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doi: 10.1177/13670069010050030201pmid: N/A
National belonging is a central facet of modern social identities. In Europe, nation-building often went hand in hand with linguistic nationalism. While the monarchial empires that preceded the modern nation had been multilingual polities (e.g., the Habsburg Empire), nations were founded on the ideology of “One Language, One Nation.” Nations are not only “Imagined Communities,” that is, systems of cultural representation whereby people come to imagine a shared experience of identification with an extended community, but also exclusionary historical and institutional practices to which access is restricted via citizenship. Linguistic restrictions to such access can be found in naturalization language testing, which usually takes place during the naturalization interview and tests the applicant's proficiency in a country's official and/or majority language. In this paper I examine the interrelationship of ideologies of national and linguistic identity and the ways in which they impact upon ideologies of citizenship. I describe current naturalization legislationina number of countries and the ways in which it is based on these ideologies. The paper has a special focus on Germany where naturalization legislation changed on January 1st, 2000. I describe the linguistic tests as they are stipulated by law and as they are conducted in actual practice. Finally, I turn away from the national ideologies behind these language tests to the linguistic ideologies that (mis)inform them. The data for this analysis come mainly from legal texts pertaining to naturalization, but also from newspaper accounts and interviews with naturalization candidates. I will show that the relationship between naturalization and language requirements depends on the different national ideologies that the various countries hold. The paper ends with the conclusion that most of the practices I report on are compatible neither with a contemporary understanding of citizenship nor with recent advances in linguistic research and the study of multilingualism.
doi: 10.1177/13670069010050030301pmid: N/A
This paper examines the way Italian-Canadian youth negotiate their identities through their language practices. Language and culture are the paths through which identity performance can be observed and interpreted. In fact, Ibrahim (1998,p.13) states that "not only identities are reflected in languages but also constructed in, through and within them. Language can be or is a political statement and is or can be a medium of identity performance. ”By viewing identity as multiple and shifting, I will show how eight Italian-Canadian youths in Toronto lean on different aspects of their identities through their daily linguistic and cultural practices across and within multiple “worlds” (i.e., Canadian, Italian-Canadian and Italian) and discourse sites. I examine the discourse around language, the linguistic interplay of codes and the discourse of representation within worlds and discourse sites in order to understand how participants negotiate their identities and positions.
doi: 10.1177/13670069010050030401pmid: N/A
The present paper focuses on an unusual linguistic minority — contemporary American writers for whom English is a second language. The study examines ways in which these writers position and reposition themselves with regard to their multiple languages and identities in autobiographic narratives. The analysis of the narratives demonstrates that five main aspects of identity may be subject to renegotiation in the process of second language socialization: linguistic, racial and ethnic, cultural, gender, and social identities. It is argued that written—and, in particular, published—texts represent ideal discursive spaces for negotiation of identities, spaces where accents may be erased and the writers' voices imbued with authority.Furthermore, it is argued that the importance of cross-cultural autobiographies by bilingual writers is not simply in ways in which this writing allows the authors to reinvent themselves but rather in ways in which it allows second language(L2) users to assume legitimate ownership of their L2 and to provide the readers with new meanings, perspectives, and images of “being American—and bilingual” in the postmodern world.
doi: 10.1177/13670069010050030501pmid: N/A
The purpose of this paper is two-fold. First, to present the findings of a study of Bangladeshi women's relations with their children's school in Birmingham, U.K., and the ways in which languages and literacies were regarded at thresholds of power between the minority-culture women and the dominant-culture institution. Second, to consider the insights which the work of French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu affords in analyzing the power structures evident in minority-culture parents' access to their children's schooling. The paper develops from a four-year research project which investigated home and school literacies of Bangladeshi children and their families in Birmingham, U.K. As part of the study, the mothers of 18 six-year-old Bangladeshi children were interviewed about their children's learning, their attempts to support this learning, and their communications with the school about this process. The children's teachers were also interviewed, about the role of parents in their children's learning. The home-school literacy process was a site at which the reproduction or renegotiation of power between dominant and minority groups became visible. The analysis makes clear that the Bangladeshi women were marginalized by structures of power which dictated that those with cultural and linguistic capital which was different from that of the majority-culture school were unable to gain access to information about, or support with their children's schooling.
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