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2018-07-19 Identity Perception of Chinese Immigrant Youth at a Mandarin Bilingual School
Lai, Xingru
Lai, X. (2018). Identity Perception of Chinese Immigrant Youth at a Mandarin Bilingual School (Unpublished master's thesis). University of Calgary, Calgary, AB. doi:10.11575/PRISM/32654 http://hdl.handle.net/1880/107472 master thesis
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UNIVERSITY OF CALGARY
Identity Perception of Chinese Immigrant Youth at a Mandarin Bilingual School
by
Xingru Lai
A THESIS
SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES
IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE
DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS
GRADUATE PROGRAM IN EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH
CALGARY, ALBERTA
JULY, 2018
© Xingru Lai 2018
Abstract
This study explored identity perception of youth from Chinese backgrounds in the context of a Mandarin/English bilingual education program in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. The study was based on the theory proposed by Grosjean (2015) on bilingualism and biculturalism, together with bilingual identity negotiation framework by Fielding (2015). Six students from
Grades 7 to 9 were individually interviewed about how they used languages and how they perceived their identities as a person from Chinese backgrounds in the Mandarin/English bilingual program.
Results indicated that bilingualism is a dynamic process. Some participants in this study started with one language as the dominant language, but after a transition period, the first language became the weaker language and the second language the stronger language.
Meanwhile, results revealed their creative uses of languages. Most participants engaged in code- switching in their language use both in the interviews and in their home usage of languages.
Through this program, they learned how to value their own languages and cultures as well as feeling proud of being Chinese.
Implications of the study suggested the need to emphasize the importance of affirming identities in language learning for immigrant students. In order for students’ bilingual competence to develop, the immigrant students’ heritage background should be seen as a valuable resource and be fully respected.
ii Acknowledgements
Completion of this research would not have been possible without the support, guidance, and encouragement of numerous individuals. I would like to express the deepest appreciation to my supervisor, Dr. Sylvie Roy, who always provides me assistance and suggestions throughout my research. I have been lucky to have a supervisor who responded to my questions and queries so promptly.
Besides my advisor, I would like to thank the rest of my committee members, Dr.
Roswita Aleida Helene Dressler, and Dr. Olive Chapman for their encouragement, insightful comments, and careful attention to detail.
I am grateful to all participating students, their teachers, the principal of the school, and the school board for their keen cooperation with my research. The research was an immeasurable learning experience to understand the implications of Mandarin bilingual education and a precious opportunity to examine what I learned from University of Calgary.
Last but not the least, I would like to thank my family: my parents, Yonghui Lai and
Xiaoyue Chen for supporting me financially and spiritually throughout my life. Without them, it could not be possible that I could have gone this far in my research.
iii TABLE OF CONTENTS
Abstract……………………………………………………………………………………………ii
Acknowledgements....……………………………………………………………………………iii
Table of Contents…………………………………………………………………………………iv
List of Tables……………………………………………………………………………………viii
List of Figures…………………………………………………………………………………… ix
CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION ...... 1
Research Purpose and Questions ...... 2
BACKGROUND ...... 3
Chinese immigration to Canada ...... 3
Mandarin-English bilingual program in southern Alberta...... 6
Chinese in Calgary...... 8
Research Journey ...... 11
Significance of the Study ...... 12
Organization of the Thesis ...... 13
Use of Terms as Related to My Study ...... 14
Immigrant youth...... 14
Culture...... 14
CHAPTER TWO LITERATURE REVIEW ...... 16
Bilingual Education ...... 16
Definition ...... 16
Types of bilingual education...... 16
Research on Mandarin Bilingual Program ...... 19
iv Research on identity ...... 21
Theoretical Framework ...... 23
The bilingual person ...... 23
Becoming bilingual ...... 25
Acting bilingually ...... 27
Monolingual mode ...... 28
Bilingual mode ...... 28
The bicultural person ...... 29
Becoming bicultural ...... 31
Acting biculturally ...... 33
Monocultural mode ...... 33
Bicultural mode ...... 34
Bilingual bicultural ...... 34
Bilingual identity negotiation framework ...... 35
CHAPTER THREE METHODOLOGY ...... 38
Research Purpose ...... 38
Philosophical Foundation...... 38
Research Design ...... 39
Qualitative study ...... 39
Case study ...... 40
Data Collection Procedures ...... 40
Research site ...... 40
Focal participants ...... 41
v Participants selection...... 41
Participant Demographics ...... 42
Interviews ...... 43
Confidentiality ...... 45
Trustworthiness ...... 45
Researcher’s disposition ...... 46
Summary ...... 47
CHAPTER FOUR FINDINGS ...... 48
Becoming Bilingual ...... 48
Language proficiency and use ...... 49
Code-switching...... 51
Relationship with languages...... 53
Self-perception as bilingual ...... 54
Benefits of being bilingual ...... 55
Challenges of being bilingual ...... 56
Cognitive challenges...... 57
Perception of decrease of heritage language proficiency...... 58
Becoming Bicultural ...... 59
Self-perception as bicultural ...... 60
Connection with Canadian culture ...... 61
Connection with Chinese culture...... 62
Celebrating Chinese festivals...... 62
Daily activities...... 63
vi Participation in the Mandarin bilingual program...... 64
Perceived Discrimination ...... 65
Summary ...... 67
CHAPTER FIVE DISCUSSION ...... 68
Bilingualism as a Dynamic Process ...... 68
Preference for English ...... 68
Perceived discrimination ...... 71
The Role of Program in Developing Bilingual/Bicultural Identity ...... 73
CHAPTER SEVEN CONCLUSION ...... 77
Strengths and Limitations ...... 78
Educational Implication ...... 80
APPENDIX ...... 93
vii List of Tables
Table 1 Types of Bilingual Education…………………………………………………………...17
Table 2 Language Fluency and Use……………………………………………………………...25
Table 3 Participant Demographic Data…………………………………………………………..43
viii List of Figures
Figure1 Population of Chinese immigrants………………………………………………………..9
ix CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
Immigration to Canada from Chinese speaking countries has increased dramatically in the past fifteen years. According to the results of the National Household Survey in 2011, China was the second leading country of birth among people who immigrated to Canada between 2006 and 2011. The size of the Chinese population in Canada has increased from 1,094,700 in 2001, which accounted for 3.5% of Canada’s total population to 1,487,000 in 2011, which represented
4.5% of the total population (Statistics Canada, 2011). With the influx of Chinese immigrants, there was also a parallel growth in the number of immigrant youth in Canada.
Although there was a variety of research about Chinese immigrants (Li, 2005; Wang &
Lo, 2005; Shan & Guo, 2013), little has been conducted on what immigrant youth may experience. Different from adult immigrants, immigrant youth move into a new cultural context before becoming integrated adults and may undergo different experiences of identity perception.
For instance, Anisef and Kilbride (2003) explored “a range of challenges and needs encountered by immigrant youth as they make the transition to life in Canada, exploring issues that include personal adaptation to a new culture; coping with a new and often different school environment and adjusting to changed family dynamics that accompany immigration” (pp. 2-3).
According to Gonzales-Berry, Mendoza, and Plaza (2006), adolescence was “a moment of crossing an important identity forming threshold” (p. 4) and the moment of “crossing” was more complex and complicated for immigrant youth who live at home in one culture, while attending school in a different cultural context. Just at Tyyskä (2009) pointed out, many youths felt torn between their desire to ‘fit in’ with their peers and their desire to meet their parents’ expectations. One immigrant youth shared his experience in a study stated that “I am stuck in the
1 middle. I want to have my cultural background, for that is where I come from. I also want to join in the mainstream society…I like to learn about my original culture and keep those values. But we are in Canada. We need to do what Canadians do. If there are not many difficulties, I will stay in the middle of the two cultures” (Social Planning Council of Ottawa, 2010, p.15). The use of “stuck in the middle” to describe his experience suggested that he perceived identities as separated. For him, identity was an either-or question and heritage Chinese culture was incompatible with Canadian culture. However, there is a possibility to adopt mainstream and other cultures while maintaining heritage culture (Buriel, 1993). For instance, the bicultural people combine and blend aspects of two or more cultures involved and their identities are viewed as mixed and blended not separated (Grosjean, 2015).
Although the topic concerned about the identity of immigrant youth has been identified as a crucial area for social science research (Suarez-Orozco & Suarez-Orozco, 2001), we have little insight into how young Chinese immigrants perceive their identities particularly in bilingual schools in the Canadian society, more specifically a Mandarin bilingual school in Alberta.
In this qualitative research, I undertook an inquiry into struggles and tensions of identity among Chinese immigrant youth who settled in Alberta and attended Mandarin bilingual programs. By exploring their perceptions of their lived experiences through in-depth and face-to- face interviews, I expected that the research could contribute to a deeper understanding of identities of Chinese immigrant youth in Southern Alberta.
In following chapters, I introduced the research questions, provided the background and the context of my research, and elaborated my research journey in this paper.
Research Purpose and Questions
2 To achieve a more thorough understanding of the lived experiences of Chinese immigrant youth in Mandarin bilingual programs, I designed this research as a case study in a Mandarin bilingual program in Southern Alberta. Through their voices, I aimed to explore in-depth the inner worlds of a group of immigrants, namely, recent Chinese immigrant youth who are enrolled in grade 7-9. More specifically, I explored struggles and tensions in the identities of
Chinese immigrant youth in Canada and how they perceive their identities as Chinese immigrants in the Mandarin bilingual program.
My research questions are:
1. How do youth perceive their identities as Chinese immigrants in the Mandarin
bilingual school?
2. What are differences among students in Mandarin bilingual school in terms of
bilingual and bicultural identities?
Guided by these two questions, I conducted one-on-one interviews with six students aged
12 to14 from Chinese backgrounds to understand their lived experiences in Mandarin bilingual program in Calgary.
Background
Chinese immigration to Canada. Chinese settlement in Canada can be traced back to
1788. In the memoirs of British Captain John Meares, a group of roughly 70 Chinese smiths, sailors and carpenters from Macau were employed to build a ship, North-West America, at
Nootka Sound, Vancouver Island, British Columbia (Dawson, 1991; Lai, 2003).
However, mass immigration from China to Canada did not begin until the 1850s when gold fields were discovered in the Fraser Valley of British Colombia, drawing thousands of gold miners from China seeking their fortune. The next influx of Chinese immigrants occurred in the
3 1880s when Chinese laborers arrived to build the B.C. section of the Canadian Pacific Railway
(CPR). Upon completion of the CPR in 1885, a serious recession began. It battered the economy and affected the available labor force throughout the province. Many unemployed Chinese suffered from deprivation and malnutrition for months. In such conditions, those who had sufficient savings sailed home to China while some others moved eastward to Alberta and
Ontario in search of a new life (Dawson, 1991; Lai, 2003).
Despite their invaluable contribution, Chinese in Canada suffered from discrimination and persecution. In 1884, a Canadian federal Royal Commission was held inquiring into the alleged problem of Chinese immigration. Following the Royal Commission came the Chinese
Immigration Act of 1885 which placed a head tax of $50 on all China Chinese immigrants coming to Canada in order to restrict Chinese immigrants. This amount was subsequently raised to $100 in 1900, and $500 in 1903. However, as many Chinese still managed to pay the heavy head tax, Chinese immigration to Canada was not halted until the most restrictive law—the 1923
Chinese Exclusion Act which essentially excluded Chinese immigrants from entering Canada.
The reason behind the introduction of the Act is the fear and concern that the Chinese population was going to take jobs from White Canadians (Dawson, 1991). By 1941, the population of
Chinese had been reduced to 34,672 (Li & Lee, 2015).
At long last, in 1947, the Chinese Exclusion Act was repealed and in 1967, Canada eliminated race and place of origin from its immigration policy (see the link https://pier21.ca/research/immigration-history/immigration-regulations-order-in-council-pc-
1967-1616-1967#footnote-1) After this, there was a steady influx of Chinese immigrants, mostly from Mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan or Southeast Asia. Despite the immigration policy change in the 1960s, the racial discrimination which was rooted in Canadian history did not
4 disappear. Rather, “it has been continually reproduced in the contemporary Canadian society, particularly in major social institutions such as school” (Cui, 2016). According to Cui (2016), one Chinese immigrant youth she interviewed talked about the discrimination he encountered, such as racial slurs and racial gestures. He regarded the discrimination as being caused by the social context of the school, where he was the only Chinese student. As this immigrant youth stated in the interview, “[t]he general population [in the small town] is Caucasian. I am the only
Asian in junior high. So the White kids, I don’t think they’ve ever met an Asian person before in their life so they are a bit nervous in a way, but also cautious in their attitude toward me. Also at the same time, they are a bit discriminatory. Because just by appearance I look different from them” (Cui, 2016, p. 1160). Likewise, Kobayashi and Preston (2014) discussed everyday racism that Canadian-born Chinese (CBC) experienced at school. For example, one participant in this study stated that children at grade school would come up to him and teach him a song “Me
Chinese, Me So Dumb, Me Know . . .”. Some children even told him to go back home, where he came from. Further, The CBCs deflected their experiences of racism by transferring their own prejudices to recently arrived immigrants, whom they labeled as FOB (Fresh off the boat). They denigrated recent Chinese immigrants as not Canadian enough and differentiated themselves from recent Chinese immigrants. Moreover, they blamed recent Chinese immigrants for not assimilating into the Canadian culture like everyone else and reinforcing an otherness held by dominant Canadians that often includes them. From the perspectives of Canadian-born Chinese, the insistence of recent Chinese immigrants on creating a “Chinese” landscape consisting of certain kinds of cars, clothing, and language made them vulnerable to racism and othering. Just as one participant declared, “It’s their fault that we experience racism” (Kobayashi & Preston,
2014, p.239).
5 As discussed above, racism is not only discrimination of white against minorities but also discrimination that is internalized within Chinese community (Kobayashi & Preston ,2014;
Cui, 2016). The Chinese immigration history and racism that Chinese immigrant youth face set the broad context in which their identities perception and development take place. In my study, I would discover if history has an impact or not on how youth in Mandarin bilingual program perceive their identities as persons from Chinese backgrounds.
Mandarin-English bilingual program in southern Alberta. With the Official
Language Act’s establishment of French and English as official languages in the 1960s, Canada became a bilingual country. In 1970, the federal governments’ Royal Commission Report on
Bilingualism and Multiculturalism acknowledged that Canada was a multicultural nation and that cultural diversity in Canada needs to be recognized. This report made specific recommendations that had the significant influence on the education of minority students not represented by the two official language groups. One of the recommendations was as follows: “We recommend that the teaching of languages other than English and French and cultural subjects related to them, be incorporated as options in the public elementary school program, where there is sufficient demand for such classes” (Government of Canada, 1970, p.228). In 1988, Canada’s
Multiculturalism Act was formally introduced and it provided a legislative framework for the official policy of multiculturalism adopted by the government in 1971. One of the objectives of the act was to “preserve and enhance the use of languages other than English or French while strengthening the status and use of 31 the official languages of Canada” (Tavares, 2000, p.159).
