‘To invest or divest’: Speculative bilingualism and meritocratic subjectivity in Chinese multinational corporations amid post-globalisation dynamics

Abstract This article examines how skilled professionals in Chinese multinational corporations navigate language investment amid post-globalisation dynamics characterised by heightened geopolitical uncertainty. It advances ‘speculative bilingualism’ as a theoretical intervention, reframing English, and increasingly Mandarin, not as stable linguistic capital but as volatile, contingent resources whose value fluctuates with global realignments, national agendas, and corporate priorities. Drawing on mixed-methods research combining longitudinal surveys and critical sociolinguistic ethnography in three Shanghai-based multinationals, the study analyses how meritocratic subjectivity—the internalised imperative to self-optimise for mobility—interacts with speculative orientations towards language acquisition. Rather than linear skill accumulation, employees pursue affectively charged, risk-laden strategies of investment and divestment, shaped by structural constraints such as gendered barriers and the absence of institutional alternatives. By foregrounding a shift from a capital logic to a speculative logic in language investment, the article offers critical insight into how language learning and meritocratic aspirations are recalibrated within turbulent global orders. (Speculative bilingualism, meritocratic subjectivity, post-globalisation, multinational corporations, language investment)