Chinese Community Schools in England as Intercultural Educational Spaces: Pupils’, Parents’ and Teachers’ Constructions of the Chinese Language

Abstract

This chapter presents reflections arising from a 14-month in-the-field research on pupils’ identities within Mandarin Chinese community schooling in England. The research aims to explore the social, cultural and linguistic significance of Chinese community language schools for those who are involved in them. The research draws on the data from two Chinese community schools, Apple Valley and Deer River, to investigate how the schools provide a context for pupils, parents and school staff to (re)construct understandings of Chinese language. In particular, the chapter investigates how they construct ideas around Chinese heritage language (CHL) (He 2008, Chinese as a Heritage Language: An Introduction. In A.W. He and Y. Xiao (Eds.), Chinese as a heritage language: Fostering rooted world citizenry (pp. 1–12). Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press) and native speakerism (Creese et al. 2014, The Modern Language Journal 98(98):937–951) and how the status of ‘heritage language speaker’ risks being constructed as a homogenous and fixed system (Doerr 2009, Introduction. In N. M. Doerr (Ed.), Native speaker concept: Ethnographic investigations of native speaker effects (pp. 1–12). Berlin: Walter de Gruyter; Kramsch 2012, Critical Multilingualism Studies 1:107–128). Literature on language community schools suggests that these schools play a political role in countering the monolingual orientation of mainstream schooling (Li and Wu, 2008, Code-switching: Ideologies and practices. In A. W. He & Y. Xiao (Eds.), Chinese as a heritage language: Fostering rooted world citizenry (pp. 225–238). Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press; Archer et al. 2010, Oxford Review of Education 36(4):407–426.). They also support pupils to resist ethnic categories and social stereotypes associated with static identity markers (Creese and Blackledge 2012, Anthropology & Education 43:306–324). The findings presented in this chapter suggest that although participants implicitly construct a complexity of language-related positions (e.g. the role of other fāngyán as CHL contrasting the dominance of Mandarin), stereotypical discourses are still powerful in their explicit narrations.