Individual Language Policy: Bilingual Youth in Vietnam 9781800411142

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Individual Language Policy

BILINGUAL EDUCATION & BILINGUALISM Series Editors: Nancy H. Hornberger (University of Pennsylvania, USA) and Wayne E. Wright (Purdue University, USA) Bilingual Education and Bilingualism is an international, multidisciplinary series publishing research on the philosophy, politics, policy, provision and practice of language planning, Indigenous and minority language education, multilingualism, multiculturalism, biliteracy, bilingualism and bilingual education. The series aims to mirror current debates and discussions. New proposals for single-authored, multiple-authored, or edited books in the series are warmly welcomed, in any of the following categories or others authors may propose: overview or introductory texts; course readers or general reference texts; focus books on particular multilingual education program types; school-based case studies; national case studies; collected cases with a clear programmatic or conceptual theme; and professional education manuals. All books in this series are externally peer-reviewed. Full details of all the books in this series and of all our other publications can be found on http://www.multilingual-matters.com, or by writing to Multilingual Matters, St Nicholas House, 31–34 High Street, Bristol, BS1 2AW, UK.

BILINGUAL EDUCATION & BILINGUALISM: 135

Individual Language Policy Bilingual Youth in Vietnam

Trang Thi Thuy Nguyen

MULTILINGUAL MATTERS Bristol • Jackson

DOI https://doi.org/10.21832/NGUYEN1135 Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. Names: Nguyen, Trang Thi Thuy, author. Title: Individual Language Policy: Bilingual Youth in Vietnam/Trang Thi Thuy Nguyen. Description: Jackson [Tennessee]; Bristol: Multilingual Matters, 2022. | Series: Bilingual Education & Bilingualism: 135 | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Summary: “This book explores individual language policy among bilingual youth who belong to different ethnic minority groups in Vietnam, as reflected in their daily language behaviours. Contributing to research on language and identity, and language policy in non-Anglophone contexts, it will appeal to those working in sociolinguistics and related areas”— Provided by publisher. Identifiers: LCCN 2021059174 (print) | LCCN 2021059175 (ebook) | ISBN 9781800411135 (hardback) | ISBN 9781800411159 (epub) | ISBN 9781800411142 (adobe pdf) Subjects: LCSH: Language policy—Vietnam. | Multilingualism—Vietnam. | Linguistic minorities—Vietnam. | Minority youth—Vietnam—Language. Classification: LCC P119.3 .N45 2022 (print) | LCC P119.3 (ebook) | DDC 306.44/9597—dc23/eng/20220208 LC record available at https://lccn.loc. gov/2021059174 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021059175 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue entry for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN-13: 978-1-80041-113-5 (hbk) Multilingual Matters UK: St Nicholas House, 31–34 High Street, Bristol, BS1 2AW, UK. USA: Ingram, Jackson, TN, USA. Website: www.multilingual-matters.com Twitter: Multi_Ling_Mat Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/multilingualmatters Blog: www.channelviewpublications.wordpress.com Copyright © 2022 Trang Thi Thuy Nguyen. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the publisher. The policy of Multilingual Matters/Channel View Publications is to use papers that are natural, renewable and recyclable products, made from wood grown in sustainable forests. In the manufacturing process of our books, and to further support our policy, preference is given to printers that have FSC and PEFC Chain of Custody certification. The FSC and/or PEFC logos will appear on those books where full certification has been granted to the printer concerned. Typeset by Nova Techset Private Limited, Bengaluru and Chennai, India.

Contents

Foreword Bernard Spolsky

ix

1

Individual Language Policy: An Introduction Background, Terminology and Overview Outline of the Book

2

Conceptualisation of Individual Language Policy Proposing Individual Language Policy Level: Macro, Meso, Micro and Individual Forces on Individual Language Policy Agent: Individual Language Policy Constructor and Agency Level: The Influentiality of Individual Language Policy Process: Components of Individual Language Policy

1 1 7 10 10 12 16 18 19

3

External Forces on Bilingual Youth Geographical, Historical and Social Forces Political Forces Under the Forces: Bilingual Youth in the Terrain

24 24 27 31

4

Practised Language Policy The Youth’s Stories: Policy in Practices Construction of Practised Language Policy: Maintenance and Transformation in Implementational Spaces

35 35

5

6

53

Perceived Language Policy The Youth’s Stories: Policy in Beliefs Construction of Perceived Language Policy: Maintenance and Transformation in Ideological Spaces

62 62

Negotiated Language Policy The Youth’s Stories: Policy in Management

82 82

v

75

vi Individual Language Policy

Construction of Negotiated Language Policy: Maintenance and Transformation in Managerial Spaces 7

Individual Language Policy: Identification, Contextualisation and Interaction Perspectives Identification: Individual Language Policy as a Means for Maintenance and Transformation of Identity Contextualisation: Individual Language Policy in a Subtractive Language Environment Interaction: Individual Language Policy and Higher-Level Language Policies Transcription Convention Acknowledgements References Index

96 103 103 106 110 115 116 117 127

This book is dedicated to my family and to those who provided early support for my research journey. My heartfelt thanks go to Dr Obaid Hamid and the late Professor Richard (Dick) Baldauf for their great mentorship. I am thankful to the editors of the Bilingual Education and Bilingualism book series for their useful suggestions on the proposal of the book. (Brisbane, November 2021).

Foreword

When I started to study language policy, the field was still largely under the influence of what Jernudd and Nekvapil (2012) called the classic period, the 1960s, when several linguists tried to help new independent nations to develop a language policy that would suit a postcolonial situation. Language policy then meant national language planning, what some classify as a top-down process. In our own first efforts in the field (Spolsky & Shohamy, 1999), we too tried to prescribe Israel national policy, but given the source of the funding of our research, we aimed to propose a workable language education policy, seeing the school as a significant domain. In continuing studies, I later acknowledged the relevance of different levels and domains, so that in Spolsky (2009) I suggested that the common failures of State language management was ignoring the policies at other levels, ranging from the family through education and religion and work to government. Two developments took me further. I learned about the concept of self-management of the Prague linguists who drew attention to how individual workers in German-owned industry in Czechoslovakia tried to gain competence in the language of their employers (Neustupný & Nekvapil, 2003). And my middle grandson, at the age of five or six, refused to shift from the English of his parents to the Hebrew that his older siblings had already acquired at school. Therefore, in my latest book (Spolsky, 2021), I start not with the nation but with the individual speaker, working through all the levels up to the nation. This explains why I am so happy to be invited to write a foreword for this book by Trang Nguyen, Individual Language Policy, a pioneering study focusing on the language practices, beliefs and management of bilingual minority Vietnamese youth. Drawing on a wide and thorough grasp of research in language policy, she sets out to describe the way that, despite external pressure, these young people maintain their loyalty to and use of their indigenous non-standard home languages, drawing on their developing language repertoires to fit into their changing domains and environments. From informal interviews with several youths and supplementary talks with some of their parents, she derives a picture of the way their competence in the second language, Vietnamese, grows, and the varied situations in which they use it and their home languages. To this, she adds ix

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evidence of their learning and use of global English. The resulting description provides a vivid picture of the pressures that young speakers of indigenous minority varieties encounter in the wider modern world. Apart from its interest in showing the current state of minority varieties in Vietnam, this book will hopefully encourage more studies which focus on the language policy of individuals, for it is at the individual level that the success or failure of a language policy is fi nally revealed. We need more studies like this, studies that show language practice, beliefs and management and the individuals concerned. Thus, we will learn about the early and late adopters (Cooper, 1989) who show the forces behind language maintenance and shift, and be able to go beyond analysis and criticism to proposing language management that can contribute to healthy multilingualism and maintenance of heritage language varieties. Bernard Spolsky References Cooper, R.L. (1989) Language Planning and Social Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Jernudd, B.H. and Nekvapil, J. (2012) History of the field: A sketch. In B. Spolsky (ed.) Handbook of Language Policy (pp. 16–36). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Neustupný, J.V. and Nekvapil, J. (2003) Language management in the Czech republic. Current Issues in Language Planning 4 (3&4), 181–366. Spolsky, B. (2009) Language Management. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Spolsky, B. (2021) Rethinking Language Policy. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Spolsky, B. and Shohamy, E. (1999) The Languages of Israel: Policy, Ideology and Practice. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters

1 Individual Language Policy: An Introduction

Background, Terminology and Overview

Although macro, meso and micro language policy and planning still dominate thinking in the field (Hamid & Baldauf, 2014), the question of how individuals’ language behaviours pertain to higher-level (national, institutional or family) language policy has been a central issue to be explored in related research (Nguyen, 2019b). More attention has been lately paid to the most basic layer of the complex language policy circle – the language policy performed by/manifested in individuals (e.g. Hornberger, 2014; McCarty et  al., 2009; Nguyen, 2019b). Recently, Spolsky (2021), a guru in the area of traditional language policy and planning, has also referred to individuals as a significant element of multi-level language policy and management in suggesting an updated theory of language policy that starts with the individual speaker and moves through various contextual domains. Language policy of individuals, which is not necessarily comparable to traditional national, institutional or family language policy, however, is not the central focus of the related studies. In the present piece of research, I shall contribute to enriching this emerging discussion on language policy at an individual level by conceptualising the notion of individual language policy as reflected in individuals’ daily language behaviours and building a theoretical model founding this concept, illustrated by vivid stories about bilingual youth’s life with many languages. I refer to individual language policy as a kind of policy which individuals discursively construct and apply to themselves in their everyday language practices, beliefs and management. Extensive description and explanation of this fundamental concept are presented in Chapter 2. Exploring individual language policy, I attempt to uncover part of bilingual youth’s complex language life as they move across ethnic and cultural worlds, focusing particularly on a group of young adults who belong to different ethnic minority groups in Vietnam, such as Bahnar, Rengao, Jarai, Halang, Jeh or Sedang. They speak the language of their ethnic group as their mother tongue, and Vietnamese – the language of 1

2

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the Kinh majority – as a second language, and learn English as a foreign language in mainstream school. The youth’s rich stories about their life with multiple languages were gathered from different sources of data, among which one-to-one interviews with the youth constitute the primary materials used. Detailed accounts of the research participants and presentation of the study’s research methodology are in Chapter 3. Before exploring the issue further, I think it is useful to clarify some common terms I mention here and there throughout this piece of work, as the way I understand and utilise the terms may be contextual or selective. Within the scope of the book, I centre my concern only on bilingual youth who are ethnic minority people living in a subtractive language environment. By ‘bilingual youth’, I mean young adults (age range from 18 to 25 years) who know two or more languages. Although ‘bilingualism’ and ‘multilingualism’ terminologically mean two languages and many languages, respectively, the terms are often applied interchangeably to refer to the competence or practice of two or more languages by individuals or the situation where there are two or more languages used in a social unit (family, community or nation); and at individual level, it can be generally subsumed under ‘bilingualism’ (Clyne, 1997). In addition, some scholars, including Grosjean (1982) and Mackey (1968), prefer using bilingualism in mentioning individuals speaking two or more languages, regardless how many languages they know. I hence subscribe to these views in referring to my participants as bilinguals, although the number of languages they know can be described as ‘multiple’ (i.e. multiple languages). As aforementioned, my bilingual participants belong to different ethnic minority groups in Vietnam. Ethnic minorities are categorised as ‘folk bilinguals’, who are distinguished from ‘elite bilinguals’ (Fishman, 1977) in terms of the circumstance in which they become bilingual. Elite bilinguals speak the society’s majority language as their mother tongue and learn a second ‘prestigious’ language for life benefits. Folk bilinguals, on the other hand, have to learn the second language to participate in the wider society as their mother tongue is a minority language. The environment for elite and folk bilinguals’ second language acquisition is also different: while elite bilinguals enjoy additive language conditions – language learning as an enrichment process – folk bilinguals are often in ‘subtractive’ language surroundings – language learning as an expense process (Lambert, 1974). In a subtractive language environment where folk bilinguals’ second language is dominant, their lower-status fi rst language is in danger of being gradually removed and replaced by their second, more prestigious, language (Bhatia, 2006; Skutnabb-Kangas, 1981), and therefore acquiring the second language can ‘subtract’ from their first language, that is, can make their fi rst language competence gradually sink into oblivion. Folk bilinguals are, hence, often ethnic minority people, who seek to be part of the mainstream through learning the language of the majority, which is a cause of their linguistic and cultural discontinuity.

Individual Language Policy: An Introduction

3

I now further elaborate the term ‘ethnic minority’ or ‘ethnic minorities’ by connecting the use of the term to the context where the participants are living. Research has suggested that it is perhaps more critical to refer to ethnic minorities (those who belong to a small ethnic group in terms of population) as ‘ethnic minoritised’ people. For Khleif (1993), ‘minoritised’ refers to the circumstance of the so-called ‘minority’ groups who have less power and autonomy compared with the ‘majority’. These groups are ‘minoritised’ as they are often socially, economically and politically marginalised in the wider society (McCarty, 2002) and the political regime in which they are residing. Accordingly, ‘ethnic minorities’ can be regarded as ‘ethnic minoritised’ people, and ‘minority language’ can be seen as ‘minoritised language’. However, I decided to pick the term ‘ethnic minority’ people (and ‘minority language’) after considering the commonality of this concept not only in Vietnam, but also in a substantial body of related scholarship. The terms which the Vietnamese government and public often use to describe minorities are dân tộc and dân tộc thiểu số, which can be literally translated as ‘ethnic’ and ‘ethnic minority’, respectively. For Rambo (2003), this usage of terms perhaps reflects the influence of Soviet concepts about the position of indigenous and immigrant groups in socialist nations. Although I do not mean to adhere to the Vietnamese government’s ethnic ideologies, I think this choice of using ‘ethnic minority’ would help readers track down these people who are widely referred to by the term in Vietnamese society more exactly, and relate them to similar cases of ethnic minorities who are widely mentioned in research. I acknowledge that the term ‘ethnic minority’ in this particular context sometimes does not necessarily refer to the number or quantity of people, but implies a connection with minority status (Skutnabb-Kangas, 1981). I, however, deny and exclude that meaning of the term from my discussion on these research subjects. Further analysis of the government’s policies, which can be seen as a political force on ethnic minority people, is provided in Chapter 3. Given that the participants speak multiple languages, it is perhaps useful to include a note here about how these languages are often termed in this book. As I have discussed earlier, the youth speak the language of their ethnic group as their mother tongue and Vietnamese as a second language, and learn English as a foreign language in mainstream school. In the coming discussions, the youth’s mother tongue is interchangeably called their first language (L1) or their ethnic language (i.e. the language of their ethnic group), while Vietnamese is referred to as either their second language (L2), the majority language, the mainstream language, the dominant language or sometimes the school language. Vietnamese is, in addition, sometimes referred to by ethnic minorities in the region as ‘Kinh language’, ‘Viet language’ or the ‘general language’. The different ways of naming the languages allow me to avoid repetitions in telling the stories in which the languages are mentioned at a high frequency. It is

4

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necessary to notice that for a few participants, Vietnamese may not be the second language they were exposed to in terms of chronology, as they can speak other local minority languages which are different from their mother tongue as a result of their regular interethnic contact. ‘Local minority languages’ means languages of ethnic minority groups in the province where the research site of the study is located in general. Among the local minority languages, there can be one (or more than one) ‘regional minority language’ which is the most common minority language spoken by a large number of people in the residential area. Hence, in addition to the youth’s fi rst language, Vietnamese and English, other languages are also brought into the discussion on their construction of individual language policy where relevant. Before extensively unfolding the fundamental issue of individual language policy in the coming chapters, let us take a glance at bilingual youth’s life with many languages, which is useful to gain some understandings of the background conditions for their language policy construction. Although ethnic minority youth are often under pressure from the subtractive language environment where they are living, they are able, to varying degrees, to savour their colourful, vibrant and complex language life. These young people possess multiple language strengths, which allow them to accommodate varying social roles in different ways with different people (Wyman, 2012) and circulate across different ethnic and cultural worlds. As their languages signal different ethnic and cultural standards of their community and the mainstream society (Gumperz, 1982a), they are not only exposed to a number of minor and major cultures (Woolard, 2004), but also able to ‘touch’ various ethnic traits, frontiers and intersections. Youth’s ability to manage their multilingual repertoire can be seen as what Paris (2011) calls ‘linguistic dexterity’, where they reinforce or challenge ‘marked’ and ‘unmarked’ (Myers-Scotton, 1993) realities occurring as a result of interethnic and intercultural interactions, through their everyday language beliefs and practices. Performing their linguistic dexterity, they take into account how they are linguistically seen in inconstant ethnic and cultural worlds. I would describe bilingual youth’s dynamic movements across ethnic and cultural spaces using their multilingual capacity as a linguistic or language voyage. Heller (1999) refers to them as voyagers who can not only discover and cross ethnic and cultural borderlines, but also soften and resolve tensions and contradictions among ethnic and cultural worlds in taking advantage of their multilingual resource. In their linguistic voyage, they move along and find them at various points in a here-and-there continuum (Grosjean, 2010), where they activate, deactivate and reactivate different modes in order to align with different standards and expectations of these worlds. What matters to the youth is not how to arrive at this or that point, but how to voyage, how to navigate movements (Lam, 2004) and how to define their position at certain points. Travelling across spaces,

Individual Language Policy: An Introduction

5

they often present their multilingual repertoire as a linguistic passport to reach various minor or major destinations. This voyage correlates to the development of their linguistic, ethnic and cultural hybridity, where their multilingual capacity facilitates their experiences of ‘borderland’ which foreground their liminal and in-between status (Hamilton, 2019). Bilingual voyagers’ movements, which are their moving in and out of a variety of borderland situations adroitly using their multilingual and multicultural practices (Fisher, 2001), contribute to shaping their border identity as a hybrid persona with multiple pieces of know-how. How do bilingual youth navigate their interethnic and intercultural movements and defi ne their own position? I think there are various clues and cues (Baker, 2011) they use to manage their complex linguistic resource during the journey. These clues and cues, which are associated with their knowledge and experience of the points they often visit, guide their language decisions so that they can (dis)align with the standards and expectations of the corresponding micro-, meso- and macro-sociolinguistic situations, circumstances and contexts. They need to consider several factors in order to make the right language choice, and some factors can have more weight than others (Grosjean, 2010). In making language decisions, they sometimes step in the borderland where certain ethnic or cultural lines are blurred. Clues and cues in such in-border situations are to unblur the lines and (dis)confirm one’s linguistic position. At this point, I by chance remember such a situation of language choice in the borderline which I observed a few years ago, during fieldwork, where I was collecting part of data for the present study. In an ingarden café, I was talking with a young Jarai minority – who I refer to as Y-Nom – about her language life. While she was enthusiastically sharing how she used her multiple languages in communicating with different people, her phone rang and she answered the call for a couple of minutes. When Y-Nom got back to our conversation, she told me that she had been talking with her older sister. I then asked her, with a little curiosity: ‘Why didn’t you talk to your sister in your ethnic language? Did you tell me you often used Jarai in your family?’ Y-Nom burst out laughing: ‘Because my sister started [the conversation] using Vietnamese. That means, it depends on the one who starts [the conversation]. If my sister says something in the ethnic language fi rst, I will keep going with the ethnic language. Because she said “Y-Nom, is that you?” (in Vietnamese), so I answered her in Vietnamese’. She also explained that this sister, unlike her other older sisters who preferred speaking Jarai, sometimes switched between Jarai and Vietnamese in family communication. We can see that in communication with this particular family member, Y-Nom was often on the borderline of language choices associated with different ethnic signs. On the one hand, her daily use of Jarai in talking with this sister reflected her involvement in the family’s customary language policy and her performance of ethnic solidarity through the

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language. On the other hand, her frequent switch between Jarai and Vietnamese in communication with the sister revealed her willingness to engage in the ‘open’ family’s language policy established by her and the sister, as well as her performance of an ‘interethnic solidarity’ with this family member. Y-Nom’s unconscious question about language choice in interacting with the sister could be ‘so which language mode?’ Her clue or cue for this question, as she explained, is that ‘it depends on the one who starts [the conversation]’. That means, who starts the conversation is often in a better position to decide which language mode should be used in their communication at a certain time and in a certain context. I call Y-Nom’s clue or cue for language choice in communication with this particular interlocutor, among a vast number of clues and cues she applied in her daily language beliefs and practices, as constituents of her individual language policy. Bilingual youth’s individual language policy guides them to pick up clues and cues and monitor appropriate language modes in responding to certain contextual conditions (Baker, 2011). Bilingual youth, by that sense, are agentic actors whose individual language policy is connected with their critical awareness of linguistic ‘meaning-making’ processes, where they apply different strategies to design their linguistic trajectories (Hamilton, 2019) and navigate their different movements in their travel across ethnic and cultural worlds. Proposing the concept of individual language policy, I maintain McCarty et al’s (2009: 292) broad view of language policy that language policy can be ‘implicit and explicit, overt and covert, de facto and de jure’. One’s individual language policy is often implicit, informal, de facto and more difficult to detect (Shohamy, 2006) compared with language policy at other levels, as it is discursively constructed in one’s everyday social practice (McCarty et al., 2009). Bilingual youth’s individual language policy is central in the story I want to tell here. In the previous discussion, I have reasoned that bilingual youth are voyagers who journey across ethnic and cultural worlds, using their multilingual repertoire as a linguistic passport to reach various minor or major destinations. These destinations are not necessarily specific places, but inclinations which they often direct through their everyday language beliefs and practices. The major destinations of their linguistic voyage are, hence, what their individual language policy orients them to. For ethnic minority youth who have to sustain their connection with their family and community through their ethnic language and participate in the mainstream society through the majority language simultaneously, the two major destinations of their linguistic voyage can be maintenance – maintaining the values of their ethnicity, and transformation – embracing the common values of the mainstream society (see Nguyen, 2021a). As such, the youth engineer and implement their individual language policy to align their everyday language beliefs and practices to the maintenance and transformation lines. As ethnic minority youth belong to a subordinate group, who are often marginalised but under pressure to join the mainstream society, and as

Individual Language Policy: An Introduction

7

their ethnicity and ethnic language are often devalued as compared with those of majority people, maintenance and transformation are not always clear or easy choices. The power relationship between their ethnic language and the mainstream language can affect their individual language policy and major linguistic destinations. Even if they are proficient in both the languages, they can encounter sociolinguistic pressures that cause one of the two language orientations to become more dominant (Sevinç, 2016). For some of them, for example, speaking a minority language can be a sign of inferiority, and their bilingualism is a ‘transition’ on the way to integration (Miller, 1984). Their ethnic language is symbolic of what they regard as an old-fashioned or impoverished way of life (Romaine, 2011), while the mainstream language is associated with social integration and the enhancement of their socioeconomic status. They then determine that they should apply a transformation-oriented policy and ensure the family–community and school–society split in their language use. Some of them, on the other hand, appreciate the benefits from their frequent use of the dominant language and interaction with the mainstream society, but still want to preserve their ethnic distinction through maintaining their ethnic language and culture (Romaine, 2011). They choose to travel closer to the maintenance line as a way of affirming their conscious ethnic identity, that moves well beyond the ethnic/mainstream or minority/majority dichotomies (Hornberger, 2014). Many other ethnic minority youth, however, continuously face a major tension: whether there is a way to achieve both maintenance and transformation at the same time. This seems to be a ‘paradox’ of their bilingualism, as this expectation requires them to manage ‘both a repertoire of difference and one of similarity’ (Paris, 2011: 17). In navigating themselves between the ‘two apparently countervailing forces’ (Ferguson, 2013: 132), they can, nevertheless, perform their linguistic capacity for facilitating the ‘borderland’ experiences that can foreground their liminal status (Hamilton, 2019) and ‘deparadoxise’ this linguistic expectation. For these youth, the maintenance and transformation lines with which they would like to associate are not always parallel or separate, but sometimes twist or overlap with one another. This is the way they choose to neutralise the contradictions of the two orientations and claim a position of being in-between. The idea that the youth’s individual language policy guides their everyday language beliefs and practices to moving closer to or further from the maintenance and/or transformation lines is the core argument frequently put forward in the coming chapters. Outline of the Book

So, we will observe how bilingual youth construct their maintenanceand transformation-oriented individual language policy to balance or outbalance their ethnic preservation and mainstream participation in detail in this book. An outline of the subsequent chapters is as follows.

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Chapter 2 presents readers with important knowledge of the present study’s theoretical approach, which serves as a lens for discussions in the remaining chapters. In Chapter 2, I conceptualise the term ‘individual language policy’ referring to a combination of theories, including the ethnography of language policy (Hornberger & Johnson, 2007, 2011), the tripartite-component language policy model (Spolsky, 2004, 2009) and the proposition of language policy as constituted in individual language behaviours (Bonacina-Pugh, 2012, 2017). First, the concept of individual language policy, in relation to ethnic minority youth, is introduced and explained. Then, a detailed description of individual language policy as the basic level of language policy in terms of level, agent and process is provided. Regarding level, an examination of how individual language policy interacts with and is influenced by external forces and other language policy layers, as well as of how individual language policy affects higherlevel language policy, is included. Regarding agent, individual agents as language policy constructors and their agency are brought into the discussion. Regarding process, a proposal of three components of individual language policy together with three spaces for individual language policy to construct and operate is developed. In discussing the process of individual language policy, unique concepts of negotiated language policy (in addition to Bonacina-Pugh’s [2012] practised language policy and perceived language policy) and managerial spaces (in addition to Hornberger’s [2002] implementational and ideological spaces) are suggested to capture a comprehensive picture of individual language policy as mirrored in bilingual youth’s language practices, beliefs and management. In Chapter 3, I provide an overview of the context, including some demographic information of ethnic minority people in the region, language and education policies related to ethnic minorities in Vietnam (referred to as external forces), and the situation of ethnic minorities under the influence of the forces. This serves as a contextual setting within which the discussions in the subsequent chapters are located. Detailed information about the bilingual youth in the terrain, research site, participants, methods used to collect and analyse data, and my roles as a researcher and a peripheral participant in this study is also included. The subsequent chapters draw a vibrant picture of the bilingual youth’s construction of individual language policy across ethnic and cultural worlds. Chapter 4 starts with the youth’s practised language policy. Chapter 5 brings readers’ attention to the youth’s perceived language policy. Chapter 6 follows with the youth’s negotiated language policy. As the youth identified with multiple languages, including their ethnic language and the mainstream one, in constructing their individual language policy, it is argued that in practising and managing the languages and figuring their language beliefs, the youth practised, perceived and negotiated their individual language policy as a process of aligning with both the maintenance and transformation orientations.

Individual Language Policy: An Introduction

9

In Chapter 4, I examine the bilingual youth’s practised language policy as reflected in their language practices across domains, including the family–ethnic community (communication with parents and siblings, and young and older community members), the mainstream school (communication with school peers and teachers), and the wider society (communication with random/general people). The argument here is that the youth’s construction of practised language policy was a process of maintenance and transformation in implementational spaces, in which they manifested their efforts to maintain their ethnic–cultural features while transforming to the mainstream at the same time. In Chapter 5, I focus on the youth’s perceived language policy underlying their language beliefs to understand how they perceived, assessed and valued their languages. Some salient features in their language beliefs related to language and ethnicity, the utility of language, language and self-esteem, and bilingualism are presented here. It is also suggested that the youth’s construction of perceived language policy was a process of maintenance and transformation in ideological spaces. In Chapter 6, I explore the youth’s negotiated language policy exerted in their management of language beliefs and practices under observable and explicit intervention by external forces. First, the youth’s stories of their language management under institutional and community forces (including school, church and ethnic community), and intervention by individuals (including parents, teachers and peers), as well as how their individual language policy revealed in this management are reported. Then, following the argument developed in the previous two chapters, the construction of their negotiated language policy as a process of maintenance and transformation in managerial spaces is discussed. In Chapter 7, the last chapter of the book, I take a broader look at the youth’s language policy construction arising from the fi ndings reported in Chapters 4, 5 and 6 by providing an extended analysis of their individual language policy from identification, contextualisation and interaction perspectives. Specifically, the chapter includes discussion on how the youth’s individual language policy configured part of their maintenanceand transformation-oriented identity, why for many of them, formation of policy and identity could follow a dual-line (both maintenance and transformation) process, the challenges they faced in constructing and maintaining their dual-line language policy in a subtractive language environment, as well as why bilingual youth’s individual language policy should be taken into consideration in higher-level language policy development and implementation. Let us discover the youth’s linguistic voyage in the coming parts of the book.

2 Conceptualisation of Individual Language Policy

Proposing Individual Language Policy

Individual language policy is the key theoretical concept discussed throughout this book. In sociolinguistics research, whenever language policy is brought into discussion, what often comes to one’s mind is macro-level (national/state) language policy or meso-level (local governmental/institutional) language policy. Perhaps the most-micro-level language policy which has been discussed widely to date is family language policy. The concept of individual language policy has been randomly mentioned elsewhere, but has not often been the focus of related research studies, if any. In this book, I refer to individual language policy as a kind of policy that individuals discursively construct and apply to themselves in their daily language behaviours (practices and beliefs). I adhere to the view that language policy may operate not only at the macro-, meso- and microlevels, but also at the individual level; and that there is a kind of ‘selfpolicy’ which is implicitly defined and implemented by individual language policymakers. In other words, individuals take the ownership of their individual language policy. Individual language policy, in comparison with macro-, meso- and micro-level language policies, can be seen as the basic level of language policy. This level of language policy has received limited attention in research to date. Several scholars have agreed, explicitly or implicitly, on the existence of such an individual language policy. Shohamy (2006), for example, suggests that language policy can be found at all levels, which can be as small as individuals and families who make decisions about which languages should be used in different spaces. Spolsky (2009: 1), in his book entitled Language Management, likewise, states: Language policy is all about choices. If you are bilingual or plurilingual, you have to choose which language to use. Even if you speak only one language, you have choices of dialects and styles.

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Conceptualisation of Individual Language Policy

11

Although Spolsky (2009) does not directly mention the concept of individual language policy, he may imply that language policy, by its nature, starts at the individual level. For him, perhaps, there are policies of language choice made by individual speakers in responding to various communication situations and sociocultural environments in which they are embedded. More recently, Spolsky (2021) updates his language policy theory in the book entitled Rethinking Language Policy, where he confi rms the importance of language policy at individual level, suggesting that individuals can manage their own language practices, resist external management and expand their and their group’s linguistic repertoires. Other researchers also (although quite occasionally) discuss individual language policy in their work on individual language behaviours. For McCarty and her colleagues (McCarty, 2011a; McCarty et al., 2009), individuals are ‘de facto’ language policymakers, as in their interaction, negotiation and production, they show their implicit and informal policy in their language-regulating process, when they make claims about the (il) legitimate forms and uses of language. Hornberger (2014), in a similar vein, refers to bilinguals’ personal language policy as allowing their flexible communicative practices and their shift of indexical values associated with their languages. According to Matras and Bakker (2003), in individual language policy, ordinary speakers are actors of language engineering. Bäck and Lavric (2009) believe that such individual language policy is strategies behind one’s ordinary language practices, and that there is not a clear distinction between the policy and practice levels. Nguyen (2019b) also suggests that individuals, in managing their language practices in dealing with external interventions, implement their individual language policy. Sallabank (2013), by the same token, supposes that one’s expressed language attitudes can be seen as overt statements of their individual language policy. For Nguyen and Hamid (2018), individual speakers can produce their own language policy which is deemed appropriate within the social contexts by their language practices and their beliefs about the languages, which can be characterised as the informal ‘grass-roots’ level of language policy. Likewise, Nandi (2017) argues that for ethnic minority people, individual language policy can be seen as a valid description of their daily practices of their L1 and the mainstream language, their beliefs about the languages, and their management of L1 maintenance. It is, therefore, informed by these authors that there is certainly a kind of language policy at the individual level. However, this policy, compared to other language policies of higher levels, is more implicit and informal, which is ‘more difficult to detect’ (McCarty et al., 2009; Shohamy, 2006: 50). So why do individuals construct their own language policy? My answer is that, similar to the view of language policy as identity policy (Orman, 2008) at macro-, meso- and micro-layers, applying an individual language policy can be seen part of one’s identity-making process. Individual language policy is closely connected with one’s linguistic identity.

