ERIC Number: EJ1447319
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2024
Pages: 14
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0143-4632
EISSN: EISSN-1747-7557
'I Walk in Language Circles': Transnational-Translocal Entanglements of a Refugee-Background Somali-Bantu's Multilingual Identity
Xia Chao
Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, v45 n9 p3892-3905 2024
This narrative case study examines the multilingual practice and identity of Haben, a refugee-background Somali-Bantu in a larger one-year (2019-2020) ethnography with refugee arrivals in coping with new linguistic and cultural environment in a northeastern U.S. city. Framed by the entangled transnational-translocal approach to multilinguals, languages, and identities, this study finds Haben's African languages and English were acquired and used as resources for survival and thrival and weaponized against bullying and discrimination in his early and later life in diaspora. Haben's multilingual identity was (re)produced by the sociocultural and linguistic flows across national boundaries and his responses to local needs. This study indicates multilingual identity as a discursive spatio-temporal entanglement that blurs the boundaries between transnational-translocal, past-present, human-nonhuman. This study challenges deficit discourse that perceives immigrant multilingualism as a deficit.
Descriptors: Multilingualism, Refugees, African Languages, Second Language Learning, Native Language, English (Second Language), Coping, Self Concept, Ethnography, Bullying, Social Discrimination, Immigrants, Sociocultural Patterns, Disadvantaged, Cultural Differences, Adjustment (to Environment), Language Usage, Personal Narratives
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A