Chineseness and Chinese Heritage Language for Chinese Australians: A Sociological Quantitative Study

• In Event: Roundtable Session 79
  In Roundtable Session: Negotiating Identity: Religion, Language, Race, and Place

Abstract

The relationship between Heritage Language and ethnic identity has been gaining significant research ground in North America. However, there seems to be little if any research investigating the link between Chinese Australians’ ethnic identity and their Chinese Heritage Language. This sociological quantitative study interprets Chinese Australians’ “Chineseness” as their ethnic identity and did so by virtue of Bourdieu’s key concept of habitus. The result of Spearman’s correlation test demonstrates a statistically significant strong positive correlation (.656, p<.001) between Chinese Australians’ “Chineseness” and their self-perceptions of Chinese Heritage Language proficiency. This paper further explains the finding in light of Bourdieu’s (1991) contention that people make choices about languages according to the dispositions (habitus) they have.

Author

• Guanglun Michael Mu, Queensland University of Technology