12

Individual Language Policy

Constructing, maintaining and adjusting their individual language policy, individuals thereby configure their identity through language. Geraghty and Conacher (2014), for example, suggest that individual language planning, as socio-psychologically interpreted, is the individuals’ negotiation of meaning which is related to their positioning behaviour in interaction, which simultaneously forms their identity. For ethnic minority people whose first language is usually subordinated to a mainstream majority language (Nguyen & Hamid, 2020), individual language policy is perhaps the policy of choices between their L1 and the mainstream one (and other languages) in configuring and reconfiguring their ethnic, mainstream, border and hybrid identities in relation to the languages. Part of the discussion on individual language policy construction in this book is inspired by Hornberger and Johnson’s (2007, 2011) ethnography of language policy, which also attaches importance to individual agents and agency, and redefi nes language policy as language regulating modes of individual interaction, interpretation and negotiation in their daily social practices. However, while Hornberger and Johnson are interested in examining how individuals interpret and respond to top-down macro- and meso-level language policies, in the present study I also analyse the connection between different levels of language policy, but follow another direction: I seek to provide comprehensive descriptions of how the construction and appropriation of individual language policy by bilingual youth are influenced by external forces, including national, institutional, community and family language policies, as well as language intervention by other individuals. Specifically, I emphasise the centrality of individual agents who construct, reconstruct, interpret, enact and negotiate their own language policy through everyday practices under external influences. Individual language policy as contextualised language policy, or the ethnography of individual language policy, is hence taken into consideration in this book. The discussion on the ethnography of individual language policy – focusing on three main policy factors, namely level, agent and process (Ricento & Hornberger, 1996) – is presented in the subsequent sections of the chapter. Level: Macro, Meso, Micro and Individual Forces on Individual Language Policy

As one’s language repertoires and behaviours are changing as a result of external experiences and pressures (Spolsky, 2021), individual language policy, as the basic level in the multiple layers of language policy, interacts with and is influenced by other policy layers to varying degrees (Ricento & Hornberger, 1996). Just like language policy at higher levels, individual language policy constructed by individuals is part of a larger sociocultural process in which national language policy, social discourses, institutions, community and family’s formal and informal language policies and

Conceptualisation of Individual Language Policy

13

management, as well as intervention by other individuals, are integral to shaping the ideas about what counts as language policy and identity (McCarty et  al., 2011). In the present study, while drawing an ethnographic focus on individual agency (agent) and providing a detailed account of how individuals construct and reconstruct their own language policy (process), I also consider how such a policy is influenced by the complexities of external forces (level) (Hornberger et al., 2018). Interaction situations and the geographical, historical, social and political ideologies/ contexts in which individuals are embedded (Hornberger et al., 2018) are, therefore, not merely a background, but an intrinsic part of their own language policy (Menken & García, 2010). Although language policy is ‘all about choices’ (Spolsky, 2009), these choices are not necessarily freely made as they are often constrained by various social conditions (Sallabank, 2010). Individual language policy, similar to top-down policies, operates in a ‘complex ecological relationship among a wide range of linguistic and non-linguistic elements, variables and factors’ (Spolsky, 2004: 41). This policy, therefore, carries with it a number of interrelated sociological, political and economic features (Grin, 2006). According to Spolsky (2004), these external factors may come from the national constitution in which language is mentioned, a law on the official national language, local government bodies who make decisions on a local language, institutions deciding which languages to teach or learn or family members who try to manage other members’ language use. For Curdt-Christiansen (2009), there are four major external conditions which often have an impact on language policy of different levels: sociolinguistic context, sociocultural context, socioeconomic context, and sociopolitical context. Ethnic minorities whose first language is different from the majority language may construct their individual language policy as a process of planning and managing their L1, the mainstream language and other languages constrained by these external conditions. This policy is a product of their exposure to various macro (political/ sociocultural/ economic factors, and national language policy and discourses in relation to minority languages), meso (the existence of their L1 community, and institutional and community language policies), and micro forces (group and family language policies), as well as language intervention by key individuals in their life. Some examples of such different-level forces are discussed in the below sections. Macro national language policy and discourses of language

Language policy at the national level (often found in the government’s texts and documents) is perhaps the most obvious policy which does not directly interact with the basic-level individual language policy in individuals’ daily language activities. However, this highest level (supranational and international level language policies are not taken into account in the

14

Individual Language Policy

present study) policy is often a broader formal ‘frame’ which provides guidance or has an umbrella influence on policies occurring at lower levels. In a multilingual polity, for example, the official national language and the government’s ‘unmarked’ (Myers-Scotton, 1993) monolingualism tendency, that is, the ‘one nation, one language’ approach, which serve the purposes of common communication, mobilisation and national identity (Spolsky, 2009), have a systemic impact on institutions and communities’ policies in relation to minority languages, and ethnic minority people and their individual language policy. These top-down restrictive policies allow very limited spaces for minoritised languages and multilingualism (Hornberger et al., 2018). These policies, furthermore, create a common sense of language and naturalised language ideologies and discourses in people’s ordinary lives, of which they may be unaware (Yu, 2016). The official language and monolingualism-related policies, for example, if they exist for a long time, can make both linguistic majority and minority people think that it is obvious to use the dominant language as the official language and the common communication tool for citizens of all ethnicities, and that they have freely chosen the languages they use without any top-down pressure (Yu, 2016). These language discourses also lead to the tendency to naturally privilege the dominant language and majority people (Johnson & Pratt, 2014) in lower-level institutional language policy. Institutions, community and family as meso/micro language policy actors

Under the national and governmental language policy, there is often a large number of institutions and groups, including school, church, workplace, ethnolinguistic community, the immediate neighbourhood, family, and various kinds of marketplaces of which individuals are a member, or in which individuals often participate, that can be reasonable domains of formal and informal language policies (Spolsky, 2004) and can influence and/or accommodate its members’ individual language policy. Under this influence, individuals commonly refer to the rule-governed patterns of ideologies and practices recognised by these entities (Nguyen, 2019b). It is important to note that national-level language policy is often interpreted differently by these institutions and groups. Some of these entities may adopt language policies somewhat in variance with the top-down policy to cater to specific language expectations of minority communities (Nguyen & Hamid, 2018). Institutional language policies, hence, can be seen as meso or micro language policy actors who interact with top-down national policy on the one hand and bottom-up individual policies on the other (Barrett, 2016). Among different institutions whose policies have a fundamental influence on individual language beliefs and practices, school is, without doubt, one of the most powerful forces or language policy actors which

Conceptualisation of Individual Language Policy

15

organises to put pressure on its students, actively participates in managing their language behaviours and remedies their individual language policy (Spolsky, 2009). School is a space of policy construction where students, teachers and other members are seen as interpreters, implementers or actors of the policy, who are required to adapt and use the language that is believed to be the norm in the educational environment (Nguyen, 2019b; Valdiviezo, 2013). For ethnic minority youth, mainstream school, which often follows the national language policy and applies the ‘default’ monolingual education policy, is the most likely to conflict with their home and community language practices and their de facto multilingualism (Cadier & Mar-Molinero, 2012; Spolsky, 2009). Ethnic minority youth who make an effort to maintain their L1 practices may still construct purist or standard language ideologies (Hornberger et al., 2018) under the influence of such language discourses of school. Religious institutions such as the church are another meso force on individual language policy, as they often use an earlier version of a language for public ceremonies, and by that way, help maintain the first language (Spolsky, 2004) of people who are members of these institutions. Spolsky (2009) believes that the reason for this minority language maintenance is that the choice of language is a matter of sacred tradition, which is a way of expressing their religious ideology. For him, one’s mother tongue is the best tool to receive and transmit their sacred ideology as linguistic purity is closely related to godliness. Ethnolinguistic minority community and family, where young people’s L1 is used more frequently compared to other domains, can also have their informal language policies to either maintain this predominant language or open to the influence of the mainstream language. Language policies within the home–family and neighbourhood–community domains are perhaps a major factor in preserving threatened languages (Fishman, 1991), as they can directly regulate and shape young people’s policy, beliefs and practices in relation to their ethnic language. These critical L1 domains, with implicit and explicit language policies which promote L1 maintenance and practices, can encourage their members to construct a positive individual language policy and ethnic identity of which their L1 is an important integrant. Individual language interveners

In addition to top-down macro-, meso- and micro-level language policies, young bilinguals are influenced by other individuals they often have contact with, who, consciously or unconsciously, intervene in their language life. Jernudd and Neustupný (1987) and Nekvapil (2007, 2009), in their Language Management Theory, mention everyday language interveners in the course of communication who try to maintain or modify others’ language choice, beliefs and practices. Individuals, therefore, can

16

Individual Language Policy

be influenced by other people who play the role of a language intervener, who want to remedy what they perceive as language problems or assert their own beliefs, position and power (Nguyen, 2019b), and who want to change the way the former speak or the value they assign to a particular language (Spolsky, 2009). Spolsky (2009) indicates that parents (or carers) and teachers are among the most influential individuals who can intervene in young people’s language practices and beliefs. Parents often take for granted their authority to expect their children to comply with their own policy, manage the children’s language beliefs and give instructions on how to speak and what to say. Teachers as interpreters and actors of school language policy (Spolsky, 2009; Valdiviezo, 2013) can implement the school policy their own way or try to impose their language beliefs on youth. For young people, in addition, peers who belong to their generation and have shared views and interests can be important language interveners. Their individual language policy is therefore often affected by their peers’ language attitudes, as their language choice and behaviours can index specific peer categories, identities and positions (Nguyen & Hamid, 2020). These above macro, meso, micro forces and individual intervention on one’s individual language policy, although coming from different levels, are sometimes intertwined, overlapped and interrelated. As individual and institutional language policy actors are often influenced by their higher-level policies and discourses, they may impose their policies on others on behalf of the higher-level policies. The alignment of school language policy with the national language policy, the similarity of teachers’ language intervention and their school’s language policy and the consistency of same-ethnicity peers’ language intervention with their community’s language policy are examples of this complex and intertwined impact on individuals’ language life and behaviours. Agent: Individual Language Policy Constructor and Agency

In the present study, I explore individual language policy by drawing an ethnographic focus on individual agents who, through enactment of their agency, construct, interpret and appropriate their own (discursive and implicit) language policy (Hornberger & Johnson, 2007) interacting with various top-down macro, meso, micro and individual forces. Agency is defi ned by Murray (1997: 126) as ‘the satisfying power to take meaningful action and see the results of our decisions and choices’. It reflects individuals’ efforts or ability to respond to external challenges (McAlpine & Amundsen, 2018) or to act as a force for resistance to structural power (Collin et al., 2017). Their agency is hence not solely personal, but constrained by the external forces and the sociocultural context (structure) in which they exist. Individuals possess varying levels of agentic potential (Hitlin & Elder, 2006), and the levels of agency that they

Conceptualisation of Individual Language Policy

17

perceive and act upon vary in relation to particular situations/ environments. They may demonstrate clear decision-making in some situations (McAlpine & Amundsen, 2018), but may choose not to participate in others (Paloniemi & Goller, 2017). Hamid et al. (2018), in addition, consider agency as one’s deliberate and purposive mobilisation of the self as one travels across contexts, and this implies that individuals’ agency is related to their action for identity mobilisation. Leeman et al. (2011), similarly, believe that individuals’ agency is intricately tied up with their identity, and that bilinguals’ critical understanding of, as well as their active decision-making regarding language, language varieties and language manners are resources for performing or highlighting various aspects of their identities. In individual language policy, the individuals themselves are powerful agents with agentive power in the policymaking and implementing process. They exercise their agency to construct and reconstruct their own language policy within and across multiple levels of formal and informal language policies and other external forces, and manipulate to appropriate and interpret the policy in creative, complex and unpredictable ways (Hornberger & Johnson, 2011; Johnson, 2013). The ‘policy’ in this process is a result of their language-regulating power, that is, the ways in which they enact their agency and express normative claims about (il)legitimate forms of language (McCarty, 2011a). Their individual language policy construction, implementation and interpretation are based on their multiple pieces of know-how and appropriate with their everyday interpersonal interactions, and meet the demands of the micro, meso and macro social settings in which they are embedded. The ethnography of individual language policy makes visible the interplay between the agency and power of individual language policy constructors as the key agent of their own language policy, and external language policy actors, interveners and forces (Johnson, 2013). As I have discussed in Chapter 1, ethnic minority youth whose fi rst language is usually subordinated to a mainstream majority language often face the questions of whether, how and to what extent they should use the languages for different purposes in their daily life. They are regularly in two minds about choosing their languages for communicative use, or whether they should completely belong to any wider groups besides their ethnic community, when it is a fact that people usually look down on ethnolinguistic minority groups (Grosjean, 1982). Their individual language policy, therefore, is constructed through their agency, clues, cues and strategies in relation to their beliefs and practices of the L1 and the dominant language. If individuals are aware of the values of their ethnic language and culture, their language policy can prioritise the L1 to perform a positive ethnic identity, and maintenance is their main linguistic destination. If they wish to be part of the mainstream, their policy can put an emphasis on the L2 to display an identity which is closer to majority

18 Individual Language Policy

people, and transformation is the major destination they want to reach in their language voyage. For most ethnic minorities who can speak their ethnic and the mainstream language, an individual language policy in which both maintenance and transformation tendencies are intertwined is perhaps more common. The degree to which the L1, L2 (and other languages, if any) and the values associated with the languages constitute and orient the individual language policy is, of course, different for different individuals. As ‘agentive beings’, they are able to search and exploit their multiple linguistic resources (Pavlenko & Blackledge, 2004) in which each language has its own legitimate functions (Fishman, 1969) as they are required to be involved in multiple ethnic and cultural worlds. Under the pressure or influence of a national language policy, social discourses, institutions, community and family’s formal and informal language policy and management, as well as intervention by other individuals, they enact their agency to construct and reconstruct such a policy which involves their ethnic language, the mainstream language and other languages in configuring, perhaps, a hybrid identity associated with the languages. This individual language policy can be described as a ‘dual-line’ policy (i.e. a maintenance- and transformationline policy), which is flexibly, creatively and unpredictably constructed, implemented, interpreted and appropriated through the individuals’ agency in making decisions about when to bring to the fore or hide in the background either or both the maintenance and transformation orientations in reacting to the demands of the situational, micro, meso and macro settings in which they participate. Maintenance and transformation as major destinations of the youth’s language voyage in this study are related to the ‘goal’ (or ‘intention’) factor of their ethnographic language policy (in addition to the ‘level’, ‘agent’ and ‘process’ factors) which is referred to by Johnson (2013) in his discussion on five elements of focus in studying the ethnography of language policy, namely agents, goals, processes, discourses and contexts. Level: The Influentiality of Individual Language Policy

I have discussed in the above sections that language policies at higher levels often influence individual language policy. It then raises a question: from the opposite direction, how can individual language policy affect higher-level (i.e. societal, national or institutional) language policy? As aforementioned, individual language policy is the basic level in the multiple layers – which are intertwined in complex ways (Soler Carbonell & Jürna, 2017) – of language policy, and is therefore part of, and in turn, may influence language policy at higher levels (Nguyen, 2019b). Individuals’ daily language practices and beliefs, indirectly, can create changes at other language policy layers. McCarty et al. (2009), in examining the language practices and ideologies of Native American youth, for

Conceptualisation of Individual Language Policy

19

example, suggest that young people’s language practices and language decisions are manifestations of implicit language policies, and therefore youth can be positioned as de facto language policymakers, as their language choices, ideologies and practices are highly consequential for the language life of future generations. In Nguyen and Hamid’s (2020) study, ethnic minority youth, by aligning or disaligning with their L1 and L2 peers through their language alternation practices, contributed to support or challenge their community and school’s formal/informal language policies. Likewise, Nandi (2017), in a study on parental language management in urban Galician homes, indicates that individuals’ ‘under the radar participation’ in language policy (Zhao & Baldauf, 2012: 6) may be quite intermittent and ad hoc, but can have an impact on their immediate society’s language behaviours. I therefore suggest that as macro, meso and micro language policies and individual language intervention often target language use by people, individual language policy can be considered the first step on the path to the outcomes of, and can contribute to shaping, these top-down policies (Grin, 2003; Nguyen & Hamid, 2018, 2020). In implementing their individual language policy, they can influence the interveners’ language behaviours, the direct domains in which micro and meso language policies operate, and more macro-level language policies (Nandi, 2017; Nguyen, 2019b). As individuals’ language behaviours can inform qualitative features of language practices in society as a whole (Sloboda, 2009), language policy of individuals plays a significant role in this whole process, as this policy exhibits manifestations of how their language practices and ideologies reflect the discursive exteriority of top-down language policies (Nandi, 2017). Ultimately, the fate of a micro-, meso- or macrolevel language policy often depend on individual speakers’ capacity, opportunity and desire to apply it (Grin, 2003; Spolsky, 2021). Higherlevel language policy outcomes, therefore, need to be construed as results of people’s language behaviours (Grin, 2003). As macro-layer language policy may both influence and result from micro-layer policy (Nekvapil & Nekula, 2008), understanding individual language policy is therefore important to develop, pursue and implement other levels of language policy (Nguyen & Hamid, 2018).

Process: Components of Individual Language Policy Language practices, beliefs and management

Individual language policy in this study is examined in individuals’ daily language life, as discursively constructed through the process of their language practices, beliefs and management. Spolsky (2004, 2009) highlights these notions in his classic tripartite component framework of language policy, including language practices, language beliefs and language

20

Individual Language Policy

management. In other words, individuals, in practising, figuring beliefs about and managing their language, enact, interpret and appropriate (Johnson, 2009) their individual language policy within larger language policy landscapes, and thereby (re)form their identity through language. Language practices, as Spolsky puts it, are ordinary language use and the habitual pattern of selecting among variable languages and language behaviours, or ‘what people actually do’ with language (2004, 2007). For ethnic minorities, practices are choice among and use of L1, L2 and other languages. Language beliefs, as described by Spolsky, are the values, prestige and meanings assigned to languages and linguistic features based on shared views on language among members of a community, or ‘what people think should be done’ with language. Beliefs are the ways minorities perceive, assess and value their L1 in comparison with other languages. Language management, according to Spolsky, is observable attempts at intervening in others’ language choice, or how people have or claim authority to influence or control others’ language practices and beliefs (Spolsky, 2004, 2007, 2009). With respect to minority individuals, management is implementing strategies and negotiation to maintain or adjust language practices and/or beliefs under intervention by others (Nguyen, 2019b, 2021a). Nguyen (2016, 2019b) argues that individuals’ language management is their management of language practices and beliefs. For the author, individuals’ language practices and beliefs always involve implicit management that guides these practices and beliefs. That management is then fulfi lled by their explicit decisions on language under the influence of external (organised or simple) interventions by someone or some group. Nguyen (2021a), in addition, suggests that individuals, in practising, shaping beliefs of and managing their languages, are at the same time doing, valuing and managing their linguistic identity. Practised, perceived and negotiated language policy

As I have mentioned previously, individual language policy is a discursive process, which is hidden and reflected in one’s daily language behaviours. Compared with other language policies at higher levels, individual language policy is more implicit and informal, which is ‘more difficult to detect’ (McCarty et al., 2009; Shohamy, 2006: 50). Individual language policy as mirrored in their language practices, beliefs and management comprises three main components: practised language policy, perceived language policy and negotiated language policy. In other words, individuals practise/enact their own language policy in using the languages, perceive/interpret the policy in valuing the languages, and negotiate/ appropriate the policy in managing the languages. The three concepts of practised, perceived and negotiated language policy are proposed in reference to Bonacina-Pugh’s (2012, 2017) creative idea of practised language policy in her work – which is also inspired by Spolsky’s (2004) tripartite

Conceptualisation of Individual Language Policy

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component framework of language policy (i.e. practices, beliefs and management). Bonacina-Pugh reasons that as there is a language policy at the level of practices (Spolsky, 2004, 2007), which implies seeing ‘policy as practice’ or policy within practices themselves, practised language policy can be understood as the ways individuals legitimate their language choice and use it in given situations and contexts. As such, practised language policy is based on a set of explicit and implicit (but regular and predictable) language norms and rules that members of the speech community have of appropriate language behaviours (Spolsky, 2007; Spolsky & Shohamy, 2000). These language norms constitute the speakers’ practised language policy which informs them of what language or language behaviour is appropriate in a certain interactional situation and context (Bonacina-Pugh, 2012, 2017). Their practised language policy is constructed and reconstructed, as these norms of language choice and practices can be negotiated, recreated or transformed to suit their language alternation act (Bonacina-Pugh, 2017). The practised language policy I want to depict in the present study is also constituted through various clues and cues which individuals utilise to active/deactivate/reactivate different modes of language practices and legitimate their language choice, referring to certain norms and rules formed and regulated by the community, institution and other entities. As Spolsky (2007) puts a clear emphasis on language practices in his tripartite component framework of language policy, practised language policy is seen as the key component (among the three components) of individual language policy, which takes up a large amount of discussion in this study. In addition, although Bonacina-Pugh (2012) mentions perceived language policy and declared language policy as the policy form of language beliefs and language management, respectively, she did not provide adequate explanations of the two concepts in relation to individuals’ language behaviours. Moreover, while perceived language policy, which is sometimes referred to as ‘policy as discourse’ (Ball, 1993), can reflect individuals’ policy of valuing languages, declared language policy is likely related to ‘policy as text’ (Shohamy, 2006), which is a formal authority statement informing what should be done with languages, rather than a policy constructed by individuals. For that reason, in addition to practised language policy (policy constructed in language practices) and perceived language policy (policy constructed in language beliefs), I propose the new concept of negotiated language policy, or ‘policy as negotiation’, which is more relevant to portraying the language policy constructed in language management by individuals, to capture a comprehensive and accurate picture of individual language policy. I provide detailed explanations of perceived language policy and negotiated language policy as follows. Perceived language policy, in a similar vein to practised language policy, can be seen as policy within beliefs themselves. It is the ways individuals shape their belief choices about the meanings and values of

22

Individual Language Policy

language based on a set of explicit and implicit (but regular and predictable) language norms and rules that members of the speech community have of appropriate language behaviours. These language norms constitute the individuals’ perceived language policy which informs them of what kinds of beliefs are significant in considering the position and value of languages and the roles of these languages in their daily life, and what clues and cues should be applied to maintain or adjust these beliefs. The perceived language policy can be seen as a basic reference for individuals to active/deactivate/reactivate different language beliefs and legitimate their belief choice. Their perceived language policy is constructed and reconstructed, as these language norms can be negotiated, recreated or transformed to suit changes in their language beliefs across times, situations and contexts. Individuals’ negotiated language policy, likewise, is policy within management of their language practices and beliefs. In other words, negotiated language policy can be seen as ‘negotiation of practised and perceived language policy’, which is the way they explicitly strategise and legitimate their alternation of beliefs and practices under observable external interventions. This policy is therefore also constructed and reconstructed based on the language norms and rules which inform practised and perceived language policy. Nguyen (2016, 2019b) refers to this language negotiation behaviour as ‘individual language management’ and reasons that when there are observable efforts by someone or some group that has or claims authority over the individuals (Spolsky, 2009) to modify their language practices and beliefs, they have to express more explicit responses to these pressures. Their negotiation to maintain or adjust their language practices and beliefs in dealing with external interventions can be seen as adhering to an individual policy at the level of management. Individuals’ negotiated language policy is, hence, constituted from overt clues, cues and strategies which help fulfi l and more explicitly declare their practised language policy and perceived language policy. Individual language policy is, hence, an interconnected process of practised, perceived and negotiated language policy generated through one’s practices, beliefs and management of language. These three components of individual language policy form the focus of Chapters 4, 5 and 6, which brings our attention to bilingual youth’s real-life stories about their linguistic voyage across ethnic and cultural worlds. Implementational, ideological and managerial spaces

Individuals’ daily language practices, beliefs and management, in addition, create implementational, ideological and managerial spaces for their practised, perceived and negotiated language policy to operate, and for construction of their linguistic identity in relation to this policy. Hornberger and her colleagues (Hornberger, 2002; Hornberger &

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23

Johnson, 2007; Johnson, 2010) suggest that implementational and ideological spaces are found when localised educational agents take advantage of spaces in policy to reinterpret the education policy, exercise their agency and enact their multilingual education practices and ideologies. In the present study, implementational spaces are opened up as individuals evaluate and take advantage of the situation and context to enact their practised language policy, while ideological spaces are where they are able to evaluate and take advantage of relevant internal and external factors to strengthen their perceived language policy. Implementational and ideological spaces are, thus, lived and imagined advantageous environments in which individuals construct, reconstruct, operate and confi rm their individual language policy. For Gallo and Hornberger (2019), ideological spaces opened up by policies may create implementational spaces for practices, while implementational spaces carved out from practices may open up new ideological spaces. Implementational and ideological spaces for individuals’ practised and perceived language policy, in a similar vein, are intersectional and interlinked with one another, as regular language practices are the foundation of constructing general beliefs, while language beliefs both derive from and influence practices (Nguyen, 2016). In addition, in order to highlight the negotiated language policy component of individual language policy in the present study, I propose the idea of managerial spaces (which is inspired by Hornberger’s [2002] implementational and ideological spaces and Spolsky’s language management [2004, 2007]), which, arguably, lived and imagined advantageous environments in which individuals explicitly negotiate to maintain or adjust their practised and perceived language policy in the face of external interventions. Managerial spaces are created when there are observable efforts made by someone or some social institution who has or claims authority over individuals to modify the latter’s language practices and/or language beliefs, and the individuals had opportunities to respond to them by either maintaining or adjusting their language use/ideologies (Nguyen, 2019b, 2021a) and, thereby, explicitly declare their individual language policy. As language practices, beliefs and management are independently describable but closely interrelated with each other (Spolsky, 2004, 2007), implementational, ideological and managerial spaces are interconnected as constituent parts of a legitimate space, where individuals can exert their agency to construct their individual language policy. This space is changeable and transformable as they are exposed to various interactional situations while voyaging across linguistic, social, ethnic, cultural worlds and life stages. For individuals, implementational, ideological and managerial spaces are lived and imagined advantageous environments not only for their agency to exercise and their individual language policy to construct and operate, but also for their identity enactment and practices, identity perceptions and beliefs, and identity negotiation and management to configurate.

3 External Forces on Bilingual Youth

Geographical, Historical and Social Forces

In Chapter 2, I suggested that individual language policy is part of a larger process, and operates in a ‘complex ecological relationship among a wide range of linguistic and non-linguistic elements, variables and factors’ (Spolsky, 2004: 41). Individual language policy, therefore, carries with it a number of interrelated geographical, historical, cultural, social and political factors. I now clarify some of these interrelated factors, which can be seen as a contextual backdrop for the construction of individual language policy by bilingual youth who are the research subjects of the present study. The bilingual youth who I focus on in this book belong to different ethnic minority groups in the Central Highlands of Vietnam. For that reason, information about external forces which can have an impact on their de facto language policy would shed light, to some extent, on the ‘level’ element which is interrelated to the youth’s ethnographic individual language policy. As I have just mentioned, geographical, historical, social and political factors are often interlinked, so the geographical, historical and social forces I focus on in the present section also reflect some political aspects of the context, which are discussed in the next section. Geographical, historical and social characteristics of the Central Highlands of Vietnam where the bilingual youth are living provide multiple background conditions which contribute to the construction of their individual language policy. The fi rst salient geographic factor is that, as aforementioned, they belong to a small ethnic group in terms of population, and this has contributed to their less valued status in Vietnamese society as compared with majority people. Among the 54 ethnic groups officially recognised by the government, people of 53 minority groups constitute only about 15%, while the Kinh (Viet) majority accounts for around 85% of the total population in Vietnam (in the present study, I refer to the majority as ‘Kinh’, as this word is much more common than the word ‘Viet’ in formal and informal discussions on interethnic relations 24

External Forces on Bilingual Youth 25

in Vietnam). In the Central Highlands, the proportion of ethnic minority people is larger, which is approximately 38% of the population, but the Kinh is also the dominant group here. Among ethnic minority communities in this region, Jarai, Sedang, Bahnar, Rhade and Koho are the largest groups (Central Population and Housing Census Steering Committee, 2019; Vietnamese Committee for Ethnic Minority Affairs, United Nations Development Programme & Irish Aid, 2017). Minority people here, however, are sometimes placed in a lower position compared with some minority groups in other regions of the country, as it is believed that due to specific geographical and historical characteristics of the Central Highlands, minority people here have had contact with the ‘civilised’ Kinh life for a shorter time compared with many minorities in Northern, Central and Southern areas. In the past, most of the residents in the Central Highlands were those who have recently been referred to as minority people, although there were still trade contacts among them and the Kinh lowlanders. Since the increasingly ‘spontaneous’ immigration and the then Government’s resettlement projects throughout the 20th century, the number of Kinh residents in the region has rapidly grown, the demographic distribution of ethnic groups has changed significantly, and local people have been ‘transformed’ into a minority (Rambo, 2003) in their homeland. Minority people’s life, culture and language have also been minoritised and interiorised, as compared with those of the Kinh majority. These geographical factors are one of the causes of minority people’s marginalisation and less-heard voices concerned with different social issues, including issues related to their ethnic language. Social forces which have a profound influence on minority people’s life come from the relationship between their ethnic group (as well as other ethnic minority communities) and the Kinh majority. There have still been clear distances between minorities and majorities in terms of social status, political power, economic development, technological advance and educational benefit. Ethnic minorities’ culture and knowledge are not highly regarded by Kinh people. Kinh’s stereotypes and misconceptions about, as well as discrimination and stigmas against, minorities are still common, reflecting their limited knowledge about minorities’ culture and livelihoods. It is widely believed by the Kinh that minority people are ‘ignorant’, ‘superstitious’ and ‘conservative’, and that their life is ‘primitive’, ‘backward’ and ‘underdeveloped’. For that reason, one of the purposes of the Government’s 1970s–1990s resettlement projects, which encourage Kinh lowlanders to migrate to the Central Highlands, is to bring Kinh people’s ‘development’ to the ‘backward’ uplands (Nguyen, 2021b). Nevertheless, it appears that the ‘massive influx’ of Kinh migrants to the region (McElwee, 2008) has had a more negative (rather than positive) impact on ethnic minorities’ life. There have been unrest and tensions between Kinh and minority people due to land disputes and cultural confl icts. Kinh settlers are sometimes considered by local minorities as

26

Individual Language Policy

‘uneasy neighbours’ (McElwee, 2008) who bring more formidable troubles and challenges to their daily life. This contributes to further widening the social distance between Kinh and minorities. In reality, Kinh and minority groups in the region, even if they share the same habitation, still maintain relatively separate living arrangements where minorities live in their village clusters and Kinh reside in other places outside minority villages (except for some near-town areas). Kinh and minority people, however, still have frequent contact through a number of trade, work and social activities (see McElwee, 2008; Nguyen & Hamid, 2020; World Bank, 2019). The dominance of Kinh culture is a continuous force on minority people, that leads to the loss of minorities’ traditional lifestyle and culture, including the loss of their language (Nguyen, 2019a). Many ethnic minorities, not surprisingly, tend to be vulnerable in comparing themselves with the Kinh and judging themselves by the Kinh’s standards. Many of them believe that they should learn to be more like Kinh (Rambo, 2003; Truong, 2011) to better develop and to be part of the mainstream. It appears that the Government’s existing policies have failed to address the social gaps and distances across different ethnic minority groups (World Bank, 2019). The geographical, historical and social forces have put a huge pressure on ethnic minorities’ language life. Similar to many other regions of the country, the Central Highlands of Vietnam has been multiethnic and multilingual since the earliest records of history. Recent unofficial statistics estimate that there are around 100 languages or language varieties spoken across ethnic communities in the nation (Nguyen, 2021a). Minority languages in the Central Highlands belong to the Austroasiatic (Mon-Khmer branch) and Austronesian (Malayo-Polynesian branch) language categories. In the present time, Vietnamese – the language of Kinh majority lowlanders – is the most widely used here. It is currently the major language in all mainstream social, political, economic and cultural domains. Compared with Vietnamese, minority languages are not considered important or prestigious in society (Nguyen & Hamid, 2016, 2018, 2019). The discourse of language hierarchies, which is common in Vietnamese society, has placed minority languages (and speakers of these languages) at a lower position in terms of practicality, usefulness and reputation. Ethnic minorities, hence, have no choice but are ‘forced’ to become folk bilinguals who have to know their ethnic language to communicate with their community members and Vietnamese to interact with Kinh and other ethnic minorities in the wider society. Their Vietnamese proficiency, however, varies from older to younger people, and from area to area. Some of the minorities still lack exposure to Vietnamese (Nguyen, 2019b). As it is reported in a recent survey by the Vietnamese Committee for Ethnic Minority Affairs, United Nations Development Programme and Irish Aid, around 96% of ethnic minorities in Vietnam can speak the language of their ethnic group (although to varying degrees). Nevertheless, in some

External Forces on Bilingual Youth 27

minority communities with a small population size, the percentage of members who know the language of their ethnic group is much lower, and this raises serious concerns about language loss among these groups (Vietnamese Committee for Ethnic Minority Affairs et al., 2017). As different ethnic communities often live quite close to one another, and there is an increase of ethnically mixed communities, many minorities can speak three (or more than three) languages, including the language of their ethnic group, Vietnamese and another minority language in the region. Some participants in the present study, for example, can speak the language of their ethnic group, Vietnamese and Bahnar – which is considered as the ‘regional’ minority language, as Bahnar is one of the most populous minority groups residing in the provincial town where the research site is located. The lower position of minority languages compared with Vietnamese is due to several reasons related to the dominance of the Kinh majority, the national language policy and the unpopularity of these languages in many social domains. Minority languages are rarely used in the mainstream settings, except for several cultural events or limited broadcasts in the most common regional minority languages on the local television and radio news. In addition, many minority languages are not widely used as they still lack a completed written system, which is another challenge for ethnic minority communities to maintain their language. Documents written in minority languages are rarely found in the mainstream market, if at all. For those reasons, minority languages are seen as less practical in the wider society and often associated with something traditional and old fashioned (Nguyen & Hamid, 2021) by many Kinh and even many ethnic minorities. The devaluation of minority languages and the discourse of ethnic/language hierarchies in Vietnamese society are everyday forces that drive young bilingual minorities’ language beliefs and practices and put them under pressure to learn Vietnamese and integrate with the mainstream dominated by the Kinh at the expense of their ethnic language and culture. Political Forces

Political forces are related to the mechanisms and policies which are directly or indirectly related to ethnic minority people in the polity. In a power-concentrating language regime (Liu, 2015) such as Vietnam, political impact on minorities comes from the Government’s ‘ethnocentric’ view, which prioritises the Kinh majority, and their one-nation-onelanguage approach, which promotes the official and dominant position of Vietnamese, the language of the Kinh. That has oriented their formulation and implementation of language and education policies for ethnic minority people. Over the course of the 20th century, Vietnamese has been designated as the single national and official language. It now functions as a lingua

28

Individual Language Policy

franca for communication among people of all ethnicities and regions in the country. More importantly, Vietnamese is seen by the Government as a key component of the national identity (Le & O’Harrow, 2007), a bond that fosters ethnic coherence and national consolidation, and a critical tool for enhancing the uniformity in social, economic and cultural development across ethnic communities (Lavoie, 2011). In addition to the promotion of Vietnamese, languages of ethnic minority groups are also a concern in policy documents. It is declared in several versions of the Constitution, for example, that people of all ethnicities in the polity have the right to use the language of their ethnic group and preserve their ethnic culture. This has been, so far, more likely just a ‘paper’ policy, as it is rarely implemented in practice. The reason is that from the Government’s position, language unity and cohesion should take precedence over maintenance of minority languages and development of multilingualism, and this can be accomplished through the use of Vietnamese as a single common language (Nguyen & Hamid, 2017). They maintain that it is both the right and the responsibility of Vietnamese citizens of all ethnicities to learn and use Vietnamese language (Vietnamese Government Council, 1980). This can be seen as a ‘legal force’ exerted on ethnic minority people, which urges them to become folk bilinguals and puts more adverse pressure on their preservation and propagation of minority languages (Le & O’Harrow, 2007). This Government’s view and policy have been criticised as showing a lack of understanding of minorities’ value, expectations and needs (Giacchino-Baker, 2007), and a manifestation of ‘internal contradictions’ (Rambo, 2003), where there is a tension between the Government’s vision of national integration and minorities’ inclination to maintain their language and culture rights (Tran, 2014). The authoritative discourse and policy related to a unified language for a unified nation have created an ideological space (Hornberger, 2002) for the ideologies of linguistic ethnocentrism, colonialism and discrimination in Vietnamese society, where many Kinh majorities and ethnic minorities believe that acquiring Vietnamese is a must for social participation, even at the expense of one’s mother tongue other than Vietnamese. Although the ‘impracticality’ of maintaining all minority languages is taken for granted (Phan et  al., 2014), there have been some efforts in encouraging the use of common regional minority languages and developing a Romanised orthography for these languages. Written characters for some minority languages have been jointly created by Vietnamese teachers, linguists and members of ethnic minority groups for the purposes of education. Currently, about 30 ethnic groups have their own writing system and language development is still ongoing in others (Benson & Kosonen, 2012; Kosonen, 2013). There are also broadcasts in the regional minority languages on the local media, as previously mentioned, although these programmes are only for a few hours per week, which are insufficient to cover different aspects of minority people’s vibrant life. The

External Forces on Bilingual Youth

29

limited efforts to support minority languages at the local level are, hence, not powerful enough to overcome the dominant social discourse and ideology (Hornberger et al., 2018) which endorse the value, usefulness and position of Vietnamese and put integration pressure on ethnic minority people. These policies, moreover, neither serve to improve ethnic minorities’ economic conditions nor do they necessarily contribute to enhancing minority languages’ status and minority people’s ethnic identity (DeJaeghere et  al., 2015). For Kirkpatrick (2010), the Vietnamese Government’s motivation behind this support of minority languages and their orthography comes from their ultimate intention of using the languages as a means for easier accommodation and assimilation of ethnic minority people. The Government’s authoritative language discourse also reflects in their education policy for minority people, which designs mainstream schooling as one of the most powerful and direct forces which is organised to put pressure on minority students and continuously manages their language beliefs and practices on a daily basis. Vietnamese is proclaimed as the mandatory and taken-for-granted language of instruction for teaching all subjects to students of all ethnicities in public schooling, from primary to tertiary level, even in remote and minority-concentrated areas. In mixed-ethnicity mainstream schools, most of the learning content in the curriculum and teaching practice also reflects the Kinh life and culture. As teaching in Vietnamese is compulsory, it is mentioned in the Education Law that minority children should learn some Vietnamese language before their primary schooling (Vietnamese Government, 2019) to alleviate their language barriers. Young minority students who have little or no knowledge of Vietnamese, however, face a number of language challenges in their early schooling, as the majority of their teachers are Kinh, who do not know the students’ ethnic language nor have the skills to teach Vietnamese as a second language (Phan et al., 2014). Truong (2011) also points out that Kinh teachers have little, if any, connection with minority communities in terms of either geographical location or livelihood and make little or no effort to accommodate ethnic minorities. As the majority of minority students have to join the same education system together with their Kinh counterparts, school is a big and deep pool which they are thrown in without being taught how to swim (Benson, 2005). Young students’ language barriers are still a major ‘stumbling block’ (Aikman & Pridmore, 2001) in many remote schools. Minority students, however, are often expected to leave their ethnic language at the school gate and integrate into the school climate through learning and using Vietnamese (see Nguyen & Hamid, 2017, 2019). The mainstream education system, hence, offers minority students a kind of ‘subtractive schooling’, which aims to add the dominant language and culture to the students and, consequently, subtracts their ethnic language and culture (Nguyen & Hamid, 2017; Valenzuela, 1999). As minority students often get unequal access to

30

Individual Language Policy

education compared with their Kinh counterparts and experience a number of challenges in mainstream schooling, only a relatively small number of them ‘survive’ to fi nish the twelfth grade required to enter a college or university. Schools’ language policies, hence, refl ect and reproduce the distribution of power within the wider society (McCarty, 2011a), as they adhere to the Government’s language-as-problem orientation, where minority students’ ethnic language is seen as a handicap and barrier for their study and development, and education in the mainstream language is considered as the only solution for this problem (Ruiz, 1984). Mainstream schools, which promote the dominance of Vietnamese in education, then become a critical instrument for perpetuating the Government’s assimilationist language and ethnic policies, and facilitating the establishment of implementational and ideological spaces for driving minority students to the transformation orientation. Although it is reiterated in the Education Law that the State would encourage and provide advantageous conditions for ethnic minorities to learn their ethnic language, it is also emphasised here that the teaching and learning of minority languages have to follow the Government’s regulations (Vietnamese Government, 2019). Moreover, this policy has rarely translated into practice due to a number of practical difficulties related to ethnic diversity, mixed-ethnicity settlements, lack of a completed written system in many minority languages, as previously discussed, and shortage of resources. Very few schools, even in areas where there is a large number of minority students, have followed this legal encouragement. When minority languages are included in school programmes, they are often taught as a subject, rather than used as a medium of instruction. In the so-called ‘bilingual education’ (which is perhaps a misnomer) programmes, young minority students learn their ethnic language only a few hours per week, simultaneous with their Vietnamese learning in most classroom contact time, until it is assumed that they have acquired the required level of Vietnamese (Lavoie & Benson, 2011) to learn all subjects completely in Vietnamese. Lavoie and Benson (2011), in addition, argue that the term ‘bilingual education’ used to refer to these L1-as-a-subject programmes in legal documents and statements can cause confusion, ambiguity and misunderstanding of them as full bilingual education programmes in which students learn both their ethnic language and Vietnamese as mediums of instruction. Although these L1-as-a-subject programmes are stated to improve minority students’ participation and achievement in school, it is not clear whether they have achieved their expected outcomes (DeJaeghere et al., 2015). Scholars, in addition, criticise that the actual aim of these programmes is to use minority students’ mother tongue as a bridge language to support their easier and more effective learning in Vietnamese and by that way, quickly accommodate them with the Vietnamese language (DeJaeghere et al., 2015; Kirkpatrick, 2010). More recently, there are several pilot mother-tongue-based education programmes conducted by

External Forces on Bilingual Youth

31

non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in collaboration with the Vietnamese Ministry of Education and Training, in which minority students’ L1 is used as a medium of instruction (e.g. UNICEF, 2015). In reality, however, the majority of minority students still do not have opportunities to be exposed to their ethnic language either as a subject or a medium of instruction in school. Among the minority students I approached in the fieldworks for my research projects, only a few of them had heard about these programmes, and only two had experience of learning their L1 as a subject in primary school. Minority students, in addition, have to learn English – which is broadly perceived as a language of ‘new trend’ and opportunity in Vietnam (Nguyen & Nguyen, 2017) – as a foreign language subject from primary or secondary school level, depending on their residential area. Their language problem seems to be more complicated, as they have to depend on the second language (i.e. Vietnamese) for foreign language learning. When compared with their Kinh counterparts, minority students who are living in remote places are unfamiliar with the outside world, especially with Western culture which, consequently, makes their English learning more challenging (Nguyen et al., 2018). Kirkpatrick (2010) commented that this is an example of double language pressure on minority students in the mainstream schooling, where they are forced to learn the majority language along with the international lingua franca while still struggling to maintain their ethnic language that is often devalued in the wider society. Under the Forces: Bilingual Youth in the Terrain

The geographical, historical, social and political forces, as aforedescribed, create subtractive language conditions that have powerfully impacted on minority communities and individuals’ language policy and behaviours, that mainly orients them to the transformation line. The scarce opportunities to read and write in their ethnic language, and the limited use of their ethnic language in family and community domains, as a consequence of these forces, pose a threat to their community’s linguistic vitality and their inclination to align with the maintenance orientation. These macro-level forces can strongly shape the linguistic repertoires of young ethnic minorities, who are most exposed to mainstream schooling and the wider society compared with other members of their community, and drive significant changes in their language beliefs and practices. Their individual language policy, hence, is not isolated from the external forces. Still, we have much to learn about how ethnic minority youth navigate their maintenance and transformation-oriented individual language policy, which does not necessarily stand independent of the macro forces (Hamid, 2019). The selected group of ethnic minority youth in the present study and their stories would partly shed light on minority people’s language life in this particular context. Even so, I do not mean this group of

32

Individual Language Policy

participants can be seen as representatives of all ethnic minority youth in the region. However, my exploration of the ways they manage their colourful, vibrant and complex language life, and their shuttling back and forth between the maintenance and transformation lines in such a subtractive language environment, can be seen as ‘indicative information’, which will be useful to draw references to and conclusions about similar cases in this particular region and comparable subtractive contexts elsewhere in the world. The site where I selected participants for the present study is a community college, which I refer to as ‘Indochina College’ (a pseudonym), located in a province in the Central Highland of Vietnam. A few years ago, I worked in the province as a teacher and had many opportunities to contact local ethnic minority youth. This site was selected for its accessibility and convenience, where I could approach a number of young ethnic minorities who are otherwise hard to reach by others (some of the participants were my students or former students). This local college is a mixed-ethnicity environment, where there are Kinh students and a high percent of minority students, who come from the provincial town and other remote districts as well as other provinces. This is one among many community colleges in the Central Highlands that have lower entrance requirements that give some priority to local minority people. Nevertheless, I see my research terrain as much larger than this particular site, as the terrain covers multiple spatiotemporal places which the participants visited in their language voyage. My awareness of this complex research terrain has encouraged me to keep an eye on the ‘multiple actors, trajectories, and truths’ (Hornberger, 2006: 235) the youth experienced across time, situations and contexts. The discussion on the youth’s individual language policy in the subsequent chapters is based on two different data sets from two projects which target the same research subject group at the same research site (Indochina College). In the fi rst project on bilingualism, data were gathered through multiple interviews with the focal participants (premier data), their language experience journal and interviews with their parent/family member (supplementary data). Participant-interview data from the second project on biculturalism, which include some information about the youth’s language life, also constitute part of the empirical basis of the present study (premier data). Generally, the discussion on individual language policy draws on the stories of eight bilingual youth (from five different ethnic backgrounds) who are the focal participants of the fi rst project, and 20 other bilingual youth (from five different ethnic backgrounds) who are participants of the second project. At the time I contacted them, the youth (18 females and 10 males) were a student or recent graduate of the college. They are from different ethnic groups, including Bahnar, Rengao, Jarai, Halang, Jeh and Sedang. A few of them are mixed-blood (Bahnar-Rengao, for example), and often speak two mother tongues within their extended

External Forces on Bilingual Youth

33

family. As Bahnar is the second most populous group (after Kinh) among groups of people living around the provincial town and its neighbouring areas, participants who are Bahnar were the majority in this study. In addition, because of ethical reasons and the complexity of accessing minority people in the region, the use of a pseudonym is applied for all participants and place-names to protect their antonymy and privacy. I used one-to-one interviews with the youth as the central method for gathering primary data for the present study. Multiple interviews (three meetings) were conducted with the eight participants of the first project and a single interview (one meeting) was carried out with the 20 participants of the second project. The questions were semi-structured to ensure that the necessary and significant information was elicited from all interviewees, but there was still enough space for the youth to express themselves. I would describe these interviews as informal conversations in reality, in which the youth and I talked about things related to their language life and other issues in a comfortable manner. Depending on the development of the conversation and their personality, I encouraged them to talk and confide their stories. The conversations were in ‘in-garden’ cafés where we felt relaxed as both privacy and convenience were ensured. It is useful to note that going to an in-garden café in the free time is a common habit among many locals. The conversations were in Vietnamese, the language which the youth and I can speak fluently. The interview extracts, which are used as illustrations in the next three chapters, were translated from Vietnamese into English. The eight participants of the fi rst project were also asked for their cooperation in writing a language experience journal, where they shared some further information or notes related to the topics we discussed in the interviews. Since it was predicted that the youth might not remember all the things about their life at the time of being interviewed, journals were selected as another means for them whereby they would have more chances to recollect, record and express opinions about their language practices, beliefs and management according to their own schedule and over a longer time period. In fact, some of them did not write much in their journal. I suppose that they did not have the motivation to write, as they might have thought that they had already shared enough in the interviews. Nevertheless, I obtained some useful data from their journals. It is necessary to also mention the participation of some youth’s family members in the present study. I asked the eight focal students of the first project if they could introduce one of their parents or another family member to participate in an interview. The youth all agreed that they would introduce one of their family members. However, it was not easy for me to approach these informants and persuade them to participate in a one-hour conversation, due to such reasons as time, distance to travel, and language and cultural differences. In fact, some minority parents did not speak Vietnamese as well as their children because they did not go to

34

Individual Language Policy

school or went to school only for a short time; some were too busy with their work; some lived far away from the provincial town while others hesitated to meet their children’s teachers. After many repeated attempts, I fi nally succeeded in meeting with one of each participant’s family members. I also invited them to meet in an in-garden café. Questions for them were related to their child’s (the participant of the study) language experiences and practices. The language used in these interviews was also Vietnamese. Meeting parents or other family members of the youth was an interesting experience for me in the process of gathering data. It should be noted here, however, that parent/family member interviews are only used as supplementary data in the present study. As a researcher approaching the youth to learn about their language voyage, I need to think about my role as a peripheral participant who is ‘an integral aspect of the research process, including the selection of individuals, groups and sites’ (Lanza, 2008: 78), as well as my own subjectivity as a researcher in this process. The way I accessed the youth might have been influenced by my own identity, attitudes and experience and my relationship with them. Despite having positive attitudes towards multilingualism and minority people, I may still be affected by preconceived ideas, for example, about the position of minority languages as compared with Vietnamese language. As I am a Kinh majority, a Vietnamese national and a native speaker of Vietnamese, this gave me an insider identity. I am also an outsider – a cultural other – because I am not a member of any of the ethnic minority communities in Vietnam. I may therefore not have a deep understanding of their thoughts, views, languages, customs or culture. However, being an outsider may provide me with a more objective position from which to observe them. Honestly, the two research projects were unique opportunities when I got closer to some ethnic minority youth and gained more understandings about their interesting life with many languages, a life in which, according to Skutnabb-Kangas (1981), they are forced to accept the necessity of being bilingual without an alternative. I thank the youth for offering me such opportunities to deliver their otherwise less-heard voices to the world, and I hope that I have done justice to what they experienced, what they believed and what they wanted to say. We will follow the youth’s language voyage in which they constructed their maintenance- and transformation-oriented individual language policy through their everyday language practices, beliefs and management in the coming chapters.

4 Practised Language Policy

The Youth’s Stories: Policy in Practices

As I have discussed in Chapter 2, language practices are what people actually do with their language. Specifically, language practices of individuals are observed in their habitual patterns of selecting from among the varieties that make up their linguistic repertoire, including the linguistic features chosen or the variety of language used (Spolsky, 2004, 2017). Practised language policy, accordingly, is policy within language practices, which is related to how individuals, as language policy agents, legitimate their language choice by using various clues and cues in given situations and contexts. In the present chapter, I examine the bilingual youth’s practised language policy by looking at the ways they legitimated their language choice in their daily contact in diff erent domains. Domains, as termed by Fishman (1972), are defi nable societal– institutional contexts in which bilingual individuals use their languages considering three significant factors: the location, the participants and the topic of communication. Place or location and people in the place/location often have a strong impact on individuals’ policies of language choice. Each of the domains in which individuals exist, in addition, often has its formal and/or informal language policies that can be seen as a force on its members’ language practices (Nguyen & Hamid, 2018; Spolsky, 2007). In an attempt to highlight the ‘level’ component of the ethnography of individual language policy, where one’s language policy is influenced by the complexities of various contextual conditions, in this chapter, I defi ne the boundaries between the contexts that the youth had lived and participated in and examine their practised language policy in four main domains: the family–ethnic community, the school, the church and the wider society. The youth’s agency in enacting their policy in practices (the ‘agent’ component) and their construction of maintenance- and transformationoriented policy in implementational spaces (the ‘process’ component) are also brought into the discussion.

35

36

Individual Language Policy

Practices in the family–ethnic community domain

For ethnic minority youth living in a subtractive language environment, family and ethnic community are the most critical domains where their ethnic language is most frequently used. Family/community members’ customary use of their ethnic language in these domains is linked to their commitment to maintaining their native language and culture, irrespective of their language’s status in the mainstream society. However, this domain is not a closed unit, and family/community language practices are always influenced by the surrounding environment (Nguyen & Hamid, 2021; Spolsky, 2009). Young members who are exposed to mainstream schooling and society often bring these external influences to their home and community, which can also influence other family/community members’ language practices to varying degrees (Spolsky, 2009). The family and community, then, turn out to be open to the influence of external forces, which leads to pressure in managing the impact of the mainstream language on the traditional language practices among their members (Spolsky, 2012). The youth in the present study applied the language of their ethnic group as the fi rst and essential communication tool in their family/ community interactions. Although Vietnamese was not used as much as their ethnic language, the former had penetrated into this domain. In addition, English and other local languages were also visible in their language use in the community. As interlocutors’ age is an important factor in choosing codes (Nguyen & Hamid, 2021), the youth’s language choice in their communication with different age groups of people in their family and community (parents, siblings, young community members and older community members) are examined. Communication with parents

In the family, the youth’s communication with parents was normally based on their mother tongue. L1 use was sometimes considered as a sign of home tradition or a sign of respect for senior family members (Nguyen & Hamid, 2019), as one’s mother tongue reflects and conveys its culture ‘more felicitously and succinctly than other language’ (May, 2013: 138). The majority of the youth believed that in talking to their parents, L1 should be applied first, because the parents made them speak L1 at home. Many said that they limited the use of Vietnamese in talking to their parents because the latter would not like Vietnamese (Y-Trinh) or were not sufficiently proficient in the language (Y-Kap). Y-Kap related that the older she was, the less Vietnamese she used in communicating with her parents, as she was aware that L1 use was more convenient for her parents and herself. Similarly, for Y-Diopris, it was important to keep using Rengao, her ethnic language, to respect her parents. As she related, although her parents knew Vietnamese, she felt uncomfortable in talking to them in this language. ‘It is odd [if I talk to my parents in Vietnamese]’ – she said – ‘only when I want to make jokes, I speak Kinh language (Vietnamese)’.

Practised Language Policy

37

In addition, many youth maintained the habit of speaking the L1 in communication with their parents as the parents wanted them to preserve the language of their ethnic community. A-Xan, for example, said that as he studied far away from home, his language practices had changed, and sometimes he forgot some words in Rengao, his L1. For that reason, his mother was not happy if he spoke too much Vietnamese at home, being afraid that he would lose his habit of using Rengao. Likewise, Y-Chung’s parents would like her to maintain their ethnic language at home, although they were not unfamiliar with Vietnamese. As Y-Chung related: It (speaking the ethnic language frequently in communication with parents) is, on the one hand, because of my habit. On the other hand, my parents said although I studied higher and could speak Kinh language better, I still had to speak the ethnic language (Bahnar) at home, to preserve our language. Because recently we sometimes pronounce a few Bahnar words incorrectly, and there are some difficult Bahnar words which I do not know.

In some other youth’s family, however, their use of the mainstream language was allowed or even encouraged by their parents who were comfortable with the language or believed in its utilitarian value. They observed that it was acceptable if sometimes they spoke some Vietnamese to their parents. A-Diem, for instance, said that his father had substantial contact with Kinh people and the latter was familiar with Vietnamese, so if he spoke a little Vietnamese, his father would not mind. He added that he could explain some Vietnamese words to his parents if they asked. In line with the discussion, some youth revealed that their parents encouraged them to learn and speak Vietnamese. As Y-Tinh related, her parents wanted her to read many Vietnamese books to learn more Vietnamese words. Y-Rieng revealed that her parents supported her to speak Vietnamese and have more contact with Kinh people. Likewise, Y-Hong narrated that her mother would be happy if her children spoke Vietnamese frequently and fluently: She (my mother) likes it very much if she hears us speaking Kinh language […]. My mother wants her children to gain more knowledge. Her wish is that, my sister, both of us can become a teacher. She wants, she hopes so.

It can be seen from the above examples of the youth’s language practices in communication with their parents that the parents played the role of the most influential individuals who could orient the youth’s individual language policy towards the maintenance or transformation tendency in this domain. In many cases, the parents who were more powerful members of the family, often took for granted their authority to expect the youth to comply with their own language policy and give instructions on how to speak and what to say (Nguyen & Hamid, 2021; Spolsky, 2009). Some parents who were not aware of the penetration of the mainstream language into their family as a possible barrier to their L1 transmission between generations might compromise with their children’s use of

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Individual Language Policy

Vietnamese. Under the influence of their parents, some of the youth expressed their agency in deciding to maintain their ethnic language in speaking to their parents, aligning with the parents’ expectation of preserving the family’s customary L1 habit and the traditional parent-child relationship (Nguyen & Hamid, 2019), and practising their individual language policy in line with the maintenance orientation. On the other hand, it seems that the obligation of young members to maintain their ethnic language in talking to parents was no longer common in some of the youth’s family. As such, in an attempt to narrow down the language differences between the two generations in their family-based communication, the youth exercised their agency in introducing their parents to their Vietnamese competence and pulling their parents closer to them in terms of language (Nguyen & Hamid, 2021), and thereby practising their individual language policy which was, to some extent, closer to the transformation line. Communication with siblings

Siblings, who also experience mainstream schooling and society, are often young people’s ‘supporters’ of their switch between home- and schoolstyle language practices. As siblings belong to the same generation and have more shared views and interests in language, the relationship between siblings seems to be similar to their relationship with same-age peers (Nguyen, 2019a). As revealed in the youth’s stories, in addition to their ethnic language, Vietnamese and other languages were more frequently used in their communication with siblings than in communication with parents. Some participants said that in addition to L1, they used Vietnamese in talking with their siblings. A-Anton’s brother, for example, said that he and A-Anton sometimes mixed their ethnic language with Vietnamese in their daily talk. As Y-Hong said, speaking Vietnamese to her sister was a way of practising this language so they could be more fluent in Vietnamese. Likewise, Y-Xuong explained that because her brothers and sisters also went to school and they could speak Vietnamese well, she used more Vietnamese in talking to her siblings than in talking to her parents: I use more Vietnamese in talking to my brothers and sisters […]. Because at home, [we] usually talk to [our] parents in our ethnic language. But among brothers and sisters, we usually talked in Vietnamese, because it is a habit. We go to school, then it (speaking Vietnamese) becomes a habit.

Along the same line, A-Doan related that since his brother-in-law who was a Nung (an ethnic minority from Northern Vietnam) joined the family, he and other members talked with the brother-in-law in Vietnamese as the brother did not know the family’s ethnic language. As A-Doan said: Now we have my brother-in-law in the family. He belongs to another ethnic group, so we sometimes have to speak Kinh language. Before,

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when the brother-in-law was not a member of our family yet, we spoke our Jeh language more frequently. Now when we have him in the family, if we speak Jeh, he may not be happy. It’s not comfortable [to speak Jeh language] so sometimes we have to speak Kinh language.

Interestingly, it is revealed from the youth’s stories that English was occasionally applied (although to a limited extent) in communication among their siblings. As English was a subject they had to learn in school, speaking a few English words and sentences was perhaps a way of having fun with their siblings and a way of practising the language. A-Diem, for example, said that he sometimes practised English with his sister in their daily talks. Y-Rieng, similarly, revealed that all four siblings in her family liked learning English and often practised the language together. As she related: My older sister said if we learnt English, we should practise it, and should not worry about it if we pronounce [English words] incorrectly. That means we practise speaking [English]. I am a bit afraid [of speaking English] because I often speak it incorrectly, especially pronunciation, I cannot pronoun it well.

It is indicated from the youth and their siblings’ language practices that in a family where the L1 is often preferred in communication between parents and children, the mainstream language (and sometimes a foreign language such as English) has a higher value among the younger family members (Nguyen, 2019a), and this reflects the fact that they are attending a mainstream language-dominant school. The youth’s agency was strongly enacted in forming a flexible language policy which facilitated the flexible use of their ethnic language, Vietnamese and English in communication with their siblings, which occurred as their habitual ways of expressing their nonverbal shared understandings and knowledge (Gumperz, 1982b) of the mainstream school/society (Nguyen, 2019a). Language flexibility and translanguaging between the L1 and Vietnamese (and English) in the youth’s sibling talks were a manifestation of the intertwine between the maintenance and transformation tendencies (to different degrees) in practising their individual language policy for communication with these interlocutors. Communication with young people in the village

The intertwine between the maintenance and transformation orientations in the youth’s individual language policy is also found in their language practices in communication with young people in their ethnic community. Similar to siblings, the youth’s village peers belonged to their generation and had shared views and interests in language and language use. In addition to L1, the mainstream language was also more common and more comfortably used in communication among same-age friends and young people in the community. As suggested by Nguyen and Hamid

40 Individual Language Policy

(2020), however, young people’s language practices can be directly influenced by each of the same-community peers who either encourages or discourages their L2 use. Same-ethnicity peers who have experience of mainstream schooling can encourage more L2 use among young members in the community. In talking about their language practices in the village, Y-Khau, for example, said that she used Vietnamese with her village friends more frequently because they ‘like Vietnamese’. Y-Chung also stated that in talking to same-age village friends, she often switched or mixed between her ethnic language and Vietnamese because she felt more comfortable in terms of language use outside the home. Likewise, A-Doan explained how young people in his hamlet were exposed to Vietnamese when they were small: Sometimes we speak [Vietnamese] and sometimes we also speak the ethnic language. But when we were small, we spoke the ethnic language more frequently. I have to admit that when we were small, there were two different ‘zones’ in my hamlet, that means they ‘divided’ the hamlet into different zones. In our zone, we could speak Jeh (the ethnic language), people of the younger generation, we could all speak [Jeh]. In the other zone, they lived near Kinh people, and parents of those young people often spoke more Kinh language.

Same-ethnicity peers, on the other hand, can discourage L2 use. It was revealed by Y-Minh, for example, that young people in her ethnic community preferred talking with each other in the language of her group, Rengao, perhaps because they hesitated to use Vietnamese. A-Diem, similarly, said that his community peers did not like Vietnamese, so he had to maintain the L1, Bahnar, in his communication with them, and that Vietnamese was applied only when they studied together. As he related: We talked with each other in the mother tongue only […]. Sometimes [I want to speak] Kinh language with my neighbour friends, but I rarely have opportunities to do so. They don’t want to speak Kinh. So we mostly speak in our mother tongue.

From the discussion above, we can see two different language tendencies in the youth’s communication with young members of their community. Peer attitudes and reactions could have a strong influence on their choice of and willingness to use the languages (Nguyen & Hamid, 2020) in talking with the former. On the one hand, if their village friends were happy with their Vietnamese choice, they made use of the language as a way of maintaining a comfortable, sympathetic and flexible language atmosphere of young people who shared the similar social backgrounds, linguistic abilities and favourite language styles in this L1-dominant domain (Nguyen, 2019a). In doing so, they enacted their agency to legitimate their use of the majority language as a breach of the community’s language norm (Jacobs, 2016) and together with their peers, performed

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their individual language policy as moving closer to the transformation line. On the other hand, some youth also showed their agency in deciding that they should not disalign with the peers who did not like overusing Vietnamese in their community. If their Vietnamese use in communication with L1 peers was disrupted by the latter, they reapplied the L1 in talking with them, and at the same time, kept their individual language policy associated with the maintenance line in these community-based interactions. Communication with older people in the village

Similar to communication with parents, the bilingual youth’s language practices in communication with older community members were often based on the language of their ethnic group, as this was often seen as a sign of respect for the latter or a sign of respecting the latter’s customary language habit (Nguyen & Hamid, 2021). The youth reported that they considered the choice of language and their communicative behaviours more carefully in contacting older people in their village. Y-Xuong, for example, related that she did not use Vietnamese in talking to her older villagers because their Vietnamese proficiency was not good. As she said: If they are older people, if I ask them in the general language, Vietnamese, maybe they will answer in our language (ethnic language) […]. Their vocabulary is limited […]. They don’t speak Vietnamese fluently.

A-Anton, in answering the question about whether Vietnamese should frequently be applied in communication with older villagers, affi rmed: ‘Defi nitely no!’ For him, perhaps, it might not be respectful to use much Vietnamese in talking with these people who were not in the habit of frequently using the language. In line with the discussion, Y-Minh said that her older neighbours did not like her to speak to them in Vietnamese. Other youth also admitted that they sometimes felt hesitant in using Vietnamese in their village because they were afraid that elderly people or those who had not been to school would negatively appraise them. Y-Nom, for instance, related a situation she observed in her village, where older people were not happy about some young village members who frequently used Vietnamese at home and sometimes did not understand their ethnic language. For her, it was better to not overuse Vietnamese in communication with them as they might have negative attitudes or reactions towards her language behaviour. Y-Kap, similarly, related the situation when some young people in her village talked to elderly in an improper language manner, that made the latter unhappy: As I remember, one of my friends spoke like that (mixing Bahnar with Vietnamese) when she was talking to older people, and they scolded her. Older people, as I told you a short while ago, they will say that I show off if I speak in a mingled way like that.

