North American International Students in China: Language Learning and Identity Negotiation

• Author / Creator

  Mao, Li

• In this study, I critically investigate the language learning experiences of North American Chinese as a foreign language (CFL) international students in China, specifically those related to their investment and identity negotiation in Chinese social networks. Adopting the theoretical core and tools of critical hermeneutics, I focus on the power dynamics that CFL learners encountered in the multi-layered social context of a Northern Chinese city. The research findings show a big gap between participants’ vague and idealized understandings of China as imagined communities and the complexity of their actual investment beset by isolation and discrimination. In the target universities and programs, many aspects of the teaching and administrative philosophies, policies and practices were disadvantageous to the social interactions between the participants and local peers. In local communities, certain identity categories of North American CFL learners, such as mother tongue (native English speakers), race and ethnicity, and gender, brought out overt and covert othering practices towards the participants and led to the ambivalence of social privileges and vulnerabilities. Facing differentiated treatments, the participants to different extents took their personal initiative and fought for equal and full social participation. However, without sufficient and sustainable social support, agentive acts are a feeble solution to fulfill their social needs in Chinese homogeneous and hierarchical society.

• Subjects / Keywords

  • traditional Chinese learning culture
  • identity negotiation
  • power relationships
  • language learning
  • Canadian international students in China
  • American international students in China
  • critical hermeneutics
  • investment
  • CFL education in China
  • Chinese as a foreign language (CFL)
  • learning Chinese in China
  • Chinese universities
  • China as imagined communities
  • study abroad in China
  • racism in China
  • North American international students in China
  • Chinese social environment
  • Chinese learning experiences of native English speakers
  • gender issues in China
  • international education in China

• Graduation date

  Spring 2018

• Type of Item

  Thesis

• Degree

  Doctor of Philosophy

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/R32Z1349W

• License

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