1. Does language loss affect BBC’s self-perception of their ethnic identity?

2. If yes, how does Language Loss change their self-perception of identity?

BBC and Heritage Language Loss

Often, the heritage language stays in the home and the dominant language used in the majority of contexts outside of the home (e.g. work, education etc.). Because of this and various other reasons, it is common for a heritage speaker’s dominant language to shift from their heritage language to the dominant community language, resulting in a weakening or even complete loss of their heritage language skills.

This is exactly what is happening in the British-Chinese community - BBC children’s exposure to Chinese is typically limited to the home and when school starts, their primary language shifts to English (Raschka et al., 2006:9-10). Around this time, we find that BBC’s Chinese skills start to weaken or become lost.

Francis et al. (2014) surveyed 60 BBC children and found that 38 of them reported they could not speak Chinese. even though all these children were attending Chinese complementary schools, where they were learning Chinese. Francis et al. also found that many children believed that their heritage language was irrelevant and generally held negative attitudes to Chinese, which Francis et al. believe is another reason that many BBC shift to English as their dominant language.

Introduction

This study looks at heritage language loss in British-born Chinese (BBC) and the impact their language competency has on BBC self-identify.

Specifically, I was interested in:

Ethnic identity

According to Ego Identity Formation (Erikson 1969), ethnic identity is comprised of 2 things:

EXPLORATION

The effort to learn more about ethnic group/participation in cultural practices

COMMITTMENT

The positive affirmation of one’s group and sense of commitment to group

What is a Heritage Speaker?

A heritage speaker is someone who was raised in homes where the language was different to the dominant community language. The home language is called the heritage language.

British-Born Chinese (BBC)

British-born Chinese (BBC) are individuals who ethnically identify as Chinese but were born in, or moved to the UK at a very young age. There is some disagreement around how old a child can be when they move to the UK to still qualify as a BBC, but usually people agree that the child must have come to the UK in early childhood.

For BBC, their heritage language is usually Chinese and the dominant language of the community (the UK) is English.

Chinese Language(s)

There are several languages that can be referred to as ‘Chinese languages’. Cantonese, Mandarin, Hakka are just a few common examples. These are sometimes referred to as dialects of Chinese though these languages are not mutually intelligible. That is to say, if you knew one of these ‘Chineses’, you wouldn’t necessarily be able to communicate with someone who spoke another.

The British-Chinese community speak many different varieties of Chinese though this study will treat them all as just ‘Chinese’ as I am much more interested in the experiences of learning these languages as heritage languages in the UK rather than the specific structures and forms of the languages themselves.

Committment and Exploration develop an individual’s sense of group or community membership which Tajfel (1981) argues develops identity.

Most researchers are in agreement that exploration and commitment are essential to identity. However, many propose other factors they believe constitute identity though there is little consensus over these ones:

Identity is not static

It is important to note that identity is a process. It is strongly connected to an individual’s experiences as well as the community’s history, culture, power and other social factors.

Often identities can change throughout a lifetime or you may identify more with certain groups in different contexts.

This is particularly true for BBC. Some BBC may identify as ‘more Chinese’ while surrounded by others who also identify as Chinese people or in a situation with stronger associations to Chinese culture than in other contexts.

Language and identity

Whenever you use language, you are making a choice. You chose what words to use or how you pronounce those words, though often you do it so naturally, you rarely give it a second thought. These choices tell people things about you and your identity. What you call a ‘bread roll’ can tell people where you come from, what words you use can indicate to others how old you might be.

Linguists believe that identity emerges through language and idea of self is linguistically constructed and negotiated. Though language you indicate what gender, class, personality, communities you reside with.

What language you use can also be a choice if you are a bilingual. But what happens when heritage speakers lose the ability to speak their group’s language? Does it impact the strength of an individual’s connection to the group?

Methodology

To find this out, BBC participants were asked to fill out a questionnaire.