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For many older people in the youth’s ethnic community, Vietnamese was a ‘marked’ language, which should not be applied too much among village members, and overusing the Vietnamese and other languages which were external to the community might be considered an act of betrayal or lack of allegiance and loyalty to their ethnicity (Kim & Duff, 2012). Under that pressure from their older neighbours, the youth often maintained their L1 – the unmarked code (Myers-Scotton, 1993) – in talking to the former to respect their language preference, habit and customs. Being aware of the older people’s voice, position and role in the community, as well as their language expectation, the youth showed their agency in understanding and deciding what clues and cues they should apply to maintain a proper manner in contacting older members. Their maintenance-oriented individual language policy in communication with older community members was practised under the force of the latter and their customary language habit. This suggests that interlocutors’ age and generational status were a significant causal element that affected young people’s level of bilingualism manifested in their individual language practices and policy in the ethnic community domain (Nguyen & Hamid, 2021). Practices in the school domain

As I have discussed previously, mainstream school normally works towards uniformity and monolingualism (typically represented in its language policy) (Spolsky, 2009), that reflects the government’s language assimilation ideologies; and often creates the strongest influence on ethnic minority youth’s individual language policy which is connected with the transformation orientation. School, which is the most powerful institution that develops the L2 competence of minority youth (Spolsky, 2004), can therefore be considered as their fi rst and most important L2 domain in their process of being part of the mainstream (Nguyen & Hamid, 2019). From the early days of schooling, they face strong and continued pressure to switch to the mainstream language (Spolsky, 2009) through their learning and communication in this L2-dominant domain. Despite the strong assimilationist language environment, some young people may choose a bilingual language style where they apply their ethnic or other languages where relevant in communication. This can be observed in the present study, in the youth’s adaption to the Vietnamese-dominant environment and their flexible use of their L1 and other languages in interactions with different interlocutors. Below I discuss changes in their language practices in different stages of their schooling, from primary until college level. Primary school

As it is revealed from the youth’s stories, although they were required to learn and use Vietnamese from the early days of their schooling, they still spoke their ethnic language as a matter of habit. This seems to be

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obvious, as many of them had little or no contact with people speaking Vietnamese before schooling. Most of the youth recognised that primary school was the time when they most used their ethnic language for communication in this domain as, at that time, most of their school peers came from the same ethnic group, spoke the same L1 and could not speak Vietnamese well (Nguyen & Hamid, 2019). Y-Bien, for example, recalled the time when she was in her primary school: It is because when I studied from Grade 1 to Grade 5, I studied in a school near my village. I mostly communicated using Jarai language in my class. I never communicated in Vietnamese at that time. I only communicated with my teacher using Vietnamese when I was doing the reading practice and the teacher taught me how to read in Vietnamese. I communicated in Jarai in all other situations.

Being ‘immersed’ in the new language that is different from their L1, the youth often faced language difficulties in learning in the majority language in their early days of schooling. Many of them admitted that, at fi rst, they could not understand what their teachers said. A-Anton mentioned that his first-year overall marks in primary school were ‘poor’. He also observed that he could not study well because of the language difference. A-Than even reported that he could not pass the fi rst year and he had to repeat Grade 1 and believed that this was because of his language disadvantages. Some minority youth, however, were quicker in language acquisition than other students who were also minorities. Facing language challenges, Y-Kap, Y-Linh and Y-Xuong made efforts to adapt by patiently practising reading and writing in Vietnamese, and overcame their initial difficulties. Y-Kap discussed the ways in which she exerted her agency to approach Vietnamese lessons in her Grade 1 classroom: When I was in primary school, although I rarely communicated, we learnt in Kinh language. I caught the lessons. I wrote and I read, then I usually raised my hand to practise reading […]. Raised my hand to practise reading and express my ideas in Vietnamese. I read a lot of texts, tried to read as well as my teacher and the same to writing.

Along the same line, Y-Xuong believed that she quickly overcame language difficulties because she made efforts to learn Vietnamese from the fi rst days of schooling. As she related: At fi rst, I did not understand, but I asked some friends around. If they were local people like me and did not understand, too, I would ask other Kinh friends. They would help me if they understood.

While at this stage of their schooling, the youth’s language practices were just related to their habit, which was not necessarily based on a clear individual language policy, it can be suggested that during this period, the transformation line in their language practices was set up through their study in the mainstream language, and their maintenance-oriented

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language practices were due to their inadequate Vietnamese proficiency and the school setting where there were many students from the same ethnic group. After finishing two or three initial grades, most of the youth could carry out simple communication in Vietnamese, which enabled them to start directing their language voyage closer to the transformation line. Secondary school

As secondary schools were closer to the provincial town or town centre, these schools were often a mixed-ethnicity environment where there were Kinh students and students from different ethnic minority groups. In this environment, their ethnic language was also applied, although sparingly, among the youth who were from the same-ethnic group. This environment, however, did not encourage them to use languages other than Vietnamese. Most of them agreed that they used their ethnic language considerably less in secondary school, where they only had contact with several friends of the same language background. They, generally, switched to Vietnamese use in an attempt to identify with the dominant group. Some of the youth, however, admitted that they had difficulties in speaking Vietnamese and understanding their Kinh counterparts in their early contacts with them due to several reasons, including lack of Vietnamese proficiency and confidence. Y-Khau, in sharing her experience of language practices in secondary school, said that when she contacted Kinh friends, she felt shy and hesitated to speak Vietnamese. Along the same line, A-Diem said that he hesitated to talk with Kinh peers because he was not confident with his Vietnamese proficiency. As he related: I was afraid, not very confident. I was not very confident in communication. I was afraid, like I mentioned earlier, afraid that I could not speak many [Vietnamese] words correctly. I was not very confident. But after a time, I could integrate with the [Kinh] friends and talk with them.

In the early stage of attending secondary school, the minority youth often quickly found that their language habit was not the same as the discourse that was used in the common climate. In talking about their language use in secondary school, Y-Phuong and Y-Bien related some difficult situations which they experienced: Sometimes I hesitated to speak [Vietnamese]. They asked me to come and play with them, I just nodded or shook my head or smiled. I hesitated to speak, being afraid that I would speak [Vietnamese] incorrectly in terms of accent, and they would laugh at me. (Y-Phuong) When I was in Grade 6, whenever I spoke Jarai or another [minority] language in the class, the Kinh friends often said that I disdained them. So I had to practise speaking Vietnamese. Then I understood more about Vietnamese […]. I mean if they did not understand my language, they would think I was saying something bad about them. They often said so. (Y-Bien)

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The language assimilation process in school, however, was also quite quick for many minority youth in the present study. As they related, after the first months of feeling diffident about their Vietnamese, they gradually adapted themselves to the new environment. Since that time, the frequency of using the mainstream language significantly increased and Vietnamese started penetrating into all aspects of their school life. Secondary schooling, for many bilingual youth in this study, could be seen as a transition time when they strongly transformed themselves to the mainstream through their use of the majority language and their increasing contacts with Kinh majority peers. It can be seen from the discussions above that in addition to the study environment in which Vietnamese was dominant, majority peers’ attitudes towards their use of both Vietnamese and their ethnic language were perhaps a strong force which pushed the youth towards the transformation line. Although some of them still had opportunities to speak their L1 with some same-ethnicity peers, they seemed to realise that Vietnamese was the key that could help them study and join their Kinh peers. Under these forces from the school language policy and the majority peers, they learnt what was and was not rewarded (Commins, 1989) and what they needed to do to survive in this environment (Nguyen & Hamid, 2017). The youth’s agency in facing the language issues in this environment was revealed in their decision to practise an individual language policy which could assist them in improving their Vietnamese proficiency, being part of the school community and transforming themselves to the mainstream. High school/college

In high school and college, the minority youth were often more familiar with the environment of mainstream school and applied L2 more comfortably than before. Their L1 use, however, varied depending on factors such as the type of school and the place where it was located. While A-Lim and Y-Nom, for example, said that they rarely used their L1 in high school as their schools were closer to the town centre where they did not have many schoolmates who could speak their language, other students still had some opportunities to use the L1 in high school. Y-Diopris who studied in a vocational high school where there were more ethnic minority students than other high schools near the town centre, for example, reported that she joined a group of same-ethnic friends and could more frequently speak Rengao in school than before. Indochina College, according to many students, provided more comfortable surroundings for them with regard to ethnicity and L1 use. Some of them studied in a fi xed class in which nearly half of the students were from ethnic minority groups. They could hence utilise their L1, Vietnamese and other local minority languages in their communication with classmates of different ethnic backgrounds. This allowed them to apply a dual-line individual language policy at the same time where the boundary between the

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maintenance and transformation lines in their language practices sometimes seemed to be blur. A-Hoan, for example, related his experience of language practices in his college class: I contact with many friends in the class, for example in our class, there are friends who are Jarai, Bahnar, Rengao, Sedang, or Kinh. If I communicate with Sedang friends, I use Sedang language. It is the same [when I interact with] Bahnar friends, I communicate with them [using Bahnar language].

For many minority youth, it was apparent that the mainstream school created a favourable environment for them to use Vietnamese. According to Y-Xuong, her choice of using more Vietnamese in school was due probably to the impact of the surroundings. Some of them, in addition, related that their choice of using their ethnic language was related to the negative attitudes from the majority peers towards them and their language, similar to what they sometimes experienced in their secondary school. Y-Na, for example, shared her thoughts about being misunderstood by Kinh peers because of her L1 use: Honestly, I was afraid that if I spoke it (Rengao language), they would think that I said something bad about them. For example, I was talking about something else, but if I looked at them while talking, they would said I was saying something behind their back. Actually, I was taking about other things. So it is better to speak the language (Vietnamese). If I sit next to them and speak my ethnic language, it looks like I disrespect them. It is better to speak the common language, so everyone can understand.

Y-Na’s concern about Kinh friends’ reactions when they spoke Vietnamese or their L1 is an interesting example of the situations which ethnic minorities often experience in a subtractive language context. It can be observed that in environments where minority languages are dominated by a majority language, majority language speakers often think that minority people are being rude or saying something behind their back. Her priority clue or cue in dealing with this situation was perhaps conforming to the Kinh peers’ expectation. Peer attitudes, hence, were certainly a critical force which had an influence on Y-Na’s (and other youth’s) individual language policy which urged them to switch their language practices to the transformation line in this domain. It can be suggested that the youth’s language practices in school significantly varied across levels of schooling. In this domain, generally, there was some decrease in their L1 use and a considerable increase in their Vietnamese use. This tendency of change in their L1 and L2 use is common for minority youth in a subtractive school environment in which they develop their second/school language often at the cost of their mother tongue (Diaz, 1999). In addition to the force from school and its language policy, the youth’s peer relationship, especially the relationship with their

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Kinh majority peers, was another important force that strongly influenced their L1 and L2 use in this domain. Kinh peers and their language attitudes and practices often put pressure on the youth in encouraging Vietnamese use and discouraging L1 use. It seems that the youth’s occasional contacts with peers who were from their ethnic group or other minority groups were not enough to motivate them to practise a strong maintenanceoriented individual language policy in this environment. Due to the forces from the school’s Vietnamese-centred language policy and the majority peers, they ought (or were motivated) to exercise their agency in deciding to transform themselves through their increasing use of the L2 so they could integrate with their school climate. Their transformation-oriented individual language policy in the school domain might be seen by them as a critical policy which could help them learn about and reach out into the wider mainstream society. Practices in the church domain

Religious institutions can play an important role in providing support for the maintenance of the heritage language of minority people. As religious belief and linguistic purity are closely related, religion often preserves an earlier version of a language for public ceremonies. Therefore, importance is often attached to parishioners’ L1 in their religious activities (Spolsky, 2004, 2009). Individuals’ language practices in this domain, however, may vary in different religious activities/institutions. Religion significantly affects the spiritual life of many ethnic minority communities in the Central Highlands of Vietnam that, subsequently, has an impact on their language practices. The church provided the bilingual youth in this study, who were Christians (Catholics or Protestants), with more favourable conditions for L1 practices, while it also encouraged them to apply other languages when possible. Due to the ethnic diversity in the region, the most popular local minority languages (or regional minority languages, such as Bahnar or Jarai) and Vietnamese were often used in Bible and catechism activities in local churches, even where there were parishioners from different ethnicities. Other minority languages were also applied in group activities where people of the same ethnicity could participate and interact with each other using their L1. The youth whose mother tongue was the regional minority language had opportunities to practise their ethnic language in a more significant way in most of the religious activities including reading and listening to the Bible, learning catechism, taking part in daily Masses, listening and singing hymns and others. The Bible was translated into their L1 so it could be easily read and understood by their people. A-Diem, a Bahnar, for example, said that he participated in the church’s activities using Bahnar and sometimes Vietnamese. Y-Rieng also related her language experience in religious practices in the church: ‘The village which has just

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joined our parish, they say Masses in Jarai. In my village, we also sang hymns in Jarai when Father Tam was there’. Through religious activities, many youth, in addition, had more opportunities to engage with the written form of their ethnic language than in any other places. In this way, they improved their reading and writing, to a certain degree, in their L1. The majority language, Vietnamese, was also often used by the youth, especially when Kinh parishioners were present in this domain. Many participants of this study, in addition, took part in teaching catechism for younger people of their ethnic group when they applied Vietnamese together with their L1. Y-Khau, for example, related her experience in writing lesson plans and teaching catechism in Bahnar – her L1 – and Vietnamese: In writing catechism lesson plans, I have to translate from Kinh language into Bahnar. I have to think. For example, there are some Kinh words that are difficult to translate into Bahnar. I need to fi nd relevant words […]. Do not have enough [Bahnar] words to explain to older people, so I use Vietnamese to teach.

Some other youth whose L1 was not the regional minority language had opportunities to learn one more local language in church activities. A-Tan, a Rengao, for example, said that he often read the Bible in Bahnar language because there was no Bible in another minority language. Similarly, Y-Minh, another Rengao, related that she often used Bahnar and Vietnamese in her religious activities: We can read the Bible in two languages, Bahnar or Kinh. When there are Kinh people participating in the Masses, we read it in Kinh language. When we have private Masses (for Rengao people only), we read in Bahnar […]. Because Rengao language does not have a written form.

It is suggested that the youth were influenced by the church’s language policy, which affirms minority people’s right to their ethnic language as both a legal entitlement and a natural endowment (Ruiz, 1984) in using languages for religious practices. The church’s language practices were somewhat consistent with the youth’s needs to preserve the integrative values associated with their ethnic language and culture (Nguyen & Hamid, 2018), even when the main minority language used in church activities was sometimes not their mother tongue, or even when Vietnamese was also sometimes applied in these activities. The church and its minority language-priority policy, hence, can be seen as a positive force that pushed the youth back to the maintenance line, while still occasionally provided them with transformation opportunities. Under the force of this particular domain, which supported their L1 preservation and ethnic identity, they exercised their agency to practise their spoken L1 (and for some of them, the written L1) or another minority language, which was not supported in their mainstream school, and thereby practised their individual language policy as not only orienting strongly to the maintenance line, but also aligning with the transformation position when necessary.

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Practices in the wider society

In the wider society where social participants are quite diverse, individuals have to deal with complex interactions among interlocutors with different language capacities and cultural imaginations (Kramsch & Whiteside, 2008). In this open domain, bilingual speakers often construct their own polyphonic language patternings that ‘allow them to make maximal use of their language resources when participating in the overlapping communities of practice they are part of’ (Spotti, 2008: 34). As the majority language is dominant in this context, bilinguals often use this language more frequently as the use of this widely known language can include a wide range of communication participants. Bilinguals, however, may sometimes choose other languages to meet the demand of the subcontext, the communication situation, or the interlocutor’s language preference (Nguyen & Hamid, 2019). The youth in the present study reported that they applied Vietnamese as the fi rst choice and switched to L1, English or other languages when necessary in the wider society. In this context, they had chances to apply their languages via numerous social contacts in a more opened environment, whereby they could construct and practise their individual language policy in line with both the transformation and maintenance tendencies through alternative ways of practising the languages. As the wider social setting provided quite diverse social contacts whereby they could widen the scope of using the languages that they knew, in this section, I describe their language practices and policy in practices by examining their ways of using each language in different situations. In other words, how Vietnamese, their ethnic language, English and other languages were applied with different interlocutors in different communication situations by the youth in such an open and wide milieu. Vietnamese

As the mainstream language was clearly dominant, the youth confi rmed that in the wider society, Vietnamese was their fi rst choice in their communication with different people. Y-Khau and Y-Diopris, for example, said that Vietnamese was useful and applicable everywhere in most of their social activities. Y-Duong, in discussing her language use in her wider social contacts, stated that she defi nitely spoke Vietnamese to Kinh people and minority people whose language she did not know. Similarly, A-Diem believed that Vietnamese was the common language for communication among different ethnicities, so he used Vietnamese in talking with Kinh people and other ethnic minorities: ‘If I meet people from other ethnic minority groups, they don’t understand my [ethnic] language, I don’t understand their language, so I speak Vietnamese so they can understand’ he said. Along the same line, A-Lim agreed that the fi rst time he talked to people from other minority groups who did not know his L1, Vietnamese was a safe choice because ‘perhaps everyone knows

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Vietnamese’. Likewise, Y-Khau related that when she went to a remote district to work as a teacher, she stayed with a Sedang family for the first several months and had to speak Vietnamese to them because she did not know the Sedang language and they could not speak her language. In addition, Vietnamese was also applicable for the youth in mixedethnicity communication situations. They related that when they participated in social activities in which there were many people from different ethnic groups, they often used Vietnamese which was widely known and accepted by all ethnicities to make sure that everyone can understand. Y-Kap, for example, described mixed-ethnicity exchanges in which she participated in her journal: We usually have many dancing performance, ‘Gong’ dancing and exchanges with friends from other ethnic groups such as Sedang, Rengao, Jeh. But we get acquainted and communicate with each other in Vietnamese most of the time.

As we have observed from the discussions above, the youth considered and applied Vietnamese as the bridge language in their interethnic contacts, as this language was widely assigned as a ‘default’ communication tool by the majority of people in society. Their agency was revealed in their choice to use this language as a neutral lingua franca and a medium to connect with people from different ethnic groups, thereby, maintaining their tendency of transforming into the mainstream where they adapted to the common climate in communication (Nguyen & Hamid, 2019). Vietnamese hence constituted a means for their practices of transformationoriented individual language policy that helped them integrate with the mainstream society. Their individual language policy in the wider social communication was, hence, somewhat influenced by the power relationship between Vietnamese and other minority languages, as the power, dominance and popularity of Vietnamese were sometimes a force which had an impact on their agency exertion in terms of language choice, as they had limited language options and had to choose the most inclusive language in many situations of communication with Kinh or people who did not know their languages. L1 and other local minority languages

In this social setting, the minority youth sometimes had opportunities to apply their ethnic language in communication with out-group people who knew their language. In the province where the research site of this study is located, Bahnar is a regional minority language that is known by many people who are not Bahnar, as it is the most popular minority language around the provincial town. Y-Khau, for example, said that in the wider society, she sometimes met people from other minority groups who know Bahnar, her L1, so she preferred using Bahnar to Vietnamese in communication with these people. A-Anton also stated that as Bahnar and Rengao languages were quite similar, if he spoke

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Rengao, his ethnic language, with Bahnar people, they would still understand him. Similarly, A-Lim related that he occasionally had opportunities to speak a little Jarai, his L1, to people who would like to know about Jarai language. As most of the youth in the present study could speak at least three languages, including their ethnic language, Vietnamese, and one or more than one local minority language other than their L1, they sometimes applied the local language(s) in talking with people of other minority groups. As Bahnar language was the most popular minority language in the provincial town and nearby areas, many of them knew Bahnar and could use Bahnar in talking to Bahnar people or people speaking Bahnar. Similarly, due to highly diverse ethnic contacts in the research site in particular and the region in general, many youth could learn, to a lesser or greater extent, other local minority languages in their daily interethnic interactions. A-Anton, who worked as a tourist guide, said that because of his work requirements and his extensive social relations, he usually used many local minority languages other than Rengao, his L1. Similarly, A-Lim, a Jarai, revealed that he participated in non-profit social and community activities by which he contacted many people from other minority groups and spoke Bahnar. He believed that he could ‘speak Bahnar even better than [his] ethnic language’. In line with such discussion, the youth revealed that as they knew many languages, translanguaging between their L1, Vietnamese and other local minority languages was common in their language practices in the wider society. Translanguaging was often applied in their interactions with people who were from other minority groups, that might be seen by them as a mediator for balancing language and ethnic differences and a means for claiming multiple identities connected with the languages (Nguyen, 2019a). In addition, minority people’s language preference and language attitudes were also important factors that influenced the youth’s language practices in their social contacts. They agreed that generally, minority people preferred using a minority language (either their L1 or the language of the other interlocutor) to Vietnamese in communication with each other, as they considered minority languages as a key to express the ‘sympathy’ between minorities and win others’ affection and fondness (Nguyen & Hamid, 2019). Y-Khau, for example, related a situation where she spoke with a minority woman: ‘At fi rst, we started talking in Kinh language, then we realised that we were also minorities, we spoke Bahnar […]. I spoke Bahnar to show them that I was also a minority’. Y-Diopris and A-Than also stated that it was easier to be friendly and close to each other if two minority people used a minority language in their communication, even though it was not their L1. Similarly, A-Anton confirmed that in general, ethnic minorities liked people who could communicate with them in their language. He said: ‘About preference and sentiment of this ethnic group or that ethnic group, if I know their language, they will be fond [of me] […]. It is easier to be friendly’.

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Individual Language Policy

The opportunities to apply their ethnic language and other minority languages in wider-social contacts offered the youth possibilities to orient their individual language policy towards the maintenance line, although their maintenance-oriented language policy in this context was not necessarily as strong as in the family–ethnic community domain. Using their L1 and other minority languages in the wider society, the youth also performed their agency to show their differences from the Kinh majority and reintroduce themselves as a member of their ethnic group. Their agency associated with the maintenance tendency was exercised strongly in their decision to use a minority language in communication with people from other ethnic minority groups to share the feelings of consensus and similarities and to support themselves as ethnic minorities in contrast with the Kinh majority. In doing so, they exhibited their maintenance-oriented individual language policy, through which they utilised the minority languages to emphasise their ethnic pride and expressed their identity distinctiveness (Nguyen & Hamid, 2019). English

In Vietnamese society where English is only a foreign language, English is not applicable for most people in their daily interactions. Some of the youth, however, could occasionally apply some English in their work and in contacting people from other countries. Among them, A-Anton appeared to use English more frequently as he was working fulltime as a tour guide. As he wrote in his journal: A Western tourist whose name is Milan came to my office. He’s from France. Although he is French, he could speak English very well. He wanted a two-day tour. Then we went around the whole day. We communicated with each other in English. More fortunately, we could learn from each other. The tourist asked me [to teach him some] Vietnamese and I asked him some French [words]. Then we both knew one more language.

Other youth also said that they sometimes used a bit of English when they occasionally chanced on foreigners. A-Diem, who also had some experience of working as a tour guide, related a situation when he spoke English with a foreign tourist: They asked me many questions about cultures and ethnicities. They just asked about cultures, ethnicities and places [to visit] […]. They asked me what beautiful places to visit were. They came in the souvenir shop and asked what the traditional things were. They asked about a Bahnar dress: ‘what is this used for? it is worn for what purpose?’. They asked many things.

In line with such discussion, Y-Nom related a situation when she contacted a foreign man in a shop: Once I went out to buy a calculator, I saw a Western person who was [working] in Vinh Xuyen. Ahh, he was buying calculators. Then he asked

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the shop-assistant. Then he saw the price ‘fi fty thousand’ (Đồng, Vietnam currency), he said ‘so expensive’. Then the lady (shop-assistant) said ‘what, don’t understand’ - she said in Vietnamese, then asked me to explain. I said: ‘he complained that it was expensive’. ‘This is not expensive, no!’ – she said – ‘no!’ He wanted to bargain, like ‘forty’. ‘Forty!’- he said. The lady said: ‘no!’, then she kept showing the original price. He did not agree, he said. After that, I asked him where he was from, in English: ‘where from?’ Then he said, from Australia, as I remember.

English was, hence, another interesting ingredient for the youth’s practices of individual language policy aligning with the transformation orientation. By speaking English in interactions with foreigners, even if this was a ‘must’, as these foreign people did not know their languages, they showed their agency in supporting their interlocutors’ language preference (Nguyen & Hamid, 2019). Their English use in these situations was a tool for them to get aligned with the ‘international norm’ of language and transform themselves to the ‘wider mainstream’ outside their home country.

Construction of Practised Language Policy: Maintenance and Transformation in Implementational Spaces

It is revealed from the youth’s stories that living in an environment in which they were surrounded and influenced by different forces from the domains which they belonged to or participated in, they regularly applied a number of clues and cues to legitimate a multitude of language choices as they travelled across multiple ethnic and cultural worlds. These domain forces had partly initiated the formation of lived implementational spaces where they found themselves in the position where they were faced with language choices that mirrored different images of their ethnicity and the mainstream society. In that process of navigating their language practices, the youth exercised their agency to construct their practised language policy which is deemed appropriate within the domain (Nguyen & Hamid, 2018) in an effort to transform themselves into the common flow through Vietnamese and English, while still maintaining particular ethnic features that differentiated them from the majority through their ethnic language and other minority languages. The youth’s agency in performing their practised language policy operated in multiple implementational spaces created by the domain forces and by themselves and their interlocutors. This practised language policy was associated with their bilingual identity in which both maintenance and transformation lines were active (Nguyen, 2021a). Their practised language policy was reflected in: •

their situational policy-in-practices where they applied different patterns of language preference across situations and thereby supported their interlocutor’s customary habit of language use or followed the interlocutor’s preference of falling in line with the common tendency;

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•

the functions of their language alternation practices associated with the role of ‘preserving’ and ‘integrating’, which are related to their choice of L1/other local minority languages and L2/English, respectively; their tendency to gradually move closer to L2 and the general values that were widely accepted by many people in their living environment.

•

Situational policy-in-practices

Situational policy-in-practices are inspired by McCarty’s (2011b: xii) discussion that policy should not be viewed as a disembodied thing, but rather as a ‘situated sociocultural process’, and Mathews’ (2000) idea of situational identity, which refers to people’s identity (being) shifted in different contexts. The bilingual youth in the present study shifted between different policies which allowed their shift of language practices so these practices would suit the immediate interaction in contacting different interlocutors in different communication situations and contexts across domains (Canagarajah, 2007). The youth’s policy of choosing among language varieties and language styles was strongly affected by their interlocutors, the people they were speaking to or communicating with, and the language norm in the domain. By shifting their language policies as the addressees altered their codes, they were able to practise their language appropriately to meet the demands of the settings. In the family and ethnic community, their practised language policy varied in communicating with interlocutors of different ages, sometimes depending on the latter’s language attitudes. As we can see from their stories, their language practices situationally changed in communication with their parents, siblings, young and older community members. Primary school was the place where they often chose their L1 in their communication outside the classroom as most of their schoolmates spoke the same L1 and could not speak Vietnamese well. When Vietnamese was no longer a barrier, some of them still occasionally applied their ethnic language when they met appropriate interlocutors. In the wider society, although Vietnamese was more frequently used by the youth as they supposed that this was the most inclusive language, L1 and other local minority languages were also applied when they met suitable addressees. By identifying the interlocutor as one of the fi rst influential clues in their policy of language choice, they positioned themselves in different roles and relationships with the interlocutors, such as parent–child, brother–sister, senior–junior and same-age peers (Sankoff, 1972). The complex interactions with interlocutors of different language capacities in different social networks shaped advantageous implementational spaces where they manipulated their situational policy-in-practices. The youth, in general, applied their situational language policy to practise their language properly in communication with each interlocutor for two main purposes: to support the interlocutor’s customary habit or perceptions of

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language use or to follow the interlocutor’s preference of falling in line with the common tendency. On the one hand, the youth’s situational policy-in-practices aimed at maintaining their ethnic language and other local languages in communication with some groups of interlocutors to respect or support those people’s customary habits or perceptions of language use. This was salient in their language practices at home and in the ethnic community, where they seemed to perform a ‘situational agency’ to tactfully manipulate their code choice which responded to communication participants’ age differences, relationships and community norms. Their L1-priority policy which reminded them to use more L1 in speaking to parents and older people than in talking to siblings and younger people suggests that they were sensitive to the hierarchical relationship between themselves and their interlocutors. This policy was supposed by them to bring on the least generational and linguistic conflict. Y-Diopris, for example, considered L1 use in her communication with her parents as a sign of politeness. Y-Kap kept using L1 most of the time in talking with her parents to support and respect their customary habits of language use. Similarly, L1 use in speaking to elderly people in the ethnic community was also seen to be a proper manner of showing respect for seniors. Considerably, the youth’s policy of choosing L1 or local minority languages in talking to minority people to get affection from them revealed their awareness of supporting these people’s customary preference or perceptions of language use. This indicates that the youth’s interlocutors also contributed to creating advantageous implementational spaces where they operated their situational policyin-practices associated with their ethnic language or other local minority languages. The youth’s maintenance-aligned language policy in these situations is evidence of their understanding of the role of minority languages within the cultural context as well as their use of the languages as a way of enhancing group solidarity, ethnic pride and belief similarity (Ryan & Giles, 1982). The minority youth, on the other hand, constructed their situational policy-in-practices which aimed at following their interlocutors or indicating that they were joining them and falling in line with them, with common values and tendency through their choice of more Vietnamese or sometimes English. The transformation-aligned policy of the youth was salient in school and wider society environments where Vietnamese was the norm or widely used, that initially provided favourable implementational spaces for this policy to operate. From secondary school until college, they exerted their agency to apply this practised language policy in frequently using Vietnamese because most of their schoolmates were Kinh majorities or from other ethnic minority groups. Outside the ethnic community and school, the youth’s agency was shown in their choice of Vietnamese as the top language option in communicating with different people as they believed that this language was the most inclusive and that

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‘everyone knew Vietnamese’. The situational policy which persuaded them to follow the interlocutor’s shift to Vietnamese or English, in addition, manifested in some participants’ interactions with their L1 relations. Y-Xuong, Y-Rieng and A-Anton, for example, sometimes used Vietnamese, translanguaging or English in speaking with their siblings because their siblings also went to school or workplaces and then brought Vietnamese, English and new language manners to their home. Likewise, Y-Khau often used Vietnamese in talking to her village friends, although they all could speak the same L1, because her friends ‘liked Vietnamese’. Their agency was also situationally exerted in using English in communication with random foreigners. The youth’s interlocutors who preferred Vietnamese or English in their interactions, hence, encouraged them to open up implementational spaces where they constructed their practised language policy following the transformation tendency. In short, the youth’s various language choices and manners constructed their situational policy-in-practices where they applied different language options and styles in different situations to make their speech approximate more closely to those of their interlocutor (Bentahila, 1983). The communication participant effect intersected with the location or place to construct favourable implementational spaces for the youth’s practised language policy to operate because in each identifiable location, there were typical participants who had their own language beliefs and practices (Spolsky, 2012). Their language choice was deeply rooted within the implementational spaces which involved their interactional moments, local relationships, higher-level policies, discourses, knowledge systems, geographical places and so on (Wyman, 2009). The youth can be seen as ‘tiny social barometers’ who were sensitive (Harrison, 2007) to the surrounding conditions of their language practices. Their individual language policy is the key to their decision-making processes, which guides their everyday language beliefs and practices to moving closer to or further from the maintenance and/or transformation lines. The youth’s practised language policy, hence, situationally switched between the maintenance and transformation orientations to suit these participants’ beliefs, practices and position. Preservation and integration in different domains

The bilingual youth performed their practised language policy differently in the family–ethnic community, the school, the church and the wider society. Each of these sites was associated with the predominance of one language (Lamarre & Paredes, 2003) and pressures of various kinds affected their use of that language rather than the other(s) (Mackey, 1968). As previously discussed, one’s individual language policy is unseparated from contextual forces from the domains in which one is present, it is argued that the youth, in their language alternation practices, expressed their relatively