Under the influence of the federal multiculturalism policies, provincial governments adopted parallel multicultural policies, which provided opportunities for various cultural groups.
6 Bilingual programs such as Ukrainian, German, Hebrew, Arabic, Spanish, and Mandarin were developed in Alberta.
In 1982, an English-Chinese bilingual program was piloted by the Edmonton Chinese
Bilingual Education Association (ECBEA) in two schools with an enrolment of 40 students in
Edmonton. ECBEA is a non-profit association run by volunteers, aiming to liaison with
Edmonton Public Schools on all matters pertaining to Chinese bilingual education and promote the learning and understanding of Chinese language and culture. Members of the ECBEA comprise all the parents of children registered in Chinese bilingual programs in Edmonton.
Although at that time, most immigrants to Edmonton from China spoke Cantonese, the program selected Mandarin as the language of instruction because Mandarin was the official language in
China and the majority of Chinese back home spoke Mandarin (Schoeck, 2006). Another reason was that learning Mandarin could help students establish connections with China in the future
(Edmonton Public School Board, 2017).
The pilot project turned out to be a great success. As a result, the program was adopted by the Edmonton public school board in the second year. In more than three decades, the Chinese bilingual program has developed into one of the biggest bilingual programs in the city
(Edmonton Public School Board, 2017). There are six elementary schools, four junior high schools, and three senior high schools enrolling over 1,900 students from kindergarten to Grade
12.
In Calgary, the Chinese (Mandarin) bilingual program opened in September 1998 at K
School1, starting with one grade four class. Over the years, it steadily progressed into a full elementary program. Later, the elementary program has moved from K School to other schools.
1 This school was kept anonymous.
7 In 2011, the program was finally moved to W School where for the first time since its conception, the Mandarin Bilingual program had its very own school (Calgary Board of
Education, 2017). Currently, there are three elementary schools and one junior high school enrolling students from Kindergarten to Grade 9. In 2017, parents of children in an elementary school wanted the opening of a south Calgary Junior high site for the program. The reason was that children would have to travel to a junior high school in the north of the city if they want to continue Mandarin beyond Grade 6. Concerned about this issue, the Calgary Board of Education
(CBE) expanded the Chinese (Mandarin) Bilingual Program for Grades 5-7 for students living in the south of Calgary.
Apart from providing the same curriculum content as other schools in Alberta, the
Chinese (Mandarin) bilingual program offers students the opportunity to acquire the basic skills for speaking, reading, writing, listening and communicating in Mandarin at a young age (Calgary
Board of Education, 2018). English and Mandarin are used as the languages of instruction. At the elementary level, 50% of the instruction is in Mandarin and the other 50% in English. For half of the day, students are instructed by teachers with high proficiency in English in English Language
Arts, Social Studies, and Health. For the other half of the school day, students are instructed by teachers with high competency in Mandarin in Mandarin Language Arts, Math, and Science. At the junior high school level from grade 7 to 9, there is a 30 % split in instructional time between
English and Mandarin. Chinese Language Arts and Math are taught in Mandarin while all remaining subjects are taught in English. The major goal of this type of language education is to produce bilingual and multicultural children (Calgary School Board, 2017).
Chinese in Calgary. While much research (Jia, 2016; Marshall & Lee, 2017) has focused on Chinese immigrants in Toronto and Vancouver, studies of Calgary-based Chinese
8 immigrants are relatively less frequent. The Chinese immigrants in Calgary are smaller in number, compared to the large Chinese communities in these two metropolitan areas (Statistic
Canada, 2011).
Figure 1 Population of Chinese immigrants
Toronto 10.65% Vancouver Percentage of Chinese: 18.7 %
Calgary 7.1%
There is no written account of the arrival of the first Chinese in Calgary. However, the
Calgary Herald in late January 1886 indicated the presence of a Chinese man in Calgary
(Dawson, 1991). For many years, the hand laundry was the primary type of business established by Chinese in Calgary. Moreover, the Chinese hand laundry itself was a notable hallmark of
9 Canadian prairie settlement. When the laundry market was saturated in the mid-1920s, Chinese launderers started to venture into the restaurant business. During the 1930s, the majority of
Chinese workers was engaged in the service sector. After the Second World War, more job opportunities emerged, and Chinese were started to engage in different sorts of businesses, such as financial management and business administration. By 1991, Chinese residents of Calgary were almost much closer to other Canadians, percentage-wise, in these white-collar areas
(Dawson, 1991).
In terms of education, there are several weekend schools which provide Chinese lessons besides the Mandarin bilingual program mentioned above. The first Chinese weekend school was the Calgary Chinese Private School founded in 1916 by Chinese parents who wanted to maintain their tradition and to transmit the language and customs to their children. During the Great
Depression and at several other times, the school was closed because of insufficient funds, or the absence of a teacher or pupils. In March of 1939, the school had registered to become a legitimate educational institution and has been the first Chinese language school in the city of
Calgary (Dawson, 1991; Calgary Chinese Private School, 2017). In the beginning, there were only a few native born Chinese children that learn their own language on weekends or leisure time, and the teachers used Cantonese dialects. After 1947 when the Canadian government repealed the Chinese Exclusion Act, the number of students and teachers in the school kept growing. In 1989, it was the first Chinese language school to be accredited by Alberta Education in Calgary.
In addition to Chinese weekend schools, there were almost 60 Chinese organizations in
Calgary (United Calgary Chinese Association, 1993). Activities targeting youth have become significant and widely encompassing in Calgary. For instance, Chinese cultural dance program at
10 Chinese culture center was intended for youth to embrace the beauty of various Chinese cultural dance. The Sino-Canada Cultural Association, which was established in 1975, offered courses in
Mandarin (the official Chinese language), Chinese brush-painting and kung fu. a martial art. The
Calgary Chinese Cultural Society, a voluntary organization, sponsored cultural events, tours to
China, and Chinese classes. In this context, youths were provided abundant opportunities to increase their exposure to Chinese culture and history. Participation in these activities may be a factor influencing their perception of identities as bilingual or bicultural.
Research Journey
It was a movie called Growing Up Among Strangers (Sundra, 2009) that made me interested in the topic of identity perception of Chinese immigrant youth. In this movie, several young Canadians from diverse cultural backgrounds shared their stories and talked about their struggles to make a balance between their home culture and Canadian culture that lay outside. I was impressed by the difficulties they experienced at school. Some of them were discriminated against just because of their ethnicities. It reminded me of what I experienced in kindergarten.
During my days at the kindergarten in 1999, I came under verbal attack just because I was the only child who could not speak Cantonese in Huayang kindergarten which was the Cantonese- instructed kindergarten in Guangzhou. Since my parents were not the local, language and culture at my home was different from that at my school. At school, courses instructed in Cantonese were mainly about Cantonese traditions and customs about which I had no idea at that time.
Every day at school, I could feel that I was in another world and there was an invisible barrier between me and others. The exclusion and devaluation of my home language and culture made me feel ashamed of my own identity and my home culture. Having a similar experience of being excluded, I could understand the difficulties and struggles that immigrant youth experienced at
11 school and had an interest in exploring how Chinese immigrant youth go through these struggles and perceive their identities in Canada.
Based on this movie and other research (Eyou, Adair & Dixon, 2000; Liu, 2015), I noticed that those Chinese immigrant youths who had an identity crisis tended to experience a gap between their home culture and school culture. Some Chinese immigrant youth were sent to schools where courses are instructed only in English because their parents held a belief that
English-only schools could make it easier for their children to improve English proficiency and to integrate into mainstream society. With this mindset, parents of Mandarin-speaking children
(i.e. recent immigrants from China) did not allow their children to participate in a new Mandarin immersion program at a public elementary school in Vancouver (Kubota, 2014).
At English-only school, these immigrants encounter Canadian values and ideals through peers and teachers. At home, they are exposed to the values and ideals of Chinese culture through parents and other members of their communities. Culturally-based conflicts may lead youth to believe that they are required to choose one of two opposing cultures or values. They may also perceive that switching between identities is not a sustainable option to address the issue. This conflict between cultures leaves the individual with a difficult and sometimes painful dilemma (Giguère, Lalonde & Lou, 2010). If the English-only classroom widens the gap between home language/culture and school language/culture, what about Mandarin bilingual schools?
Would Chinese immigrant youth experience different degrees of identity crisis in Mandarin bilingual schools? What would be the role of Mandarin bilingual schools in their perception of their identities? All these questions motivated me to do a research exploring identities of Chinese immigrant youth in Mandarin bilingual programs.
Significance of the Study
12 Despite the fact that Mandarin bilingual programs have existed in Southern Alberta for more than 35 years, very little research has been done on identities of Chinese immigrant children especially for Junior high school students who are around ages 12-15. The aim of this study was to achieve an in-depth understanding of identity perception of Chinese immigrant youth at a Mandarin bilingual program in Calgary. The emerging concepts from this study may contribute to theory development in the current field of Mandarin bilingual education and identity of immigrant youth. In the society, this study helped to extend the thinking on the role of
Mandarin bilingual programs play in identity perception of Chinese immigrant youth.
Organization of the Thesis
Chapter two provides an overview of research on Mandarin bilingual program. It also identifies the gap in previous research and situated the position of this thesis.
Chapter three explores the theoretical framework of the thesis – the theory proposed by
Grosjean (2015) on bilingualism and biculturalism, together with bilingual identity negotiation framework by Fielding (2015).
Chapter four presents the research methodology adopted for the thesis. This chapter introduces philosophical foundation, the research context and data collection methods employed for the thesis. Following is a discussion of the validity of the study.
Chapter five outlines the major research findings of my research by analyzing participants’ rich and detailed narratives regarding their experiences of learning languages and cultures in the Mandarin bilingual program as well as the perception of their identities.
Chapter six discusses the major findings from the present study in the context of the relevant research literature.
13 Chapter seven summarizes the main findings of this study. It also discusses the strengths and limitations of this study as well as its implications for the bilingual program.
Use of Terms as Related to My Study
Immigrant youth.
A review of literature revealed that there was no consensus on the classification of immigrant youth or what some would call "the sandwich generation" (Miller, 1981) or generation 1.5. Fry and Lowell (2002), in the study of Latino immigrant youth in the United
States, defined immigrants who were born abroad and immigrated to the United States before 13 years of age as generation 1.5.
For the purpose of this dissertation, I followed the definition provided by Hurlock,
McCullagh, and Schissel (2004). Immigrant children and youth were defined as “individuals, from birth to eighteen years of age who are from immigrant families, regardless of where they were born” (p. iii). This definition was an extension of the definition of “immigrant” in the
Immigrant Sector Council of Calgary 2001 –2003 Progress Report and Future Directions. This report identified immigrant as a person who “has moved themselves (and often their families) to take up permanent residence and often citizenship in the new country … who chooses to leave his/her home country and who has been lawfully permitted to come to Canada to establish permanent residence” (p. 23). As for the boundaries of youth, youth in this thesis was defined as persons between the ages of 13 and 17 years based on Gaudet (2007).
Culture.
Culture is a complex concept, and no single definition of it has achieved consensus in the literature. According to Arnold (1867), culture was referred to special intellectual or artistic endeavors or products. By this definition, only a portion of any social group has culture.
14 In contrast to Arnold’s definition, Tylor (1871) defined culture as “complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society” (p.1). This definition suggested that all people have culture, which they acquire by membership in some social groups. In addition, Tylor assumed that culture was synonymous with civilization by referring to “culture or civilization” (p.1) in his definition of culture.
Out of the many possible definitions, this study was guided by the following definition.
Culture is defined as “the way of life of a people or society, including its rules of behavior; its economic, social, and political systems; its language; its religious beliefs, its laws; and so on”
(Grosjean, 1982, p.157).
15 CHAPTER TWO
LITERATURE REVIEW
Bilingual Education
Definition. The term bilingual education has been defined and used quite differently throughout the countries. According to Brisk (1998), the term was used in the United States to describe non-native English children's education while in most parts of Europe, it was used to describe education in two languages. In China, bilingual education was referred to Chinese-
English bilingual education and Mandarin Chinese education for non- Mandarin- speaking minority nationality groups (Feng, 2007).
The term also has different interpretations among scholars. Blanco (1977) suggested that
“[b]ilingual education is the use of two languages, one of which is English, as mediums of instruction for the same pupil population in a well-organized program, which encompasses all, or part of the curriculum and includes the study of the history and culture associated with the mother tongue. A complete program develops and maintains the children’s self-esteem and a legitimate pride in both cultures.” (p.123). Genesee (2004) who proposed a more extensive definition considered bilingual education is education that “aims to promote bilingual (or multilingual) competence by using both (or all) languages as media of instruction for significant portions of the academic curriculum” (p.548).
In conceptualizing this study, I used typology of current bilingual education provided by
Baker (2011).
Types of bilingual education. Among various typologies of bilingual education, one of the best known and most widely used was the typology developed by Baker (2011). Depending on the linguistic goals of each type of bilingual education, this typology sorted various types of
16 bilingual education in ten different categories, which were divided into three major groups: monolingual forms for bilinguals, weak forms for bilinguals and strong forms for bilingualism and biliteracy. It should be noted that with diverse aims and socio-linguistic context where bilingual education is located, a typology can only classify common patterns and “not all real-life examples will fit easily into the classification” (Baker, 2011, p.208). Below was a chart adapted from Baker (2011, p.215).
Table 1 Types of Bilingual Education
Monolingual forms of education for bilinguals
Types of program Typical type of Language of the Aim in
child classroom language
outcome
Mainstreaming/submersion Language Majority language Monolingualism
education minority
Mainstream with pull out Language Majority language Monolingualism
classes minority with ‘Pull-out’ L2
lessons
Segregationist Language Minority language Monolingualism
minority (forced, no
choice)
Weak forms of bilingual education for bilinguals
Type of program Typical type of Language of the Aim in
child classroom language
outcome
17 Transitional Language Moves from Relative
minority minority to monolingualism
majority language
Mainstream with foreign Language Majority language Limited language teaching majority with L2/FL bilingualism
lessons
Separatist Language Minority language Limited
minority bilingualism
Strong forms of bilingual education for bilingualism and biliteracy
Type of program Typical type of Language of the Aim in
child classroom language
outcome
Immersion Language Bilingual with Bilingualism
majority initial emphasis and biliteracy
on L2
Maintenance/ Heritage Language Bilingual with Bilingualism language minority emphasis on L1 and biliteracy
Two way/ Dual language Mixed language Minority and Bilingualism
minority and majority and biliteracy
majority
Mainstream bilingual Language Two majority Bilingualism
majority languages
18 In the Mandarin bilingual program where I conducted my research, students vary in terms of their native languages. Some of them speak Mandarin as their L1 at home; some of them speak other dialects of Chinese such as Cantonese at home; and a small number of students are native speakers of English who are either from other cultural backgrounds or second or third generation Chinese immigrants who speak English at home. Due to the difference in students’ cultural and language backgrounds, it is hard to categorize this program into one single type of bilingual education by using Baker’s (2006) typology. According to Wu and Bilash (2000),
Mandarin bilingual program in Western Canada is “a maintenance program for Chinese minorities to keep their language and cultural heritage. Secondly, it functions as a two way bilingual program with both native Chinese and English speakers in the same class. Finally, it also serves as a transitional program for new immigrant children to learn English as a second language and to adapt to the Canadian school system. For many, it is an immersion program for learning two new languages at the same time. In general, it is a versatile language program whose multiple functions meet the needs of different students” (p.11).