We looked at 5 things:

1. General demographics of participants (e.g. age, gender, level of education etc.)

2. Their language practices (what languages they used with their family or friends, do they read or write in Chinese etc.)

3. Their Chinese competency (how comptent are they in listening, speaking, reading and writing Chinese)?

4. The strength of their Ethnic identity using the Multigroup Ethnic Identity Measure Revised (MEIM-R)

5. How they position themselves in British and Chinese culture (using Wallace’s Self-psoitioning model)

MEIM-R

To measure the strength of participants’ ethnic identities, I used Phinney and Ong’s (2007) Multigroup Ethnic Identity Measure – Revised (MEIM-R).

This is a revision of Roberts et al.’s (1999) MEIM, which itself was a revision of Phinney’s (1992) original MEIM.

There are 6 statements and for each one, participants rate from 1 – 5 how much they agree with the statement.

1. I have spent time trying to find out more about my ethnic group, such as its history, traditions, and customs.

2. I have a strong sense of belonging to my own ethnic group.

3. I understand pretty well what my ethnic group membership means to me.

4. I have often done things that will help me understand my ethnic background better.

5. I have often talked to other people in order to learn more about my ethnic froup.

6. I feel a strong attachment towards my own ethnic group.

Questions 1, 4 and 5 assess exploration of their ethnic group while questions 2, 3 and 6 assess the participant’s commitment.

The higher the scores, the greater the engagement in the participant’s ethnic identity. Each category (commitment and exploration) could be scored from 3 -15. Those with commitment or exploration scores between 3-8 were considered low, scores of 9 were considered mid and scores of 10-15 were considered high.

For this study, the participants were asked these questions twice – once in relation to their Chinese community and heritage, and one in relation to their British culture.

Chinese Language Skills

To find out a participant’s Chinese language skills, participants were asked to select statements about their listening, speaking, reading and writing skills.

e.g. could the participant read texts like Chinese Newspapers and novels?

These questions were based on the HSK (Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi) Chinese proficiency test, China’s official Chinese language proficiency test (for non-native speakers).

General participant info

Through family and friends and various online groups, I managed to attract 55 BBC participants to answer my questionnaire. Their ages ranged from 17-52 and qualifications ranged from Level 2 qualifications to PhDs. We had a mix of female, male and non-binary participants.

The majority of my participants were Cantonese speakers, though we also had speakers of Hakka, Mandarin, Taishanese and Malay (it’s assumed this participants means the Chinese variety spoken in Malaysia rather than the separate Malay language from their answers to other questions).

*Participants were allowed to leave any questions blank if they did not know or feel comfortable answering them.

Wallace’s Self-Positioning Model

My study also wanted to investigate how BBC position themselves in relation to their communities and cultural groups.

Often, heritage speakers are seen as caught in-between 2 cultures, as though their cultures were dichotomies.

However, Wallace argues it’s more complicated than that and proposed 4 possible models to describe how heritage speakers position themselves in a way that acknowledges both their dominant and minority heritage communities and the ties between them:  

Findings

The majority of participants, agreed that being able to speak Chinese was essential to being Chinese, with only 1 participants strongly disagreeing and 0 participants disagreeing. 7 were neutral, 30 agreed and 9 strongly agreed.

Which language participants feel more comfortable using

40 felt most comfortable using English and 12 felt equally comfortable using Chinese and English. No one felt more comfortable using Chinese over English. 1 person selected another language and 2 didn’t answer.

As seen on the graph on the right, the feet in both worlds model is the only model where there were more participants who felt comfortable using both English and Chinese than those who were more comfortable using English over Chinese. The latter group were mostly spread between feeling British culture as home-base model, the life on the border model or the shifting identities model.

We also found that a higher percentage of those who felt equally comfortable using English and Chinese had a higher MEIM-R score for commitment to the Chinese group compared to those who were more comfortable using English over Chinese.  

Whether participants felt they use to be better at Chinese when they were younger

Participants were asked how strongly they disagreed or agreed with the statement: I used to be better at Chinese when I was younger.

