Language and Identity Flashcards
Identity negotiation for bilingual and mulitlingual people.
Co-construction (negotiation) of your identity as you connect with multiple languages and cultures.
Cultural capital
A “value” placed on a culture by people.
Language capital
A “value” placed on a language. It is part of cultural capital.
The language capital of indigenous languages in the USA.
They are valued less than the dominant language, English.
The language with the most valued cultural capital in the USA.
English.
The consequence of an indigenous having a lower cultural capital.
Loss of other langauges. WIthin one or two generations, immigrant languages are often lost.
Do attitudes to dialects vary with speakers of a language?
Yes. Speakers of a language place a different value on the dialects within in.
For example, in Brunei, perhaps more value is placed upon standard Malay than Bruneian Malay.
Subject positioning.
We “place” ourselves in particular groups. Therefore, at the same time we label some people as “others”.
For example, a student may consider themselves Hokkien, a punk skater, and all round seriously cool guy. They may consider others are Mandarin speaking, study nerds.
Bilingual or multilingual people might fit into one (or more) of how many identity models?
Four: home base / visitor’s model, feet in both worlds model, life on the border model, or the shifting identity gears model.
Home base / visitor’s base model.
You consider one culture your “home” but are happy to visit another one. Your connection to the visited one isn’t so strong, however.
For example, Chinese may “visit” Malay culture at school.
Feet in both worlds model.
You feel at ease in to two cultures in almost equal amounts.
For example, you may feel totally at ease in the Dusun world and equally at ease and connected to Malay culture.
Life on the border model.
You are positioned between two cultures. This may even lead to a new “border” culture. It is a challenging place to be.
For example, you may feel not quite Dusun but not quite Malay.
The shifting identity gears model.
You feel totally at ease in two (or more cultures) and simply “switch” identity according to your situation.
For example, there may be a “Hokkien you, an English speaking you, and a Mandarin you. Your identity changes to fit wherever you find yourself.
