Bilingualism as a resource

Language attitudes of Vietnamese ethnic minority students

Datos Bibliográficos

ID12677757
AutoresT T T Nguyen (0000-0001-8005-4567, The University of Queensland, autor de correspondencia), M Obaidul Hamid (0000-0003-3205-6124, The University of Queensland)
Año2017
Volumen19
Número4
Páginas343-362
Fecha de publicación2017-07-31
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaCurrent Issues in Language Planning (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 1466-4208 • E-ISSN: 1747-7506
EditorialTaylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/14664208.2017.1337922
OpenAlexW2739824771
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas25
Referencias citadas38

This article examines a group of Vietnamese ethnic minority students’ language attitudes towards formal and informal language policies of the domains of school, church and ethnic community and towards their individual bilingualism. Multiple semi-structured interviews with eight college-age minority students are used as the main source of the data. Findings reveal that school language policy contributed to shaping the students’ view of “language-as-problem” in valuing Vietnamese, while church and community language policies shaped the “language-as-right” orientation in relation to their first language. Under the mixed influences of language policies of these domains, the students considered their bilingualism as a “resource” that could help them to maintain their ethnic features and join the mainstream flow simultaneously. Being aware of the sample size and other methodological considerations, we suggest that there may not be essential conflicts between bilingual identity and national solidarity in the same minority language speaker in a polity such as Vietnam. Based on these insights, we would like to consider language diversity, bilingualism and cultural heterogeneity as a resource rather than a problem in defining language policies for national development and social inclusion and harmony in Vietnam

Comprehension approach · Ethnic group · First language · Language education · Language planning · Language policy · Linguistics · Mainstream · Minority language · Multilingualism · Neuroscience of multilingualism · Pedagogy · Pidgin · Political science · Politics · Sociolinguistics · Sociology · Sociology of language · Solidarity · Vietnamese · Law · Linguistic Variation and Morphology · Multilingual Education and Policy · Second Language Learning and Teaching