We got a mix of answers: 9 participants completely agreed, 14 somewhat agreed, 9 selected neither agree nor disagree, 10 somewhat disagreed and 13 completely disagreed.

From out results, we do find a correlation between the level of Chinese commitment and exploration and whether participants felt they were better at Chinese when they were younger compared to their current language proficiencies. Those who felt they were better at Chinese when they were younger, tended to score lower on both level of Chinese exploration and commitment than those who disagreed with the statement.

Language Skills

Our participants have a range from listening and speaking abilities. Generally, participants seem to have slightly higher listening skills compared to speaking. Reading and Writing is a lot less common, with the majority of BBC participants not being able to read or write at all.

When comparing participants speaking and listening skills, we find that those who identify with the feet in both worlds or shifting identities models tend to have higher levels of listening and speaking competencies.

Those who identify with the home base/ visitor’s base model and identify their home base as British Culture tend to have lower levels of speaking competencies. For listening, they’re more spread out, with the majority of those identifying with a ‘British home-base’ around HSK3 though this may be because the majority of our participants were at HSK3 for listening.

The study also found that BBC with higher listening and speaking skills tended to have higher levels Chinese Commitment MEIM-R scores.

Additionally, those with higher speaking competencies tended to have higher Chinese exploration MEIM-R scores, but this pattern did not exist in listening.

These trends did not exist in a significant enough level when looking at participants reading and writing skills though this may be because there were significantly less participants with high reading and writing competencies.

What does this tell us?

All of this supports the belief that competency in the Chinese language is important to being Chinese and the Chinese identity. 

Overall there does seem to be some correlation between certain aspects of Chinese language competency and practice with factors of ethnic identity, with generally British-born Chinese individuals who feel more comfortable using Chinese or having greater Chinese language competencies exhibiting greater ties to their Chinese ethnic identity in the form of having higher MEIM-R commitment and exploration scores, as well as often identifying with the shifting identity model in Wallace’s self-positioning Framework as oppose to Home-base/visitor’s base model.

Thank you

I would like to thank my supervisor, Karin Tusting for her guidance, my friends and family for their support and my participants for their time.

Also, I would like to thank you, the person reading this right now. I hope you found this study insightful and interesting! If you would like to know more or express any of your own opinions, experiences or thoughts, please email me at y.siu@lancaster.ac.uk (or ying.siu@hotmail.com post Summer 2021) - I’m always excited to talk more about linguistics!

References

Erikson, E. (1968). Identity: Youth and Crisis. New York: Norton.

Francis, B., Mau, A. and Archer, L. (2014). ‘Speaking of Identity? British-Chinese Young People’s Perspectives on Language and Ethnic Identity’. In. Curdt-Christiansen, X. and Hancock, A. Learning Chinese in Diasporic Communities: Many Pathways to being Chinese (AILA Applied Linguistics Series: Vol. 12). Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company: 203-218.

Phinney, J. (1992). ‘The Multigroup Ethnic Identity Measure: A New Scale for Use with Diverse Groups’. Journal of Adolescent Research, 7(2): 156-176.

Phinney, J. and Ong, A. (2007). ‘Conceptualization and Measurement of Ethnic Identity: Current Status and Future Directions’. Journal of Counselling Psychology, 54(3): 271-281.

Raschka, C., Wei, L. and Lee, S. (2006). ‘Bilingual Development and Social Networks of British-Born Chines Children’. In: International Journal of the Sociology of Language 153(1): pp. 9-25.

Roberts, R., Phinney, J., Masse, L., Chen, Y., Roberts, C. and Romero, A. (1999). ‘The Structure of Ethnic Identity in Young Adolescents from Diverse Ethnocultural Groups’.  Journal of Early Adolescence, 19(3): 301-322.

Tajfel, H. (1981). Human Groups and Social Categories. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

43 Cantonese Speakers

5 Hakka Speakers

1 Malay Speaker

1 Mandarin Speaker

1 Taishanese Speake

2 Not said*