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This qualitative study investigated the impact of online education on the learning and peer interaction experiences of students from eight universities in Hong Kong over the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. It employed an expansive and spatial notion of translanguaging to explore the process by which students drew on the affordance of virtual communication environments to communicate, study and develop new identities. The findings suggested (1) the students strategically mobilised manifold multimodal resources to constitute their communicative repertoires that facilitated smooth intercultural communication and academic success; (2) such communicative competence centralized the mediating effect of digital semiotic systems and thus might empower the students with disadvantaged language skills; and (3) through translanguaging acts the students developed a virtually translocal identity with an expanded experience of internationalisation of higher education whereby the increasingly interwoven physical and virtual spaces bring extended social networks, learning resources, and career opportunities. The implications of the findings were discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While English as a medium of instruction (EMI) is becoming a global phenomenon across higher education contexts, little attention has been paid to the instructional experiences of EMI teachers. Informed by a spatial perspective, this study explored how a cohort of Chinese university teachers navigated their EMI instructional settings. Different from the conventional discourse that depicts EMI teachers as deficit due to their being nonnative speakers of English, this study shows that the teachers were able to capitalise on their spatial repertoires for alternative ways of meaning making in their EMI classrooms. Instead of reducing EMI into an English-only space, the findings show that the teachers constructed EMI as three major spaces, including a space for drawing upon local experiences as spatial resources, a space for redefining internationalisation, and a space for translingual pedagogy practice. Through the construction of these spaces, the teachers reclaimed their legitimacy of being EMI teachers. The findings lend further support to refute the monolingual bias in EMI practice and call for attention to how EMI teachers can act as agents in reconstructing EMI instructional settings as spaces for multilingual and multimodal meaning making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This qualitative case study explores the multiple forces driving the development of language ideologies within a multi-generation ethnic Mongolian family in mainland China and its family language policy (FLP) implementation. The findings reflect changes in family members’ language proficiency, ideologies, and practices across generations, per the influence of state education and language policy, the changing national-level socioeconomic and political environment and globalisation. The findings suggest the multiple factors that influence and shape FLP. It is found that conflicts and contradictions exist among family members’ language ideologies, language management and language practices, driven by the dual position of the Mongolian language’s decline (due to its lack of involvement in globalisation) and revival (due to national-level efforts to enhance cohesion). Presenting a nuanced and holistic understanding of FLP, this study relates the Mongolian family’s FLP to wider educational, historical and sociocultural realities. The implications for different stakeholders are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study, adopting the Foucauldian lenses of citizenship, investigates how a group of students understand the prevailing social discourses and how such understanding and perceptions influence students' sense of citizenship and coping strategies. Drawing on in-depth individual interviews with 28 participants from six universities in Hong Kong, the findings suggest that multiple factors have impacts on the university students' sense of citizenship, including the media as technologies to shape citizenship, the essentialized ideological differences as an apparatus of intervention to shape and act upon individuals, and the legitimacy and discordance of opinions among individuals within both physical and virtual communities. The participants were found to gradually develop an awareness of the discursive construction of the social. They were found to search for their sense of citizenship through (a) opting for one ideological stance and/or keeping silent to avoid being othered within the social discourses existing at the social, community, and family levels; (b) adopting different coping strategies when dealing with their confusion towards conflicting comments; or (c) developing news reading literacy and coming to the realization of the role media plays in discursively constructing new citizens and exercising influence over existing and potential members of communities. The implications of the findings for curriculum design and policy making to develop support measures to facilitate students' positive learning and whole-person development are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social reality is refined and redefined through media. This article explores the representation of discourse of multilingualism in a series of Hong Kong government public service advertisements called Faces of Hong Kong. Given the role of advertisements in social reproduction and the construction of identities and subjectivities, there is scope to explore how public service advertisements that include a subset of advertisement texts, reflect and are governed by market ideologies. This article focuses on the cultural reproduction of differences and identities, and sees the ideology conveyed in public service advertisement as a powerful trope operating across different sociocultural communities. A critical reading of the promotional series suggests that discourses on English as a global language and Hong Kong as a multilingual and multicultural city are strategically co-opted to further neoliberal ideologies. This has implications for policy practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This qualitative study investigates the language socialization experiences and identity construction of a group of Chinese students when they interact with their international peers, in a transnational university in China. This study is informed by the recent critical ethnographic sociolinguistics studies (e.g. Blommaert 2010), language socialization (Duff 2007; Schieffelin and Ochs 1986), and the post-structuralist conceptualization of identity (Norton 2000). Drawing on interview and observation data, this study finds an asymmetrical power relationship between Chinese students and their native-English-speaking peers in conversations, which precipitates the separation of the two groups on campus and pushes Chinese students into a vulnerable ESL speaker positioning. This study indicates that the asymmetrical power relationship, in spite of its existence, tends to be hidden under the cloak of intercultural difference and taken as a natural and granted convention. Moreover, the findings suggest that the intercultural communication in this transnational higher education context provides a space for reciprocal language socialization in which the Chinese students are empowered to construct a multilingual Chinese identity, which opens up possibilities to interculturalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This qualitative study investigates how migrant students from mainland China attending Hong Kong universities, as scale makers, negotiate and construct new scales and identities by utilizing their sociolinguistic resources, and how their scale making is related to such social categories as history and politics. The findings suggest that (re)scaling practices are beyond hierarchically-ordered indexical regularities, but develop and change as a shifting category, and can be considered a construct that allows for negotiation and creation of meanings. The participants show their agentiveness in defining a translocal space that advocates hybridity to their advantage. It is also found that the participants established new tacit norms and organized their identities with reference to experiences and attitudes local students lacked. Under the force or influence of political, social, economic, and interpersonal factors, rescaling practices were continuously in play, and norms were re-constructed by language users. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This qualitative study explores how migrant mothers strategised to construct new class identities and mobilise between different classed communities, and how the children aligned their linguistic practices with language policy, both at home and at the societal level. Drawing on the individual interviews and focus group, this study finds that, while the mothers actively drew on resources (e.g. social-networking, knowledge of governmental policy and languages) from their emigrational experiences to achieve class mobilisation, a bounded view towards cultures may have influenced the family language policy (FLP), in turn constraining their socialisation into mainstream society and leading to class stabilisation. The mothers were found to draw heavily upon their own migrant and social experiences to set up a restrictive FLP that functionalised the contexts of household, school, community, and society. It is therefore argued that the migrant mothers' linguistic and cultural resources should be valued and suppoort is needed to help them develop a more fluid family language policy that better prepare their children for educational success. The findings suggest the agentive role children play in FLP and this points to more school-parent collaboration, and the necessity of providing more space for children to enact their agency and contribute their ideologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adopting the Bourdieusian concept of capital, this study explores capital transformation and habitus recalibration among professional migrant women in Hong Kong. This study shows the fluidity and plurality of capital conversion within the interplay between gender, power relations, and broader social and neoliberal discourse. The findings indicate that the smooth conversion of different forms of capital requires the resources and capital acquired and accumulated in other places to be locally validated, and that the extent to which linguistic and cultural resources can be validated depends on migrants' social-economic ability, and how they define the boundaries of migration-specific capital. It is also found that classed power relations play a part in constituting networks, which in turn influence habitus recalibration. This study shows the process of capital conversion and new habitus establishment cannot be simply reduced to individual agency, and that wider historical, institutional, social, and political factors play a shaping role. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This qualitative study investigates the interplay between the ethnic and academic identity construction of a group of university students with South Asian backgrounds in Hong Kong. The findings indicate that ethnic identity and ethnic socialization have protective and facilitative effects on learning motivation and academic achievement. It is found that these ethnic minority students receiving tertiary education, holding congruent views of ethnic and academic identity, display a sense of agency and critical reflectivity of both the host society and their heritage communities and see facilitating community uplift and developing a more positive social image of ethnic minorities as their generation's responsibility. Reconstructing an ethnic identity and developing new social images therefore motivate them to pursue academic success. The findings indicate that the South Asian students figured out ways in which to interact with the outer world and set up new roles and spaces (i.e., a heritage community with more positive social image). The findings shed light on how to provide better opportunities for and assistance to ethnic minority students when they pursue higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This qualitative study investigates the language ideology of a groups of Chinese language teachers working in Hong Kong's secondary schools when they teach ethnic minority students. Drawing on interview data, this study reports on how these teachers' language ideologies are in accordance/discordance with dominant discourse, and in what ways their ideologies impact their teaching approach and attitudes towards the students' heritage language and culture. Key findings indicate that instead of promoting homogeneity as a prerequisite for success, the teachers hold a pluralistic language ideology and outline the potential for ethnic minority students to become linguistic and cultural brokers between the heritage communities and mainstream society. An inconsistence was found between the teachers' positive language attitude towards heritage language and their self-distancing from the heritage language learning and use in school contexts. The findings implied that teacher education courses could enable teachers, as active agents, to re-negotiate the separate language ideology of the language policy at the macro level, deconstruct it in classroom settings and develop knowledge and beliefs to challenge and resist the ideologies that sustain the marginalisation of heritage language and culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This qualitative inquiry investigates how the experiences of learning and using multiple languages influenced the transformation of self-perceived ethnic identities in a group of tertiary-level Uyghur minority students in the context of internal migration in China. Data analysis showed that the majority of Uyghur participants developed a greater affinity with and attachment to their ethnic group by emphasizing the language differences between Uyghur and the dominant Han in intercultural encountering. However, they gradually probed into the meaning of "being Uyghur" in the receiving community. Participants following mother tongue and Chinese educational paradigms were found to offer contrastive answers to the question "what should be the distinguishing features of being Uyghur?". It was further found that learning English as a third language enabled participants to develop a positive personal ethnic identity by enhancing their understanding of ethnicity and its associations with its constituent elements. We conclude with suggestions for relevant stakeholders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores how a cohort of tertiary-level Uyghur students contested and negotiated their identities through multilingual practices in the receiving community. Drawing upon interview data from fieldwork, this study indicates that these students experienced essentialist understandings and negative views in the host society. Participants symbolically struggled over the ethnicization process and contested stereotypical images by emphasizing the pure use of their mother language and resisting the use of Putonghua within the Uyghur community. However, the participants did not hold consistent and simplified views towards languages. In the host community, participants negotiated an elite identity as ‘Zhendan Uyghur,’ capitalizing on a repertoire of available resources including Putonghua and even local linguistic resources. Moreover, they developed awareness of and utilized the symbolic value of their ethnic resources, and learned and navigated highly valued Chinese knowledge. Despite the legitimate social positions they negotiated and imagined, due to their primordial community belongingness, minority elites faced potential challenges when translating symbolic resources into economic capital in a neo-liberal economy. Implications drawn from the findings are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• This qualitative study investigates how a group of university students construct digital citizenship through their digital literacy practices in social media. • This study is informed by an integrative framework of translanguaging and spatial repertoire. • The findings suggest that digital citizenship construction entails complex interplay between individuals' social, educational and economic practices in digital space, and their agency of deploying language and semiotic recourses to enhance the communicative effect in academic and social circumstances and achieve intellectual development as well as social engagement. • The findings suggest the students' digital citizenship is largely realized or manifested through specific digital literacy practices (e.g. reading and viewing, sharing personal life on social media). • The participants' digital citizenship is dynamically constructed in and across sites for different types of social and communicative activities. • The participants are found to transcend the normativized boundaries between linguistic categories and between semiotic systems in their digital communication involving different social media and networks. • The students' agency has been facilitated by the generative and agentive nature of the social media in which the digital literacy activities take place, providing spatial repertoire constituted by various semiotic resources and tools. This qualitative study has investigated how a group of bilingual university students in Hong Kong understand digital citizenship and construct it through digital literacy practices in social media. Drawing on interview data and examples of digital activity shared by the students, we adopt the theories of digital literacies and translanguaging and transsemiotizing to reveal how they construct digital citizenship through an complex interplay between several factors, most prominently (1) a variety of digitally mediated social, cultural and educational practices the students engage in, (2) their agency of deploying diverse linguistic and semiotic recourses to achieve varied communicative effects in different settings and (3) their personal pursuits of intellectual and professional development and social engagement in a digitalized and globalized society. We then discuss how the findings can enrich our understanding of digital citizenship and its relationship with digital literacies in a multilingual and multicultural context such as Hong Kong. The implications for digital citizenship education are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores how a group of Uyghur minority students construct their identities in and through English language learning experiences as they move from Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region to study in a prestigious East coastal university in China. The research findings show that the processes of English language learning enable the ethnic minority students to develop multiple yet powerful identities, that is, a situated elite identity constructed as opposed to other Uyghur members and a positive heritage identity negotiated within the academic community, and allow them to imagine multilingual and multicultural memberships for themselves. The favourable identities thus forged are found to facilitate their adaptation to the host community. However, these minority elites are confronted with a series of problems in learning English compared to their Han counterparts, which hinder their socialisation into the society and upward social mobility. Finally, implications for policy-makers, the host institution, and ethnic students are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study takes the initiative to use structural equation modelling to evaluate a motivational model which subsumes some hypothesized links between L2 ideal self, acculturation to the mainstream society, acculturation to the heritage culture, and learners' intended effort to learning the mainstream language as an L2 among immigrant students in a host context. Data was collected from 390 secondary students with ethnic minority backgrounds in Hong Kong. It is found that L2 ideal self has a direct effect on intended effort and an indirect effect through the acculturation to mainstream culture. It is also found that parental encouragement contributes to intended efforts both directly and indirectly via impacting L2 ideal self. The findings imply that promoting ethnic minority students' Chinese language ideal self would help construct their bicultural identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the complex interplay between religion, gender and marginalization among a group of Pakistani schoolgirls in Hong Kong. It is found that the participants experience multiple marginalization and develop various strategies against disadvantageous positions. It is also found that, while the Pakistani girls attempt to extricate themselves from the gendered practices in their heritage culture and its customs that marginalize and confine women, they simultaneously seek to establish an Islamic or Muslim identity that differentiates them from local girls. It argues that, while mainstream culture has, to a certain extent, released Pakistani girls from the oppression and pressure of religion and customs, they have not been provided sufficient guidance to realize their dreams, making the release