Search

This article seeks to explore intercultural communication among a group of students with diverse linguistic and sociocultural backgrounds in an English-medium transnational university in China, focusing on multilingual students' practices and perceptions of English as a lingua franca (ELF). Informed by an expanded understanding of translanguaging from a spatial perspective, this study explores multilingualism, multimodality, and spatiality in linguistic practices related to ELF in an international education context. Drawing upon multiple data sources including ethnographic observations, interviews facilitated by language portraits, recordings of interactions, and policy documents, findings of the study show that ELF communication was understood and practiced by multilingual students as a translanguaging act based on (partially) shared repertoires and beliefs about language and communication. It is also found that the monolithic and monolingual model of language policy in English-medium higher education ran counter to the students' daily communicative practices and language development needs. Implications are suggested for how international universities can account for translanguaging in fostering linguistic diversity and preparing students for the practical realities of a multilingual world.

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.

The advancement of English as an instrument for the internationalization of higher education has foregrounded English as an academic lingua franca (EALF), and the case of China is no exception. This study focuses on the process by which EALF has been interpreted and negotiated across university policies and local practices in China's internationalized higher education. Drawing upon nexus analysis and multisource data, the study traced the discursive (re)location of EALF across different scales of social activity related to multilingualism at an English-medium transnational university in China. Our analysis illustrates the tension between English and other co-existing languages, as presented in educational language policies and as perceived and practiced by multilingual students in the local communicative context. The findings also show an interactive policymaking process through which students and university administrators opened ideological and implementational spaces that linguistically and semiotically pluralized communicative scenarios at the internationalized university in focus.

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.

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.

Drawing on the notions of scale and space, this paper investigates identity construction among a group of mainland Chinese cross-boundary students by analysing their language choices and linguistic practices in a multilingual university in Hong Kong. The research illustrates how movement across spaces by these students produces varying index values for languages and influences their language usage, which becomes emblematic of individual and group identities. The research demonstrates that the values developed in their place of origin may have influences on their identity construction and peer communication in the host context. Finally, it shows that these students use their multiple linguistic repertoires to project multilayered identities and gain legitimacy in peer interactions. (Contains 1 note.)

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 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]

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]

• 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]