Research on Mandarin Bilingual Program
There has been a growing corpus of research on bilingual programs. The vast majority of research viewed bilingual programs as successful (Howard, Christian, and Genesee 2004;
Lindholm-Leary 2001, 2005) and positive results were reported on language and academic development of students in bilingual programs across language groups and ages from preschool to 11th grade (Alanis, 2000; Thomas & Collier, 2000, 2002; Barnett et al., 2007; Bearse & De
Jong, 2008). However, most of what is known about bilingual programs come from researchers who have studied Spanish/English bilingual programs in the United States (Barnett et al., 2007;
Lindholm- Leary & Borsato, 2002; Howard, Christian & Genesee, 2004) and these findings may
19 or may not be applicable to Mandarin bilingual programs in Canada. Although there is now a surge in the popularity of Mandarin/English bilingual programs, there has been very few published research on the outcomes of Mandarin/English bilingual programs in general and on the experiences and perceptions of students from Chinese backgrounds within the Canadian context.
In one of the few published studies on Mandarin/ English bilingual programs, the focus has been on language and literacy practice. For example, Zhang (2013) explored the multiplicity of how children in a Mandarin-English bilingual program become literate. The study indicated that the multilingual children in this Mandarin-English bilingual program “engaged in their complex, multi-layered, fluid, and context-dependent multilingual communication in different social networks” (Zhang, 2013, p.170). Moreover, these multilingual children revealed a highly creative use of languages. In addition to mixing Mandarin and English, they also exceeded language boundaries among English, Chinese Pinyin, simplified and traditional Chinese in literacy practices.
Lam, Chen, and Cummins (2016) investigated children’s English and Chinese language and literacy skills in a Chinese-English bilingual program by comparing children enrolled in a
Mandarin language bilingual program (the experimental group) with children attending English- only public schools (the comparison group). Based on research findings, they suggested that children in the experimental group had significantly better character reading skills and Chinese phonological awareness than children in the comparison group. In terms of English language and literacy skills, results indicated that children in the experimental group demonstrated English abilities that are similar to children in the comparison group even though they received less academic instruction in English than their counterparts.
20 The above research demonstrated that the students in the Mandarin/English bilingual program were able to achieve higher levels of Chinese language and literacy proficiency than the students in regular all-English programs. Thus, the Mandarin instruction provided in the bilingual program is effective and beneficial for Mandarin development. Also, these researchers suggested that increasing Mandarin instruction posed no cost to bilingual children’s English development.
Research on identity. In terms of the identity of children in Mandarin bilingual programs, Bilash and Wu (1998) is among the few studies conducted to explore students’ perceptions of language learning and cultural and self-identity by comparing Mandarin and
Ukrainian bilingual programs in the same Western Canadian city. They noted that, although students from both programs reported positive influences of the bilingual programs, the overall responses from Ukrainian bilingual students were more positive than those from Chinese bilingual students. To further explore the impact of Mandarin bilingual programs on students’ language learning and their perceptions of ethnic identity, Wu and Bilash (2005) did a study with
Grade 6 students in one Mandarin bilingual program. The findings of this study revealed that students “felt positive about being Chinese, while at the same time recognizing their Canadian side” (p.16). Based on these findings, Wu and Bilash (2005) indicated that this program played a role in empowering students, creating positive self identity, and supporting minorities to become full participants of a multicultural society.
Zhang and Guo (2015) conducted a study to investigate transnational identities of multilingual students in a Mandarin-English bilingual program in Canada. Results indicated that these multilingual students in this program moved beyond being stuck as described in some studies (Cui, 2016; Kobayashi & Preston, 2014) between two cultures and took up different
21 identities in different contexts. Their identities were not tied to one place and one community. In doing so, they “challenged the dominant discourse of fixed and hyphenated identity, Chinese–
Canadian or Canadian–Chinese” (p.226). It is suggested by Zhang and Guo (2015) that educators should unfold children’s multiple and mobile identities and explore new possibilities for life.
A study by Lo-Philip and Park (2015) explored how the multiple and diverse discourses students encountered in everyday life contributed to the formation of their bilingual identities.
Using ethnographic approaches, the authors conducted the research with three students in a
Mandarin-English bilingual school in the United States. For Haley, one of their participants, her bilingual identity was one who challenges and subverts dominant essentialist ideas about language, culture, and identity. She negotiated and reinterpreted through the way she engaged with the school’s discourse, the discourse of her home and the discourse of the mainstream community in her everyday life. For Tyler, he viewed bilingualism as an economic resource which provides better opportunities for jobs in the global market and himself as a flexible global subject who was not bound to a particular culture or location but freely moving across boundaries of language and culture. For Kevin, he regarded bilingualism as a cultural resource which provides access to cultural heritage, knowledge, ways of thinking and lifestyle of various linguistic communities. He imagined himself as a competent bilingual who could truly blend into another culture and community. Findings above demonstrated how shared educational experiences and discourses are personalized according to different individual’s lived experiences and how interactions with the discourses that each person encounters through everyday experience resulted in divergent bilingual identities. Based on findings, Lo-Philip and Park
(2015) implied that both the L1 and L2 classroom could be productive spaces for students to
22 voice and critically reflect upon their experiences with languages, cultures, and identities. They argued that critical discussion on identity and race would push students to consider alternative viewpoints and to reflect their understandings and interpretations of the bilingual self, language, culture, and race.
As reviewed in this chapter, even though there has been an extensive discussion on bilingual language programs, a few studies have been conducted focusing on the Mandarin/
English bilingual language programs. Furthermore, a discussion of students’ identities within
Mandarin/ English bilingual language programs remained virtually invisible in scholarly literature. Therefore, researchers called for more studies on students’ perceptions of bilingualism and identities (Lindholm-Leary 2001; Reyes & Vallone, 2007). To address this gap, my research aimed to make contributions to the already existing body of knowledge on Mandarin/ English bilingual programs and to explore bilingual and bicultural identities of Chinese immigrant youth.
In the next section, I explored the theoretical framework of this study.
Theoretical Framework
For this research, I examined identities of Chinese immigrant youth in a Mandarin bilingual program based on the theory proposed by Grosjean (2015) and bilingual identity negotiation framework developed by Fielding (2015).
The bilingual person. The bilingual person has been defined and interpreted in a number of ways in previous literature (Benet-Martínez & Haritatos, 2005; Berry, 1997). The definition of a bilingual person involves the question of whether a person is only defined as bilingual if they can speak the two languages or whether they are bilingual if they can understand, read or write a second language. Another issue is that whether the degree of language proficiency should be
23 taken into consideration for bilingualism. As these questions illustrate, defining bilingualism is not simple, and there are no commonly accepted answers to these questions.
Bloomfield (1933) stated that in order to be classified as bilingual a person must have equal competence in both languages and some believe that the person must have a native-like knowledge and use of both languages (Bloomfield, 1933). This is referred to as being a
“balanced” bilingual or a “perfect” bilingual (Grosjean, 2015). However, the majority of bilinguals simply do not resemble these rare bilinguals. Most people who have access to more than one language are not balanced bilinguals, as they may have greater knowledge of one form of each language than the other forms. Just as Grosjean( 2015) pointed out, “[i]f one were to count as bilingual those who pass as monolinguals in each language, one would be left with no label for the vast majority of people who use two or more languages regularly but who do not have native-like fluency in each language” (p. 573). Other researchers (Baetens-Beardsmore,
1986; Hakuta, 1986; Romaine, 1995) also regarded the position that bilinguals have equal and perfect knowledge of their languages not realistic.
Another important point in the discussion of bilingualism is that bilingualism in some literature refers to the ability in and use of two languages (and not more) while in other literature the term bilingualism refers to multilingual competence. This means that a person may have knowledge or experience of three or more languages (Baker & Prys Jones, 1998). It is not uncommon for writers to use the term bilingual to mean multilingual. For instance, Weinreich
(1968) and Mackey (1962) defined bilingualism as the alternate use of two (or more) languages.
In this way, the term bilingualism includes multilingualism. In this study, following Grosjean
(1982), I used the term bilingualism to mean “the regular use of two or more languages” (p.1)
24 and bilinguals to mean “those who use two or more languages (or dialects) in their everyday lives” (Grosjean,2015, p. 573).
Based on language fluency and use, Grosjean (2010) developed a grid that allows one to depict a bilingual. The horizontal axis on the table shows language fluency (Low fluency to
High fluency). The vertical axis shows language use (Never used to Daily use). A bilingual's two or more languages can be placed in the appropriate cells of the grid that correspond to their level of fluency and their frequency of use.
Table 2 Language fluency and use
Becoming bilingual. Bilingualism could be a result of several factors such as the migration of an individual or a group of people for political, social or economic reasons or
25 cultural and educational causes (Grosjean, 1982). The first factor of importance is the migration of an individual or a group of people for political, social or economic reasons. In the past centuries, one of the most significant and frequent kinds of migration that would lead to bilingualism was due to military invasions and colonization (Mackey 1967). According to
Brosnahan (1963) and Cooper (1978), in order for a language to spread, several conditions should be present: (1) the conquerors must be settled in the target country for a long period; (2) the conquered area should be multilingual thereby the invader’s language could be used as a lingua franca to enhance the social, political, educational or commercial options for the natives.
In his work, Life with Two Languages: An Introduction to Bilingualism, Grosjean (1982) illustrated the Roman occupation of Great Britain as a good example.
“Lewis (1976) reports that when the Romans arrived in Britain, Celtic was the native language. It remained the first language of the population throughout the Roman occupation, but a number of Britons also learned and used Latin, which was used in the administration of the country, in the army (which recruited native Britons into its ranks) and in trade and commerce between Romans and Britons and with other parts of the empire. Use of Latin enabled native
Britons to profit from the many advantages of the Roman Empire, including its schools, markets, public baths, and amusement places.” (p.33)
Other political and ideological reasons are nationalism and political feudalism. In most cases, bilingualism is a result of the spread of national language over regional languages if a portion of the population speaks their regional or native language and the imposed national language.
As for reasons resulting from social or economic migration, migrants who move from their home country to other regions or countries in order to find work or better living condition
26 acquire the language of the host country and hence become bilingual in a very short period. The immigrant communicates with the natives in the targeted language but uses his or her native language with friends from his or her own country.
In short, for individuals who migrate to other places, bilingualism arises as a necessity to survive and adapt to the host country.
In addition to social origin of bilingualism, education and culture play significant roles in the spread of bilingualism. At home, family opinions about language learning, maintenance of native language and bilingualism exert a strong impact on the young person’s view of their languages and bilingualism and their opportunities for language maintenance and learning
(Fielding, 2015; Pease-Alvarez, 2003). At school, the educational context may be monolingual or bilingual, but even in a monolingual education setting, there are measures that can be taken by teachers to foster the student’s self-esteem and feelings of empowerment in their languages
(Cummins, 2003). Moreover, students become bilingual when they pursue their studies in a region or country with another language. Other factors such as intermarriage, professional development opportunities, business, foreign journalism, language teaching and so on cause bilingualism.
Overall, bilinguals acquire and use their languages for different reasons, with different people, in different domains of life. It is the needs of the languages as the main factor that leads to the acquisition of languages.
Acting bilingually. What discussed above emphasizes the different needs to acquire a language based on the language history of the bilingual and the domains of use of a language.
This, in turn, impacts the fluency in each language.
27 Based on the observation, Grosjean (1994, 2001) proposed that bilinguals travel along a
“situational continuum” (Grosjean, 2015, p. 579) which induce different language modes. At one end of the continuum, bilinguals restrict themselves to the monolingual mode when they speak to a monolingual of one or the other of the languages that they know and at the other, they can be bilingual when they speak to a bilingual who share their two (or more) languages (Grosjean,
2015). It should be noted that these are endpoints and that intermediary modes do exist.
Monolingual mode. In this mode, language deviations characterize the verbal repertoire of bilinguals. As stated by Grosjean (2015), “bilinguals adopt the language of the monolingual interlocutor(s) and deactivate their other language(s)” (p. 579). The deviation may be due to a lack of fluency in the language or to interference of other languages (Grosjean, 1982). An interference, which can occur at all levels of language, “is a speaker-specific deviation from the language being spoken due to the influence of the other ‘deactivated’ language” (Grosjean, 2015, p.580). There are two kinds of interferences: static interferences and dynamic interferences.
Static interferences reflect permanent traces of one language on the other while dynamic interferences are the ephemeral intrusions of the other language.
Moreover, if one of the bilingual’s languages is mastered only to a certain level of proficiency, there will be deviations because of interlanguage which include overgeneralizations
(such as taking irregular verbs as regular), simplifications (omitting functions words or simplifying the syntax), hypercorrections (substituting “I” for the object “me”) and the avoidance of certain words and expressions (Grosjean, 1982).
Bilingual mode. In this mode, both languages are activated, and bilinguals are able to access another language freely. The actual choice of the language bilinguals will use with others is a result of factors such as the topic, the situation, the participants involved and the function of
28 the interaction. Bilinguals choose a particular language as the base language and bring in the other language in various ways such as code-switching and borrowing. Code-switching is to shift completely to the other language for a word, a phrase, a sentence. It is acknowledged that code- switching is “a communicative strategy to convey linguistic and social information” (Grosjean,
2015, p. 580).
Another way is to borrow a word or short expression from that language and to adapt it into the base language. It is the integration of one language into another. In most cases, the form and the content of a word are borrowed to produce a loanword. Another kind of borrowing is a loan shift which either extends the meaning of a word in the base language or creates a new meaning for a word in the base language by rearranging it along with a pattern provided by the other language.
The bicultural person. Much less is known about biculturalism than bilingualism even though one views the term “bicultural” almost as often as the word “bilingual”. Just as Haugen
(1956) noted, bilingualism and biculturalism are not necessarily coextensive. People can be bilingual without being bicultural. In countries or areas with a lingua franca, such as Kenya or
Indonesia, it can be argued that a bilingual really has only one culture: that of one’s ethnic group.
Similarly, some people are bicultural without being bilingual. For instance, French-speaking
Bretons or English-speaking Scots may be bicultural because they share the beliefs, attitudes, and habits of two overlapping cultures (Grosjean, 1982).
