“It's not like I'm gonna go to China one day”
A raciolinguistic perspective on students’ language ideologies in a U.S. Mandarin FLES program
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 17366396 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Xinyue Lu (0000-0002-2226-5427, Department of World Languages and Cultures Howard University Washington, DC USA, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Publication date | 2026-04-26 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Modern Language Journal (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0026-7902 • E-ISSN: 1540-4781 |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1111/modl.70063 |
| OpenAlex | W7155799232 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 77 |
In U.S. schools, Chinese is often offered as a world language, yet students may come to understand it through broader meanings attached to “Chinese” as a racialized, cultural, and geopolitical construct. Despite the rapid expansion of Chinese programs, little research has explored how students experience and interpret these ideological conditions that shape their learning. Drawing on data from a larger ethnographic study, this article employs a raciolinguistic lens to examine how fourth‐grade students in a U.S. Mandarin FLES program articulated and negotiated language ideologies surrounding Chinese learning. Findings reveal that students positioned Chinese learning in contrasting ways. While some valued it as a form of linguistic and cultural capital and as a site for identity reflection, others dismissed it as irrelevant within English‐dominant, monolingual frames. Across these orientations, a persistent sense of foreignness shaped how students understood Mandarin as socially distant and irrelevant, judged who could legitimately speak Chinese through racialized assumptions, and conflated Chinese with broader forms of Asian sameness. By showing how young learners negotiate these ideological tensions, this study highlights the need for pedagogies that cultivate critical language awareness, affirm multilingual legitimacy, and situate Chinese learning in locally grounded ways
China · Ethnography · Identity (music) · Ideology · Language ideology · Mandarin Chinese · Perspective (graphical) · Sinology · Study abroad · EFL/ESL Teaching and Learning · Linguistic Variation and Morphology · Multilingual Education and Policy
The Language of Evaluation
Community Forces, Social Capital, and Educational Achievement
Second-Wave Critical White Studies
Critical Race Pedagogy for More Effective and Inclusive World Language Teaching
Raciolinguistic Ideologies and Second Language Spanish
Neoliberal multilingualism and “humanitarian connections”
Give you some color
Conflicting Ideologies of Mexican Immigrant English Across Levels of Schooling
Teacher beliefs about multilingual learners
Teacher and Student Language Practices and Ideologies in a Third-Grade Two-Way Dual Language Program Implementation
Critical Approaches to World Language Education in the United States
Silencing the Subaltern
Speaking against racism
Becoming bilingual in two-way immersion
Language Discourses and Ideologies at the Heart of Early Childhood Education
Language Ideology
Minority Language Policy in China
Monolingual ideologies in multilingual states
Language Ideological Multiplicity and Tension within Dual Language Bilingual Education Teachers
Translanguaging and the Writing of Bilingual Learners
Revisiting ‘foreignness’
Commodification of the Chinese language
On the utility of Asian critical (AsianCrit) theory in the field of education
Language attitudes and heritage language maintenance among Chinese immigrant families in the USA
Words are repeated in your mind and then you remember”
Teaching third languages
Language ideologies and the production of identities
Neoliberal ideologies and language in education policies
Chinese language varieties
Ideologies of language among ELLs on the US-Mexico border
Race and language learning in multicultural Canada
I will be more inclusive towards students from different backgrounds’ – exploring Chinese teachers’ language ideologies and views about teaching Mandarin
From my parents’ language to my language
Language‐in‐Education Policies in Japan Versus Transnational Workers’ Voices
The Unexamined Relationship Between Neoliberalism and Plurilingualism
Rethinking Language Barriers & Social Justice from a Raciolinguistic Perspective
Teaching Chinese in K–12 Schools in the United States
Chinese bilingual preservice teachers' reflections on translanguaging pedagogy
The presence and absence of race in world language education literature
Diversity and inclusion of culturally and linguistically diverse students in K‐12 Chinese language education
We’re Here to Learn to Speak French”
Negotiating language ideologies in learning Putonghua
Does English really open doors? Social class and English teaching in public primary schools in Mexico
Race and language teaching
Orientations in Language Planning
Translanguaging and transnational literacies in multilingual classrooms
Complicating raciolinguistics
Critical Approaches to Spanish Language Teacher Education
A raciolinguistic analysis of the neoliberal promotion of dual language education in a new Latinx South state
Unsettling race and language
Mother Tongues and Nations
When Talk Isn't Cheap
The Racial Triangulation of Asian Americans
Standardization, Racialization, Languagelessness
Confucius Institute Programming in the United States
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |