Grappling With HMoob: Hmong Community Translanguaging in Language Survivance and Reclamation

• In Event: Cultivating Authentic Language Practices: Learning From Community Translanguaging Practices Outside of Schools

Abstract

Objectives
This paper examines how dialect translanguaging occurs in collective and contested ways within Hmong heritage language reclamation. Hmong language variations are referred to as dialects within the Hmong community and internal language (meshed dialect) translanguaging reflects displaced and endangered language use contexts that do not fit cleanly into colonial language (e.g. Spanish/English) dominant narratives of translanguaging in the U.S.
Hmong people are multiply-displaced people indigenous to southern China and Southeast Asia with a complex array of heteroglossic dialects, reflecting cosmologies and cultural practices (Her, 2005; Symonds, 2014). Primary dialects in the U.S. are Hmoob Dawb (White) and Moob Leeg/Ntsuab (Green/Blue). Hmong have long histories of contact zone translanguaging (Canagarajah, 2013). This paper identifies sovereign translingual practices that occur in relationship with historical power dynamics of colonial erasure. Pressures for language preservation and standardization exist in tension with Hmong cultural-linguistic diversity. The purpose of this paper is to highlight internal negotiations within community translanguaging pedagogies of language reclamation in late stages of Indigenous language loss.

Theoretical Framework
Sovereign translingual practices consider ecological models (Douglas Fir Group, 2016) of translanguaging within community language reclamation, which accounts for historicity, language ideologies, and power dynamics across languages, dialects, institutions, clans, and users. Recognizing the relationship of hegemonic/minoritized language meshing (e.g. Hmonglish), it focuses on internal language group translanguaging (e.g. Hmoob Dawb/Moob Leeg/Ntsuab). It retains translanguaging’s anticolonial roots (Canagarajah, 2013; Lewis, Jones, & Baker, 2012; Malsbary, 2014), accounting for the pressures and affordances of survivance (Vizenor, 2008) in colonial contact zones (Pratt, 1991).

Methods/Data
Research questions were:
What is the Hmong-US community stance towards dialect translanguaging?
What are the historical/ideological contexts that shape community attitudes towards dialect translanguaging?
Data were collected from Facebook groups focusing on community agreements for language use, school language/dialect policies, and Hmong language history. Data analysis combined critical historical language method of “warty genealogies” (Heller & McElhinny, 2017) with social media content analysis (Lai & To, 2015) and critical discourse policy analysis (Johnson, 2011).

Results
Findings provide (1) a historical narrative of internal Hmong language power dynamics and processes for dialect sustainability and integration and (2) a description of the terrain of internal struggle for cultural survivance in connection to language reclamation that recognizes the evasive power of colonial displacement, and (3) community desires for Hmong linguistic and cultural futurity that call into question historical practices of dialect distinctions.

Significance
This study has significance to deepening translanguaging theory through the development of sovereign translingual practices as a framework to understand and examine translanguaging that occurs within language and across language variation. It also has significant implications to Hmong language research and reclamation efforts. Findings push scholarly and pedagogical efforts to ask how internal translanguaging reflects possibilities for a translingual HMoob-as-Hmong-language future. It also questions whether the meshing of Hmoob Dawb and Moob Leeg/Ntsuab could reflect the beginnings of a unified Hmong that simultaneously redefines notions of Indigenous language standardization for the purpose of sustainable preservation.

Authors

• Vicky C. Xiong-Lor, California State University - Fresno

• Jenna Cushing-Leubner, University of Wisconsin - Whitewater