As I mentioned in the previous section, Grosjean (1982) defined culture as “the way of life of a people or society, including its rules of behavior; its economic, social, and political systems; its language; its religious beliefs, its laws; and so on” (p.157).
29 In terms of biculturalism, there exist some definitions of the bicultural person even though biculturalism has been studied by relatively few researchers. Luna, Ringberg, and
Peracchio (2008) put the emphasis on the equivalence of fluency when they define the bicultural persons as someone who has “two distinct and complete sets of knowledge structures, one for each culture” (p. 280). On the other hand, Grosjean ( 2015) put more emphasis on use
(interacting in two or more cultures) and characterized the bicultural person by at least three traits. The first trait is that biculturals take part, to varying degrees, in the life of two or more cultures. The second trait is that biculturals adapt at least in part, to these cultures (their attitudes, behaviors, values, etc.). The third trait is that biculturals combine and blend aspects of these cultures. In biculturals, there is an aspect which is static and an aspect which is more adaptable and controllable allows them to adapt to the situation (Grosjean, 2015). In other words, not all behaviors, values, beliefs and attitudes can be modified according to the cultural situation the bicultural person is in.
There is a concurrence in Nguyen and Benet-Martinez (2007, p.2) concerning the definition of biculturals. According to them, bicultural individuals are those who have been exposed to and have internalized two cultures. This is similar to the first characteristic described by Grosjean. Moreover, they mentioned that biculturalism involves the ability to synthesize cultural norms from two groups into one behavioral repertoire (see Grosjean’s third characteristic). They also added that biculturalism involves the ability to switch between cultural schemas, norms, and behaviors in response to cultural cues (see Grosjean’s second characteristic).
There are other criteria introduced by Grosjean (2015) to define the biculturals, such as identifying fully with both cultures, accepting one's bicultural status, having a good
30 understanding of both cultures, being born bicultural, etc., but these are questionable and not as important as the three traits mentioned above. One of the reason is that “many biculturals only identify with the one or the other culture, or sometimes do not identify with either, even though they are bicultural according to the characteristics given above” (Grosjean, 2015, p. 575). In addition, it is rarely the case that biculturals know two cultures perfectly and feel at ease in both cultures. It is argued that “[m]ost biculturals have a cultural dominance due to the fact that they have greater contact with, and spend more time in, one culture than in the other, but this in no way makes them less bicultural” (Grosjean, 2015, p.576).
Another important point in the discussion of biculturals is that previous literature (Luna,
Ringberg & Peracchio,2008; Nguyen & Benet-Martinez ,2007) emphasizes the “bi” in biculturalism when in fact there are many biculturals who belong to more than two cultures
(Grosjean, 2015). In this paper, I included more than two cultures in my description of the bicultural person contrary to other researchers, who have usually spoken of just two cultures.
Becoming bicultural. Things are much similar when one investigates the reasons for biculturalism. People become bicultural because they are in contact with two or more cultures and have to live, in part at least, with these cultures (Grosjean, 2015). They can become biculturals at different moments in life. They can be biculturals in early childhood. For instance, a child who is born in a bicultural family or has daily contact with two cultures from birth is considered as bicultural. Other reasons include: (a) having contact with the second culture at school; (b) pursuing studies in another culture; (c) emigrating to another country for economic, political, religious reasons; (d) rediscovering their home culture after having grown up in the majority culture (Nguyen and Benet-Martinez, 2007, p.103).
31 Literally, thousands of studies on biculturalism have concentrated on acculturation from which the concept of biculturalism was originally derived (Berry, 1997; Szapocznik, Kurtines, &
Fernandez, 1980). Traditional views of acculturation argued that to acculturate means to assimilate. In other words, acculturation is the process of rejecting one’s ethnic culture and adopting the dominant culture (Trimble, 2003). However, in the past 25 years, there was a tendency to regard acculturation as a bi-dimensional process where assimilation into the mainstream culture was not the only way to acculturate (Berry, 1990). According to Berry
(1990), individuals who have daily contact with two cultures have to deal with two central issues: (a) the extent to which they are motivated or permitted to retain their identification and involvement with their culture of origin and (b) the extent to which they are motivated or permitted to identify and participate in the mainstream, dominant culture. The negotiation of these two central issues leads to four identified acculturation positions: assimilation
(identification with the dominant culture only), separation (identification with the ethnic culture only), marginalization (lack of identification with both cultures) or integration (identification with both cultures, that is biculturalism). For instance, A Chinese Canadian bicultural individual may endorse Canadian culture behaviorally and linguistically and yet be very Chinese (ethnic culture) in terms of one’s values, attitudes, and identity. In Grosjean (1982), he also discussed these four categories. Those who never adjust to the new culture may either because they choose not to or because they are not allowed by the surrounding society to do so. Also for those who are the members of a culture that has been invaded by another people or culture, “adjusting to the culture of the invader- becoming bicultural- is the first stage of acculturation and should be avoided” (Grosjean, 1982, p.159). At the other extreme are those who overadjust to the new culture and make every effort to assimilate themselves into that culture. Between these two
32 extremes are people adjusting to a certain level of biculturalism. The fourth category “marginal person” refers to people who feel that they do not belong to either culture. These people may at first seek to belong solely to one culture, but with time they realize that they feel at ease with people who share their bicultural experience.
It is important to note that for similar reasons mentioned above, a person’s biculturalism may evolve over time. As stated by Grosjean (2015), one’s cultural dominance may change with the possibility that the first culture may no longer be the stronger culture after many years in another cultural environment. Moreover, cultural forgetting may take place when contact with one of the cultures is considerably reduced for a long time. In this case, biculturals adapt less well their behavior, values, attitudes to the weaker culture, and “the blends of the two cultures are more and more in favor of the now-dominant culture” (Grosjean, 2015, p.579).
Acting biculturally. Similar to bilinguals, the biculturals find themselves at various points along a situational continuum that requires different types of behaviors and attitudes depending on the situation or context. At one end of the continuum, biculturals restrict themselves to the monocultural mode when they are with monoculturals or with biculturals with whom they share only one culture. At the other end, biculturals will “use a base culture to interact in (the behaviours, attitudes, beliefs of one culture) and they will bring in the other culture(s), in the form of cultural switches and borrowings” (Grosjean, 2015, p.581) when they are with other biculturals who share their cultures. It should be highlighted that movement along the situational continuum may sometimes be voluntary and conscious or be automatic and unconscious.
Monocultural mode. In this mode, biculturals try to follow the motto, “When in Rome, do as the Romans do”. Biculturals attempt to deactivate, at least to a large degree, their other
33 culture(s) so that they can behave appropriately through script and frame modification or switching when they have sufficient knowledge of the culture in question (Hong, Morris, Chiu,
& Benet-Martinez, 2000). In this way, they know how to adapt to situations, such as holding a conference at work, entertaining relatives who belong to just one culture and so on. However, as mentioned above, not all behaviors, values, beliefs and attitudes can be modified and adapted according to the cultural situation the bicultural person is in. This static cultural interference is the difference between bilingualism and biculturalism. Bilinguals can usually deactivate one language and use the other exclusively in particular situations, whereas biculturals cannot always deactivate certain traits of their other culture when in a monocultural environment.
Bicultural mode. In this mode, the bicultural person uses a cultural base within which to interact (the behaviors, attitudes, beliefs, values of one culture) with other biculturals like themselves. Then, they bring in the other culture through cultural switches and borrowings. In this way, they are able to go back and forth between cultures.
Bilingual bicultural. As discussed above, people can become bilingual and bicultural at any time during their lives. Some may become bilingual and bicultural at the same time while some may acquire two languages first and only after some years start becoming bicultural
(Grosjean, 2015). An example can be found in diglossic societies in which two languages or two varieties of a language are used, and each language has a very precise domain of use. Swiss
German and German in the German part of Switzerland is a case in point. For Swiss-German children whose mother tongue is Swiss German, they start acquiring German at an early age. By their adolescence, they are bilingual in the two languages, which are mutually incomprehensible.
However, they remain monocultural unless they have a German parent. If some of them go and
34 live in Germany or Austria, with time, they will become bicultural, but many years after having become bilingual.
The opposite may also happen, that is starting off bicultural and only later becoming bilingual. For instance, a Jewish family in France may be monolingual in French although bicultural in most aspects of life. After a number of years, one of the children, having become an adult, may decide to migrate to Israel and with time he or she will become bilingual in French and Hebrew.
Therefore, even if for many, the bilingual component and the bicultural component often go hand in hand, there are also other possibilities that one must not overlook. One can be bicultural without being bilingual, and bilingual without being bicultural.
Bilingual identity negotiation framework. The notion of identity has been examined from many theoretical standpoints. In this study, I adopted bilingual identity negotiation framework developed by Fielding (2015) to analyze data because it “positions individual identity negotiation within the complexities of societal power issues and within the self-concept that an individual develops within their social setting” (Fielding, 2013, p.154). According to the framework, the development of bilingual identity is constantly changing and involves three interacting key notions: socio-cultural connection, interaction and investment (Fielding, 2015).
The first element is the socio-cultural connection with two groups or cultures. The connection to more than one language is affected by one’s socialization with others and feeling of membership of a language and culture (Fielding, 2015).
As discussed above, the bilingual person may identify positively or negatively with both of the languages and cultures that they are connected to. Some are able to construct a bicultural identity while others may experience conflict as they feel caught between two cultures and fail to
35 identify themselves as full members of either culture. Fielding (2015) argued that if one is provided a supportive environment in which both of cultures and language learning are valued by the community and the family, one is more likely to perceive identity associated with both of the languages and cultures.
The second element is interaction which inherently involves interpersonal negotiations and the underlying empowerment/disempowerment involved (Fielding, 2015). One cannot feel connected to a language and culture if they do not interact in the language and have sufficient opportunities to interact extended to them. The way one feels in a language is influenced by the types of interactions one experiences in that language (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Cummins, 2003).
One of the important sites for interactive experiences is the education setting. The existing literature indicated that positive pedagogical experiences could enhance a feeling of empowerment which is necessary for one to develop a bilingual identity (Cummins, 2001, 2003).
Empowerment in classroom interactions between teachers and students involves not only establishing the respect and trust but it also challenges the devaluation of identity that many culturally diverse students and communities experience in the border society as a whole
(Cummins, 2001). It is often the case that unequal power relations operating in the broader society are replicated in classrooms. The majority languages are regarded as more valuable or important than the minority languages. In other words, a value is attached to a language. The identity of students who speak minority languages is denied. However, through recognition of the importance of all languages to the speakers of those languages, students are empowered.
They will develop a sense of self-worth and a secure sense of identity
The third element is the investment which is developed to explain the combined factors of one’s motivation to learn a language and identify with a language or culture and the support of
36 a community to assist the learner to develop both language proficiency and identity (Norton,
2014). In this way, the element of investment acknowledges that both individual motivation and social opportunity for language development are essential for a language learner to develop their identity associated with language.
Bilingual Identity Negotiation Framework by Fielding (2015) illustrated the importance of the combined factors of investment, socio-cultural connection and interaction on bilingual identity negotiation. For bilingual individuals, they have unique experiences of language and bilingualism and therefore they have different experiences of identity negotiation based on their language experiences at school and at home. This study examined what languages, “being bilingual” and “being bicultural” meant to the students in the study and how they negotiated their meanings within the theory proposed by Grosjean (2015) and the framework of bilingual identity negotiation.
37 CHAPTER THREE
METHODOLOGY
Research Purpose
In this chapter, I explained the methodology of this study and the research design I applied to achieve the research purpose. Using the theory proposed by Grosjean (2015) and bilingual identity negotiation framework developed by Fielding (2015), this research aimed to further explore the issue of identity perception among Chinese immigrant youth guided by the following research questions: (1) how do youth perceive their identities as immigrants from
Chinese backgrounds in the Mandarin bilingual program? and (2) what are differences among students in Mandarin bilingual program in terms of bilingual and bicultural identities?
This study was designed to procure further insights on the focal issues, based on these research questions. It aimed to generate an academically impact on the field of Chinese immigrant youth’ identities perception in bilingual schools. Furthermore, this study may not only help Chinese immigrant youth, who are living in Canada, gain a clearer understanding of their identity perception, but it also may help teachers better understand the struggle that their culturally diverse students may experience and embrace their students’ identities.
Philosophical Foundation
The epistemology framing this qualitative research was socio-constructivism. This epistemological approach assumed that reality is socially constructed and there are multiple realities or interpretations of the same event (Merriam, 1997). Likewise, Creswell explained socio-constructivism as follows:
In this worldview, individuals seek understanding of the world in which they live and
work. They develop subjective meanings of their experiences…. These meanings are
38 varied and multiple, leading the researcher to look for the complexity of views…. Often
these subjective meanings are negotiated socially and historically. In other words, they
are not simply imprinted on individuals but are formed through interaction with others
(hence social constructivism) and through historical and cultural norms that operate in
individuals’ lives. (Creswell, 2007, pp. 20–21)
In this research, of particular interest were the ways Chinese immigrant youth perceived their identities and the role of Mandarin bilingual program in the process of identity perception.
The study’s participants perceived their identities based on their individual and shared experiences. How they interacted with others and made decisions based on the context was complex and reflected the socio-constructivist epistemology.
In agreement with this worldview, I used a socio-constructivist paradigm to examine and understand in-depth their lived experiences as a Chinese immigrant. I conducted one-on-one interviews with six Chinese immigrant youth and continually analyzed these data in an attempt to understand and interpret the meaning of participants’ perceptions and experiences in Mandarin bilingual program.
Research Design
Qualitative study. To explore the identity perception of Chinese immigrant youth during their studies in Mandarin bilingual program, a qualitative case study was conducted. Since little is known about this topic in Alberta, a qualitative methodology was particularly useful “for exploring and understanding the meaning individuals or groups ascribe to a social or human problem” (Creswell, 2014, p.40). In other words, qualitative research aims to provide an in-depth description and understanding of the human experiences in a certain context and “examine people’s words and actions in narrative or descriptive ways more closely representing the
39 situation as experienced by the participants” (Maykut & Morehouse, 1994, p.3). In addition, qualitative research emphasizes the researcher’s role as an active participant in the study
(Creswell, 2014). For the present study, I was the researcher, the key instrument in data collection, and the interpreter of data findings. Qualitative research methods used in this study included: purposive sampling, semi-structured interviews, and systematic and concurrent data collection procedures.
Case study. For the purpose of this dissertation research, I relied primarily on Merriam
(1988) who defined and described case study research from the perspective of the qualitative research. According to Merriam (1988), a qualitative case study was conceived as “an intensive, holistic description and analysis of a bounded phenomenon such as a program, an institution, a person, a process, or a social unit” (p. xiii). The aim of qualitative case study research is to provide a detailed holistic description that illuminates one’s understanding of the phenomena rather than testing hypothesis (Merriam, 1988). When the focus of the study is a contemporary phenomenon in a real-life context, and when information from participants is not subject to truth or falsity, a case study is appropriate to employ.
