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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.

Drawing on semi-structured interviews with six Chinese migrant families with children aged 12-15 years old, this qualitative study uses a Bourdieusian lens to probe how the historically lived and migration experiences of Chinese internal migrant parents construct their paradoxical beliefs in children's English learning and informs their family language practice. The discursive process of constructing family language policy (FLP) reveals how migrant parents negotiate between changing habitus and the newly acquired capital during migration to Shanghai. Findings indicate that the migrant parents acknowledge the value of English in the linguistic market and hold high expectations and aspirations of their children's English education. However, their historically constructed language ideologies constrain their engagement in children's English learning and hinder their FLP decision-making. The urban field's prevailing social and educational norms of promoting children's learning English as a foreign language to enhance cross-cultural communication and attain academic success has its transformative power, which enables migrant parents to adjust their understanding of English learning and encourages them to facilitate the same for their children at home. The present study proposes a theoretical model to conceptualise the FLP construction in internal migrant families. Implications of the findings for different stakeholders have been 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 process of family language policy and planning among a group of immigrant mothers with south Asian backgrounds in Hong Kong, and explores the underlying cultural, socio-political and ideological reasons. Moving beyond a discrete analysis of family language policy within the home context to incorporate elements of historical time and space, the data analysis shows that family language policy is shaped by individuals' cultural affiliations, future imaginations and their experiences across the contexts of school, community, workplace, host society and home country. Furthermore, broader social and ideological realities also impact individuals, and thereby influence family language policy. The findings suggest that South Asian families may face difficulty in maintaining their children's heritage language literacy, and that the immigrant mothers' lack of local educational experiences and limited knowledge of the Chinese language may disadvantage their children in terms of educational opportunities. Providing an in-depth understanding of bottom-up language practices, language planning and implementation in immigrant home contexts, this study has implications for policy makers in terms of language education and provision.

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.

This article explores how ethnic minority students in Hong Kong secondary schools discursively construct their identities in relation to culture, heritage, and social discourse. It finds that the ethnic minority students negotiate their identities within multiple positioning from parents, school, and the broader social discourse on minority languages and cultures. It also finds that they construct contradictory language ideologies when attempting to legitimate their heritage languages and to illegitimate the status of Chinese in the social context. The findings indicate that the participants tend to establish an essentialized cultural difference between their heritage culture and host culture. It argues that fixed and stereotyped views towards language practices and culture may lead to antagonistic relations between the ethnic minority students and locals, and become obstacles to their socialization and integration into the mainstream community. The implications for establishing a flexible and relational view on cultural differences and language use are explored.

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.

This study reports on a longitudinal inquiry into professional identity construction among six novice cross-border English language teachers from mainland China, who completed their pre-service teacher education in Hong Kong (HK) and began their teaching practice in local HK schools. The findings indicate that the participants navigated obstacles in teaching by deploying their own multiple languages as a cultural and linguistic repertoire. The findings also show that the teachers experienced difficulty legitimising their professional identity in the teaching community, where contextual issues and power interplays mediated the process. Furthermore, it is found that the participants' commitment to teaching was negatively influenced by their non-legitimate position in the teaching community and the discordance between their teaching beliefs and the norms and values of their workplace. This study suggests that complex inter-relationships between marginal status in and legitimate membership of the community, between historical and cultural background, present practice, and future expectations, between social discourse and personal location, are involved in the process of identity construction. Measures to legitimate these teachers' position and to transform the linguistic and cultural repertories of these teachers into valuable resources of the local schools are suggested. Implications for future research are outlined.

This study explores transformations in the cultural identities of a group of pre-service teachers from mainland China during their educational experiences in Hong Kong, and how these transformations subsequently impact their professional identity. Individual and focus group interviews were conducted with 16 cross-border pre-service teachers from a teacher education institution. Findings demonstrate that 1) the participants recast their extant ideologies and cultural beliefs in response to multiple influences in their new context, enabling them to move beyond pre-established teaching values to re-construct their teaching identity; and 2) some participants constructed a bicultural and multilingual identity to gain legitimacy in the host context. The findings indicate that a more supportive context that provides more room for cultural awareness should be co-constructed by local and non-local pre-service teachers, institutions and policy makers. The study extends understanding of the interconnected relations between teacher identity and historical and social discourses.

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.)

This paper investigates the identity construction and language practice of a group of mainland Chinese immigrant students studying at a secondary school in Hong Kong, and explores the underlying reasons for, as well as the individual and group identities derived from, those language choices and practices. The data were collected through semi-structured interviews with the immigrant students and through observations in the school context, which focused on their views and attitudes concerning Putonghua maintenance, Cantonese and English learning and their perceptions of language ideologies in the school context. The marginalised position of Putonghua and its non-use in and out of classrooms reflects the social distinctions or language hierarchies found in the local school context. To resist the marginalised practice in the school context, the immigrant students employ their cultural and linguistic resources to establish and maintain Putonghua-speaking social networks and to imagine a proficient multilingual identity within the broader social context. The findings suggest that immigrant students should raise their awareness of language ideologies in the school context and recognise existing contradictions and discontinuities. It is also suggested that language ideologies could be incorporated into teachers' professional development. (Contains 1 note and 1 table.)