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different language policy tendencies in different domains. In each domain, they performed their agency to direct their language policy to preserve L1 and other minority languages and/or to integrate using L2 and English. The domains, hence, provided advantageous conditions for creating implementational spaces where the youth’s practised language policy was connected with either or both maintenance and transformation tendencies. In the family–ethnic community domain, the youth, based on their habit of using the mother tongue and their traditional contacts with members of the family and community, constructed their practised language policy as connected more with preservation values, although they sometimes let the out-group languages penetrate into this L1-dominant space. In fact, this seemed to be the site where the youth found most favourable implementational spaces to use L1 as compared with the others. The presence of Vietnamese and other languages in their language practices in this domain was not as significant as that of L1. Their ethnic language had been predominant and played a central role in the relationship between the youth and their parents as well as other older people in their village. Many of the youth, through using L1 with parents and elderly people, showed their agency in their desires to preserve the traditional relationships associated with L1. Although some of them spoke more Vietnamese when talking to parents, and although more Vietnamese and English was used by them in interactions with siblings or young community members, L1, in most cases, was still more frequently applied and held in high regard, regardless of its status outside the ethnic community. It is indicated that the youth’s family–ethnic community domain represented important implementational spaces in which they consequently determined to perform their practised language policy as a way of preserving the traditional language practices and the values associated with L1. The youth’s choice to use more L1 in communication with people in their family and ethnic community, moreover, evidences that the family and neighbourhood domains were major forces for their maintenance-oriented language policy to be reconstructed and retained, that was critical for their L1 preservation and ethnic identity development. In the school domain, due to the school language policy that considered Vietnamese as the language of instruction and the norm, as well as the preponderance of Kinh majority students, which were powerful forces on the youth’s language alternation practices, their practised language policy was gradually attached more with their integration role, although L1 was also sometimes another choice in this L2-dominant space. Their high degree of using L1 outside the classroom in primary school was partly due to the number of their same-ethnicity interlocutors. The school, then, took over from the youth’s family the task of socialisation (Spolsky, 2005), offered favourable conditions for the establishment of implementational spaces for their transformation-directed language policy, which pushed them closer to L2, L2 groups and L2 society. In a mixed-ethnicity

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environment from secondary school to college, as most of their school peers were Kinh and Vietnamese was seen as the norm in school, the youth’s L2-priority language policy was naturally constructed and practised so they could integrate successfully into school. They enacted their agency to integrate with L2 and L2 groups, as this seemed to be the survival choice for them regarding both study and school relations. Their L1 use in school was limited because sometimes this excluded them from the common climate and created a certain ‘stigma of otherness’ attached to them and their L1. Perhaps this is the reason why some students, namely Y-Bien and Y-Na, in their efforts to integrate into the school milieu, sometimes decided to avoid speaking L1 to friends who were from their ethnic group. Hence, the youth’s practised language policy was essentially transformation-directed, which encouraged them to use Vietnamese as a means of integration with different school groups in this particular domain. In the church domain where conditions for minority languages to be applied as a priority were facilitated, the youth not only had many opportunities to direct their practised language policy towards preservation values through the use of their L1 and other minority languages, but also performed their integration willingness through the use of Vietnamese (and sometimes, of the regional minority language). Lived implementational spaces were created through many religious activities in which the youth’s individual language policy was made closer to the maintenance orientation through their practices of L1 or other minority languages. The church was also the place where some of them had chances to be exposed to the written form of their ethnic language more frequently. By using and understanding their L1, they executed their agency in constructing their practised language policy to preserve L1 and L1 values for themselves, then transmitting these values to others, as in the cases of some youth who participated in teaching catechism in the church. As the church often attached importance to people’s mother tongue in its religious activities, it could be seen as ‘a conservator of tradition’, in which the youth could fi nd advantageous implementational spaces for their policy of conserving L1 values and their traditions to figure. Other youth who learnt one more local minority language other than their L1 in the church could also contribute to preserving that minority language. In addition, the youth’s practised language policy in relation to their use of Vietnamese (and sometimes the regional minority language) in this domain was, to some extent, aimed at integrating themselves with the common climate, that could assist them in the process of integrating with the society outside the church. In the wider society domain, where the youth’s contact and language use were quite diverse, they often found multiple implementational spaces which allowed them to construct their practised language policy associated with either or both maintenance and transformation orientations. Their language policy in this open domain mainly encouraged them to present themselves in the role of integrating through L2 and English, but sometimes

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switched to portray themselves as a preserver when using L1 and other local minority languages. It is clear that Vietnamese was common and widely applied by the youth and their interlocutors, that constituting a means of integration that helped them to fall in line with the mainstream society. The youth exercised their agency in their decision to use Vietnamese in interactions with Kinh as well as people from other minority groups, to show that they wanted to be, or had already become, a part of the mainstream society. Their Vietnamese-first policy in contacting people from other minority groups who did not know their L1 and in mixed-ethnicity communication facilitated their connection with people who did not speak the same L1 and their integration with the common climate. Likewise, when the youth showed their agency in applying their English-only policy in communication with foreigners, they were aware that they were using the ‘international norm’ of language to integrate themselves with the international common climate. In addition, when applying minority language-preference policy in talking with people from minority groups to win their affection and sympathy, many youth exerted their agency in their attempts to draw themselves as a person who tried to preserve minority people’s language values and consider their use of minority languages as an emblem of their uniqueness (Kanno, 2000). The youth’s practised language policy connected with their integrating and preserving roles in the wider society domain constantly changed in different implementational spaces, which were created in their different interactional situations. In short, the youth’s practised language policy through which they mainly ‘preserved’ L1/minority languages and/or mainly ‘integrated’ through L2/English varied across implementational spaces in the four domains. For them, each language – considering its function of preserving or integrating – was more associated with a certain domain than the others (Fishman, 1972). The most L1–preservation domain for them was the family–ethnic community. The most Vietnamese–integration domains for them were the school and the wider society. The church domain seemed to provide them more favourable conditions for L1-maintenance and preservation. Furthermore, in an overall look at all of the domains discussed, Vietnamese was more likely than the other languages to be used across sites. Their use of translanguaging between the languages was perhaps a consequence of moving between these sites. Their agency in constructing their practised language policy associated with the maintenance or transformation line, hence, was frequently adjusted to appropriately respond to the domains’ formal/informal language policies and the interlocutors’ language preference. Transforming to the generality

In taking an overview of the youth’s practised language policy, I realised that their policy tendency was moving closer to that of the

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generality of people in their living environment. In other words, in general, they seemed to use more and more Vietnamese (and English) than before. The youth’s policy of transforming to the language of the majority was recognised in their language practices in school, home–ethnic community and the wider society. The process of aligning closer to the generality in the youth’s practised language policy clearly took place in school, which played the role of a transit by which they, from L1-dominant users, adapted the language of the mainstream society and became L2-dominant bilinguals in many domains of their life. It is noted that before going to school, L1 was dominant for the youth and their Vietnamese use was limited. In school, their language policy quickly changed. Although some of them had initial language difficulties, they all fi nally enacted their agency to adapt to the school norms. It is clear that the dominance of Vietnamese in school and the educational environment where the language emphasis was on Vietnamese initiated the creation of advantageous implementational spaces for them to modify their practised language policy and make it closer to the transformation line, not only because their schoolmates and teachers did not speak their L1, but also because they needed Vietnamese to survive in the playground and classroom (Diaz, 1999). The process of transforming to the dominant group’s norms in the youth’s language policy, hence, was naturalised by them. By applying the Vietnamesepreference policy in this setting, they were seeking to possess the necessary symbolic capital (Bourdieu, 1977) to fall in line with the school climate. From school, the youth brought Vietnamese to their family–ethnic community and, as a result, their process of transforming to the generality in their practised language policy also took place at home and in their community. The youth’s language practices in communication with their siblings and young village peers are clear evidence of this process. Many young people showed their agency in the ways they brought Vietnamese home, inserted it into their L1 and together switched to use more Vietnamese. This language policy transformation, hence, was the tendency of many young people in their family and ethnic community who had shared views and interests. Together, these young people created favourable implementational spaces for their Vietnamese use and their language policy shift. Similarly, L2 use in communication with parents, which was found in some of the youth’s language practices in their home, is further evidence of their process of moving closer to Vietnamese. They exercised their agency in increasing their Vietnamese use in talking to their parents, and this was possibly related to their feelings of who they were in the larger world outside the home–ethnic community (Caldas, 2006). The youth’s feeling of being related to the outside world and their parents’ flexible attitudes towards their Vietnamese use contributed to constructing favourable implementational spaces for the former’s

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language policy to change. Their process of aligning closer to the generality and the L2 in their practised language policy in their family and ethnic community, hence, was profoundly affected by the world outside (including the school and the wider society) that they had experienced. Outside family, community village and school, the youth seemed to be quickly swept into the general vortex of the common language use in the wider society where advantageous implementational spaces for Vietnamese to be applied as the most widely used language were facilitated. Although L1 and other minority languages were also applicable, the youth constructed their practised language policy which considered Vietnamese as the essential language in their social contacts, as the language was the one that was believed to be accepted everywhere by the majority of people in the society. Their agency in deciding to use Vietnamese as the obvious/ neutral choice in interactions with Kinh and people of minority groups as compared with L1 and other local languages was to transform their individual language policy to the generality. Likewise, in mixed-ethnicity contacts, it is demonstrated from the youth’s choice of Vietnamese to make sure everyone could understand that they were aware of the common norms accepted by most of the people. Another example of the youth’s travel closer to the generality in constructing their practised language policy is related to their occasional use of English. Some of the youth showed their agency in supporting foreigners’ language preference by applying English in communication with the latter, that is evidence of their ongoing move to the ‘modern’ tendency of the majority and their wish to more actively participate in the mainstream where English was held in high regard by both majority and minority people. The youth’s practised language policy which supported their transformation to the generality, as previously discussed, was relevant not only to their short-term daily language practices at the individual level, but might also be related to their ethnic group’s long-term tendencies of language maintenance or shift (Giles & Johnson, 1987; Nguyen & Hamid, 2019). This language policy tendency can be referred to as an ‘upward convergence’ strategy where minority people in Vietnamese society attempt to transform to the dominant languages and get closer to the majority’s norms. Their policy tendency is partly a consequence of the social and political forces which impose on them pressure to fit into the mainstream and not to be different, and encourage them to believe that Vietnamese and English can facilitate their access to education, economic opportunity and social mobility (Nguyen & Hamid, 2019).

5 Perceived Language Policy

The Youth’s Stories: Policy in Beliefs

Language beliefs of individuals are their attitudes about the values and prestige of languages and language varieties or the ways of using language. If language practices are what people actually do with their language, language beliefs are what they believe should be done with the language (Spolsky, 2004). Beliefs are not only about language, but also about one’s self as a speaker of the language, other speakers of the language and the community speaking the language (Gibbons & Ramirez, 2004). Through their language beliefs, individuals take stances not just on language itself, but also on the values of the language (Dailey-O’Cain & Liebscher, 2011) which are also associated with its speaker and speaking community. These beliefs may originate from various sources that are related to the individuals’ language experience or the external forces related to linguistic views and discourses of the community or society of which they are a member (Dufva, 2006). Therefore, understanding language beliefs at the individual level is important to develop, pursue and implement higher-level language policies (Nguyen & Hamid, 2018). Compared with monolinguals, bilinguals speaking more than one language may experience a more complicated relationship with their languages. In living with multiple languages, the youth in this study had developed their perceived language policy as reflected in their various beliefs about the languages they knew with reference to the role, importance, position or value of each. In this chapter, I present the youth’s narratives about some salient features of their language beliefs and policy-in-beliefs related to ethnicity, utility, self-esteem and bilingualism. I  bring into focus their agency in enacting their policy in beliefs (the ‘agent’ component) and their construction of maintenance- and transformation-oriented policy in ideological spaces (the ‘process’ component). The ‘level’ component of their perceived language policy is, however, not indicated as explicitly as in the previous chapter about their practised language policy, although it is also brought into the discussion where relevant.

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Beliefs in relation to language and ethnicity

There is a close connection between folk bilinguals’ ethnicity and the ways they valued their multiple languages. As language and ethnicity strongly interact with one another, language is also a strong ethnic marker and an important cue for others about a person’s ethnic identity (Deaux, 2000). In sharing their language beliefs, the youth in this study also related their L1 to their ethnicity. Minority languages can be attached importance for the ethnic value that they bring to their speakers. As language is a marker of ethnicity, using L1 is often seen as one’s way of expressing one’s ethnic identity. Many participants agreed that ethnic minority people should try to speak their L1 whenever possible. For them, speaking their L1 was one of the clearest ways to let others know their ethnicity, and it was not desirable to forget the language of their ethnic group, which was a sign of one’s ethnic belonging. Y-Xuong and A-Anton, for example, believed that they should maintain practising their L1 to preserve their ethnic characters. Y-Nom, in sharing her perceptions about the role and value of her ethnic language, stated over and over again that she and her family tried to keep their ‘ethnic traditions’. She confided that as she matured, she came to believe that although Vietnamese was more convenient for her in social contacts, she should keep using Jarai, her L1, because she belonged to an ethnic minority. Likewise, Y-Na said that she was proud of the language of her ethnic group: I am a Rengao, I have my own language and culture. I feel proud of that […]. No matter what people out there say, I do not care, but I was born like that, I respect our customs, traditions and language.

Y-Na, for that reason, maintained that it was important to keep her ethnic language so she would not ‘lose roots’. Similarly, A-Lim, in revealing that his Vietnamese proficiency was better than his L1, Jarai, in terms of both speaking and writing, asked me [the interviewer]: ‘Do I lose my roots, Miss?’ He seemed to worry that if his most fluent language was not the L1, he might be considered by others as a person who lost his roots (Nguyen & Hamid, 2016), and by that way, connected his L1 with his cultural roots/origin. In line with such discussion, Y-Trinh stated that overusing Vietnamese in family communication meant disrespecting one’s ethnic language. A-Than, likewise, related a story about some of his ethnic minority peers who tried to avoid using their L1 and liked using Vietnamese only. He was critical of this language attitude, and was of the belief that such an attitude was unacceptable. A-Than’s opposition to rejecting one’s ethnic language was not uncommon. Ethnic minorities who do not want to use or do not frequently use their L1 are often criticised by their in-group members. Minorities who do not know the language of their ethnic group are also often negatively appraised by others, especially by people who come

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from a minority group. A few other participants of the present study, however, had more tolerant views on this issue (although to a different extent), as they stated that it did not matter much if a minority could not speak their ethnic language, as they met many young people like that. In addition, as language is commonly seen as a carrier of tradition and its speakers’ ethnic identity, it is important for minority language speakers to transmit the language to their future generations to preserve their ethnic value. Connecting their L1 with ethnicity, the youth also shared their views about how to keep their ethnic language for their future children. Y-Na, for instance, said: ‘I can transmit [the ethnic language] to my children and grandchildren, [wishing that] it will never die out’. Many of them, in addition, stated that they would certainly teach their children their ethnic language, that was key to preserve their roots and traditional values. A-Lim explained the reason why he would teach his children Jarai, his L1: ‘Because we should keep our traditions, we have to speak our mother tongue. If their father is a Jarai, but they can’t speak Jarai, so they are not Jarai’. Y-Bien also said that although she would let her children learn Vietnamese, which was important for their social life, she would still teach them her ethnic language so they would not forget their roots. For Y-Khau, her ethnic language, Bahnar, would still be important and she would not accept if her children lost their roots. On the other hand, she also wanted their children to speak Vietnamese and English well, as she reasoned: ‘Children should be better than their parents’. Likewise, Y-Kap also stated that she would maintain both L1 and Vietnamese in her future family. Some other participants were consistent in affirming that they would try to teach their children both L1 and Vietnamese, and English, if possible, because they realised which languages would be applicable in the future society. Along the same line, in talking about preserving her language for the next generation, Y-Nom, a Jarai, said: Because it is said that parents have influences on their children, I think I will do the same as my parents. First, no matter what it is. I say so because I am very afraid that I am an ethnic, but if I have a Kinh boyfriend, for example, my future children, I will teach them the ethnic language fi rst. Because I want to be like my parents, to keep it (the ethnic language). Vietnamese, they certainly know when they get out and go to school.

Interestingly, Y-Xuong stated that she would teach her future children Vietnamese and English first in case she could only choose two main languages for them. As she reasoned, the two languages were more necessary for her children to survive and participate in the mainstream, and have more opportunities to succeed. However, she confi rmed that if she was able to teach them more languages, she would include Jeh, her L1. Ethnic identity and cultural pride seemed to naturally become an integrative motivation (Gardner & Lambert, 1972) for the youth to enact their agency in figuring their strong maintenance-oriented individual language

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policy. This policy encouraged them to perceive that one’s ‘authentic’ ethnic identity was related to the way they treated their ethnic language in daily language choice and practices; and that abandoning one’s L1 could be seen an undesirable behaviour, or more negatively, an act of betrayal or lack of allegiance and loyalty to their ethnicity (Kim & Duff, 2012). The youth’s agency was found in the ways they expressed their positive valuation of their ethnic language, their willingness to identify with their ethnic roots, traditions and their wish to teach their future children the very subtle aspects of their ethnic people’s language behaviour (Gardner & Lambert, 1972). For them, perhaps, this maintenance-oriented language policy was critical to keep them aware of the values of their ethnic language, which partly defi ned who they were and where they came from, which was a badge of their ethnic pride and distinctiveness, which represented the vitality of their ethnolinguistic people and community. Beliefs in relation to language utility

For ethnic minorities, the practical values or usefulness of language are often connected with the dominant languages. Vietnamese and English were the languages most frequently mentioned by the youth in this study in talking about the usability of languages and the utilities of each language in their life. Practical values of a language are related to its popularity as a common communication medium that can enable minority speakers to get access to social networks, education and economic or social benefits. The youth affi rmed that among all the languages they knew, Vietnamese was the most useful language for them in Vietnamese society. In talking about the role of Vietnamese in her life, Y-Diopris commented: ‘Without Vietnamese, how can I travel around?’ Communication and social contact seemed to be the top reasons why Vietnamese was thought to be the most important language in terms of utility. As observed by the youth, almost everyone in Vietnamese society could speak Vietnamese, so this language was useful for them in contacting people of different ethnicities wherever they went to. Y-Minh, for example, said that as she knew Vietnamese, it was easy and convenient for her to communicate with Kinh and other people. Y-Hong also stated that as Vietnamese was a common language in Vietnam, it was useful for her to interact with different people in different areas of the country: Kinh language is the common language of Vietnamese people. That means [with Kinh language], it is more convenient for me to go shopping and communicate, compared with the friends living in remote districts. For example, if I go travelling or go far away for work, I have to know Kinh language because it is the mainly-used language by people, right? Other ethnic groups’ languages, they are different in different areas. They mainly speak Kinh. So it is more convenient to know Kinh language, as it is convenient for communication.

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Similarly, A-Doan believed that Vietnamese was convenient because it was the language of the whole country, and everyone in Vietnam could speak Vietnamese. As he said: I have to speak Kinh language, because of study and communication. Kinh language is a language of the whole Vietnam. I can use Kinh language wherever I go to because obviously, Vietnamese people all speak Kinh. So it is convenient, easier and more beneficial. Even in remote areas, they can speak the language (Kinh language) everywhere.

The youth all agreed that because Vietnamese was the common language of the society, it was a useful tool for widening their social contacts, as the language could provide them more opportunities to make friends, to know more people and to widen their circle of acquaintances. A-Lim, for example, commented: ‘As compared with people who do not know Vietnamese, people who know Vietnamese have a wider [social] contacts’. Similarly, discussing the importance of Vietnamese, Y-Phuong said that Vietnamese was useful for her in terms of communication and this meant she could interact with more people: For example, if I like a Kinh person, and want to make friend with her or him, I can speak Kinh language [so it is easier] to make friend […]. In the future I have to interact with many people, and have to widen my social contacts. So Kinh language is very important.

In addition, many youth thought that it was more advantageous for them to learn in Vietnamese in school because it was related to their career in the future. A-Anton said: ‘It (Vietnamese) is necessary for my work’. Vietnamese was clearly advantageous because as A-Hoang and Y-Huong explained, Vietnamese was the general language, and a good Vietnamese proficiency was a requirement if they wanted to have a job in the wider society. In line with such discussion, A-Dang related that many ethnic minority people now considered Vietnamese as the language of career opportunity. He said: At present, people who work for the government’s services speak Kinh language only. As what I see, many people encourage their children to know some Kinh language, so it will be easier for them to find a job later on. If they know their mother tongue only, it is difficult for them to have a job.

Another advantage of acquiring and learning in Vietnamese mentioned by many youth is related to knowledge. They believed that as a powerful language, Vietnamese was a means of transmitting knowledge effectively in comparison to their L1. Y-Duong, for instance, suggested that Vietnamese was useful for her to learn experiences from others or read books. In discussing the usefulness of Vietnamese as the school language, Y-Trinh said that it was a language of study: Sort of, we can use it (Kinh language) to study, as a means for study. We can study about teaching or study about other languages. Because it (Kinh language) is the most popular language at the present. So everyone understands Kinh language.

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The youth’s transformation-oriented individual language policy was revealed in their beliefs and awareness of the utilities of Vietnamese in travelling, communication, social contact, career opportunity and knowledge acquisition, and of the role of this language as an escalation for their equal participation in the mainstream society and their upward mobility. As they understood the utilities and the role of Vietnamese, they exerted their agency in directing their beliefs towards the practical values of this language and justifying its existence in terms of its usefulness in achieving some utilitarian goals (Wee, 2003). Being aware of the dominant position and popularity of Vietnamese in society, the youth displayed their transformation tendency in figuring their individual language policy as reflected in the ways they valued the language in relating it to different instrumental advantages which they had or wished to have as a Vietnamese language speaker. In addition, English, the global language, is often believed to bring many economic advantages to its users in non-English speaking societies. Discussing the practical values of English, many youth thought that English was defi nitely important for them, as this foreign language was ‘the trend’ of this society. In discussing the applicability of English, Y-Rieng and A-Tan, for instance, said that English was the world’s language and the trend of the world: English, in terms of work, is related to the world. It is the common language for the whole world. (Y-Rieng) Because at the present, the trend of the world is that, they need English. So if I have a job [which requires English] or go abroad, I will know how to communicate with people, easier, I think so. (A-Tan)

The youth also indicated other possible benefits that English could bring to them. Y-Bien, for example, mentioned English as a useful tool for her learning, communication with foreigners and study abroad (if she had opportunities). Y-Trinh revealed that she used English for studying about other countries through watching movies. For A-Phien, it was good to know some English to read English instructions on some product labels. In line with the discussion, A-Anton and A-Dien stated that English was important for their present or future work related to tourism, where they frequently contacted foreigners. Likewise, Y-Linh stated that she would encourage her future children to learn English, as they might lose many good job opportunities because they did not know the language. She related a situation which made her believe in the importance of English: I will ask my children to learn Kinh and English languages […]. I think English is necessary. First, as what I see, many foreigners often come to visit my village […]. Last year for example, once I heard from my parents that there were many people who came to visit my village by taxi. Especially they visited farms, the farms near the river. They came and walked around to visit. It was a pity that nobody could speak [English] to instruct them. They got around on their own in a while, then got back to

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the village to have a look and take pictures of the Rong (a traditional house) and children. But no one could speak [English]. At least, there should be a representative of our village who can speak English with them.

The practical usefulness of English certainly became an instrumental motivation for the youth to navigate their individual language policy towards the transformation line. Their agency in managing their English beliefs was expressed in their view of English as a global trend, which widely spreads among people across countries around the world, and their appreciation of the values, applicability and instrumental benefits which English could bring to them in terms of communication, education and career. Their transformation-oriented policy in beliefs inspired them to hold English in high regard, as they were aware of great mobility opportunities associated with the language, which could potentially help them to reach out to the global world outside their home country. The youth’s transformation-directed language policy as mirrored in their beliefs of English might be influenced by the common instrumentalist discourses related to the language.

Beliefs in relation to language and self-esteem

James (1890) defi nes self-esteem as being one’s evaluation of oneself. It strongly relates to feelings and evaluations of individuals’ self-worth imposed by the self and others. Individuals can have personal self-esteem, that is the unique aspects of the self, and collective self-esteem, that is the aspects that connect them with others or group memberships (Wright & Taylor, 1995). Language is one of the factors that defi nes their self-esteem. In sharing their language beliefs, the youth in this study mainly related their self-esteem to Vietnamese and English. Many ethnic minorities’ feelings of positive self-esteem are often connected with the dominant language and its linguistic capital that can enable them to gain benefits in the process of integration, especially the variety that is considered to be ‘standard’ in the society (Bourdieu, 1977). Many youth in the present study, similarly, tended to connect their language confidence to Vietnamese more than to their L1, especially to the ‘standard’ Vietnamese that they had acquired from school. They believed that speaking standard Vietnamese as educated people gave them a sense of prestige for which they were also appreciated by Kinh native speakers of Vietnamese. Discussing the advantages of learning in the dominant language, Y-Kap said that thanks to the school language, she was confident in her Vietnamese and her communication skills: The Vietnamese that I learnt in school and the Vietnamese that is used by others out there, it depends on each person. When I have contacts and exchanges with them, I use the Vietnamese that I learnt in school. [Using it,] fi rst I am sure about the words [I use], not afraid of using them incorrectly, then I [can] use it fluently.

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Similar to Y-Kap’s views, other youth also believed that the Vietnamese they learnt in school helped them to develop their confidence in contacting people speaking Vietnamese and joining the common climate. According to Y-Nom, her Vietnamese helped her to be ‘confident to know [other things through this language]’. Y-Khau affirmed that thanks to the opportunities to learn Vietnamese in school, she felt confident because she knew how to use it ‘methodically’ and ‘grammatically’. She said: ‘In my village, when I use Vietnamese skilfully, they (Bahnar people) have a higher regard for me’. Y-Trinh also confided that as she could use Vietnamese well, she felt that she sounded like an ‘educated’ person. Along the same line, Y-Chung believed that with Vietnamese, she would not be afraid of getting ‘backward’. She said: [With Kinh language] I can communicate with people everywhere […]. I would not be backward. My parents, previously they did not know Kinh language. They got out, for example, but could not understand what Kinh people said. They wanted to answer but did not know how to say, and they kept silent.

By linking their positive self-esteem to the dominant language, young ethnic minorities often compare their language proficiency to that of its native speakers, the majority. Some participants in this study also compared their Vietnamese proficiency with Kinh majority people. Y-Diopris’ sister, for example, revealed Y-Diopris’ belief in the relationship between Vietnamese proficiency and being respected. The sister said: Generally, they still scorn: ‘ah that girl is an ethnic, she speaks with a slight accent’. She (Y-Diopris) said it was fortunate that she was not better than others [in speaking Vietnamese], but was not worse than anyone, too. Well she said so. Once I heard that, at that time she said ‘if I did not try to study and try to speak their language (Vietnamese), perhaps they would still disparage me now’.

In line with the discussion, A-Anton expressed his pride in being able to speak Vietnamese as well as Kinh people. He said: ‘When I get out, some people even think that I am Kinh’. Similarly, Y-Nom and A-Lim happily related the situations when other people mistook them for Kinh people because their Vietnamese was so good and their Vietnamese accent sounded like Kinh’s. As A-Lim said: Yes, previously I was in a situation. I was going out in a charity activity, I saw that child then visited the family. When I came, they thought that, because I spoke Kinh language, they listened to me for a while, then asked ‘oh, where are you from, are you Kinh’. I answered ‘No, I am Jarai’. ‘Oh so strange!’ – they were surprised. They did not know.

In a similar vein, English – the language of opportunity in non-English speaking societies – can also contribute to positive self-esteem for individuals who can speak this language. English was considered by the youth

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as a language that could make them proud of themselves and more confident of their language in general. Y-Diopris, Y-Nom and A-Than, for example, stated that English helped them to be confident in communicating with people speaking English. A-Lim confided that English made him feel ‘somewhat happy’ and ‘a bit proud’ of himself as his language knowledge was ‘broadened’. He explained that in his living and working environment, his ethnic language and Vietnamese were common, but there were not many people who knew English; and therefore, his ability to speak English was the reason why people often had a higher regard for him. Similarly, Y-Kap revealed that in being able to speak English, she felt luckier and more confident and that thanks to English, people looked at her with different eyes: First, [if I know English], the way people look at (appreciate) me would be different. For example, if they look at a person who can speak English but I cannot [speak English], defi nitely I then cannot hold a candle to that person […]. [If I know English], I have one more certain advantage, I can be confident in front of friends.

Along the same line, in relating English to her self-esteem, Y-Khau emphasised that knowing some English made her feel like a changed and better person: Maybe it (speaking some English) can make me feel diff erent. That means it has an impact. At the present, I feel that I am better, get further away from the feeling of being an ethnic, a Vietnamese […]. Yeah get further away, know more, like, I am not the same as before. Now I am a new person.

It is suggested that the youth’s transformation-directed individual language policy was perceived through their beliefs in Vietnamese and English as the languages which could enhance their positive self-esteem. The ability to speak good Vietnamese or some English might be made out by them as being ‘better’, ‘nicer’, ‘more educated’, ‘more confident’ or achieving a higher status than other minority people who did not have the same opportunities to acquire the languages. By indicating the role of the languages in making them confident and proud of themselves, the youth showed their agency in deciding to attach their positive image with the standard Vietnamese and English, and by that way, directing the prestigious part of themselves as aligning with mainstream norms and the transformation tendency. The youth’s pride of being able to speak Vietnamese the same way as Kinh or being able to speak English – the highly valued foreign language – might be, hence, related to the belief that it was good to adopt the majority’s language style and ideologies. Their sense of achievement and self-respect associated with their ability to speak good Vietnamese and English was also a manifestation of their agency to seek greater benefits and others’ approval through the languages. The youth’s feelings about the role of Vietnamese and English in building their

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self-esteem may also be related to the practical application of each language and their instrumental motivation in using and valuing these languages. Considering the languages spoken/valued by people of the majority group as the norms for them to portrait an ‘ideal language self’ (Nguyen & Hamid, 2016), the youth’s individual language policy as reflected in these beliefs was associated with greater linguistic transformation, where they made themselves closer to the dominant language group and the mainstream society. Beliefs in relation to bilingualism

As I have discussed in Chapter 1, bilingualism in this study is considered as the alternative use of two or more languages by the same individual (Mackey, 1968). I am not sure if my participants had ever thought of themselves as being bilingual before I asked them questions about their bilingualism in the interviews. However, I think that at least they had always been aware that in order to join the common climate outside their ethnic community, they needed to learn and apply at least one more language that was different from their mother tongue. Being bilingual seemed to be self-evident for them. In fact, all of the youth in the present study spoke three or more languages. In addition to their ethnic language, Vietnamese and English, all of them knew at least one more local language, as there was a close relationship or regular contact between many local minority groups of people as well as their languages. In the province, it was common that young ethnic minorities could know or speak four or five different languages. Perceptions of self as bilingual

According to the youth, being bilingual should be a strong point of that person. They expressed their positive feelings and attitudes towards their ability to speak many languages and believed that being bilingual meant holding advantages, at least in terms of language. ‘Good’ or ‘intelligent’ were the words used by them in talking about someone who could speak many languages, especially many foreign languages. A-Dang said: ‘Maybe I feel proud because I know more than them (Kinh people)’. Similarly, Y-Kap stated: ‘I get the better of them (Kinh people)’. Many of them then expressed their desire to be better at using the languages they knew or learning more languages. Y-Khau, for example, thought that she ‘should know many languages because the future society will be different from the present’. Likewise, Y-Nom confi rmed her will of learning languages: I think, then I know one more foreign language. After reaching higher, it (the ethnic language) gets sound. Then, because there are many minority communities, and I have learnt Bahnar. So, I have more contacts and I like it. I like knowing many languages.

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The youth also believed that other people looked at their ability to speak many languages (especially foreign languages) as an advantage. Y-Diopris said that many people were ‘jealous’ of her because she could speak many languages and they wished to be the same as her. A-Lim and Y-Khau also revealed that people often ‘admired’ and ‘praised’ them because they knew many languages. Likewise, A-Anton related that he was highly appreciated by others because of his language ability: A-Anton:

Interviewer: A-Anton:

Sometimes they (Rengao people in the village) say, when they tried to bring up their children, [they] related me ‘You should study as well as Anton. He learns a lot and knows many languages. Don’t be stubborn and lazy like that’ Oh, so they related you as an example? That’s right!