In Merriam (1988), the case or the unit of analysis is “a single unit or a bounded system within which there may be numerous situations, participants, events or phrases of a process”
(p.52). For the current study, the case was a Mandarin bilingual program in Southern Alberta.
Data Collection Procedures
Research site. The study was carried out in a junior high school in a city in Alberta. As the research site, this school had two distinctive characteristics. First, because previous research focused on the bilingual program in kindergarten and elementary schools, this school was an effective research site to explore Mandarin bilingual program in a middle school. Second, the
40 school held a variety of activities to celebrate Chinese festivals, such as Spring Festival and Mid- autumn Festival. These extracurricular opportunities offered by the school could enhance students' learning experiences and have some impacts on students’ identity perception and their perception toward their Chinese roots. This is interesting but again we might recognize the school
Because my study sought to gain a comprehensive understanding of their experience as
Chinese immigrant youth in Mandarin bilingual program, the junior high school provided me an opportunity to communicate with various individuals in order to gain an overview of their lives in an academic and social context.
Focal participants. The participants of this study were selected from the junior high school mentioned above based on following three criteria: students (1) who were enrolled in grades 8 or 9 in Mandarin bilingual program and (2) who had at least one Mandarin-speaking parent and (3) who immigrated to Canada from China at an early age. Since this study focuses on exploring identity perception of Chinese immigrant youth in Canada during their studies in
Mandarin bilingual schools, these three criteria allowed me to select the suitable participants for this study2.
Participants selection. I started searching for prospective participants after the Conjoint
Faculties Research Ethics Board (CFREB) and Calgary Board of Education (CBE) approved this study. As a researcher, I explained my proposal to the principal and teachers who provided handouts of my research to students. Students who were interested in participation and respond back to me were given a further explanation of the research. They used pseudonyms on
2 The third criterion was abandoned because the majority of the students in Mandarin bilingual program were Canadian born and students who immigrated from China were not interested in my research.
41 interviews related to data collection for the study to keep their identity confidential. As the
participants were minors, under the age of 18, students who accepted participating voluntarily
were asked to sign on the assent form and their parents were asked to sign on the informed
consent. These forms outlined the purpose of the study, the process of the study, the risk and the
benefits of participation. These forms also indicated the right of the participants to withdraw
from the study at any time and that they could request that any data related to them be destroyed.
Participant Demographics
In total, six participants were successfully recruited for face-to-face interviews for the
present study. Participants ranged in age from 12 to 14, with their average age was 13.3 years.
Please see Table 3 for more detailed information regarding individual participants listed by age
at the time of immigration, grade, and languages spoken. Of the six participants interviewed, two
were born outside of Canada, and they came to Canada before they went to elementary school. In
other words, these students did not receive systematic school education outside of Canada. The
other four students were born in Canada, but they are Chinese-ethnic youth and live in Chinese -
speaking families.
Table 3 Participant Demographic Data
Participant Birthplace Age at Current Grade Home Additional Language
Pseudonym Immigration Age Language(s) Language(s) Acquired
From Birth
Thomas Canada n/a 12 8 Cantonese Mandarin Cantonese
English
Christy United 5 13 8 English/ Mandarin English/
States Cantonese Cantonese
42
Andy Canada n/a 13 9 English/ Mandarin English/
Cantonese/ Cantonese
Vietnamese
Olivia Canada n/a 14 9 Cantonese/ Mandarin Cantonese
English
Yang China 6 14 9 Mandarin English Mandarin
James Canada n/a 14 9 English/ Cantonese Mandarin
Mandarin
Interviews. This research applied the qualitative interview as a means to collect data
from the participants. Hendricks (2016) stated that through inquiry data collected verbally in
face-to-face meetings with participants, “participants have the opportunity to provide detailed
feedback. The researcher can shift the focus of the inquiry meeting based on participants’
comments and can ask questions as they arise in conversation with participants” (p. 92). In other
words, the purpose of the qualitative interview was to allow participants to express their opinions
and to understand the participants’ interpretation from the interview. It is an effective way for
researchers to increase the richness and depth of investigations. Moreover, qualitative interviews
result in thick descriptions of the subject being studied that enable readers to make decisions
about transferability of study results (Merriam, 2002).
43 For this research, six participants were interviewed between October 1, 2017, and
December 30, 2017. For convenience, interviews were held in the junior high school. All interviews were conducted on a one-on-one basis and last from 30 to 40 minutes. During interviews, I audio recorded interviews to ensure accurate transcription (Merriam, 1997) with participant approval. I also took handwritten notes during each interview, which enabled me to track key points to return to later in the interview or to highlight ideas of particular interest or importance.
As a first step in the interview process, I introduced myself and reminded participants of the purpose of the study, research procedures, expected benefits, their right to withdraw from the study at any time, and protection of confidentiality. In this way, participants knew clearly what topic areas would be addressed. Also, I was interactive and personal to establish an equitable relationship with participants and to create an opportunity for active dialogue, co-constructed meanings and collaborative learning (Simons, 2009).
Then, I applied the semi-structured interviews as a way to explore identities of Chinese immigrant youth. The reason was that “using a semi-structured interview is a useful way to make sure that questions important to the researcher are answered while providing participants with an opportunity to add other useful information” (Hendricks, 2016, p. 92). Mainly, open questions were asked in semi-structured interviews to encourage participants to respond freely and openly
(Simons, 2009) and to obtain: (a) demographic information on the participants, and (b) participants’ experiences in Mandarin bilingual program and their perceptions of identity as
Chinese immigrant youth (See Appendix A: Interview Schedule). In addition, follow-up questions were used, when necessary, to encourage participants to elaborate on or clarify a
44 response (Berg, 2009). At the end of interviews, participants had an opportunity to ask me any further questions regarding the study.
After the interview, audio recordings of interviews were all transcribed into written documents. To ensure transcript accuracy, I reviewed each transcript while listening to the audiotapes.
Confidentiality
In order to protect the privacy and confidentiality of the participants, pseudonyms were used throughout the process of collecting, analyzing, and reporting data. The audio recordings from the interviews were stored on a USB drive that was password protected and only accessible to me and my supervisor. Because there were handwritten notes, each inscribed note was scanned for backup purposes while protecting the anonymity of the participants involved by masking their names on the computer during scanning. This allowed me to create handwritten copies, plus additional ones that were organized and stored in a computer database (all on a
USB).
Trustworthiness
In qualitative research, the researcher takes an active role in the collection and interpretation of others’ meaning-making. In order to be credible, qualitative researchers must be good and trustworthy. Merriam (1988) suggested that researchers should learn to understand their research as their participants do, rather than impose their own assumptions. It was advocated that triangulation is useful to validate accounts and experiences (Simons, 2009;
Merriam, 1988).
In order to increase the trustworthiness of the study’s findings, I employed the following strategy suggested by qualitative researchers. I performed member checks (Merriam, 2002).
45 When designing my research, I did not plan to send transcripts to my participants. However, some participants requested for transcripts at the end of the interviews. Therefore, at the request of some participants, I sent them a copy of their interview transcripts and asked them to verify the accuracy of the content so that transcripts reflected their views, feelings, and experiences.
In addition to member checks, I provided rich, thick description “to contextualize the study such that readers are able to determine the extent to which their situation matches the research context” (p 31). Also, rich and thick description enabled other researchers to make decisions about transferability (Merriam, 2002).
Researcher’s disposition
One important issue that I had to grapple with was the role the researcher play in the process. In case study research, the primary instrument for data collection and analysis is the researcher. As noted by Berger (2013), the position of the researcher may shape the nature of researcher–participant relationship and affect the information that participants are willing to share. In addition, the worldview and background of the researcher have an impact on the way how the researcher constructs the world and chooses the lens for the interpretation of information gathered from participants. For this study, in the interest of guarding against unethical or unintentional influences on my interpretation of data, the following discussion outlined my personal experiences relevant to this study.
Since I was born in China and am a native Mandarin-Chinese speaker, I had the capability to communicate with Mandarin speakers and was sensitive to Chinese cultural concepts and values. Also, as an international student, I experienced both Chinese and Canadian cultural contexts, similar to Chinese immigrant youth. My personal experiences made me an insider among Mandarin speakers and Chinese immigrants and helped me to build trust with the
46 participating Chinese immigrant youth. However, as an investigator of a qualitative research study, I tried to maintain my role as an outsider and a noninterventionist (Merriam, 1988) to ensure the trustworthiness of the data through triangulation.
Throughout the research, I followed the suggestion from Guillemin and Gillam (2004) to be reflexive. I reflected on how my research might affect the research participants, acknowledged the micro ethical dimensions of research practice and prepared for ways of dealing with the ethical tensions that arise.
Summary
In this research design, I outlined the epistemological and theoretical grounding, the methodology and methods for this study, and the ways in which these decisions anchored the process of data collection and analysis. The constructivist paradigm was described along with a rationale for qualitative case study research.
For the research, I employed a qualitative inquiry to obtain rich and in-depth information about the experience of Chinese immigrant youth in Mandarin bilingual program. Participants were interviewed, and audio recorded. Transcripts of the interviews were coded and analyzed through triangulation to establish the trustworthiness and credibility of this study. In the next section, I would discuss findings of this study.
47 CHAPTER FOUR
FINDINGS
The following chapter described the results and findings of the present study. The purpose of this study was to explore the experience of becoming bilingual and bicultural, particularly among Chinese immigrant youth. More specifically, the study was interested in examining the influences of the bilingual and bicultural experience on their relationship to their languages and cultures as well as on their identities development. Presentation of the results began with a description of participants’ demographics and characteristics. This was followed by a thematic analysis that elucidated themes and patterns described by the participants. Using thematic analysis, I searched each of the transcribed texts individually for recurring words, phrases, and patterns to identify core contents, categories, and meanings. Each theme was linked to an example from the transcript that provided evidence for the theme. In this manner, a table of themes was created for each transcript. Connections between themes were identified and a list of dominant themes were sorted and organized according to their connections to each other. As noted by Creswell (2007), the thematic analysis provides an organized presentation of the data in addition to a more cohesive understanding of the narratives.
Becoming Bilingual
All six participants seemed comfortable in sharing their reflections on their experiences with learning languages in Mandarin bilingual program and the process of becoming bilingual.
Yang shared a lot about her feelings toward languages and cultures. Also, she is the only one that immigrated to Canada from China and had different perspectives from other participants.
In the following section, findings addressed participants’ perceived benefits and challenges associated with the process of learning English and Chinese as well as how this
48 experience might have influenced their relationships with Chinese language and culture, and their bilingual identities. Within these descriptions, patterns of language use, proficiency, and preference were also revealed. Five major themes were explored: (a) language acquisition and use, (b) relationship with languages, (c) self-perception as bilingual, (d) benefits to being bilingual, and (e) challenges to being bilingual. In the next section, I explored all of them supported by examples from my participants.
Language proficiency and use. Throughout their narratives, most participants born in
Canada and United States learned Cantonese at home, English from friends and teachers at school and Mandarin in the bilingual program.
In describing their proficiency of these languages, all participants considered that they were best at English. For three participants, Thomas, Christy, and Olivia who spoke Cantonese mostly at home, Cantonese was the second language that they were good at, and Mandarin was the third one. For Andy, Cantonese was the second language. Mandarin came third, followed by
Vietnamese. For James, Mandarin was the second language, and Cantonese was the third one.
One participant, Yang, who was born in China and immigrated to Canada with her family at the age of 6, learned Mandarin at home and English when she moved to Canada. Compared to other participants, she was talkative and shared a lot about her feelings toward languages. It’s interesting to note that Yang, whose first language is Mandarin, indicated that her English was much better and her Mandarin was fading. She stated:
English is my better language like a 9 or 10. I think my Mandarin is still pretty okay like a 5 or 6. The Mandarin we were learning was way too easy for me so I didn't go to my Mandarin class for the first couple years. (laughs) I did it ESL instead. But now that we're getting to a grade level where, you know, the Mandarin we were learning, it's getting harder. And I'm getting worse at it. And it's at a level where it's actually a challenge and I'd be actually learning stuff.
49 Similarly, James who learned Mandarin when he was born and English in kindergarten also reported that he was more fluent in English. He stated that “Mandarin, I’m ok. English is clearly the best. Cantonese, I’m not that good”. When asked to rate his proficiency in these three languages on a scale from 1 to 10, James reported that “Mandarin, I’ll say about 6. Um, English,
I’ll say about 10. Cantonese, about 3”.
As for their usage of these languages, all participants indicated the influence of social contexts on their patterns of language use and preference. Most of them reported using English with friends and peers mostly in settings outside of the home, such as at school while largely using their heritage languages (Cantonese/ Mandarin) with their families, relatives and friends at homes or in locations that have a predominantly Chinese population, such as Chinatowns in
America or various places in China. The reason was often that English is what most people understand or most of their friends and teachers had English as their first language. Additionally, with friends who were from Chinese backgrounds and spoke Chinese, they still preferred English because they regarded it easier to communicate in English. The third reason was to help others practice English. For example, Yang mentioned that
I do speak Chinese with my friends in China of course. But sometimes they want to practice English too, so we just speak English.
Interestingly, two participants, Christy and James reported using English not only with their friends but also with their parents. Christy stated that when she was little, her parents spoke with her often in Cantonese. However, her parents decided to speak with her most of the time in
English because her parents didn't want her to “learn Cantonese like full-on Cantonese”. They wanted her to learn English so it would be easier for her to school. In James’s case, the reason he spoke with parents in English was that his vocabulary in Mandarin was not as big as his English, so English was better for him to communicate. However, he sometimes used his heritage
50 languages with his grandparents because Cantonese was the only language his grandparents were fluent in. Most of the time, when his grandparents talked to him in Cantonese, he understood
Cantonese and responded in Mandarin.
On the other hand, the other four participants, Thomas, Andy, Olivia, and Yang, reported using their heritage languages a majority of the time, if not always, with family and relatives.
One of the reasons to use heritage languages was limited English proficiency of their family members. As Yang stated,
My parents speak English but not fluently, not you know our point of English. So I speak Mandarin with them because it's more convenient and easier to get a point across.
Similarly, Andy whose parents were from Vietnam reported using Cantonese with his mother and Vietnamese with his father because his father didn’t know a lot of languages and it was easier for them to communicate in this way.
Thomas and Olivia reported generally using heritage languages in the contexts of home and family visits to China. When reflecting on the contexts in which she might use Cantonese,
Olivia mentioned that when she was visiting her family in Guangzhou, she met new people that her family introduced her to and spoke a lot of Cantonese.
Code-switching.
