cultural identity – Educational Sociolinguistics

How included we feel and how much included we want to be: a newcomer’s perspective

Fangzhe

This morning, I was commuting to my class. There were only two days left before the traditional Chinese New Year, but the joyful atmosphere, which has already been rare even in China these days, was apparently nowhere to be found in a carriage of the subway in a country thousand miles away. Suddenly, a naïve voice from a Chinese boy next to me drew my attention: “妈妈，中国农历新年是在情人节那天吗?”(Mum, is Lunar Chinese New Year on the Valentine’s Day?) His mother did not say anything, and the boy quickly added: “还是你也不清楚呢?” (or…you are not clear either?) , followed by an awkward silence. Thanks to the conversation still, that is one of the few things that remind me that Chinese New Year is around the corner.

Currently, the Chinese population no doubt takes up a considerable proportion of the immigrants in Quebec. However, a lot of us will find ourselves outsiders of this ‘unique’ French-dominant place (Allen, 2006).

Matthew’s language biography!

Matthew

Hello everybody! In class, we were asked to think about our own language biographies and discuss them. This is also a great way of getting the ball rolling for the blog posts. It looks like I’m one of the first students to post anything, so here goes nothing.

Where to start? I’m originally from the north of England, but I’ve been in Montréal since 2008. My first language is English. It’s the language I grew up speaking and it’s the language I still speak for the majority at home. Since being in Montréal, I’ve come to realize the difference in how I use English between my home country and my adopted country. Actually, I tend to think I have two main English identities.

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Language and cultural identity

Cynota

I teach ESL to immigrants who work very hard to lose their accent. They feel they need to eradicate their foreign accent in order to be taken seriously at work. Although it is my job to help them do this, I really think that it is sad that this variance is regarded as a negative attribute.

The first language that I learned was English, and because I lived with my Grandmother, she was my first model for my native tongue. My Granny was an immigrant; she came from Russia when she was 4 years old and spoke in broken English. She had a very basic vocabulary and syntax and would stick to two or three word sentences: “Come eat!”, “ Don’t walk barefoot!”. I thought about this when I had trained myself to use simpler sentences for ESL class.

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