“Không, Thích Nói Hơn”: A Loving Negotiation of Language Ideologies and Identities

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Friday 9:50 am Four Seasons Ballroom 1
  In Roundtable Session: Language, Ideology, and Identity in Bi-/Multilingual Education (Table 4)

Abstract

This qualitative study explored language ideologies of an immigrant mother and a transnational child of Southeast Asian heritage through their articulation about language(ing) and language practices. The author observed a community-organized language class, interviewed the mother and the child, and collected the child's literacy artifacts. The findings demonstrate the mother's complex language ideologies when participating in diverse ideological sites (e.g. schools, community-organized language class, or at home) and how being flexible with her expectations of her child’s bilingual development will support the child to sustain the home language in the child’s preferred modes of expression. In addition, the child’s translanguaging practices rejected the notion of balanced bilingualism, and asserted how he constructed his identity as an emergent bilingual.

Author

• Ngan Bich Vu, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign