Presented at the 16th World Congress of Applied Linguistics (AILA), Beijing Foreign Studies University, China, 27 August 2011.

This symposium aimed to capture the multiple and dynamic processes of language and identity in the context of globalization. The pervasive process of globalization has inevitably affected the previously existing social and linguistic order. Broad, stable and normal patterns of conduct are being deconstructed and reshuffled; multiple, overlapping and conflicting forms are being shaped and reshaped. The abnormal becomes normal; disorder becomes the new order. The symposium explored this issue from two complementary perspectives – a macro perspective that focuses on language policies, and a micro perspective that focuses on how people struggle to articulate their identities.