As we can see, the youth seemed to relate their ability to speak multiple languages to their ‘good’ self, just as they associated their Vietnamese and English proficiency with their positive self-esteem. However, as they talked about many languages, including their ethnic language, Vietnamese, English and other minority languages, it does not seem to be very relevant to suggest if their individual language policy reflected in this belief of bilingualism was connected with either the maintenance or transformation line. In fact, this policy-in-belief was related to both the lines. Also, it is useful to restate that bilingualism is the main focus of this book and being in-between maintenance and transformation lines is the main argument I would like to make throughout the discussions on the youth’s life with many languages. That means, although here and there I highlight their either maintenance- or transformation-oriented policy associated with each language, I do not mean to describe these policy features connected with each language separately. These discussions are just parts of the long and complicated stories about their language voyage across ethnic and cultural worlds. For that reason, we should take a holistic look at the youth’s bilingualism and their flexible dual-line individual language policy as we go through all chapters of this book. Advantages and disadvantages of being bilingual

Bilingualism is highly valued by bilinguals themselves and others because it is often believed that bilinguals who can speak many languages have more advantages than monolinguals. In talking about their languages, the youth, in their capacity as bilinguals, also shared some perceptions of the advantages of being able to speak many languages that they had experienced in their life. Communication and social contact were mentioned as the top benefits of being bilingual by many participants, as they were living in a social setting in which they contacted different people using different languages. The youth mentioned advantages of being bilingual in contacting many

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different local minority people. Y-Phuong, for example, said that she was happy as she could understand whatever her friends of different ethnicities said, and communicate with them. For Y-Duong, knowing other local minority groups’ language meant understanding their culture, and so it would be easier for her to talk with these people. Other youth believed that speaking local languages, they could win affection and sympathy from the local minority people. It seems that advantages in communication and social contact are commonly mentioned by most bilinguals as the main benefit of being able to speak many languages. As it was shared by Y-Nom, she believed that when applying different languages in different social contexts, she was getting ‘keener’ in choosing, using languages as well as dealing with language problems in communication, thereby improving her communication skills. Some of the youth also revealed another communication advantage of being bilingual related to transmitting ‘secret messages’ between bilingual people. For them, perhaps, knowing multiple languages was an advantage as they could feel safe in using a language to separate themselves from other people who did not speak that language and when they were capable of excluding others. Y-Khau, for example, thought that using another language was a useful way of exchanging information in case she wanted to avoid others’ attention. Similarly, Y-Diopris discussed her experiences of being involved in situations in which she saw her ability to speak many languages as useful: For example, when we are talking like this, there are many people speaking another language [around]. But we do not want them to mind. We are talking about the third person, about them, or other people.

In line with such discussion, Y-Phuong, a Sedang, thought that she should know many languages to avoid the situation when people said something behind her back in a language she did not know. As she related: For example, Bahnar language. My classmates often communicate using Bahnar, to say bad things about others but I did not know. I think I should learn [Bahnar]. Also, there are many Bahnar people here, so I think it is fi ne to learn Bahnar.

Along the same line, some other youth mentioned advantages of being able to speak many local languages related to their future job as a teacher. For them, it was easier for teachers who were able to speak local languages to win minority pupils’ trust and fondness, to help them study better, and to interact with the pupils’ parents more effectively. Y-Phuong and A-Doan, for example, shared their view in relation to this issue: If I know many languages, in the future, if I go far away from home and work as a teacher in an area where there are ethnic minority people, I will speak to them in their ethnic language, they will feel closer to me than teachers speaking Kinh language […]. If my pupils have difficulties, I can

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communicate with them easier in their language. In remote areas, they do not often speak Kinh language fluently. (Y-Phuong) If I know many languages, for example, I can work as a teacher. In my place, there are many Jeh and Trieng people. But if they want me to work in (name of a remote district), there are many Sedang people. I have to know Sedang language, as it is advantageous for me in contacting with people or parents of my pupils, something like that. For example, some parents do not know Kinh language. (A-Doan)

Some other youth, in addition, referred to Vietnamese and English as tools for learning and knowledge acquisition. For them, being able to use these languages means they had opportunities to access multiple sources of materials and documents written in these languages in their school and other places. A-Than, in discussing his bilingualism, mentioned English as an important means for exploring the internet and knowing more things from there. The youth’s bilingualism, hence, allowed them to access more knowledge and information, and helped open their eyes to wider worlds. Regarding disadvantages, the youth believed that they had not experienced many disadvantages from being bilingual. Some of them stated that they could not fi nd any disadvantages of being able to speak many languages. A-Anton said: ‘It just takes me more time to learn [many languages]’. Y-Nom and Y-Xuong, however, believed that translanguaging or code-mixing in their language use could be seen as a disadvantage in applying many languages at the same time. According to Y-Xuong, if her languages were mixed in a disorderly manner, she often ‘made mistakes’ in using the languages. She also thought that an increase in one language possibly led to a decrease in another language. In line with such discussion, Y-Kap complained that as she knew many languages, sometimes people thought that she was good; but in fact, she was not as good as they thought: ‘Sometimes they asked me to talk in English, but I was not confident enough’. Significantly, in answering if she found any disadvantage in being able to speak many languages, Y-Nom revealed that sometimes it took time for her to think to choose proper and appropriate languages and ways of using the languages in different communication situations. This might be related to her language tension – when she controlled and exploited different registers of language to different identities (Batal, 2013). The advantages of being able to speak many languages, however, preponderated over the disadvantages. The youth considered that bilingualism gave them an upper hand in terms of language in comparing themselves with Kinh people. It can be seen that those who can use two or more languages are advantaged in many ways. As commented earlier, the youth’s individual language policy framed through their bilingualism-related beliefs was both maintenance- and transformation-oriented (although in the extracts above they talked

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more about being able to know many local languages). The youth’s agency in this policy-in-beliefs manifested in the ways they highlighted the integrative and instrumental values of the languages they knew (Nguyen & Hamid, 2018) in seeking communication, social contact and career advantages, as well as social mobility opportunities in the minority communities in particular and mainstream Vietnamese society in general. They expressed a strong language-as-resource orientation (Ruiz, 1984) in figuring their individual language policy related to bilingualism, considering their bilingualism as a resource and a vehicle to travel across ethnic and cultural worlds. In shaping their beliefs about bilingualism, they hence constructed their perceived language policy in which numerous harmonies and conflicts between different maintenance and transformation values were manifested through these language perceptions and attitudes. Bilingualism as a resource for both maintenance and transformation is further discussed in the subsequent section of the chapter.

Construction of Perceived Language Policy: Maintenance and Transformation in Ideological Spaces

Bilinguals’ beliefs of language are not about language alone, but are tied to an individual policy which shapes these beliefs in a particular way. That policy is applied to frame their feelings, perceptions, views, attitudes, evaluations and assessments about the languages, language varieties, language speakers (including themselves) as well as social–cultural symbols associated with the languages. That policy often manifests when there are advantageous ideological spaces for it to show up. The bilingual youth in this study, in conceiving and figuring their language beliefs, expressed their agency in following a kind of perceived language policy in which they pushed themselves towards the common flow through Vietnamese and English while still attempting to keep up the ties with their particular ethnic values and spirits through their ethnic language (or sometimes other local minority languages). The youth’s perceived language policy which encouraged their language beliefs to get aligned with the maintenance and transformation orientations in ideological spaces was revealed in: • • •

their policy-in-beliefs towards integrative values attached to their ethnic language and instrumental values attached to Vietnamese and English; their enhancement of self that was mainly influenced by the mainstream norms through Vietnamese and English; and their views of bilingualism as a resource for maintaining the ethnic values and transforming to the mainstream values simultaneously.

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Integrative versus instrumental policy-in-beliefs

Ethnic minorities who are surrounded by the society of the majority often face a choice between two main systems of values: the integrative values attached with their ethnic language and the instrumental values attached with the mainstream–majority language (May, 2005). For Gibbons and Ramirez (2004), the instrumental values are related to the pragmatic benefits of a language, particularly in terms of self-advancement, whereas the integrative values are connected with interpersonal and affective feelings towards the community speaking the language. The language of their ethnic group has often been associated with solidarity, ethnic pride and social bonding, while the mainstream language has often been linked to status, prestige and social integration. The minority youth in this study, as agents of their language policy, displayed their integrative policy-in-beliefs in valuing their ethnic language and their instrumental policy-in-beliefs in valuing Vietnamese and English. When there were advantageous ideological spaces for such beliefs to display, they expressed their agency in showing a desire to grasp both of the value systems and navigating their perceived language policy to either the maintenance or transformation orientation. Some of them were, however, still influenced more by the utilities of the languages in facing choices among the values that sometimes contrasted and conflicted with each other. In discussing their ethnic language, the youth tended to orient their perceived language policy towards integrative values related to their ethnicity. It seems that the common discourses about the predetermined position of one’s ethnic language as a marker of one’s ethnic identity, which was related to their whole person – the speaker of that language – as well as the ethnic group they came from and identified with (Skutnabb-Kangas, 1981), had initially established ideological spaces for this policy to show up. Indicating the symbolic value of L1 in their ethnic identification, the youth consequently expressed their agency in emphasising the importance of using the language among its speakers. They believed that using L1 was a manifestation of in-group loyalty and solidarity. Y-Na and A-Lim, for example, were of the belief that their ethnic language was closely related to their roots. Many of them strongly criticised people who rarely used or avoided using their L1, who spoke like an outsider and forgot where they came from (Fought, 2006). As speaking the L1 was also seen as an effort to preserve their ethnic traditions, they also showed their agency in deciding to transmit L1 to their future children and maintain advantageous ideological spaces for next generations’ maintenance-oriented language policy. The language policy which attached with integrative values, hence, made them perceive that L1 played an essential role in conserving, collecting and passing on ethnic and cultural features and identity to future generations (Howard, 2003). For them, perhaps, transmitting this perceived language policy to the next generations could contribute to preserving the

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language even in the face of the dominant language and culture (MyersScotton, 2007). Talking about Vietnamese and English, the youth tended to attach their perceived language policy with instrumental values related to the utilities of these languages in targeting different utilitarian goals. The government’s, society’s and school’s forces, as well as the common discourses about the dominant position and usefulness of Vietnamese and English in the society had partly provided favourable ideological spaces for this policy to display. The youth expressed their agency in underlining that as Vietnamese was the common language, it was the most useful for life activities in terms of communication, interethnic contact, career opportunity and knowledge acquisition. This agency was also revealed in their determination of the usefulness of English related to their communication with foreigners, education and career advancement. It can be seen that the transformation-directed language policy made the youth recognise that the pragmatic functions of Vietnamese and English could assure their social participation and enhance their upward mobility in society. As language attitudes always have an instrumental basis (Myers-Scotton, 2007), the benefits of Vietnamese and English seemed to be apparent for the youth because they could not avoid speaking and using the dominant language and they also could not ignore the advantages of the global language. In advantageous ideological spaces facilitated by the discourses of the dominance of Vietnamese and the global trend of English, they constructed their perceived language policy associated with their beliefs in the utilities of the languages in relation to the transformation line. Emphasising the integrative values of the language of their ethnic group and the instrumental values of Vietnamese and English, the youth sometimes seemed to affi liate themselves with both the value systems. Considering L1 as a marker of ethnic solidarity and Vietnamese or English as a means for mobility and opportunities, the youth believed that both L1 and Vietnamese were important for them to ‘reach out’ and fall in line with the mainstream society while still retaining their ethnic value. Many of them wanted their future children to learn all the three languages to ensure both preservation of their ethnic values and integration with the mainstream values. Their understandings of the relationship between language and power in relating to their ethnic language and Vietnamese/ English constructed a perceived language policy that sometimes reflected both the maintenance and transformation orientations. Some of the youth, however, although affi rming the importance of their ethnic language, Vietnamese and English and desiring to gain both the integrative and instrumental values from the languages, tended to lean towards the instrumental ones when facing choices in certain circumstances and situations. The emotional symbolism of L1 sometimes contrasts with the practical usefulness of the mainstream language (Dailey-O’Cain & Liebscher, 2011), as the asymmetrical relations of

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power between their L1 and the dominant language, between them and the speakers of the mainstream language (Blackledge, 2002; Heller, 1999) seemed to be clear to them. Under the force of these power relations, imagined ideological spaces were naturally created for the youth’s stronger instrumental language policy to construct. They might want to keep a balance of both value systems, but because of the pressure to assimilate, they sometimes oriented themselves more to the instrumental values. Some of them, for example, expressed their agency in determining that it was acceptable if minority people did not know their ethnic language. Y-Linh and Y-Xuong also showed their agency in deciding to emphasise Vietnamese and English as being more practical and useful for their future children. It is evidenced that their language beliefs had an instrumental basis because they sometimes could not overlook the practical applicability of the languages they were using (Myers-Scotton, 2007). As such, the youth’s perceived language policy could lean towards the transformation tendency when there were advantageous ideological spaces and conditions for it to reveal. Self-enhancement with mainstream norms

The bilingual youth’s construction of their perceived language policy which was closer to the transformation tendency was also revealed in their beliefs in the role of language in enhancing their self-esteem. In assessing and valuing their languages, they appeared to connect Vietnamese and English – the more powerful languages – with their positive persona, which contributed to their enhancement of self. The youth’s transformationoriented language policy, which figured in ideological spaces facilitated by the mainstream norms, manifested in their sense of their own social worth and sense of integration into the mainstream society through Vietnamese and English. The youth tended to apply their perceived language policy to build up a sense of their own social worth (Bourdieu, 1991) by connecting their language confidence with the ‘standard’ or ‘native-like’ Vietnamese and the ‘global-trend’ English that they had acquired. These mainstream discourses about the languages seemed to offer conditions for the creation of very favourable ideological spaces for and strongly act upon their transformation-directed language policy. The idea of the standard or native-like Vietnamese was common among the youth who believed that speaking Vietnamese as educated people or Kinh people, they felt themselves better and were better appreciated by others. A-Anton, Y-Nom and A-Lim, for instance, happily related to the situations when others mistook them for Kinh because their Vietnamese proficiency was as good as Kinh native speakers. In addition, English contributed to enhancing the youth’s self-worth, as many of them were happy and proud of being able to speak the global-trend language. They knew that not many people, especially

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people of their ethnic group, could speak English and that thanks to English, other people looked at them with different eyes. The youth seemed to clearly understand the symbolic power of the higher-value languages of the dominant social class, that could position them in upper echelons of the society (Bourdieu, 1977). They then expressed their agency in drawing their personal strength and pride, as well as their sense of social importance (Kramsch, 1998) attached to the mainstream-used or mainstream-favoured languages, namely Vietnamese and English. For these youth, perhaps, it was not only significant about who or what they were, but it was also important to what it was worth to be who or what they were (Liebkind, 1995). The youth’s perceived language policy, which was drawn upon their views of standard/native-like Vietnamese and global-trend English, hence, aimed to enhance their language self-worth and transform their ideal self as connecting with mainstream norms. The youth’s perceived language policy aligning with the transformation orientation, which was associated with Vietnamese and English, was also related to their wish to integrate with the mainstream society. Desire for integration was another explanation for the ways in which they related their language confidence to Vietnamese and English. The symbolic power of the languages, hence, contributed to designing primary ideological spaces for this perceived language policy of the youth to display. Moreover, they seemed to realise that the symbolic power of the languages was significant for their ‘audibility’, that is, being heard and respected (Miller, 2000). As such, they showed their agency in seeking to identify their positive persona with the mainstream-used or mainstream-favoured languages, mainstream norms and dominant groups. They might be of the belief that these languages would bring them greater benefits related to social inclusion and acceptance (Diaz, 1999). Being proud of their ability to speak standard Vietnamese and being happy with their native-like Vietnamese proficiency, for example, the youth realised that good Vietnamese would greatly facilitate their entry into the mainstream and enhance their prestige in front of others, while deficient Vietnamese may result in marginalisation and disrespect. They were confident and proud of their good Vietnamese and English because these abilities had brought them necessary skills of socialising and gaining others’ approval in the process of integrating. Connecting their self-esteem with the mainstream languages and mainstream norms, such as the norms about standard/ native-like Vietnamese or global-trend English, they thereby expressed their desire to construct an ideal Vietnamese self or ideal English self (Nguyen & Hamid, 2016) who could balance the unequal relations between them and people of the majority group through the languages. The youth’s strong beliefs in the value of the standard/native-like Vietnamese and the global-trend English, together with their need to participate, their need to fit in and their desire for being a part of the mainstream, then, also set up advantageous ideological spaces for their

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construction of transformation-oriented language policy, which navigated their language beliefs in seeking a better version of themselves reflected in the languages. Bilingualism as a resource for maintenance and transformation

‘Bilingualism as a resource’ is inspired by Halliday (1978) and Ruiz (1984) – the idea of language as resource that attaches importance to functions, effectiveness and benefits of language rather than its rules and correctness. Bilingualism as a resource was also the main focus of Nguyen and Hamid’s (2018) discussion on ethnic minority youth’s language attitudes under the influence of different external forces. For these authors, language is a resource that its speakers can use, exploit and deploy to achieve certain purposes. Bilinguals who are able to speak multiple languages seem to possess a repertoire of resources which provides them with more choices to perform different language functions. In this sense, bilinguals are resourceful speakers who have available language resources and are good at shifting between different language manners and discourses (Pennycook, 2012) to strategically fit different purposes (Canagarajah, 2007). The youth in this study, in positively valuing themselves as bilingual, figured their perceived language policy which encouraged them to consider their bilingualism as a resource that could help them to simultaneously fulfi l two functions: maintaining their ethnic features and transforming to the mainstream flow (Nguyen & Hamid, 2018). Their awareness of bilingualism as a resource, in addition, inspired the creation of ideological spaces for their dual-line (maintenance and transformation) language policy to be figured. One the one hand, the youth’s perceived language policy was to facilitate their understanding that their bilingualism could be a precious resource for L1 and ethnic value maintenance, as they asserted the importance of L1 in portraying their ethnic identity and preserving heritage values of their ethnic group. Being happy and proud of the ability to speak multiple languages and believing that they were better than many Kinh counterparts in terms of language, the youth, as folk bilinguals, highlighted the language advantages related to their L1 (which was the language Kinh people did not often have). They, hereby, expressed their agency in recognising their L1 as a salient feature of their bilingualism and fostering their stronger sense of ethnicity among other senses of being attached with different cultural systems through different languages. Discussing their multiple languages, they also related to advantages in contacting people from other minority groups and these people’s languages, and showed their agency in appreciating the integrative values of bilingualism, and by that way, indirectly supported themselves as an ethnic minority (Nguyen & Hamid, 2018). The youth’s perceived language policy, which was framed in their positive attitudes towards

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bilingualism and their strong commitment to bilingualism, could be correlated with their hope and desire to use this language ability as a resource for L1 and cultural maintenance (Ng & Wigglesworth, 2007). On the other hand, the youth’s perceived language policy was to facilitate their awareness that their bilingualism could be a highly appreciated resource for transformation, which could provide favourable conditions for them to transform to the dominant tendency and integrate themselves with the mainstream society. Talking about advantages of being bilingual, the youth mainly emphasised the benefits of their multiple languages related to communication, social contact and knowledge, that were necessary for their social participation. By that way, they showed their agency in confi rming the belief that this language ability was useful for them in their process of socialisation and integration. In the imagined ideological spaces where their transformation-directed language policy was operating, they figured their belief in the possibility of utilising these multiple languages to share social resources with Kinh and people from other ethnic groups and to widen their mainstream participation. Describing themselves as ‘good’ and ‘intelligent’ being bilinguals, the youth seemed to be aware that they had more than one passport that could allow them to cross their ethnic boundaries in integrating with the wider society. As such, the need, desire, willingness and pressure to be part of both the ethnic and mainstream worlds were also found in the youth’s perceptions, attitudes and evaluations of their ability to use many languages. It is, hence, observed that although living in a subtractive language environment, the youth in this study perceived their individual language policy in an additive way, where their ethnic language, the mainstream language, English and other languages, as well as the ethnic and mainstream values connected with the languages were held in high regard; and both maintenance and transformation were attached importance. The youth’s agency manifested in the ways they valued their bilingualism as a property and resource for attaining different life purposes, as they seemed to understand that being able to speak multiple languages meant they could identify with L1, L2, English and other languages as well as ethnic, mainstream, local, national and global values at the same time (Nguyen & Hamid, 2018); and make themselves stand out and be different from others. Bilingualism, hence, was not only a passport to travel across ethnic and cultural boundaries, but also a vehicle to move between preservation and integration (Nguyen & Hamid, 2018), and a key for the youth to construct their perceived language policy in particular and individual language policy in general as aligning with both the maintenance and transformation orientations.

6 Negotiated Language Policy

The Youth’s Stories: Policy in Management

Following the proposal of individual language policy comprising practised language policy, perceived language policy and negotiated language policy, the previous two chapters were devoted to analysing and discussing the bilingual youth’s practised language policy mirrored in their language practices and their perceived language policy underlying their language beliefs. The present chapter focuses on the youth’s negotiated language policy exerted in their management of language beliefs and practices under observable and explicit intervention by external forces. Individuals, in practising and valuing their languages, often face explicit interventions by external forces. It is when they are required to use the majority language only in the mainstream school, maintain their ethnic language in the community, or apply a particular language in their religious activities. They are sometimes also reminded by other individuals to use or think about their languages in a ‘proper’ way. The organisations, groups or individuals who have or claim authority over the individuals to intervene in the latter’s language practices or beliefs are language policy actors (Zhao & Baldauf, 2012) who perform their formal/ informal language policies. When there are such observable interventions, individuals have to express more explicit reactions to these pressures, and then exercise their agency to make decisions on certain clues and cues for maintaining or adjusting their language practices and/or beliefs (Nguyen, 2019b). Under the influence of these external forces, choices of language practices and beliefs made by individuals are normally determined by their understanding of what is appropriate to the participants’ situation or domain and to their own character and identity (Spolsky, 2009). Negotiated language policy, which I depict in this chapter, is the policy that informed the bilingual youth, as powerful agents of their language policy, relevant clues, cues and strategies to enact their agency to control their language practices and beliefs in dealing with external forces (the ‘agent’ factor). I describe the youth’s construction of negotiated language policy in managerial spaces (the ‘process’ factor), which oriented their language management under the impact of the policies and discourses of 82

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the institutions that they participated in and the community of which they were members, as well as the intervention by the key individuals in their life (the ‘level’ factor). As the youth’s language management was management of their language practices and beliefs, their negotiated language policy somewhat overlapped their practised and perceived language policy as presented in the two previous chapters. Management under institution and community forces

The youth related the ways in which they managed their language in dealing with interventions from different groups and institutions. The school, the church and the ethnic community were the three main ‘organised language management’ institutions (Nekvapil, 2009) that claimed authority over them to intervene in their language practices and beliefs. School

As the youth in this study spent a substantial period of their life in school, they had to perform decisive management of their language practices and beliefs under the intervention by this institution. Mainstream school as a strong language intervention authority imposed its language policy, that is, Vietnamese as the centred language, on its students. The youth, therefore, experienced Vietnamese as the only and mandatory language of instruction from primary school until college. They all confi rmed that Vietnamese was applied right from the fi rst days of Grade 1, regardless of whether their teachers were from the Kinh majority or the minority communities. They were considered the same as Kinh who should already know Vietnamese, not as students who were still learning it as a second language (Skutnabb-Kangas, 1981). Y-Khau and A-Than, for example, said that they were often reprimanded by their teachers because they did not understand the lessons which were conducted in Vietnamese. Similarly, Y-Nom recalled her teachers’ attitudes towards young minority students who had not been familiar with Vietnamese: When I was in primary school, some teachers sometimes, sort of, found it was hard to teach students who were ethnics. Because first, we had not been familiar with Vietnamese. So some teachers were unhappy or annoyed.

For many of them, it was common that their L1 was not welcomed or accepted at school. A-Dang and Y-Phuong related that in primary and secondary schools, they were ‘forbidden’ to use their ethnic language. A-Lim also said that he was expected to forget his L1 and try to improve his Vietnamese as soon as possible: Because at that time in my school, my class, we were asked to restrict using our ethnic language by the teachers, for example Jarai or Bahnar, to restrict using them […]. [The teachers] did not allow [us to speak L1]. They encouraged us to speak Vietnamese so we would be more fluent and would remember more words.

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By imposing Vietnamese as the only language of instruction, the school tried to restrict young minority students’ language choices. School restriction on students’ L1 use, in this case, was a result of the national policy that turned language into a means of social control serving the purpose of reinforcing the national unity implemented across educational, economic, political and social domains (Coulmas, 1991). This is also an example of negative language planning that is intended to restrict the number of linguistic options (Kaplan & Baldauf, 1997) of ethnolinguistic minorities and assimilate them into the mainstream. The top-down restrictive policy allowed limited spaces for the students’ ethnic languages and multilingualism (Hornberger et al., 2018). Under this intervention regime, the youth adopted Vietnamese as a vital language in their study and communication at school to ensure their survival. They exercised their agency to adapt to the school’s language policy and use Vietnamese there most of the time, especially when they reached higher levels of education as they might, gradually, understand that they needed to accept and transform from their L1-dominant habit to the L2-based school norm and join their mainstream peers. Some of them, in addition, showed their stronger agency in making decisions to practise and improve their Vietnamese in the first years of their schooling. A-Diem and A-Xan, for example, said that although they had language difficulties in the fi rst days of schooling, they ‘tried to practise’, ‘imitated the teacher to speak’ and improved their Vietnamese. Y-Rieng, interestingly, narrated that in primary school, she confidently asked her teachers what she did not understand: ‘When I was in primary school, I was very confident […]. In the class, some classmates were afraid to ask or suggest something, but I could ask or suggest something to my teacher’. Furthermore, the school language policy had a profound influence on the youth’s language beliefs regarding school language preferences. They developed the belief that it was better for them to study in the dominant language, as it was more practical and useful in this environment. Although they sometimes wondered about their language disadvantages as compared with their Kinh counterparts, many of them believed that it was normal for them to learn in Vietnamese in school. As Y-Kap noted: ‘For no reason, I always think that if I go to school, I defi nitely learn in that language (Vietnamese)’. In a similar vein, Y-Minh stated that she preferred learning things in Vietnamese to her ethnic language. Although the youth occasionally used their ethnic language or other languages, they agreed that Vietnamese was irreplaceable in the school setting. They also considered the school language as a means of social integration in joining L2 groups inside and outside the school. It seemed that the national and school language policies had created a common sense of language and naturalised the Vietnamese-centred language ideology and discourse, of which the students may be unaware (Yu, 2016). The youth’s language management under the school forces and their agency in making decisions to adapt to the school language environment,

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and to value Vietnamese as the right school language, hence, are part of their negotiation of a school-based individual language policy following the transformation tendency. Through this management, they negotiated to configure a school-norm-based linguistic identity which is different from the identity connected with their home and community. School, hence, was an important force which urged the youth to negotiate their individual language policy and directed it to the transformation line. Among 28 youth participating in the two projects, only two participants, namely Y-Duong and Y-Kap, were fortunate to have participated in a primary-level pilot programme involving their L1, Bahnar, as a subject when they were in Grade 4, and Grades 3, 4 and 5, respectively. This programme brought them the opportunity to practise their reading and writing skills in addition to communication skills in Bahnar. Y-Kap wrote in her journal: Although we had a considerable source of vocabulary in our mother tongue, when learning it in school, we did not understand why our language had many rules that were different from Vietnamese. After class, we had some homework assigned by our teacher. She also asked us to read and practise the texts again at home to remember them better.

School, hence, can not only intervene to transform minority youth to the mainstream language environment, but also use its power to help develop their L1 literacy. Thanks to this pilot programme, Y-Duong and Y-Kap had a chance to practise their L1 in school in a formal way. By investing their time in learning their L1, they exerted their agency to take this opportunity to know more about their ethnic language. Y-Kap, in addition, came to believe that her Bahnar writing and speaking skills were better so that she was more confident in her L1 as compared with her same-age Bahnar friends. This L1-focused language intervention from school, hence, had a positive impact on the maintenance part of the youth’s individual language policy in terms of both practices and beliefs. However, these programmes were rare since the other participants of the study did not have access to similar minority language courses. In addition, as they were exposed to their ethnic language in school as a subject rather than a medium of instruction, the L1 knowledge which the youth attained from these programmes was quite limited. Church

Religion has profoundly influenced the life of many local ethnolinguistic minority communities and people. It was observed that in the region, ethnic minority people of each suburb often had their own church and their religious activities were relatively separate from those of Kinh people and people of other communes. Due to the ethnic and language diversity in the suburbs, the Bible or other religious texts used in the churches were mainly written in the most popular minority language of

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the suburbs, namely Bahnar (and Vietnamese or Jarai, although these two languages were less common in Bible documents for nearby-suburb ethnic minorities). As Vietnamese is the majority language and Bahnar is the second most popular language in the provincial town and its neighbouring areas, in addition to the church members’ L1, Vietnamese and Bahnar were also applied as the common languages in catechism lessons and other church activities for local ethnic minority people. Most of the minority youth in this study were Christians (Catholics or Protestants), who had attended the church since they were young. They were often required to use Bahnar in reading the Bible and observing other religious rituals, although Vietnamese and their ethnic language were also occasionally applied. For the youth whose L1 was Bahnar (A-Tan, Y-Trinh, Y-Duong and Y-Khau, for example), religious activities were an opportunity to practise their ethnic language, especially in written form, in a more formal way. Other participants revealed that although they were Rengao or Jarai, they had early contact with Bahnar as another local language through religious activities in the church. Y-Huong, a Jarai, explained that she often read the Bible in Bahnar because the Jarai version of the Bible was written in another type of Jarai language: Because since I was small, since long ago, they have taught [us] to read the Bible in Bahnar only. A few years ago, a priest came every Sunday and read the Bible and said Masses in Jarai. But some elderly suggested that, as I mentioned minutes ago, that we were not original Jarai, but halfblood Jarai. The Jarai [language used by the priest] is spoken by original Jarai people. So many words [used by the priest] could be understood by some old [Jarai] people only, not by young people.

In dealing with the governing power of the church, the youth managed their language practices and beliefs to adapt to the church and its language policy. Regarding practices, the church intervened in changing some of their language habits, especially their use of Bahnar and their L1. By taking part in church activities, they applied their L1 in a more formal way. They also had chances to do some reading and writing in Bahnar, skills that were not frequently practised in their daily life outside the church. Some youth also had opportunities to learn another local language (Bahnar) in the church. In addition, many of them believed that religion played a significant role in propagating and preserving the use of minority languages in both spoken and written forms and encouraging minority people to preserve their traditional customs. Y-Nom who was fortunate to read the Bible and participate in the church activities using her ethnic language, Jarai, commented: Without the religion, we would lose everything (language), because the religion helps us to preserve [our language] […]. In the church, we have more chances to preserve [our language]. Because the ethnic people, all to

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a man, obey [the church rules]. So we can keep. They preach in that language (Jarai) entirely, 100%.

In managing their language practices and beliefs in the face of intervention by the church, the youth seemed to negotiate their individual language policy following both maintenance and transformation orientations, although they seemed to align more positively with the maintenance line. Their agency was shown in their management of formal L1 practices, and especially for some of them, in their development of Bahnar which was not their ethnic language. Bahnar, then, played a significant role in their social contacts and interactions with other local minority people outside the church. The youth’s agency was also exercised to shape their awareness about the importance of their L1, Bahnar and other local minority languages in comparison with Vietnamese. The youth’s church-based individual language policy, on the one hand, contributed to maintaining their formal L1 practices in this specific domain (which was not supported in the mainstream school and society) and strengthening their positive attitudes towards their ethnic language. On the other hand, this policy occasionally contributed to transforming them to other ethnoreligiouslinguistic worlds through learning and using other local minority languages and Vietnamese in their spiritual life. Community

Apart from the school and the church, the youth also performed their agency in managing their language under the ethnic community’s informal language policy. As young members went to school or had interactions with Kinh people in the wider society and brought more Vietnamese to their family, and Vietnamese language and Kinh culture had penetrated into the ethnolinguistic community, some communities then had language rules or actions to slow this linguistic and cultural invasion process down. The language rules were sometimes implicit, but were often accepted and implemented by the community members. It is revealed in the youth’s stories about their language use in the community that older people had more power in intervening in other members’ language. Older people, unsurprisingly, preferred maintaining their ethnic language and its predominant position in their community. For that reason, in spite of the penetration of Vietnamese, the youth still continued using their L1 frequently in this domain. Y-Kap and Y-Khau, for example, confi rmed that their ethnic language, Bahnar, was still common in communication between people in their villages. Comparably, A-Anton related that his community had an unwritten law that Rengao should be the major language for communication among villagers. He explained that many people in his village did not like overusing Vietnamese or mixing Rengao with Vietnamese. Acting as informal language polices (Baldauf, 1998), people in the community were often ‘reminded’ of this language

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law if one tended to use too much Vietnamese or languages other than Rengao. As A-Anton said: A-Anton:

Oh, they have to [speak Rengao]. Because at the present, if someone from another village gets married with a person in my village, although they’re Jarai or Bahnar, they’re obliged to speak Rengao by the villagers. Interviewer: Is that a law, a rule? A-Anton: A rule, that they aren’t allowed to. Interviewer: No Vietnamese? A-Anton: Because here in (the provincial town’s name), only [people in] my village don’t mix Rengao [with Vietnamese].

Community efforts to maintain the language of its ethnic group in the face of the invasion of Vietnamese language are also found in Y-Xuong’s story. She related that when she was about ten years old, she had an opportunity to learn the written form of Jeh language, her L1, in a Jeh class organised by people in her village. As she said: Y-Xuong:

Learn my ethnic language, sort of, they taught us the language with the alphabet. Interviewer: Who were they? Y-Xuong: They’re brothers or aunts in the village. That means, my village organised that class, so we could know our language and wouldn’t lose our roots.

The youth also discussed the ways they managed their language practices and beliefs and adapted to the community’s informal language policy and, thereby, negotiated their community-based individual language policy in line with the maintenance tendency. They enacted their agency to involve themselves in the community’s efforts to protect themselves from the invasion of Vietnamese (Nguyen, 2019b). A-Anton, for example, maintained speaking his ethnic language frequently in his village although he was fluent in Vietnamese and also knew other local minority languages. He said that he tried to use as much L1 as possible in the village and negotiated with some young members who overused Vietnamese, expecting them to speak L1 properly in the community. A-Anton also came to believe that his ethnic language should be given priority for communication between community members. For him, if the community members increased the use of Vietnamese or languages other than Rengao, his community would be in ‘disorder’ and they would be at risk of ‘losing roots’. Y-Xuong could read and write in her L1 to a certain degree thanks to the language class organised by the villagers. Her agency in adapting to the community’s language maintenance efforts was revealed in the development of her awareness that this language class played an important role in providing her with more knowledge about her ethnic language and preserving her roots and ethnic values.

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In summary, the youth negotiated their individual language policy in performing management of their language practices and beliefs under the organised intervention from the school, the church and their ethnolinguistic community. The school and its language policy forced the youth to apply the dominant language and dominant values and directed them to the transformation line. The church and its language policy encouraged them to not only preserve their L1 but also become familiar with other local minority languages and Vietnamese through their religious activities, thereby pointing them towards both maintenance and transformation lines, while still more positively supporting the maintenance orientation. The ethnolinguistic community and its unofficial language policy occasionally reminded them to maintain L1 and L1 values in their in-group communication, and so expected them to follow the maintenance tendency. The youth exercised their agency in responding to these interventions. However, it seems this was not a ‘free’ agency. Ultimately this self-initiated process was conditioned by the institutions and community of which they were a member (Nguyen & Hamid, 2017). Under these interventions, the youth generally managed to accept the common language rules and adapt to the common climate of the immediate environment where they were participating, and negotiated their maintenanceand transformation-directed language policy, as they were influenced by all these institution and community forces. Management under intervention by individuals

Language management fi rst occurs in individuals’ interactions with other people (Spolsky, 2009). The youth in this study had different ways of managing their language practices and beliefs in reacting to different forms of ‘simple language management’ (Nekvapil, 2009) from different individuals, including their parents, their teachers and their peers. In negotiating with these language interveners, they more proactively performed their agency to either conform to or deviate from their intervention (Nguyen, 2019b), and actively constructed their individual language policy. Parents and family members

The youth often executed their management in dealing with intervention by parents (and other family members) who had the right to manage the family’s language beliefs and practices. Which language should be given priority and to what degree other languages are to be accepted were common concerns of parents of the youth in this study. The parents, in general, preferred using their ethnic language as this was the predominant language for communication within the home. A-Xan, A-Hoang and Y-Diopris’ parents, for example, sometimes explicitly reminded the children that in family interactions, their L1 needed to

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be the fi rst choice, as they might be afraid that the majority language which was brought home by the children could be a risk to the family’s generational connection. A-Xan and Y-Diopris said that their parents sometimes complained or reminded them about using L1 properly in the home. Likewise, A-Hoang related that he would be ‘punished’ by his parents if he overused Vietnamese or languages other than Rengao in communication with them. As he said: [My mom] said that in our family, if we spoke other languages and did not speak our ethnic language, she would punish us […]. She said that, in the future when the world was more developed, if we mixed our language with other languages, we would gradually lose our language […]. My dad said: ‘as we are Rengao, you can communicate with your friends in the wider society using Kinh or other languages, if you can learn them; but if you are at home, you must preserve our language. Otherwise you can lose your roots and your ethnic identity’.

This language intervention by the parents was one of the reasons why the youth exercised their agency to make the decision that they would keep the habit of using their ethnic language frequently in communication with their parents. Y-Diopris, for example, stated clearly that by maintaining using L1, she was showing respect to her parents. The parents’ language attitudes, hence, were important factors that motivated the youth to maintain their L1 at home regardless of the impact of Vietnamese and to manage their individual language policy towards the maintenance path. In Y-Nom’s family, although the presence of Vietnamese in family communication was quite common, her parents still expressed concern over their children’s language use. Y-Nom’s mother, in a parent interview, said that she sometimes tried to correct Y-Nom and her other children’s way of using Jarai words: Some old words, they (Y-Nom and her siblings) did not use exactly. Ethnic people, they say this phrase like this. My children have heard that phrase since they’re small. I still corrected them ‘it is not like that’ […]. She just smiled, she said ‘I forgot, maybe since I was small’.

Y-Nom’s mother’s way of intervening in her children’s language is an example of assistance from older members of the family in maintaining younger members’ proper habits when using their ethnic language. However, it appeared that Y-Nom’s mother’s efforts were not very successful. Y-Nom exerted her agency in making the decision that her mothers’ concern was just an expectation rather than a requirement in home communication, as she could not apply L1 words in her speech to the extent to which her mother expected. Y-Nom, nevertheless, said that thanks to her parents’ concern, she was aware of using Jarai at home to preserve their ‘ethnic traditions’, and that it was better for her to use L1 at home because it played an important role in her ethnic identification. Y-Nom’s deviation from her mother’s language intervention, hence, suggests that the

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maintenance line in her individual language policy was related to the ethnic value of her L1 rather than the capacity to use a good Jarai language. Parents can also be instrumental in children’s shift to languages of greater utilitarian value (Ng & Wigglesworth, 2007). Some of the youth revealed that their parents often reminded them of the importance of Vietnamese and the need to enhance their Vietnamese, which was believed to be the vital language in their life. Y-Hong, for example, said that her mother liked Vietnamese ‘very much’ and wanted her children to integrate with mainstream society. A-Anton’s brother, in a parent/family member interview, said that their parents sometimes reminded their children to practise Vietnamese. Likewise, A-Lim related that his parents tried to encourage him to practise Vietnamese with Kinh people when he was small so it would be more advantageous for him when he went to school. In a similar vein, Y-Kap said that her mother expected her children to improve their Vietnamese because it would be more advantageous for them in the future: I am old enough, I fully know Bahnar. I know it fully so my parents perhaps do not pay attention [to me] as much as my younger brothers. My brother at home, my mother asked me to help him to practise Kinh language so it would be easier for him to go to school and understand his teachers.

It seems that these intervention efforts from parents had an impact on the youth’s language practices and beliefs. The latter conformed to the parents’ intervention when they showed their agency in managing to practise and use some Vietnamese when they were small and had some early language advantages in their primary school and wider society. In Y-Kap’s case, under her mother’s intervention, her own language practices in turn became an intervention model that acted on her younger brother’s language practices. In A-Lim and A-Anton’s case, their parents’ opinion on their Vietnamese use appeared to have influenced their language use and beliefs. A-Lim managed to apply Vietnamese flexibly in his home communication without much restriction. A-Lim and A-Anton also believed that Vietnamese communication skills were important for them to work and fall in line with the mainstream society. The parents’ language intervention, hence, contributed to directing their children’s individual language policy to the transformation tendency. In addition, some parents and family members showed their concern about other languages that were thought to be useful for their children. Y-Nom, for example, said that her father sometimes encouraged her to practise English with foreigners. Similarly, Y-Kap’s mother and other members in her family wanted Y-Kap to practise and improve her English. Y-Kap’s mother related: No, she doesn’t [speak some English]. [When] she saw some American people (Western tourists) walking past, then I said ‘Kap, look! Americans there, American men and women. Go and talk to them in English’. Then she said ‘No mom, I do not want to talk, I am so shy!’

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[…] [When] she visited her aunt’s house, her grandma said ‘Kap, my granddaughter Kap, why don’t you speak English. Talk to your auntie in English!’ Her aunt [also] said ‘Kap, you should practise, practise English’. Ah Y-Kap said she was shy. ‘Why you are still like that!’ She said ‘Auntie, I want to speak, but I am shy’

It seems that Y-Kap’s mother and her relatives’ encouragement did not shake Y-Kap’s reluctance to practise English, as she was not very confident in her English proficiency. Y-Kap, however, managed to use English in contacting foreigners in a more propitious situation, under her aunt’s intervention. She related the situation in her journal: I was asked to follow and guide some foreign tourists in (name of district), with one more person (a tour guide) […]. I wanted to communicate, to talk to them but I was afraid of speaking [English] incorrectly so they wouldn’t understand. When they tried to talk to me, I turned a deaf ear and evaded answering them, and pretended that I had not heard them. But going around with them the whole day, my aunt who went with us asked me to talk to them. Then I opened my mouth and said one or two sentences that I was sure that I could say them correctly.

Y-Nom and Y-Kap’s parents’ or family members’ attempts to intervene in the former’s English practices reflected their beliefs in the high value of this language in Vietnamese society. While Y-Nom managed to take the opportunities to learn some English, Y-Kap fi rst exerted her agency in rejecting this intervention and maintaining her position. Her hesitation about speaking English and her worry about her English proficiency might be a manifestation of foreign language anxiety, that refers to individuals’ shyness characterised as their fear of, or anxiety about, communicating with people using the foreign language. This anxiety comes from their apprehension of troubles in communicating with others due to different reasons such as low language proficiency or lack of language confidence (Horwitz et al., 1986). Y-Kap, then, managed to use a bit of English when her aunt encouraged her to do so in another situation, and this suggests that she gradually conformed to the aunt’s expectation about her English use. The youth’s individual language policy related to English under others’ intervention might be, hence, situational, and might depend on the degree to which they were willing to overcome their English anxiety or their wish to transform themselves through practising the language. Teachers

The bilingual youth occasionally applied their language negotiation strategies in contacting their teachers who, in implementing school language policy through classroom teaching, occasionally intervened in their students’ language use and behaviours. The youth narrated that their

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teachers tended to criticise rather than encourage them to use their ethnic language in the class. A-Than, for example, related that in his primary school, when he or his other classmates tried to talk about something in their L1 and laughed, his teacher thought that they were saying bad things about her. A-Xan, in line with such discussion, described that when he was in school, many Kinh teachers said that they did not like students to talk in their L1. Likewise, Y-Minh mentioned a secondary school teacher of hers who often reprimanded students for using their ethnic language: Back when we were in secondary school, we often spoke Regao. The teacher always scolded us. Because she could not understand what we said. She said ‘if you speak your language, how can I understand or know whether you say something bad about me?’

In primary school, as most of the youth’s classmates spoke the same L1, the youth still negotiated to maintain their L1 in communication with these peers. The teachers’ reminder about using Vietnamese properly, hence, might not be very successful. However, since secondary school, in a mixed-ethnicity environment where Kinh students were the majority, when the youth’s language use was objected to by their teachers, they had to conform to the teachers’ expectation. Y-Nom, for example, related that in her college, she avoided using her L1 when her teachers were in the class because one of the teachers said that it was not polite to speak in a language that other people did not understand. Her agency to make the decision to speak Vietnamese only in this environment suggests that the teachers’ language intervention could contribute to transforming the youth’s individual language policy to the mainstream line. In addition, it was narrated by the youth that their teachers’ comments on their language ability influenced the ways they self-evaluated that ability. In perceiving themselves as bilinguals, Y-Nom and Y-Khau said that thanks to their teachers, when they were young, they conformed to the teachers’ view to construct the belief that being able to speak many languages was an advantage. They also thought that they were ‘better’ than their Kinh counterparts in terms of language. As Y-Khau related: Previously in my school, my teachers often made jokes. [They said that] we knew both the ethnic language and Vietnamese, [and were] better than Kinh friends who knew only one. I was also happy.

Y-Nom and Y-Khau held their bilingualism in high regard and felt proud of their language ability when they heard their teachers’ positive comments about ethnic minority students who were able to speak languages other than Vietnamese. It is therefore verified that when the youth were given clear positive messages by teachers about their bilingualism, their agency in developing their self-worth and self-affirmation could be strengthened. As all their languages were valued, they might be able to

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construct their individual language policy in which both maintenance and transformation were attached importance. Peers

As the youth were influenced by their same-age peers who had shared interests and values, they often implemented different negotiation strategies in dealing with the latter’s judgement and intervention. In intervening in the youth’s language use, both their L1 and L2 peers tended to support the language of their own group. Many L1 peers of the youth wanted the latter to keep using L1. In talking about her language use in the community, Y-Diopris, for example, said that her village peers ‘hated’ her because they thought that she ‘showed off ’ by her frequent use of Vietnamese. She, however, added that she just ignored them and managed to keep using the language she wanted to use. Her attitudes towards the peers’ comments on her language might be because she did not appreciate criticisms from those she thought were showing a lack of goodwill in suggesting changes in her language practices (Nguyen, 2019b). Y-Diopris, therefore, demonstrated her strong agency in deviating from the peers’ intervention and was not influenced by them in negotiating her individual language policy. Along the same line, A-Dang revealed that his same-ethnic friends sometimes did not want him to speak Vietnamese when talking with them. For that reason, he managed to apply L1 as much as possible in communication with them. As he related: ‘They spoke the local (ethnic) language, but I talked to them in Kinh language, they said I despised them […]. So I felt uncomfortable when they said so’. A-Dang then understood that ‘perhaps they wanted me to speak in our ethnic language more frequently’, and that it was not good to use a lot of Vietnamese in the village. In turn, he also intervened in other village friends’ language use: A-Dang:

I also think like them. We have to speak our mother tongue, not [speak Kinh language] every day. Interviewer: If somebody in your village talks to you in Kinh language, will you have reactions? A-Dang: Yes, I will surely. If they know the local language, but pretend to talk to me in Kinh, I will hate them.

Being intervened by the same-ethnic peers, A-Dang exercised his agency to limit the use of Vietnamese and maintain the L1 properly in talking with them. His attitude towards others’ language use, which was similar to the way his peers showed their attitudes towards his Vietnamese use, suggest that the peers had also influenced his language beliefs. A-Dang and his same-community peers then, together, developed a consensus about the importance of maintaining the habit of using L1 positively when reminding each other about the common language rule. In conforming to the peers’

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language intervention, A-Dang negotiated his community-based individual language policy to be associated strongly with the maintenance tendency. The youth’s L2 peers from the Kinh majority community, on the other hand, tried to influence them to use more Vietnamese. Y-Bien, a Jarai who also knew Bahnar language, for example, said that some of her secondaryschool classmates wanted her to use Vietnamese only, so she needed to conform to them and avoid using Bahnar in the class. She said: ‘I spoke with that [Bahnar] friend in Bahnar when we hang out, but in Vietnamese when we were in the class […]. Because sometimes if I talk [with her] in Bahnar, Kinh classmates do not understand and they may think… ’. She continued relating that her Kinh classmates did not want her to use languages other than Vietnamese: They (Kinh classmates) often said: ‘you should speak Vietnamese so we can understand you’, and so we communicated in Vietnamese […]. When I was in Grade 6, when I spoke Jarai or something in the classroom, Kinh mates often said that I despised them, and so I had to practise Vietnamese. Then I had more knowledge about Vietnamese […]. That means, because they did not understand, they thought we said bad things about them. Those people often said so.

It is deduced from what happened in Y-Bien’s story that monolingual speakers of the dominant language, in intervening in their friends’ language use, may take a dominant role in the classroom with their ethnic minority counterparts. Y-Bien showed her agency to decide that it was better to use Vietnamese when her Kinh peers were around, as she might want to join them and reduce possible language conflicts and ethnic distance. The L2 peers, hence, pushed her to negotiate her individual language policy following the transformation orientation. Along the same line, A-Lim related that although some Kinh peers were unhappy when he spoke his L1 or Bahnar in front of them, he did not care about them, and just managed to concentrate on his private talk. He exerted strong agency to negotiate with the peers’ attitudes and decide that these attitudes were not important for him. Deviating from the Kinh peers’ attempt to intervene in his language practices, A-Lim determined to maintain his individual language policy in these situations. As he said: Sometimes they asked if I was ‘broadcasting short wave’ (targeting some certain communication participants only). But no problem! I just said like that [in my ethnic language], did not say bad things about anyone. For example, in talking about private things, I can use my ethnic language, no problem!

In addition, Y-Xuong related how her language beliefs were influenced by her peers. She said that she was sometimes unhappy because of her friends’ comments on her L1 and L2 proficiency and the ways she used the languages. She then came to believe that she really had language problems

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as pointed out by her friends. Her individual language policy in relation to her language confidence and linguistic identity might, hence, change because of the peers’ evaluation. This is an example of bilingual youth’s uncertain identity (Markus & Nurius, 1986) as they travel across linguistic, ethnic and cultural worlds and are ‘acted on’ by various external interventions. Y-Xuong, then, described this situation in her journal and revealed that her self-evaluation of her language was affected by those peers: Usually when I talked to my same-ethnic friends in my ethnic language, they disregarded me because I did not pronounce clearly. I thought I should use the general language, so I could avoid those troubles. But sometimes when I spoke the general language in my room (in the student dorm), some friends said that I pronounced [Vietnamese] unclearly. I then had some miscellaneous thoughts: ‘I should practise pronunciation of both the ethnic language and the general language’.

In short, the youth applied different language management strategies in dealing with different language interveners. These individuals who intervene in their language either intentionally or unintentionally could be anyone amongst their life contacts, including their parents, teachers and peers. The youth were expected by these people to maintain, modify or change their ways of choosing, using, perceiving and valuing the languages. They, however, managed and exerted their agency to take different reactions, that is, they either conformed to or deviated from, these interventions, depending on the situation, in negotiating their individual language policy in line with both the maintenance and transformation tendencies. Construction of Negotiated Language Policy: Maintenance and Transformation in Managerial Spaces

The youth’s stories in the previous section suggest that they had to manage various clues and cues to either sustain or adjust their language practices and beliefs under the impact of the meso, micro and individual forces. In that process, they constructed their negotiated language policy– or policy-in-management – as a language-regulating mode of negotiation in their daily social practices (Hornberger & Johnson, 2011) where they maintained the values of their ethnicity (maintenance) and embraced the common values of the mainstream society (transformation) simultaneously. This process of language policy negotiation operated in managerial spaces which were lived and imagined advantageous environments where external forces and interventions in their language practices and beliefs were more observable, their ‘negotiative’ agency was more explicitly performed, and their identity negotiation and management were more overtly configurated. The youth’s negotiated language policy as reflected in their language management under the intervention of institutions, community and

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individuals can be illuminated by referring to Nguyen’s (2019b) individual language management model. Re-explaining Petrovic and Kuntz’s (2013) language policy framework, the author suggests that individuals can determine three levels of responding to external forces, namely: responding (maintaining the status quo when dealing with organised institutional intervention), reinterpreting (actively reacting to simple intervention by individuals) and reframing (constructing a kind of personhood through responding and reinterpreting). The youth in this study, in managing their language practices and beliefs with different negotiation strategies (i.e. adapting, conforming and deviating), constructed their negotiated language policy by: • • •

responding: they adapted to the institutions and community’s forces and their language policy without much modification or changes; reinterpreting: they considered to either conform to (approve) or deviate (dissociate) from people’s intervention efforts; and reframing: in responding to and reinterpreting external forces and others’ interventions, they reframed their negotiated language policy following the maintenance and transformation tendencies.

Responding

Each of the language domains in which the youth existed such as the school, the church or the ethnolinguistic community had its own language policy which provided the foundations for building managerial spaces for their language management and policy negotiation. The school and the church are among the most powerful forces that intervene in the language of its participants (Spolsky, 2007), while the ethnolinguistic community is one of the fi rst direct environments which creates the sense of ‘usness’ (Doughty & Doughty, 1974) between its members, where individuals feel a pressure to follow some common social purposes such as mutual assistance, improvement of living conditions or language loyalty (Tosi, 1999). These organisations therefore not only influence, but may also strongly control their participants’ language practices and beliefs. While the ethnic community seemed to put more effort into conserving L1 and L1 values and the school appeared to put more effort into assimilating through L2 and L2 values, the church seemed to undertake both the preserving and integrating jobs. Under the intervention of the ‘background situation’ where social considerations were more important, the youth had to conform to the rules of the group to harmonise their identity with that group (Bentahila, 1983). The youth responded to the language rules and thereby, together with the external forces, created managerial spaces which are a lived advantageous environment to maintain their language practices similar to the existing state of language in the domain, or an imagined advantageous environment to sustain their language beliefs as expected by the

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institution/community. They exercised their agency to adapt themselves to the common climate and its language effort – either for conserving or assimilating – to assert their sense of belonging to that environment. The youth’s agency in adapting to the efforts of conservation was manifested clearly in their language management under the influence of their ethnolinguistic community. The community was a significant intervention authority that strongly acted upon the youth’s individual language practices and beliefs following the conservation tendency. The dominance of L1 in this domain contributed to the group’s sense of itself as expressed through its ideology about its language (Myers-Scotton, 2007), which initiated the formation of ideal managerial spaces for its young members to construct their negotiated language policy aligning with the maintenance orientation. The community gave them a sense of shared identity (Putnam, 2001) whereby they could choose to adapt to the community norms and create managerial spaces for this adaptation strategy to be applicable and their negotiated language policy to operate. A-Anton’s response is a typical example of a strong expression of agency in adapting to his community’s informal language policy. He maintained his L1 as much as possible in his in-group contact and together with others, warned people who tended to use too much Vietnamese in in-group communication. He also believed that if villagers spoke more Vietnamese, his community would be at risk of losing their language and ethnic values. Y-Xuong is another example of adapting to the community’s effort to promote its members’ L1 literacy. She attended the L1 class organised by people in her village and learnt reading and writing skills in her L1 to a certain degree as a consequence. She also affirmed that she had received knowledge about her L1 and was aware of preserving the values of her ethnic group from this experience. The youth’s feelings of in-group solidarity were enhanced by the group’s language intervention, which was a motivation for them to negotiate and execute the maintenance ingredient in their language practices and beliefs. On the other hand, the youth’s agency to adapt to the efforts of assimilation is found in the way they dealt with school policies. The school, by its very nature, is a domain which was organised to remedy their language and provide conditions for building managerial spaces which were advantageous for transformation of their language practices and beliefs. Under the dynamics of intervention from the school, they quickly learnt what was and was not rewarded (Commins, 1989) and what they needed to do to survive in this environment. This then became a significant motivation for the youth to exercise their agency in making decisions related to their individual language policy. In realising that Vietnamese was the key tool that could help them to fall in line with the school climate and participate in the mainstream society, they determined that improving L2 was extremely important for them (Nguyen & Hamid, 2017). The dominance of Vietnamese was a strong motivation for the youth to learn and apply

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this language extensively to survive in the classroom as well as the playground (Diaz, 1999) and establish managerial spaces for their negotiated language policy. Their adaption to the school’s Vietnamese-centred policy also created imagined advantageous spaces for shaping their language beliefs in line with the school’s discourses. Many of them believed that it was obvious for them to learn in Vietnamese and that the school language was a means of integration. This is because when coming of age, they were more aware of the instrumental role of the school language in their social participation and success. The youth, hence, negotiated their language policy decisions to accrue the necessary symbolic capital fi rst to successfully adapt to the common climate, then to transform themselves to the mainstream. The church, however, was a domain that encouraged both preservation and integration through language among its parishioners. As different languages, including parishioners’ L1, Vietnamese and Bahnar were applied in the religious activities, the church performed the role of both a conservator of tradition and an integration facilitator in intervening in its members’ language practices and beliefs. As there were parishioners who were from different ethnolinguistic minority groups (and sometimes including Kinh, although this was not common), the youth could interact with them in their ethnic language, Bahnar and Vietnamese in a more formal way. Church activities were hence managerial spaces where the youth negotiated their language policy decisions in line with both maintenance and transformation tendencies. Some of them executed the church’s language policy with the belief that this helped to preserve their L1 and ethnic customs, as Y-Nom confided. The youth’s responses to this intervention illustrated their conscious negotiation to adapt their individual language policy to this domain. Reinterpreting

Individual speakers normally depend on communicative situations to apply or develop different variations of their language practices and beliefs. They are also often informed of a need to modify these practices and beliefs by other individuals in different situations (Spolsky, 2009). These language interveners, hence, initiate the establishment of managerial spaces for the former’s language management and policy negotiation. In dealing with others’ intervention, the bilingual youth exercised their agency to reinterpret and actively manage the intervention to either accept or dismiss these expectations and, thereby, negotiated their individual language policy their own way. Individuals’ reactions to others’ language intervention are mentioned in the Communication Accommodation Theory (Sachdev & Giles, 2005). The theory proposes that individuals can adapt their language behaviours to make their original speech and views approximate more closely to that of the interlocutor (Bentahila,

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1983) or refuse to modify their original speech styles and views (Ng & Wigglesworth, 2007). The youth in this study, in facing others’ intervention in their language behaviours, evinced two main negotiation strategies in constructing their individual language policy: in some situations, they showed their desire for approval to the interlocutor (conforming); in some other situations, they expressed their desire for dissociation from the interlocutor’s attempt at influencing their language practices and beliefs (deviating) (Ng & Wigglesworth, 2007). The youth’s conforming strategy in managing with the intervention from others appeared more common. As they were able to speak many languages and manage a variety of language manners, the flexibility seemed to be greater, and so they sometimes strategically manipulated their language choice in observing the appropriateness of ‘ways of speaking’ (Ma, 2004). They, together with the interveners, created managerial spaces for their individual language policy to either align with the maintenance or transformation orientation. A-Hoang and Y-Diopris, for example, performed their agency by choosing to conform to the language behaviours and attitudes approved by the parents to show respect to the latter. Likewise, Y-Nom’s decision to avoid using L1 in the presence of her teacher showed her agency in conforming to intervention from the teachers whose discourses were authoritative or internally persuasive to trigger their legitimising identity (Park, 2008). Hence, the youth reinterpreted these interventions to construct their negotiated language policy which allowed them to manage the ways that brought on the least cultural and linguistic confl ict among them (Park, 2008). In addition, the desire of approving others’ intervention was also revealed in the youth’s language beliefs. Y-Nom, for example, was aware of the importance of L1 and ethnic preservation thanks to her parents’ language attitudes. Likewise, A-Lim and A-Anton adopted their parents’ view that Vietnamese skills were important for their future. Agency in approving others’ beliefs is also found in Y-Xuong and Y-Khau’s ways of looking at their language ability in referring to attitudes and appreciation from others. These can be seen as evidence of their management to accommodate their language practices to others’ expectation, and shape their language beliefs in line with others’ thought, as well as their negotiated language policy which was partly guided by other people involved in their language behaviours and set up managerial spaces for this policy to operate. Language interventions, however, are not automatically successful (Spolsky, 2007). In some situations, the youth also enacted agency to deviate from the intervention, and showed their dissociation from the other speaker (Ng & Wigglesworth, 2007; Sachdev & Giles, 2005). In doing so, they established managerial spaces for their individual language policy to either disalign with the maintenance or transformation orientation. As the youth reached school-age and were influenced by the outside surroundings, they sometimes dismissed their parents’ expectations of their

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language use. Y-Nom, for example, could not modify her L1 style regardless of the intervention efforts of her mother. Facing negative attitudes of L1 peers towards her language use, Y-Diopris exercised her strong agency in deciding to ignore them and maintain her language habit. Similarly, A-Lim’s agency manifested in his wish to keep using his L1 or code-mixing in spite of objections from his friends or other people. In addition, the youth sometimes maintained their own language beliefs regardless of others’ requests to change. Hence, in managing conflicting demands made on them, the youth deviated from their interlocutors’ intervention to assert their language preference and negotiate their individual language policy positions through this dissociation. Reframing

In responding to and reinterpreting external interventions, the youth managed (maintained or adjusted) their language practices and beliefs to attain a greater outcome, where they reframed their negotiated language policy in line with both maintenance and transformation orientations. They reacted to the interventions using different negotiation strategies, including adapting (to the school, the ethnolinguistic community and the church’s language policies), conforming (to language intervention by individuals in some situations) and deviating (from language intervention by individuals in other situations) to construct their negotiated language policy. Their negotiated language policy as reflected in their language management was constructed in managerial spaces established by the institutional/community’s formal and informal language policies, people’s language interventions, and their agency in reacting to these forces. The bilingual youth’s language management, as Spolsky (2005) observes, was all about choices as they moved across communication situations, social domains, and ethnic and cultural worlds. Under external forces and interventions, their choices were even more urgent and explicit, as they often needed to perform stronger agency to show immediate reactions through their language practices and express clearer language beliefs. They, in responding to and reinterpreting external interventions in their language practices and beliefs, constructed their individual language policy through different negotiation strategies, namely, adapting to, conforming to and deviating from the institutional/community language policy actors and the language intervener’s expectations in certain situations and contexts. They thereby reframed these strategies to conceptualise the function of language practices and beliefs as a way of constructing their negotiated language policy following the maintenance and transformation lines. The youth’s negotiated language policy as a process of maintenance and transformation was reframed with: (1) their agency in complying with the common climate of the immediate environment and its language efforts of either conserving or assimilating; and (2) their agency in language

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accommodation that reflected their desire for approval of or dissociation from the interveners who claimed to modify their language preservation or integration position. The youth’s language management was hence a negotiation process in which they performed their negotiated language policy as they placed themselves in the managerial spaces – the lived or imagined advantageous environment for managing their language practices and beliefs – through their use of various negotiation strategies. The youth’s construction of negotiated language policy, in addition, was also part of their identity configuration. As previously discussed, individuals, in their language management under the influence of external forces and interventions, managing their identity through language. Their agency is intricately tied up with their identity, as their critical understanding of negotiation strategies for and active decision-making regarding language are resources for performing or highlighting various aspects of their identity (Leeman et al., 2011). By exercising their agency in adapting to the institutions and the community’s efforts of conserving and assimilating, and in conforming to or deviating from others’ efforts of intervening in their preservation and integration desires, they configured their bilingual identity as a process in which both maintenance and transformation lines were active (Nguyen, 2021a), which was made overt in managerial spaces.

