Negotiated Identities of Second-Generation Vietnamese Heritage Speakers: Implications for the Multilingual Composition Classroom

Abstract

Grounded in interdisciplinary scholarship to include rhetoric and composition, applied linguistics, and heritage languages, my dissertation, Negotiated Identities of Second-Generation Vietnamese Heritage Speakers: Implications for the Multilingual Composition Classroom, is a qualitative study that explores how Vietnamese heritage speakers negotiate multiple identities in different social contexts. I define heritage speakers as asymmetrical bilinguals who were raised in a non-English speaking household but whose dominant language is now English. While findings from this study reveal that heritage speakers struggle to claim a linguistic identity because of discrimination from members of different Vietnamese communities, they nonetheless—through reflexive and interactive positioning—resist these communities' discriminatory practices by constructing and negotiating multiple identities that enable them to reimagine themselves as legitimate members of an imagined Vietnamese community. By focusing on speakers' negotiated identities, this dissertation departs from the traditional emphasis in heritage language and composition studies that equate language proficiency with cultural identity. Instead, it calls for a more nuanced understanding of identity formation that not only engages speakers' multiple spheres of belonging but also informs current pedagogical practices that seek to incorporate speakers' heritage languages as linguistic resources in the composition classroom.