When asked to reflect on their experience of mixing languages, only one participant shared reflections that indicated the interchangeable nature of English and Chinese in their conversations by referring to it as “Chinglish.” She attributed this mixing of languages and dialects to either a decreased vocabulary in one language or the difficulty in recalling a particular word or phrase. For example, Yang stated:
Even the teachers here, they do it because some of my classmates who are in Mandarin bilingual program don’t speak Mandarin very well so they mix up altogether. And they, you know, they have a sentence where it's half Chinese half English and other words are
51 intertwined. You don't know any specific words that come to mind. (laughs) But we do speak a lot of it where it's mixed up.
It is worth to note that one participant, James, who claimed that he had never mixed languages, used half English and half Chinese in sentences during the interview. For example, when describing how he celebrated Chinese New Year or the Spring Festival, he stated:
We do things like 舞龙舞狮(the Chinese dragon and lion dance) and all other stuff. Like there’s 红包(lucky money ) and a bunch of things and stories. Stories like there’s 年 (a man-eating monster called “Nian”), and I think 属相 (Chinese zodiac sign) is kind of related to that.
The narratives of James indicated that languages were mixed in a sentence when there were certain phrases or idioms that he could either only express in Chinese or preferred to express in Chinese. In other words, he spoke a language he preferred to use in most parts of a conversation, and then use a few words in another language to accurately complete the whole sentence. In doing so, he could accurately express his thinking.
Overall, in this section, all participants reported their preference and use of languages.
They explicitly indicated a clear preference for using English with friends. The strong inclination to use English was generally attributed to: (a) greater proficiency in the language, (b) greater comfort and ease in using the language, and (c) friends’ requests to practice English. They described heritage languages use in the following situations: (a) entertainment, such as watching
Chinese TV dramas or listening to Chinese music; (b) making jokes with each other or calling each other their dumb names and (c) when interacting with people whose preference is Chinese and whose English proficiency is low. For example, Andy described that he helped his western friends who didn’t know Cantonese order food in Cantonese at Chinese restaurants. In terms of code-switching, although participants are usually able to function well in both English and
Mandarin, the phenomenon of code-switching between English and Mandarin was apparent in
52 narratives of two participants. When they spoke English, if they did not know how to say a word in English, they translated the word into Mandarin and mixed the Mandarin word in English interactions, or vice versa. In this way, they could accurately complete the whole sentence and express their thinking.
Relationship with languages. In the interviews, I asked every participant to reflect on his or her relationship with languages. Among those who were born in Canada, Christy, Andy,
Olivia and James chose English as their first language while Thomas chose Cantonese as his first language. Four participants who identified English as the first language defined the first language as the language they mainly learn and use at school and in the local community. Other two participants, Thomas and Yang, understood the first language is the language they first learn and the language they feel connected to.
Interestingly, Yang, who immigrated to Canada at the age of six, shared her mixed feelings toward Mandarin and English. When asked to describe the reason for choosing
Mandarin as the first language, she stated:
Because I've been speaking Mandarin since I was little. It's my first language. But from now I can say that English is my better language. I feel like if I say Mandarin is my first language, people will still believe me but I might not believe myself because my English is so much better. And I feel like I make more of an effort to learn English because it's just something I know and more passionate about than Mandarin as a language. Although it's not my first language, it is the language that I relate most to. It is a language I want, I like to know more.
In her narratives, although she identified Mandarin as her the first language, she started to feel that her English was more like a first language than Mandarin because she felt more connected to English than Mandarin and she was more proficient in English and in Mandarin.
53 In summary, all participants reported their choice of the first language and provided their definitions of the first language. Christy, Andy, Olivia, and James chose English as their first language while Thomas chose Cantonese and Yang chose Mandarin.
Self-perception as bilingual. Participants’ subjective experience with their perceptions of themselves as bilingual reflected the variance in the definitions of bilingualism (Butler &
Hakuta, 2004) as noted in the literature review. A couple of participants provided their definitions of what it means to be bilingual or trilingual. Although most of them used “fluent” in their definitions, the word “fluent” meant different things to different participants. For some participants, fluency meant simply to be able to communicate in two languages. For example,
Christy who identified as bilingual commented that “one person who can speak and communicate in two languages is bilingual”. Andy who spoke four languages and identified as multilingual defined a person who “know the basics and be good with that” can be considered as a bilingual or a multilingual. Olivia who identified as trilingual also described a similar definition of a bilingual person. She stated:
As long as they can hold a conversation with other people that are trying to speak the same language. As long as they can do that. I think they could be considered bilingual because then there's communication.
For other two participants, Yang and James, fluency meant speaking all languages to the same level. Yang, who identified as bilingual, defined a bilingual person as a person who can
“speak two languages fluently, both languages fluently”. James who identified as more bilingual than trilingual indicated a similarly narrow definition of what it means to be trilingual. He went on to explain:
I think trilingual means you are stronger in three languages. I'm only stronger in two languages. My Cantonese is not as strong as my Mandarin and English.
54 One participant, Thomas, who considered himself as trilingual, linked cultures to trilingualism. As he put it, “I’m trilingual because I can speak in English, Cantonese and
Chinese. I celebrate English and Chinese cultures and festivals”.
Overall, Christy, Yang, and James considered themselves bilingual. Thomas and Olivia identified themselves as trilingual. Andy considered himself as multilingual. Their definitions of a bilingual/ trilingual person can be categorized as (a) someone who knows the basics and is able to communicate with others in two or more languages; (b) someone who has equal and perfect fluency in their languages; (c) someone who not only speaks two or more languages but also celebrates two or more cultures and festivals.
Benefits of being bilingual. Five participants, Christy, Andy, Olivia, Yang, and James explicitly described how being bilingual and being able to communicate in two or more languages is advantageous. Some participants, such as Christy mentioned that learning
Mandarin could help them get extra credits for high school while others referred to English and
Chinese languages as useful tools for communication. For example, James stated:
The benefits… I just find them as useful to use. You can communicate with different people. You know what they are talking about and you are not really confused by what they say.
Andy, who started learning Mandarin in kindergarten highlighted the importance of
Mandarin and English as key resources for getting a job. As he put it,
Finding a job is really definitely easy as if we were working like across the world as if we were looking at Asia, most countries they know Mandarin and English. It is one more thing that you can add to your resume.
Olivia discussed cultural benefits of bilingualism by stating:
The benefit is being able to communicate, communicate with more people because some people don't know English and some people don't know Cantonese. And you have a more open point of view because you understand two cultures and how different they can be.
55
Similarly, Yang described how speaking two languages provided her new perspectives.
She stated:
You are a lot more open because you experience, you know both sides of things. And… you know a little bit more. You experience a lot more and see the world differently. And then you know it's the off chance that you do speak two languages that has benefits in the workplace and in school.
Apart from benefits mentioned above, one participant described the benefits of speaking a language that others might not understand. Olivia, who spoke Cantonese in addition to
Mandarin and English, mentioned using Cantonese to share secrets with her friends. In other words, this allowed her to speak more privately when in public.
In addition, one participant, James, reported feel pride in his English because his English was better than other English learners in China. Although he was born in Canada, he attended a kindergarten in China where many of his classmates in this kindergarten were Chinese and
English was taught as a foreign language. When thinking back to his days in kindergarten, he commented on his language proficiency compared with his classmates. He stated that “[m]y
Chinese was maybe a little bit below them but their English was not definitely as good as mine.
I’m pretty flattered in my English”.
Through his narratives, it is indicated that his higher English proficiency made him feel different from the majority of his peers. He had not met anyone highly proficient in English who had learned it as a foreign language in the kindergarten and thus had no rivals.
Challenges of being bilingual. In their reflections, all participants described experiencing some challenging aspect of being bilingual. The findings that will be addressed in the following section fell under two main subthemes, including (a) cognitive challenges, and, (b) perception of decrease of heritage language proficiency.
56 Cognitive challenges. A handful of participants commented on the differences in vocabulary, the structure between English and Chinese. Because of differences, it took them longer to interpret things and response. Some of them were thinking in Chinese before speaking in English. For instance, Thomas stated:
I feel like… sometimes like… someone asks for my phone number and in my head, I can’t remember it in English. So I have to go to Chinese and say a lot in my mind. And then I just tell them in English.
Yang, who came to Canada at the age of six, also provided an example of her difficulties in being bilingual. She stated:
Sentence structure is a big thing and that’s very different. When I do speak, when I speak Chinese with my parents, sometimes I mix up words and they don’t quite understand it. Because I'm saying it in the way that it would be structured in English. But… obviously, they wouldn't know what it would be in Chinese. For example, it would be like I want to go to his house or I'm going to go to his house tomorrow. And then I'd say it really weirdly 我去他家明天. And then, they would be like “No. You say the words in the wrong order”.
As described by Yang, she sometimes said the words in the wrong order because she used the sentence structure in English. In English, much information is carried out by the use of auxiliaries and by verb inflections: is/are/were, eat/eats/ate/eaten, etc. On the other hand,
Chinese is an uninflected language and conveys meaning through word order or shared understanding of the context. The concept of time in Chinese is not handled through the use of different tenses and verb forms as it is in English. In Chinese, time words can appear in one of two positions in the sentence: either at the beginning of the sentence (before the subject), or directly after the subject. In the example above, Yang was saying the time word 明天
(tomorrow) at the end of the sentence, so it didn’t sound natural to her parents.
Olivia, who mostly spoke Cantonese at home, mentioned the difficulties she encountered because of differences between Cantonese and Mandarin, especially difference on pronunciation.
57 As Olivia mentioned, “Cantonese might like affect my Mandarin speaking abilities not writing abilities because its’ written is the same as Mandarin ”. Like Olivia, Li described examples of his difficulties in speaking Mandarin. He stated:
When reading like a passage in Mandarin in school, sometimes I mispronounce something using Cantonese cuz I got so used to it. Sometimes I think… “好 hǎo” in Mandarin, I say “好 hou2” or something like that.
Perception of decrease of heritage language proficiency. Although participants understood or appreciated their desires or need to maintain their heritage language abilities, the narratives of participants indicated some degree of experienced heritage language proficiency decrease. More specifically, three participants perceived that they couldn’t use the language as fluently as before, such as skills in vocabulary, grammar, and syntax. They attributed this to one or more reasons: (a) the lack of practice, (b) the greater use of English in school and with peers,
(c) the pressure to fit in with English-speaking peers, (d) a growing preference for using English a majority of the time, and, (e) the lack of formal education in the heritage languages.
Yang, who began learning English at age 6, described her experience of gradual heritage language proficiency decline in Mandarin. Even though she could speak and communicate with others in Mandarin, Yang considered that her proficiency in Mandarin declined because she could not read and write well in Mandarin. As She stated:
With Mandarin, because I'm not speaking it as much. I think I'm losing a lot of it. I can’t … can’t remember lots of words. I can speak it and I can understand it but when it comes to writing and reading, I have a lot of trouble now because I don't do it at all.
She went on to explain her reading and writing difficulties in Mandarin:
Because I don't read Chinese books. I have unread a Chinese book since I was 10. (laughs) I don't do it unless I'm forced to. So I don't have that fluency anymore when it comes to reading and writing same thing. I don't write… I don't need to write in Chinese so I never get the chance to put that skill to use. So eventually it's fading away.
58 Yang also attributed gradual decrease of Mandarin to her desire to fit in with English- speaking peers. As she was a newcomer to Canada and began to learn English, she was focused on making sure that she “learned English pretty fast” and “adapted pretty seamlessly”.
Similarly, James, whose heritage language was Cantonese and Mandarin, reported his declining proficiency in Cantonese. To him, declining in Cantonese meant a decreased ability to have conversations with others fluently in Cantonese. For example, when talking with his grandparents in Cantonese, He sometimes would forget how to say certain Cantonese phrases or use words incorrectly. James attributed his declining proficiency in Cantonese to the lack of practice. As he stated,
I use English mostly with my friends and my parents. At school, I use Mandarin in Mandarin class. With Cantonese, I don’t use it as much as English and Mandarin… I use Cantonese when I go to my grandparents’ house because that's usually the only language they are fluent in.
Also, he mentioned the difficulties to pronounce words in Cantonese as a reason. He stated “sometimes, it is difficult to say words in Cantonese. Like… there’s a very specific way of how you curl your tongue”. He further linked the declining proficiency in Cantonese to the lack of formal education in Cantonese. When describing his difficulties in learning Cantonese, he stated:
Cantonese… because I just listen to it and learn what it is. So it’s kind of hard when you are actually learning it… There are the times like, you listen and understand, right? And there are also sometimes that you interpret wrong so that you use them wrong. But if you learn it in a class, you know the true meaning of the word so you are able to use it in proper contexts. So these are kind of difficulties.
Becoming Bicultural
All six participants seemed comfortable in sharing their reflections on their experiences with learning cultures in Mandarin bilingual program and the process of becoming bicultural. In
59 the following section, I discussed (a) self- perception as bicultural, (b) connection with Canadian culture, (c) connection with Chinese culture, and (d) perceived discrimination.
Self-perception as bicultural. In their narratives, most of the participants articulated that they fit well in both Chinese and Canadian cultures. While five participants, Christy, Andy,
Olivia, Yang, and James identified themselves as bicultural and indicated that they enjoyed the bicultural experience, Thomas was not sure. When asked to explain the reason why they considered themselves as bicultural, they provided their definitions of what it means to be bicultural. Some participants, such as Christy, defined a bicultural person is “a person who celebrate more than one culture”. Similarly, Yang, who came to Canada at the age of six, understood bicultural is “being part of two cultures. It doesn't matter if you, you know only 25%.
As long as you take the part, you take your, take an effort, you make an effort to be part of that culture and to learn and to cherish it. That can be one, that makes you bicultural or multicultural”. She went on to explain:
I think I am bicultural because I am part of two cultures and I am so proud of both of them. Even though I'm living in a place where I am in, I'm more in touch with the Western world. I still cherish my Chinese heritage and my identity. And I would love to go back to China you know, a couple months and just learn more about the country.
James made a similar remark by making a more specific statement. He said:
A bicultural person is someone that takes part in two cultures and celebrate festivals. I celebrate festivals every single year all the time. You kind of participate in these activities, you know what they are for both Chinese and Canadians.
On the other hand, Andy, who identified as bicultural, linked ethnicities to biculturalism by stating that “being bicultural means having more than one like culture, having more than one like ethnicities”.
A similar remark was made by Olivia who linked languages in addition to ethnicities to biculturalism. As she said,
60 I am bicultural because while I live in Canada and speak a lot of English and I celebrate some of the holidays they have here. I also still speak my own language at home and I still… All my relatives share some of the culture with me.
Thomas, who was born in Canada and regarded Cantonese as his first language, was uncertain whether he was bicultural. He explained the reason was that “being bicultural, I have to celebrate most of the festivals in Chinese, English and like Cantonese. I feel like…. I don’t know”.