7 Individual Language Policy: Identification, Contextualisation and Interaction Perspectives

Identification: Individual Language Policy as a Means for Maintenance and Transformation of Identity

So far, we have learnt about the bilingual youth’s linguistic voyage, where they, as powerful agents, activated, deactivated and reactivated different language modes in constructing their individual language policy in order to align with different standards and expectations of different ethnic and cultural worlds. They practised/enacted their own language policy in using their L1, Vietnamese and other languages in different domains; perceived/interpreted their policy in valuing the languages in terms of ethnicity, utility, self-esteem and bilingualism; and negotiated/appropriated their policy in managing the languages under the impact of the policies and interventions of different institutions, communities and other individuals. As bilingual voyagers, they often presented their dual-line language policy, which was reflected in a number of clues and cues they used to navigate their language practices, beliefs and management to reach various minor or major destinations, among which maintenance and transformation were the main terminuses. This unique individual language policy, which was framed under the influence of numerous geographical, historical, political, social, institutional, situational and individual forces, allowed them to foreground their liminal and in-between maintenance and transformation status. Their movements across ethnic and cultural borders using this policy contributed to shaping their hybrid persona with multiple pieces of ethnic and mainstream know-how. An extensive look at the youth’s individual language policy from identification, contextualisation and interaction perspectives would be useful for us to have a deeper understanding of the construction of personhood in the youth’s language policy, the consequential relation between external forces and their language behaviours, as well as the policy lessons to 103

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be learnt from the present study’s findings. Identification, or self-identification particularly, refers to the youth’s configuration of identity by means of practising, perceiving and negotiating their individual language policy. Contextualisation, or social-contextualisation specifically, implies that the youth’s individual language policy was enacted, interpreted and appropriated conditionally in response to the subtractive language environment where they were living. Interaction, or cross-level interaction in particular, alludes to how bilinguals’ individual language policy can interact with language policies of higher levels, as a basic chain of the complex language policy circle. In terms of identification, it can be, again, emphasised that one’s selfpolicy and one’s identity are intertwined. For those who can speak multiple languages, bilingualism is not only about using, valuing and managing their languages in different spheres, it is also bound up with value-laden and emotive questions of their identity (Byram, 1988). As I have discussed in Chapter 2, constructing an individual language policy can be seen as part of one’s identity-making process, given that this is a kind of policy one implicitly applies to oneself in their language life. The bilingual youth, in constructing and applying their practised, perceived and negotiated language policy, configured their practised, perceived and negotiated identity through these policies in relevant implementational, ideological and managerial spaces. Their policy planning, hence, went hand in hand with their identity planning (Romaine, 2011). Their individual language policy was the policy of choices between their L1 and the mainstream language (and other languages) in configuring and reconfiguring their ethnic, mainstream and hybrid identities in relation to the languages. Therefore, the youth’s dual-line language policy facilitated the process of their dual-line identity construction, in which both preservation of ethnic identity and construction of mainstream identity were active. Their maintenance- oriented policy was therefore one of the tools for their identity maintenance, while their transformation-oriented policy would facilitate their identity transformation (Nguyen, 2021a). It is often believed that ethnic minorities, including immigrant and indigenous minorities who face pressures of assimilation into the mainstream society, have to endure a sort of language tension that is related to problems in social interaction, discrimination or disadvantages (Edwards, 2005) when people look down on folk bilinguals (Grosjean, 1982). Language tensions also lead to identity tensions between holding their own ethnic characters and pursuing life chances in the mainstream. Research on the identity of folk bilinguals in a subtractive language environment has indicated that in dealing with language and culture conflicts between the home–community and the mainstream and in facing identity choices, bilingual minorities can show one of, or fall somewhere in between, four possible identity manifestations suggested by Lambert (1967): (1) rejecting L1, identifying with L2, (2) rejecting L2, identifying

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with L1, (3) unsuccessfully identifying with either L1 or L2 and (4) identifying with both L1 and L2. The youth in the current study, at this stage of their life, constructed a kind of dual-line language policy to configure their bilingual identity that was most similar to the fourth manifestation. Although there were still pressures and tensions, they could flexibly identify with both L1 and L2, as well as other languages, as they were required to voyage across and be involved in many ethnic and cultural worlds. They had to move across boundaries to properly utilise their language resources in facing pressures to be part of both their ethnic community and the Vietnamese society. This process was challenging for them as they needed to practise, perceive and negotiate to navigate the dissimilarities, discontinuities and contradictions between languages, cultures and values (Burck, 2011) and to contest the underlying power relations (Hornberger, 2017) between their ethnic language and the mainstream language, as well as between their ethnic group and the Kinh majority. However, it appears that this group of bilingual youth was struggling to preserve their L1 identity and ethnic values while being pressured to replace them with the dominant ones through their purposeful integration into the mainstream society (Kim & Duff, 2012). In dealing with the external forces, the youth exerted their powerful agency to maintain their dual-line language policy using various linguistic clues and cues, which enabled them to form a kind of hybrid bilingual identity in which both ethnic and majority languages became part of, and both maintenance and transformation were involved in, their self-definition and group affiliation. This individual language policy was advantageous, as it allowed them to develop a multilingual repertoire which facilitated their flexible moves across public and private spheres. In other words, they did not have to reject their ethnic language and the values associated with the L1 in order to progress, but rather preserve these values and successfully integrate with the mainstream society (Nguyen, 2021a). As such, they were able to flexibly shift between equally active and available identities in certain situations, pressures and contexts (Lopez et al., 2010), and thereby maintained their ethnic identity and transformed to the mainstream identity simultaneously. The youth’s bilingual identity, as informed by their dual-line individual language policy, can be seen as a product of their active participation in multiple overlapping ethnic and cultural worlds. In addition, the bilingual youth, as particular and unique individuals who were different from each other in terms of language orientation as they were influenced by different levels of external forces, fell on a continuum in which some of them tended to choose more transformation, some were inclined to choose more maintenance, while others found some sort of a balance of both. Somewhere between these two poses of maintenance and transformation is probably a reasonable description of the youth bilingual identity (Deaux, 2000). This also evidences that their bilingual identity was in a transitional state, moving between

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maintenance and transformation, rather than a fi xed or end point (Bourgeois et al., 2009) and their identity formation was still a continuous debate with themselves, with other people, with environmental demands and social changes (Hinnenkamp, 2003). It can be suggested that this group of bilingual youth, in integrating into the mainstream, kept moving forward but still took along with them the values, and configured a kind of bilingual identity to which both maintenance and transformation were attached importance. Their individual language policy was key of this process, which guided their everyday language practices, beliefs and management to approach closer to or further from the maintenance and/or transformation lines. However, it is observed that for some of the youth, the transformation tended to become stronger with every passing day (Nguyen, 2021a), as their policy and identity often emerged in response to multiple external forces, when they realigned themselves to changing situations and circumstances (Romaine, 2011) where there were more and more integration pressures. This might be a sign of their language shift and L1 loss, which were already on the way. The youth’s wish to maintain the connection with their ethnic group through the L1 and their desire to be part of the mainstream might be in constant negotiations. Therefore, language maintenance and shift processes among them could be embedded within these negotiations (Wyman, 2012). Consequently, young people such as them should be considered as language policy actors in language endangerment settings, who play a critical role in bringing their languages forward in the future (McCarty & Wyman, 2009). Contextualisation: Individual Language Policy in a Subtractive Language Environment

In terms of contextualisation, I think it is noteworthy to take a broader observation of the youth’s construction of individual language policy as they were immersed in a subtractive language environment. As I have noted in the first chapter of this book, folk bilinguals, of which members of an ethnic minority group are typical examples, are people whose lower-status L1 is in danger of being gradually removed and replaced by their L2 – normally the dominant language of the society (Skutnabb-Kangas, 1981). These people reside in a subtractive language environment which mainly supports the acquisition and the use of the mainstream language, providing limited or no support for maintaining their L1 and other minority languages (Genesee et al., 2004; Lambert, 1977). They face strong external forces, especially those from the mainstream school and society, to become bilingual, as their L2 is dominant and more valued than their ethnic language. In other words, their bilingualism comes by force of circumstances (Baetens Beardsmore, 1986). This subtractive language environment is common in the majority of the polities in the world where there are immigrants and

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indigenous minorities. For the youth in this study, the Vietnamese society was a subtractive context where Vietnamese was dominant and their ethnic language was not valued or supported in institutions and public spaces. As discussed in Chapter 3, political forces on ethnic minority youth living in this environment are quite considerable. Recent top-down policies in Vietnam have attached importance to uniformity that can be achieved, as it is argued, by requiring all ethnic groups to master Vietnamese as a critical communication tool (Nguyen & Hamid, 2019). Although there is public commitment to promoting minority languages, multilingualism and cultural diversity, these policies have not been fully put into practice. National support for preserving and developing minority languages in schools and other institutions and the wider society is quite limited. Despite having received limited or no language support from school and society, the bilingual youth in this study had developed and maintained their own patterns of individual language policy that were necessary for allocating different functions of their private and social life in different ethnic and cultural worlds. This language policy was perhaps a product of the relation between their linguistic habitus and the linguistic market (Bourdieu, 1991). Since childhood, they acquired and articulated practices, beliefs and management skills related to their ethnic language which constituted their linguistic habitus. As they grew older, they used the linguistic capital of the societally valued languages to adapt to the market. On the one hand, the youth’s transformation-oriented policy in their adaptation and development of Vietnamese language was a result of the integration process in a subtractive language environment. Although school and the society imposed linguistic integration on the youth, there was inadequate support for them to learn Vietnamese as a second language. Even in school, they were considered as students who already knew Vietnamese, not students learning it as a second language (Skutnabb-Kangas, 1981). The youth, however, showed their agency in gradually mastering this language as a tool for their survival. By attending school and interacting with the wider society, they learnt which language was, and was not, rewarded (Commins, 1989). The way people interacted with them demonstrated to them that the language that counted in the linguistic market was Vietnamese (Fillmore, 1991). Their transformation-oriented language policy associated with Vietnamese was therefore naturally developed following the needs of surviving and integrating without much support from outside. The youth’s policy which encouraged them to use Vietnamese as a preference in many domains, sometimes even in the family and ethnic community, and to shape their belief in the higher value of Vietnamese in terms of utility, was apparently instructed by the geographical, social and political forces. These forces drove and had long-term consequences on the daily patterns of their language practices, beliefs and management, as well as the daily arrangements of their practised, perceived and negotiated language policy associated with Vietnamese.

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On the other hand, the youth still kept their individual language policy as aligning with the maintenance tendency, that manifested in their frequent practices and positive beliefs of their ethnic language, in this subtractive language environment. They believed that using L1 would connect them and their family–community, although they were keenly aware that their ethnic language might be ‘on the brink of disappearing’ (McCarty & Wyman, 2009), and was not much valued and supported by the mainstream school and the society. They still exerted their agency to develop their L1 skills, maintained a habit of practising L1 and continuously navigated their practised, perceived and negotiated language policy against the privileged position of the dominant language where possible (McCarty & Wyman, 2009). Their maintenance-oriented language policy was perhaps underpinned by the ethnolinguistic vitality (Giles et al., 1977) of their ethnic group and the collective and individual forces from their family and ethnic community. It is noted that in the Central Highlands of Vietnam, each village of the minorities constitutes a united block in which individuals are linked closely together and the life of each individual is influenced by others in the community (Dam Bo, 2003). It was understood from the youth’s stories that many minority communities encouraged their members to use the language of their ethnic group inside the community, especially with older people. The relatively positive ethnolinguistic vitality of many minority groups of which the youth in this study were a member may be related to historical forces: in the Central Highlands, influences of the Kinh majority on minority people, until now, have not been as profound as compared to other areas of Vietnam, where the relationship between Kinh and minority people has a long-term history. Looking back at the time before the 19th century, contacts between Kinh lowlanders and minority highlanders were relatively limited, and were mainly restricted to unusual goods exchanges (Dam Bo, 2003; Hickey, 1982). The historical forces on the youth’s individual language policy will be clarified further towards the end of the present section. From the youth’s stories about their construction of a dual-line individual language policy, it can be posited that it is possible for minority people in a subtractive language environment to maintain a certain balance between their multiple languages and cultures, particularly in a context of relatively strong ethnolinguistic vitality. The youth’s bilingualism had enabled more policy-shifting options, because each of their languages might have its own domains of dominance in their private and social life, and therefore, the role, position and values of the languages were not necessarily mutually exclusive. As such, they were able to exploit their multiple linguistic resources in which each policy orientation has its own legitimate functions (Fishman, 1969), that helped them to keep a relatively clear division of the usage and values of each language in different spheres of different ethnic and cultural worlds.

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The ethnolinguistic vitality of the minority communities was, however, in danger under the pressure of the subtractive language environment. Although minority communities normally live in clustered groups that are separated from the Kinh majority, influences from Kinh people on the minorities are quite considerable. Many features of the Kinh’s modern life have penetrated into minority communities, from language to other daily activities, via numerous mutual deals and contacts (McElwee, 2008). It is observed from the youth’s stories that in general, young minority people’s individual language policy tends to be strongly influenced by mainstream forces. For example, they could bring more Vietnamese to their home and ethnic community because of the Vietnamese surroundings, Vietnamese schooling and social contacts in Vietnamese. Some elderly people who were not as good at Vietnamese as their children or had less contact with Kinh people also gradually accepted the presence of Vietnamese in their family and community. Although the youth had developed their dual-line individual language policy, which allowed them to maintain a balance of their L1 and Vietnamese, they might be unable to keep themselves out of this general vortex, with the risk of gradually losing their L1 and L1 culture and being assimilated into the mainstream society. Some of the youth’s tendency to increase Vietnamese — the common language among the majority of people in their daily contact — or their instrumental view in valuing the most necessary languages for their life and their future generations can be seen as examples of the weakening of the community’s ethnolinguistic vitality, that brought language and cultural consequences to its members. The bilingual youth’s individual language policy, to a certain extent, could also mirror issues related to historical and social changes that brought language consequences to people in the region. Gordon (1964), in a study on assimilation into American life, suggested a model of assimilation for non-English speaking immigrant groups predicting that in the process of integration, the fi rst generation of the immigrant family/group speak mainly their native language, the second generation speak both the native language and English and the third generation would speak only English, the language of the mainstream American society. In an attempt to understand the bilingual youth’s individual language policy from a sociological lens, I believe that this model can be referred to in order to explain why their policy were oriented to both the maintenance and transformation lines, which might have been framed under certain historical forces. As mentioned in Chapter 3, in the past, most of the local residents in the Central Highlands were ethnic minority people. Since the Vietnamese Government’s resettlement projects in the 1970s–1990s, the number of Kinh lowlanders coming from the North and other areas to the region has rapidly increased. The dominance of Kinh people and their activities since then has led to the gradual loss of culture among minorities. If counting the number of years from the 1970s–1990s resettlement to the present

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time, the youth in this study belonged to the second generation of their ethnic family/group who had frequent contact with and received influences from the Kinh majority and the Vietnamese society. Unlike their parents, their generation had more chances to go to school, widen their social contacts and participate in the mainstream activities. Vietnamese language and Kinh culture had followed them to penetrate into their ethnic community. However, they had not lost all of the particular ethnic and cultural features that they inherited from the fi rst generation as the ethnolinguistic vitality of their ethnic group, as discussed in the previous section, was still relatively notable. It is possible to surmise that this might be one of the reasons why the youth could navigate their individual language policy between the maintenance and transformation orientations and comfortably identified themselves with both their ethnic language/ ethnic values and the mainstream language/mainstream features. It is, nevertheless, important to reiterate that how the youth will maintain this language policy and retain the balance between the languages, cultures and values and their engagement with both maintenance and transformation for themselves and for the next generations under the pressure of integration into the mainstream and the ongoing weakening of their community’s ethnolinguistic vitality is still a challenging question (see Nguyen, 2019b, 2021a; Nguyen & Hamid, 2016). Interaction: Individual Language Policy and Higher-Level Language Policies

Before expatiating on the bilingual youth’s individual language policy from an interaction perspective, it is perhaps useful to briefly revisit the theory-informed accounts of the youth’s language policy construction across ethnic and cultural worlds, as the theoretical lens used to interpret their language voyage is the principle to explain the cross-level interaction between their individual language policy and higher-layer language policies discussed in this section. To sum up, the bilingual youth’s individual language policy has been viewed through the lens of the ethnography of language policy, where their policy is examined referring to three main policy factors, namely level, agent and process. Regarding level, how the youth’s individual language policy was influenced by external macro, meso, micro and individual forces has been described. Regarding agent, how the youth, as powerful agents of their language policy construction, as well as their agency in orienting the policy towards the maintenance and transformation lines, have been examined. Regarding process, how the three components of the youth’s individual language policy, namely practised language policy, perceived language policy and negotiated language policy are framed, and how the implementational, ideological and managerial spaces for their policy to construct and operate are created, have been discussed. This ethnographic approach to examination of the

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youth’s individual language policy has enabled us, as readers, to observe their policy construction from a broader vision, and to see how their individual policy reflected and interacted with multiple higher-level language policies. This approach has also allowed us to be attentive to the ideas that the youth’s individual language behaviours did not stand independent of other-level language policies, and that their individual language policy emerged as a link in the complex language policy chain or circle. I have also suggested earlier that from a bottom-up perspective, as macro, meso and micro language policies and individual language intervention often target language use by people, individual language policy can be considered the first step on the path to the outcomes of, and can contribute to shaping, these higher-level policies (Grin, 2003; Nguyen & Hamid, 2018, 2020). Individual language behaviours have long been considered as being isolated from language policies of other layers. For that reason, a laissez-faire approach to language policy focusing on individuals, as I have attempted to do in the present study, would allow us to highlight the potential re-emergence of the macro, meso and micro language policy and planning resulting from the alignment of individual actors (Hamid & Baldauf, 2014). As we can see from the youth’s stories, several changes in higher-level language processes, such as more conservative/liberal family and community language policies, more diverse language climates in the mainstream school (at a certain degree), or stronger/weaker language connection among different ethnic minorities in the wider society, were the collective consequences of consistent patterns of language policy choices made by the youth (and other ethnic minorities) at the individual level (Romaine, 2011). As de facto language policymakers, bilingual youth’s individual language policy, although it is implicit, discursive and ad hoc, may be highly consequential for the future of their ethnic language, the vitality of their ethnic community, and the chances of success of higher-level policies (McCarty et  al., 2009; Sallabank, 2010). In addition, as indicated in the present study, the bilingual youth were key agents of their individual language policy, who had agentive power in their policymaking and implementing processes, who exercised their agency to construct, appropriate and interpret their policy (Hornberger & Johnson, 2011; Johnson, 2013). They, therefore, had potential to enhance this agency in interpreting, practising, intervening, or transforming policies of higher levels, that could promote their agentive role towards contributing to positive changes in these higher-level language policies, ideologies and practices (Phyak & Bui, 2014). As everyday language policymakers, these young ethnic minorities’ individual language policy could ‘ripple through societies to create a tidal wave’ (Harrison, 2007: 9) of changes and inform qualitative features of language use in society as a whole, although further examination of how such a tidal wave would happen and have an impact on social changes is still needed (Sloboda,

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2009; Wyman, 2012). However, as I have indicated above, it seemed challenging for many of them to keep themselves out of the general vortex of language transformation and loss; and their policy choices in such a circumstance would be highly consequential for future generations of speakers of their ethnic language. For that reason, although young minority people are agentive constructors of their language policy, they often cannot single-handedly counter the assimilation pressure on their language practices, beliefs and management. In order to sustainably maintain the balance of their maintenance- and transformation-oriented language policy, they need support from a larger nexus of authoritative language policy agents from different levels (McCarty et al., 2009). Therefore, a top-down approach to supporting youth in developing and maintaining their dual-line individual language policy and identity is needed. From a top-down perspective, there are quite a number of things that need to be considered about bilingual youth living in a subtractive language environment, such as the participants in the present study, and their language policy. As revealed from the youth’s stories, top-down language policymakers in this participial context might consider planning and implementing particular language issues to be very different from those seen at individual-level language policy (Fairbrother & Masuda, 2012). They seemed to focus only on the Government’s ideologies about the national unity through a common language and about minority development through assimilation, and ignored the complexity of language situations at ground and individual levels. Hornberger and Johnson (2011) emphasise that we cannot ignore the power of official macro- and institutional-level language policies, which can open and close implementational, ideological and managerial spaces for maintenance or transformation in language choices among young ethnic minority people. These top-down conditions, in addition to other external forces, under which young people’s individual language policy is constructed, can either empower them to preserve their ethnic language or constrain their policy construction towards choosing the mainstream language for mainstream participation at the expense of their L1 (McCarty et al., 2009). National policies, in general, have side effects on minority people: on the one hand, policies can serve to conserve traditional values, reinforce heritage identity and provide more access to mainstream opportunities; on the other hand, policies can result in marginalisation and social disadvantage (Edwards, 2004). The minority youth in this study, for example, experienced both language advantages and disadvantages under the Vietnamesecentred language regime (Nguyen & Hamid, 2021), which had a huge subtractive impact on minority people in the polity. They had chances to integrate into the mainstream and enhance their mobility through language. This advantage was, however, negligible compared with the disadvantages which they suffered: they often faced risks of being marginalised in the mainstream society and losing their L1 and cultural values in the

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process of assimilating. In order to minimise the side effects, it is necessary to ensure a range of options for young ethnic minority people to help them create their own pathways (Adamson & Feng, 2009) for their policy construction and identity configuration in their bumpy language voyage across ethnic and mainstream worlds. Top-down language policies, therefore, should reflect different domains and levels of language ideologies and practices (Nguyen, 2019b) and the outcomes of these language policies need to be construed as results of people’s language behaviours (Grin, 2003). Government and top-down policymakers need to pay attention and listen to minority people’s voices as one of the ways forward to enhancing linguistic human rights for minorities. It is necessary to fi nd out about what minority groups and people actually do with their languages and what language means to them rather than just make it as a political–linguistic discourse (Blommaert, 2010). Understandings of the nature of practised, perceived and negotiated language policy of young minority bilinguals should be the basis for planning language policy related to this particular group. On this basis, youth’s maintenance- and transformation-oriented policy and identity should be encouraged. They should not be put in situations where they are forced to choose one between these two lines (Romaine, 2011). They deserve to be considered as bilinguals who have talents in both their ethnic language and Vietnamese. In addition, as indicated in the present study, since different languages and cultures can coexist peacefully, there are not necessarily confl icts between maintenance and transformation orientations, between bilingual identity and national solidarity in the same individual (Nguyen & Hamid, 2018). Therefore, multilingualism is far from bringing about political and economic problems (Fishman, 1991), and at a higher level, it is possible to have national unity and language diversity co-existing (Baker, 2011). It is hence necessary to construct strong social discourses that bilingualism and national identity are not mutually exclusive (Gibbons & Ramirez, 2004), and that multilingualism and multiculturalism are a resource rather than an obstacle to economic progress, social development and national unity. It is hence important to preserve an ecological environment for various languages to coexist in which minorities’ ethnic and cultural prosperity, and their multiple-orientation policies and identities are respected. In subtractive language contexts such as Vietnam where using the mainstream language is essential for ethnic minority people to fully participate in the society, institutional support for minority language use in many domains is necessary for preserving endangered minority languages and cultural values of minority groups. As school was an important bridge that transferred its students from maintenance to transformation through its language policy, it should play a more positive role in reinforcing their maintenance orientation. Schools should be the pioneer in supporting minority languages, promoting L1 culture preservation and constructing

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positive views on language diversity. If minority students’ ethnic language is valued in mainstream schools, they will be able to construct a more balanced individual language policy and develop a more positive identity associated with the maintenance and transformation lines. Finally, as the youth had to struggle to maintain their ethnic language while transforming to the mainstream flow, there is a need to support and enhance the ethnolinguistic vitality of ethnic minority communities. Minority communities which are influenced by mainstream forces should revalorise their cultural traits and identities that were often devalued by the majority (Romaine, 2011) and reposition themselves as the most maintenanceoriented domain where young members can fi nd advantageous implementational, ideological and managerial spaces to balance their practised, perceived and negotiated language policy, which are sometimes strongly constrained by multiple mainstream forces.

Transcription Convention

[…] (words in round brackets) [words in square brackets]

Texts omitted Author’s explanation Words which were not uttered, but are inserted into the translation to make it intelligible

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The author would like to thank Cambridge University Press, Taylor & Francis, Elsevier, De Gruyter and John Benjamins publishers who have allowed her to reuse a few data extracts, which appear in her following articles published with them: (1) Nguyen, T.T.T. (2021) Bilingual identity of ethnic minority students: Insights from Vietnam. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism 24 (1), 91–106. (2) Nguyen, T.T.T. and Hamid, M.O. (2021) Language choice of Vietnamese ethnic minority students in family and community interactions: Implications for minority language maintenance. International Multilingual Research Journal 15 (4), 317–331. (3) Nguyen, T.T.T. and Hamid, M.O. (2020) Language choice in peer interactions and the role of peers in minority language maintenance: A case study from Vietnam. Language Problems and Language Planning 44 (2), 123–145. (4) Nguyen, T.T.T. (2019) Vietnamese ethnic minority students’ language practices under the influence of external interventions: A management perspective. Language in Society 48 (5), 745–767. (5) Nguyen, T.T.T. (2019) Translanguaging as trans-identity: The case of ethnic minority students in Vietnam. Lingua 222, 39–52. (6) Nguyen, T.T.T. and Hamid, M.O. (2019) Language choice, identity and social distance: Ethnic minority students in Vietnam. Applied Linguistics Review 10 (2), 137–162. (7) Nguyen, T.T.T. and Hamid, M.O. (2018) Bilingualism as a resource: Language attitudes of Vietnamese ethnic minority students. Current Issues in Language Planning 19 (4), 343–362. (8) Nguyen, T.T.T. and Hamid, M.O. (2017) Subtractive schooling and identity: A case study of ethnic minority students in Vietnam. Journal of Language, Identity and Education 16 (3), 142–156. (9) Nguyen, T.T.T. and Hamid, M.O. (2016) Language attitudes, identity and L1 maintenance: A qualitative study of Vietnamese ethnic minority students. System: An International Journal of Educational Technology and Applied Linguistics 61, 87–97.

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Index

agency, 16, 17, 18, 35, 53, 55, 57, 60, 62, 75, 76, 79, 80, 96, 98, 99, 101, 105, 107, 110 individual agent, 12, 16 language policy agent, 17, 35, 76, 82, 103, 111, 112

ethnolinguistic community, 14, 15, 65, 85, 87, 89, 97, 98, 101 ethnolinguistic vitality, 108, 109, 110, 114 external forces, 13, 24, 31, 53, 56, 61, 62, 82, 96, 97, 101, 103, 106, 112 external intervention, 11, 22, 23, 96, 101 geographical, historical and social forces, 24, 26 individual language intervener, 15, 16, 17, 89, 99, 101, 102 macro, meso, micro and individual forces, 12, 16, 19, 110, 111 political forces, 27, 28, 29

Baldauf, 1, 19, 82, 84, 87, 111 bilingual youth, 2, 24, 31, 32, 35, 54, 75, 82, 101, 103, 104, 105, 107, 109, 110, 111 bilingual education, 30 Bonacina-Pugh, 20, 21 Bourdieu, 60, 68, 78, 79, 107 clues and cues, 5, 21, 22, 35, 53, 82, 96, 103, 105

Fishman, 2, 15, 18, 35, 59, 108, 113

discourse of language, 13, 14, 15, 26, 27, 28, 29, 62, 76, 77, 78, 80 domain, 35, 36, 42, 47, 49, 54, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60 dual-line policy, 18, 45, 72, 80, 103, 104, 105, 109

Grin, 13, 19, 111, 113 Grosjean, 2, 4, 5, 17, 104

ethnic and cultural worlds, 1, 4, 6, 18, 53, 72, 81, 101, 103, 107, 110 ethnic minority, 2, 3, 7, 17, 18, 25, 26, 27, 31, 104, 106, 109, 111 ethnic minoritised, 3 ethnicity, 6, 53, 63, 80 ethnography of language policy, 12, 18, 110 ethnographic individual language policy, 24, 110 ethnographic language policy, 18 ethnography of individual language policy, 12, 17, 35 level, agent and process, 12, 13, 18, 35, 62, 82, 110

identity, 5, 11, 12, 17, 20, 23, 34, 54, 82, 96, 102, 103, 104, 106 bilingual identity, 53, 102, 105, 106, 113 border identity, 5 ethnic identity, 7, 15, 57, 63, 76, 80, 105 hybrid identity, 5, 12, 18, 103, 104, 105 identification, 76, 90, 103, 104, 105 identity configuration, 12, 18, 96, 102, 104, 105, 106, 113 linguistic identity, 11, 20, 22, 85, 96 mainstream identity, 104, 105 national identity, 14, 28, 113 persona, 5, 78, 79, 103

Hamid, 1, 17, 19, 26, 29, 31, 61, 80, 111 Hornberger, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 22, 23, 96, 111, 112

127

128

Individual Language Policy

implementational, ideological and managerial spaces, 22, 23, 104, 110, 112, 114 ideological spaces, 22, 23, 62, 75, 76, 77, 78, 80, 81 implementational spaces, 22, 23, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61 managerial spaces, 22, 23, 82, 96, 97, 99, 101 in-between, 5, 7, 72, 103 individual language policy, 1, 6, 10, 18, 19, 20, 103, 104, 106, 110 implementational, ideological and managerial spaces, 22, 23, 104, 110, 112, 114 individual language policy constructor, 16, 17 negotiated language policy, 20, 22, 82, 83, 96, 97, 99, 101 perceived language policy, 20, 21, 62, 75, 76, 78, 80 policy in beliefs, 21, 62, 68, 75, 76 policy in management, 22, 82, 96 policy in practices, 21, 35, 54, 55 practised language policy, 20, 21, 35, 53, 54, 56, 59, 60 situational policy in practices, 54, 55, 56 Johnson, 12, 14, 16, 17, 18, 20, 23, 96, 111 know-how, 5, 17, 103 Lambert, 2, 64, 65, 104, 106 language and ethnicity, 63 language and self-esteem, 68 language as problem, 30 language as resource, 75, 80 language beliefs, 20, 62, 63, 68, 75, 78, 80 language attitudes, 62, 77, 80, 81, 100 language ideologies, 14, 15, 113 language maintenance, 61, 106 language management, 20, 82, 83, 89, 96, 97, 99, 101 organised language management, 83 simple language management, 89 language norm, 21, 22, 40, 53, 54, 55, 59 language policy, 9, 1, 10, 11, 12, 13, 18, 19, 111, 113

basic level of language policy, 10, 12, 13, 18 community language policy, 15, 36, 42, 87 de facto language policy, 6, 11, 19, 24, 111 ethnography of language policy, 12, 18, 110 family language policy, 15, 36, 37 individual language intervention, 16, 83, 89, 97, 99, 100, 101 individual language policy, 1, 6, 10, 18, 19, 20, 103, 104, 106, 110 institutional language policy, 14, 15, 42, 45, 47, 48, 57, 83, 85 language policy actor, 14, 15, 16, 17, 82, 101, 106 national language policy, 13, 14, 27 language policy circle, 1, 104, 111 language practices, 20, 21, 35, 53, 54, 57, 60 language choice, 5, 6, 11, 21, 35, 53, 54, 56, 100 language use, 20, 53, 55, 58, 61, 101 language practices, beliefs and management, 19, 20, 22, 23, 33, 103, 106, 107, 112 language regulating, 11, 12, 17, 96 language utility, 65 level, agent and process, 12, 13, 18, 35, 62, 82, 110 agent, 16, 17, 18, 35, 62, 82 level, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 18, 19, 35, 62, 83 process, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 35, 62, 82 linguistic passport, 5, 6, 81 linguistic destination, 7, 17, 18 minor or major destination, 5, 6, 103 linguistic voyage, 4, 6, 103 language voyage, 4, 18, 32, 34, 44, 72, 110, 113 voyager, 4, 5, 103 mainstream school, 29, 30, 31,36, 42, 45, 83, 114 mainstream norm, 61, 70, 75, 78, 79 maintenance and transformation, 7, 18, 53, 56, 57, 75, 77, 80, 97, 101, 103, 109, 110 assimilation, 30, 42, 78, 84, 97, 98, 101, 102, 109, 112

Index

conservation, 58, 76, 97, 98, 101, 102 instrumental value, 68, 75, 76, 77, 78 integration, 28, 29, 56, 57, 58, 59, 77, 79, 81, 99, 102, 105, 107 integrative value, 48, 75, 76, 77, 80 preservation, 8, 56, 57, 58, 59, 77, 100, 102, 104 marked and unmarked, 4, 14, 42 McCarty, 6, 11, 13, 17, 18, 19, 20, 54, 106, 108, 111, 112 multilingualism, 2, 14, 15, 28, 84, 107, 113 bilingualism, 2, 7, 71, 72, 74, 75, 80, 81, 103, 104, 106, 108, 113 bilingualism as a resource, 75, 80, 81 bilingual youth, 2, 24, 31, 32, 35, 54, 75, 82, 101, 103, 104, 105, 107, 109, 110, 111 elite bilingual, 2 folk bilingual, 2, 26, 28, 63, 80, 104, 106 Myers-Scotton, 4, 14, 42, 77, 78, 98 negotiated language policy, 20, 22, 82, 83, 96, 97, 99, 101 accommodation, 99, 100, 102

129

reframing, 97, 101 reinterpreting, 97, 99 responding, 97, 98 Nekvapil, 15, 19, 83, 89 Romaine, 7, 104, 106, 111, 113, 114 Ruiz, 30, 48, 75, 80 subtractive language environment, 2, 4, 29, 31, 32, 36, 81, 104, 106, 107, 108, 109, 112 self-esteem, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 78, 79 self-worth, 68, 78, 79, 93 Shohamy, 6, 10, 11, 20, 21 Skutnabb-Kangas, 2, 3, 34, 76, 83, 106, 107 Spolsky,10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 35, 62, 82, 99, 100, 101 upward mobility, 67, 77 Vietnam, 2, 3, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 108, 109, 110 Wyman, 4, 56, 106, 108, 112