Bilingualism as a resource: language attitudes of Vietnamese ethnic minority students

Type Journal Article - Current Issues in Language Planning
Title Bilingualism as a resource: language attitudes of Vietnamese ethnic minority students
Author(s)
Publication (Day/Month/Year) 2017
Page numbers 1-20
URL http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14664208.2017.1337922
Abstract
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.

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