Connection with Canadian culture. When describing their connection with Canadian culture, most participants talked about how they celebrated Canadian festivals such as Christmas,
Halloween, and Thanksgiving. They celebrated these festivals because of the fun factor. Some participants thought that there is not much difference between Canadian and Chinese festivals.
As Christy said,
I celebrate Canadian festivals and Chinese festivals because they are fun. I often just hang out with my friends or spend time with my family. Halloween, I’m usually just with my sister and we just go out, to go on trick or treating. For Christmas, I have my mini Christmas tree out and I have all my lights out and my decoration. And me and my friends all have like a day plan where we just going to hang out before Christmas like a Christmas party.
Some participants only celebrated Canadian festivals with friends at school. As Yang stated,
For Christmas, I really don't celebrate it much but I observe at school and with my friends. We will often end up doing this thing called secret Santa at school or we will buy each … Everyone gets assigned a student and we buy each other gifts. But at home, you know, we don't celebrate Christmas.
In explaining the reason for not celebrating Canadian festivals at home, Yang stated that
“my family don’t celebrate it because they are not used to that”. It seemed that family is one crucial factor for participants not to celebrate Canadian festivals with family.
61 One participant, James, who did celebrate some Canadian festivals commented he was more connected to Chinese culture than Canadian culture. He stated:
I don't really understand Canadian cultures. It's kind of, part of your lifestyle but you don't celebrate them. I am not keen for festivals. Like maybe the big festivals, Christmas and Thanksgiving. All those things that are pretty important but all the other stuff, I don’t care about. (laugh)
He went on to explain:
I think I am more connected to Chinese but I'm more influenced by the Canadian. Because you live here, you are around like different people. And they're also as well formed by the culture here. So everybody is being influenced by Canadian culture all around so eventually, you get influenced too.
Similarly, Olivia also described her “distant” relationship with Canadian cultures. She stated:
Canadian tends to be more distant from me. I think Canadian people can be more diverse but we do have a lot of Chinese people here and I think Chinese people are um… easier to make friends with but Canadians… I guess it's because we share something together while for Canadians you have to work from the ground up to make friends if you were trying.
Connection with Chinese culture.
Celebrating Chinese festivals. In the interview, when reflecting on their connection with
Chinese culture, most participants specifically mentioned Chinese festivals and described their activities in the festivals. For example, as Yang stated:
We do celebrate Chinese New Year. It's not, it's not as grand of a scale of course but we'd meet up with some other Chinese families that are in the city and some of our close friends who are Chinese and then we just have a big feast. A lot of fruit and a bunch of food.
In addition to celebrating Chinese New Year with family and friends, all participants mentioned how they celebrated it at school. Every year, the school held a Chinese New Year performance and each grade had their own performance. Some students did dragon dance, some did Chinese skits about Chinese history and others did “扭秧歌” (The Yangko dance) and
62 martial arts with traditional Chinese weapons, such as spears. Two participants, Olivia and
Christy, shared their experience of performing for the Chinese New Year. Olivia stated that “we all wore Chinese wear like Qipao (a body-hugging dress traditionally worn by Chinese women) and everything and we sang Chinese songs”. Like Olivia, Christy also described wearing
Chinese dress and performing “a six-person dance with friends in grade five and a duet with friends in grade seven”.
For other traditional Chinese festivals, such as Mid-Autumn Festival which is also called
Moon Festival, all participants mentioned celebrating it at school with a party and “all the kids will bring food and eat mooncake”. Besides, only one participant described how she celebrated the Qingming Festival which is known as Tomb Sweeping Day. Yang stated:
For Qingming Festival or when we do need to honor our ancestors cuz that's the thing we do. We still do burn paper and the incense. I think that's really good to keep in touch with my culture.
Daily activities. In addition to celebrating Chinese festivals, families of participants used food as a means of maintaining Chinese tradition. Continuing to cook and eat Chinese food was one way to keep their Chinese cultural heritage. All of the participants reported eating and cooking Chinese food regularly. Also, most of them emphasized their preference for Chinese food and became excited when we talked about Chinese foods such as fried rice, vegetable, and roast duck.
When asked to make a comparison about Chinese food and Canadian food or to talk about their preference in food, James stated: “Most Canadian food is the bread, Poutine or something else, I like Chinese food. Well, usually when I make food, I think Chinese is the best”.
Like James, Yang also indicated her preference for Chinese food. She stated:
I really like it cause my dad is a really good cook and he always makes staple Chinese dishes such as 小笼包 ( Chinese steamed buns),叉烧( Chinese barbeque pork). And then
63 we cook all of the vegetables. So we cook all of our vegetables. I think the way we eat is definitely still very true to our Chinese culture.
Unlike other participants, Andy did not indicate his preference for Chinese food despite that he grew up “in like a very Chinese style home instead of a Vietnamese style home”. Instead, he mentioned how his family cooked the meals. He stated “we mix it up cuz we sometimes mix
Vietnamese food with some Chinese food. Like, lemongrass and soy sauce”.
As for entertainment, some participants reported listening to Chinese music and watching
Chinese shows. For example, Christy described a Chinese drama she watched with her friends.
When asked to explain the reason why she watched Chinese dramas, she stated:
It’s fun to watch. It’s very different from English shows and it’s like, um, the one I’m watching with my friends is like doctor and stuffs. And when I’m like watching Chinese dramas, I don’t know, I just feel a connection.
Similarly, James indicated his preference for Chinese shows and music. He went on to explain:
I find them(Chinese shows) kind of interesting. Some of them are very like lots of American culture and some of them are very unique, very Chinese. Especially Chinese music if you can understand the lyrics.
Besides, two participants described their participation in Chinese cultural organizations mentioned in the first chapter. Thomas went to martial arts class on weekends while Christy went to a Chinese dance school to learn the dance for performance for the Chinese New Year.
Participation in the Mandarin bilingual program. When asked to reflect on their experience in the Mandarin bilingual program, all participants agreed that learning in this program was a rewarding experience. For instance, Thomas talked about how he developed friendships through this program. He stated:
In this program, I feel welcomed because t a lot of people are like me here. I like to be around people who is like me and who speaks the same language and has the same
64 cultural background. We can talk in Chinese together. If I am in other programs, there won’t be much like, people that agree with me (laughter) and I would be pretty different.
Also, he discussed how he learned Chinese heritage and culture by describing one of his impressive lessons. He stated:
We just completed a project about Qixi Festival. We did a presentation about what it is, how it came to be and the story. I learned that we Chinese celebrate the cultures and the festivals just like the English but there is the difference. Like, Qixi Festival is kind of Chinese Valentine’s day.
Like Thomas, James also shared his experience by stating:
The program kind of makes you know stories, like why you celebrate it and why you get these type of things. In this program, it is really good. It lays out your basement as Chinese. It teaches you Chinese, teaches you culture, teaches you how to communicate Chinese, how to write in Chinese, how to start a conversation all these.
In addition, Yang, who immigrated to Canada at the age of six, mentioned the importance of cultural diversity of this program. She stated:
For what I've seen, it's the cultural diversity and you have so many people coming in from different families. We're not all Chinese and I have a classmate who is Turkish and then a couple of my classmates are mix. So it's so diverse and then you see people from all different walks of life. And I feel like, in a regular program or school, you might not see as much of that and you might not see much acceptance towards difference.
For Andy, this program helped him to find out his identity “like who I am” and to discover “how well or how bad I'm doing in Chinese”.
Perceived Discrimination
Although some participants had sweet memories of their friends from other cultural backgrounds and reported experiencing little to none discrimination towards Asians or Chinese at school, a few participants described experiences with racial discrimination in interactions with friends and strangers outside the school. For instance, Yang mentioned that she encountered racial discrimination mostly “in like the suburban neighborhoods where does mostly white people and then with older Caucasians. I volunteered at, you know, at um, retirement homes and
65 libraries before, so you see that”. When reflecting on the influence of languages on his identities,
Thomas said that “some people will treat me different from like normal people…like nicer or meaner”. He further explained by describing his recent experience of talking online with friends and strangers. He stated:
Like I just go on the internet and then like, there will be news and videos on YouTube like “You are Asian. You guys eat rice every day” or “you like making the duckface”.
Similarly, Christy and Olivia also described racial comments she encountered especially when talking online and meeting people that they had never met before through other friends.
These comments included Asian jokes about skin color, eyes and speaking Chinese.
When asked how to respond to these racial comments, most of them chose to “ignore it” and refused to have a discussion on racial discrimination they experienced with their parents. For
Christy, it was mainly because she thought her parents would not understand the meaning of some racial comments, such as “yellow”. For Olivia, the reasons were that she regarded racists as
“really immature” and that “I feel like it's not a very big deal. They don't make me feel ashamed of my culture or language so I just continue to be who I am”.
On the other hand, Yang took different approaches to racism. If it’s something really small “like why your eyes aren’t going so deep? or where are you from? you look, you're so
Chinese or you know like oh, are you Japanese?”, she normally ignored it. If it’s something really serious “like ching chong”, she would point it out. In addition, she responded differently depending on the age of the racist. She further explained by stating that “if it's somebody who's older, I don't. I just brush it off because they can really, it's really hard to change how do you been raised by that age”. In addition, she reflected on the general consensus of racial discrimination in Canada. She stated:
66 I think the general consensus is that we don't really face so much in Canada or at least not you know out and obvious because Canada is said to be a multicultural country. And also I spent a lot of my time in Chinatown and in Chinese supermarkets.
Summary
Participants shared rich and detailed narratives regarding their experiences of learning languages and cultures in the Mandarin bilingual program as well as the perception of their identities. In reflecting on their process of learning languages and becoming bilingual, participants addressed themes of: (a) language proficiency and use, (b) relationship with languages, (c) self-perception as bilingual, (d) benefits to being bilingual, and (e) challenges to being bilingual. In reflecting on their process of navigating two unique cultures, participants addressed themes of (a) self- perception as bicultural, (b) connection with Canadian culture, (c) connection with Chinese culture, and (d) perceived discrimination. Interpretation of these findings would be discussed in Chapter five.
67 CHAPTER FIVE
DISCUSSION
Bilingualism as a Dynamic Process
The participants in this study indicated when they acquired languages in the Canadian context. They first acquired home language and then, when they started going to school, they learned a second or third language. This finding was in agreement with the idea of Grosjean
(2015) that the majority of bilinguals start monolingually and acquire their languages successively.
In addition, the narratives of three participants suggested a shift in the dominant language. For Thomas and Olivia who first learned Cantonese, they considered their English was much better than Cantonese. For Yang and James who started as monolingual speakers of
Mandarin, they regarded English as the stronger language. This finding indicated that these three participants went through periods of “language reorganization” (Grosjean, 2015) during which an existing language may be strengthened, another one may lose its importance, yet another may be acquired. In the case of Thomas, Olivia, Yang, and James, their language dominance changed at some point and the first language (Cantonese/ Mandarin) was no longer the stronger language.
In other words, they started the lives with one language as the dominant language, but after a transition period, the first language became the weaker language and the second language the stronger language.
The above findings accorded with the opinion that “bilingualism is very much a dynamic process in which new situations, new interlocutors and new language functions will involve new linguistic needs” (Grosjean, 2015).
Preference for English
68 Although all participants reported a desire and interest to learn Mandarin, they all indicated either a clear preference for English, a greater level of comfort and ease in using
English, and using English a majority of the time as discussed previously in data analysis. Their preference for English was also shown when I encouraged each participant to feel free to speak either English or Chinese in the interview. They all chose English as the language for their interviews.
These results agreed with the findings of Ghuman (1991) who examined language attitudes and use in 13 to 15-year-old Indian-British adolescents. According to Ghuman (1991),
96% of the participants considered themselves to be bilingual and more than 90% reported a desire to learn their heritage language. However, nearly all of the participants preferred to speak
English “most of the time”. Also, the present finding was consistent with other research (Portes
& Hao, 1998) which found that as language-minority children progress through the elementary grades they may begin to prefer the majority language.
As stated by Grosjean (1982), “language attitude is always one of the major factors in accounting for which languages are learning, which are used and which are preferred by bilinguals” (p. 127). Numerous factors, such as proficiency, peer pressure, parents’ expectations and a general preference for one language above the other in the society at large, may affect the language use of the bilinguals (Landry & Allard, 1992; Romaine, 1995).
In Canadian context of this study, English is the “majority language” or “dominant language” (Grosjean, 2015) that has official status and recognition as well as holding the political, cultural and economic power in the country. On the other hand, Mandarin is “minority language” that has less power and prestige. Since English is widely used in public media, school systems, and official institutions, it is usually considered that English is the “more correct”
69 (Grosjean, 2015) language to use in Canada. Therefore, one of the reasons why participants in this study chose English as a medium of communication may be the wider acceptance and functions of English in the Canadian society. In addition, although the participants in Mandarin bilingual program received instruction in both languages, the dominance of English in the school and the wider Canadian society is most certainly noticed by the participants, since they were expected to transition to all-English high schools. The end of Mandarin language instruction could influence the participants’ attitudes towards Mandarin and they may perceive that society values English over Mandarin in academics.
At the same time, the attitude which parents have towards language also influences the language choice of children. When parents think of a language in a certain way and choose to speak it, such behavior and attitude will affect how their children think and choose to speak as well. The reason is that the children’s divergent paths of language is closely related to their parents’ perception of the host society as well as the pragmatic and symbolic values they ascribed to the language (Schecter & Bayley, 2002). As mentioned in data analysis, one participant, Christy spoke with her parents most of the time in English because her parents didn't want her to learn Cantonese like full-on Cantonese. They wanted her to learn English. Besides, they thought that speaking English at home would help Christy learn English and make it easier for her to school. This finding matched those observed in earlier studies that while parents had a desire for their children to maintain their home language, they urged their children to shift to
English as quickly as possible (Lao, 2004; Wu, 2005; Yang, 2007; Zhang, 2004). Parents showed a preference for English because they believed that English could provide their children greater advantage, economic benefits, social networks expansion and better opportunities. However, when parents responded to their children in English other than the heritage language at home,
70 they seemed to give children a signal that it is all right to use English. As emphasized in Pan
(1995), parents’ switch to English almost always leads to the child using English.
The third reason would be that the participant had some negative experiences of using
Chinese, which led to negative attitudes towards certain languages. As noted by Grosjean (1982), negative attitudes toward a language can have profound effects on the users of the language. In their narratives, some participants mentioned discomfort they encountered when speaking
Chinese. For instance, Thomas stated that he felt annoying when being asked by others to explain and translate what he said with his friends in Chinese. Christy described the discomfort of speaking Chinese when others stared at her. As a result of these unpleasant experiences, some participant reported that they preferred to speak English than Chinese. This finding agreed with the results of Zhang and Slaughter-Defoe (2009), which investigated attitudes toward Chinese among Chinese second-generation children in the United States. Their findings showed that children who had a negative experience of speaking Chinese seldom spoke Chinese with their co-ethnic peers who also know the language.