temporary and uncertain. The implications of the findings and directions for future research are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the ideological complex in a Hong Kong primary school where a large number of immigrant mainland Chinese students study by examining the interview data from teachers and immigrant students. Drawing on the notions of monoglot ideology and misrecognition, this study indicates that disqualifications of some linguistic resources in the emergent repertoire of their students exist in the primary school as a political and social context dominated by particular language ideologies. This study also explores how the language ideologies of the students are constructed and how the students censor their use of the native language through internalisation of the language attitudes held by the teachers. The findings suggest that a flexible language ideology would help the students value their own language resources and construct a new identity in the new hibitus. It is also suggested that the immigrant students can employ the multilingual practices as a symbolic resource rather than as a disadvantage constructed by the institutional ideologies. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Drawing on insights from Communities of Practice and critical discourse theory, this study investigates how teacher identities are discursively constructed in course of teacher education and under the influence of social structure. The participants were seven Hong Kong and nine mainland Chinese pre-service teachers. Two focus group interviews and in-depth individual interviews with each of the participants were employed. The study revealed that the identity formation of these participants is enacted individually, mediated by the immediate contextual factors, shaped by their socio-economic backgrounds and constructed with reference to social discourses on teachers and teaching profession. This article discusses the sociocultural factors behind the differences and generates implications for present teacher education practice and future research. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Drawing on positioning theory, this paper investigates the identity issues involved in an English as Lingua Franca (ELF) interaction in a multicultural university in Hong Kong. The findings indicate that the ELF participants' institutional roles are culturally determined, and are not fixed but vary in different phases of the discourse. This study suggests that the interlocutors move beyond language use in specific interactional context, and draw on their own histories and cultural knowledge to define and re-define the different positions of English language varieties in a broader context, so as to position their own English varieties at a privileged or advantageous position in the micro-interactional context. Despite the subtle negotiation of power relations they undertake, the ELF speakers in this study attempt to achieve alignment when a face-threatening episode occurs. It is found that ELF communication provides a context for interlocutors to see themselves through the lens of their embodied history and subjectivity and that of others, and to create new relationships and identities. The implications of the findings and future research direction are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• University students transfer habitus and capital across fields during the pandemic. • They expand habitus and capital by utilizing affordances of digital technologies. • They enrich multimodal digital literacies in online learning and communication. • They revalidate multilingual capital against a regime of English monolingualism. The COVID-19 pandemic has brought various challenges to the education domain globally. This study examines how a group of non-local university students studying at EMI universities in Hong Kong adjusted to the dominant online mode of learning and communication based on their lived experiences in learning and intercultural social networking during the pandemic. Employing the theory of digital literacies and Bourdieu's concepts of habitus and capital, we show how students expanded, redeveloped and transferred existing awareness, knowledge, competences and practices to engage in a range of digitally mediated academic and social activities in this condition. We conclude by discussing how the findings may inform refinement or readjustment of digitalized/zing international higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This article investigates the language attitudes, language practices and identity construction of a group of ethnic minority students in a secondary school in Hong Kong. Drawing on data from focus group and individual interviews, this research shows that the ethnic minority students negotiate and contest their heritage identity by utilizing their heritage and the experiences and knowledge they have gained in the host context. In addition, the students construct a counter-discourse to resist the lower social status of their heritage languages and minority identity by maintaining their heritage language, by promoting the dominant status of English and by devaluing the local language; however, these steps may limit their linguistic choices and lead to discrimination against other languages. This paper implies that school administrators and policy makers had better seek to establish a more supportive environment for language learning by immigrant students, and that the students themselves can utilize their multicultural and multilingual backgrounds to empower themselves in the host context and enjoy more equal opportunities. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

• Translocal space in internationalized education contexts is open to diversity, polycentricity and dynamicity. • Multilingual students contest the socio-politically and institutionally scaled language norms in translocal space. • Multilingual students can reconstruct space and create new sociolinguistic spaces to accommodate their communicative and social needs. • Power relations in translocal space are fluid and negotiable. This study explores the language practices and perceptions of local and international students engaged in translocal space of communication in a transnational university in China. It focuses on the process by which multilingual students, as scale makers, negotiated language norms, reshaped interactional contexts and strategically configured diverse resources embedded in various spatiotemporal scales to accomplish communicative activities. It is found that translocal space is open to plural norms and shifting power relations. Through scaling practices, multilingual students can create, define and refine sociolinguistic contexts to their own advantage. The findings also highlight multilingual students' awareness of power issues involved in the relationship between language and norms, the development of more open and flexible attitudes towards language use and their capability in applying interactive strategies to negotiate linguistic differences to achieve communicative success in translocal space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]