Perceived discrimination
As discussed in the chapter of introduction, despite the immigration policy change in the
1960s, Canada is a society with deeply rooted racism in both history and in the present. During the interviews, quite a few participants reported that their parents had high expectations for them, such as going to a very great high school, getting a high grade and going to weekend schools.
Just as Yang, who immigrated to Canada at six stated, “parents of my friends who are Caucasian and are born and raised in Canada are a lot more relaxed with their education than our parents are”. She further explained that her parents sometimes discussed the racial discrimination they experienced in Canada and wanted her to do better than the other Caucasian Canadian students
71 so that she could have a chance for a good job. It seemed that Yang’s parents regarded education as a tool for Yang to maximize the chance of success in Canada. Also, other participants mentioned that their parents held specific career aspirations, such as the doctor, lawyer, and engineer and the main reason was that in their parents’ mind, these careers are well-paid, well- respected and have higher status than others. The parents’ preference for these well-respected careers which may be shaped by their immigration experiences reflected their perception of
Chinese as a minority in Canada and wishes for their children to achieve higher social status. As
I mentioned previously, many Chinese immigrants worked as labourers with low social status and experienced racial discrimination. Based on their life experiences in Canada, Chinese parents believed that if their children are engaged in high-paying jobs with significant status, their children will have higher chances of success and lower possibility of encountering racial discrimination. As Chun (1995) argued, the limited career aspirations of Asian immigrants are not necessarily motivated by their personal interests and preferences but by their disadvantaged and visible minority status.
Besides, the participants’ experiences of racial discrimination outside the school also confirmed that the racism the Chinese experienced in Canada is an ongoing process of
“historically situated projects” rather than a finished product (Omi &Winant, 1994). As stated in the data analysis, participants experienced racial comments based on their appearance, languages and lifestyle.
As for the impact of racial discrimination on their identities, it is worthwhile to note that the impact of racism and on youth’s perceptions of their identities varies among individuals. For most of the participants, it seemed that there was no obvious impact. However, for Olivia, being discriminated against strengthened her relationship with Chinese and made her want to embrace
72 Chinese culture more. She talked about how she felt much closer to Chinese culture when reflecting on her relationship with two cultures. She stated:
Canadian tends to be more distant from me. I think I'm very proud to be Chinese so I definitely always hold it as one of my um …better parts of my personality and I think it also taught me a lot about the way I grew up.
In accordance with the present findings, previous studies (Dion &Earn,1975; Chavira &
Phinney, 1991; Cui, 2015) have demonstrated that discrimination is associated with higher levels of group identification. As Tajfel and Turner (1986) argued, the powerful majority that is prejudiced and discriminates against one’s in-group will lead to increased identification with the in-group. Also, according to Schmitt and Branscombe (2002), the reason why the discrimination from the majority leads to minority identification is that the minority group is seen as a coping resource and identification with the minority group provides psychological shelter from the hostile treatment of the majority group. In the case of Olivia, the discrimination she experienced from the Caucasians resulted in her stronger identification with Chinese people and Chinese culture. It made her embrace Chinese culture more and identify more with Chinese people.
The Role of Program in Developing Bilingual/Bicultural Identity
Although the participants had some negative experiences of using Chinese, they identified positively with the Chinese language and Chinese culture. In addition, the data reported in the above data analysis provided evidence that almost all participants perceived themselves as bilingual and bicultural. As expressed by the participants themselves, connections to the languages and cultures through family and friends were sufficient for some participants to identify themselves as bilingual and bicultural. Also, participation in the bilingual program provided sufficient opportunity for participants to identify themselves as bilingual and bicultural.
When asked to reflect on the role of the Mandarin Bilingual Program in their knowledge of two
73 languages, many participants explained that if they did not attend this program, they might forget how to speak their native language, or would not have been able to learn the Chinese language.
Just as Yang stated, “if I wasn't in the bilingual program, I wouldn't be speaking any Mandarin by now because I'm not forced to do it”. For James, this bilingual program was a “friendly and welcoming place” compared to the ESL class in China which “pushed me to learn languages”.
In terms of developing the understanding of cultures, many participants highlighted the fact that this program helped them to learn Chinese culture and history of China. They also indicated that through many learning activities in the program they learned how to value their own languages and cultures as well as feeling proud of being Chinese. For example, Yang stated:
Like right now in social studies, um, we are talking about rights and then there's a section that we can do a project on about the Canadian Pacific Railroad and the Chinese people building it and I'm really passionate about that. I'm really proud. I know it's just, I'm really proud of China and our people whenever I see on the news or whatever.
For these participants, opportunities provided by this program to celebrate Chinese festivals, learn Chinese history and Chinese culture were an essential part of understanding their
Chinese roots. In addition to gaining an in-depth understanding of Chinese culture, participants highlighted that they learned the importance of cultural diversity and multiculturalism in Canada.
In spite of their experiences of racial discrimination, they treated others who speak different languages and who are from diverse cultural backgrounds equally.
Form the participants’ narratives, I found connections among their positive attitudes towards their own languages, cultures, identities and their experiences in the bilingual program based on the Bilingual Identity Negotiation Framework (Fielding, 2015). As has been indicated in the earlier sections of the theoretical framework, interaction is an integral part of the negotiation process involved in identity perception. Interaction inherently involves interpersonal
74 negotiations and the underlying empowerment/disempowerment involved. For interactive experiences, one of the important sites is education setting.
The school in this study was an English-instruction school, but the Mandarin bilingual program provided a bilingual context for students who were enrolled in the program. The design of this program enabled the participants to receive approximately equal exposure to the two languages in language and content instruction. Teachers helped students to add a second or third language and cultural affiliation while maintaining their primary language and culture. In addition, the cultural component was an essential part of the Mandarin bilingual program. As discussed above, this program featured an intensive introduction to Chinese civilization and history with an equal emphasis on English and Canadian culture. Students were encouraged to reflect critically on their Chinese cultural background and on the culture of Canada as well as social issues that affect their lives. In doing so, students’ languages, cultures, and experiences are not only included but valued in classroom interactions. As demonstrated by the participants, such pedagogies which harnessed their linguistic diversity as a resource and affirmed their identities provided them “empowering” (Cummins, 2001; Fielding, 2015) experience through bilingual education. As Fielding (2015) highlighted, empowerment is necessary for students to develop a bilingual identity.
This finding was in sharp contrast to what one usually finds in the research literature
(Rutter, Yule, Morton, & Bagley, 1974; Klimidis, Stuart & Minas, 1994) on immigrant children’s experience of the pressure of assimilation. Often minority students’ mental health and self-esteem are under constant threat, causing heightened anxiety, lower self-esteem, feelings of marginality, and identity confusion. The participants in the Mandarin bilingual program seemed not to have gone through these pressures of assimilation and there were no clear indications that
75 they came to see themselves as “inferiors”. In fact, the way they saw connections with their own languages and cultures indicated that they experienced positive self-esteem in the mandarin bilingual program and a sense of fitting in with peers from diverse cultures.
In addition, through recognition of the importance of Chinese language and Chinese culture within bilingual settings, this bilingual program encouraged equality of languages and challenged the power relations in the wider society where the majority languages are regarded as more valuable or important than the minority languages. According to Fielding (2015), the broader societal power issues frequently influence pedagogical spaces within a classroom and result in the perpetuation of the terms majority and minority, which indicates a value being attached to a language. However, through recognition of the importance of the students’ home languages and cultures, this Mandarin bilingual program empowered students and challenged some of the imbalance present in Canadian society today.
76 CHAPTER SEVEN
CONCLUSION
The purpose of this study was to explore experiences of youth from Chinese backgrounds in a Mandarin bilingual program in Southern Alberta. This study was particularly interested in examining how these individuals acquired and used these languages in daily life as well as how they perceived themselves in terms of bilingual and bicultural identities. The approach of the research design, including the semi-structured interview and the exploratory questions, was specifically chosen for this study in an effort to gather rich, nuanced data from participants in order to more fully understand their experiences as a person from Chinese backgrounds.
Results from the data analysis addressed their experiences of learning languages and cultures in the Mandarin bilingual program as well as the perception of their identities. In the interviews, all participants explicitly indicated a clear preference for using English most of the time. The strong inclination to use English was generally attributed to greater proficiency and comfort in the language. As for Mandarin, four of them used Mandarin mainly in Mandarin classes while other two participants also used Mandarin at home. Most participants engaged in mixing their languages both in the interviews and in their home usage of languages.
In terms of bilingual identity, all participants considered themselves as bilingual despite their different definitions of a bilingual person. Reflecting on their self-identification as bilingual, they described how being bilingual and being able to communicate in more than one language is advantageous. These benefits included (a) bilingualism as a key resource for getting a job; (b) communicating with more people; (c) providing new perspectives to understand the world; (d) feeling of special and (e) speaking more privately when in public. Also, they
77 commented on challenges of learning and using two or more languages, such as the differences in vocabulary and structure between English and Chinese.
In terms of bicultural identity, while five participants identified themselves as bicultural and indicated that they enjoyed the bicultural experience in Canada, one participant was not sure whether he was bicultural or not. In defining a bicultural person, most participants agreed that a person who celebrates more than two cultures can be viewed as bicultural. Some of them further linked biculturalism with languages and ethnicities. Reflecting on their connections with
Chinese and Canadian cultures, they described their daily routines and ways of celebrating various festivals with parents and friends. In their understanding of Chinese and Canadian culture, it was clear that their families and this Mandarin bilingual program exerted a strong influence on participants’ awareness of their two different cultures. Although most students showed a positive orientation to their experiences in these two cultures, some shared their experience or racial discrimination when speaking Chinese and meeting with people from other cultural backgrounds outside the school. For most of them, the experience of racial discrimination seemed to have no obvious influence on their identity except for Olivia who stated that being discriminated against strengthened her relationship with Chinese and made her want to embrace Chinese culture more.
Overall, through analyzing participants’ narratives within the theoretical framework, it can be seen that bilingualism and biculturalism is a dynamic process. In addition, participants’ perception of bilingual/bicultural identity was influenced by the ways in which they interacted in their languages and cultures.
Strengths and Limitations
78 The qualitative case study research yielded rich data, which was sufficient enough to answer my questions regarding the implications of Mandarin bilingual program on participants’ relationships with their languages and cultures, and on their bilingual/bicultural identity perception. Several strengths and limitations were found in the execution of this study. While the small sample size limited the generalizability of the study’s findings, the aim of this study was not to draw generalizations from participants’ experiences in order to generate a broader theoretical model. Instead, the purpose of using a case study approach is to describe what participants have in common when they experience a particular phenomenon. The strength of this approach lies in the ability to gather rich and nuanced data through which the researcher can look in-depth at a topic of interest (Merriam, 1988).
The second limitation was that most of the participants did not immigrate to Canada from
China. Instead, they were born in Canada. The reason was that the majority of the students in
Mandarin bilingual program were Canadian born. Data would be much richer if more participants who immigrated to Canada at an early age could participate in this study and share their experiences. Despite that, stories of youth from Chinese backgrounds in Mandarin bilingual program could still make a contribution to the previous literature on bilingual and bicultural identities of Chinese immigrants in Canada.
The third limitation was that this study was not a long-term study. As Hansen and Liu
(1997) noted, onetime research is not adequate to examine complex phenomenon no matter how detailed and carefully the research methodology is undertaken. The present study had no opportunity to observe the participants’ identities perception after their learning process in
Mandarin bilingual program by myself. If I can work and extend this study in the future, I will interview my participants individually after their studies in Mandarin bilingual program. A
79 combination of multiple data collection methods such as observation and autobiography is suggested for the future research.
Educational Implication
The findings of this study could provide important information for educators working with students from Chinese backgrounds. Although the school in this study was an English- instruction school, Mandarin bilingual program which exposed the students to both Chinese and
Canadian languages and cultures provided them with opportunities to develop bilingual and bicultural competence. The outcome of this process for students was empowering. In this program, the inclusion of Chinese language and culture into the curriculum reflected teachers’ respect and value for students’ languages and cultures. In addition, it fostered students’ development of, knowledge of, and pride in their Chinese languages and cultures. This
Mandarin bilingual program can serve as a model of what can be achieved when students from
Chinese backgrounds are encouraged and enabled to use their entire linguistic repertoire.
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92 APPENDIX
Interview Schedule
I propose to use the framework based on Berg (2009) for semi-structured interviews, also referred to as “semistandardized interviews” (p.105). According to Berg (2009), the semi-structured interview, which is a more flexible version of the structured interview, allows “the interviewers both to ask a series of regularly structured questions, permitting comparisons across interviews, and to pursue areas spontaneously initiated by the interviewee” (p.109). For the purpose of my research, I will use this type of interviews as it would allow covering various issues concerning my study.
Step 1 Introduction of the The interviewer/researcher will introduce herself Interviewer and remind participants of the topics that will be discussed during the interview. In this way, participants know clearly what topic areas will be addressed.
Step 2 Demographic Questions are about age, ethnicity, educational Questions levels, language spoken, and so forth. This type of questions allows “the interviewer and participant to develop a degree of rapport before more serious and important questions are asked” and cultivates “a degree of commitment on the part of the interviewee” (p.113).
Step 3 Follow-up The purpose of these questions is to understand the Questions language and culture of the interviewees. This may involve learning about the current context in which the participants are studying, what matters to them and what worries or frustrates them in regard to language learning and language use. Probing questions are also included to draw out more complete stories from participants (Berg, 2009, p.115).
93 Step 4 Essential Questions Essential questions are exclusively concerned about (Topic or Conceptual the central focus of the study. Questions will Area of Questions) include participants’ definition and perception of bilingual identity and the role of languages in their identity construction.
Step 5 Conclusion of This part allows participants to reflect upon the Interview foregoing discussion and to add any views or information on the topic that they may have previously forgotten.
Interview Questions:
(1) Demographic Questions
1. How old are you now?
2. When did you come to Canada?
3. Why did you and/or your family immigrate to Canada?
4. What is the most difficult part of adapting to new life in Canada?
(2) Follow-up Questions
5. What language(s) do you speak?
6. How do you use these languages in everyday situations?
7. Have you had difficulties with either of the languages in certain situations? What kind of
situations?
8. Why do you participate in Mandarin bilingual program?
9. What is it like to be a Chinese immigrant here? How do you feel about this program?
(3) Essential Questions
10. How would you describe your relationship with English and Mandarin? How do you feel
about having two languages instead of one?
11. How would you describe your relationship with Canadian culture and Chinese culture?
94 12. How would you describe yourself in terms of your identity?
13. Do you consider yourself bilingual or bicultural? Why? Why not?
14. What do you think is the relationship among language, culture and identity?
Reference
Berg, B. L. (2009). Qualitative research methods for the social sciences (7th ed.). Boston: Allyn
& Bacon.
95