Linguistic Entrepreneurship in Sino-African Student Mobility

Wen XU (Autor)

Buch | Hardcover

234 Seiten

2024 | 2024 ed.
Palgrave Macmillan (Verlag)
978-981-97-2174-0 (ISBN)

Artikel merken

This book explores African international students’ lived experience within Chinese higher education, including their language ideologies, investment in Chinese language learning and the (re)shaping of identities and aspirations. Whilst high English proficiency has been sought by globally mobile students to play the ‘class game’ and gain entrée to the circle of elites, considerably less attention has been paid to how shifting global structures and China’s semi-peripheral position shape its language learners’ investment and identity construction. Drawing upon a series of interviews, the book deciphers African students’ logics of linguistic exchanges within the geopolitical and geo-economic context of China-African relations. The students invested heavily into Chinese language learning and use, while displaying perfectionism, linguistic entrepreneurship and linguistic insecurity. As the value of their Chinese linguistic capital increases, they reassessed their sense of themselves and produced different social identities, which includes the idea of ‘the world is my oyster’, contributing to Africa’s sustainable development and the disposition to ‘tell China’s story well’. This work transgresses monolingual dominance (i.e. English) in the existing body of international student mobility and second language acquisition (SLA) research, as great importance is assigned to Chinese as linguistic capital in South-South student migration. The book is of interest to researchers in international higher education, international student mobilities, sociolinguistics, applied linguistics, languages education, and Chinese language teaching and learning.

Wen Xu is an Assistant Professor of Chinese Language Education at Shanghai Jiao Tong University. Her research interests focus on the intersection of language, education and society. Currently, her research projects and publications encompass studies of international students’ lived experiences in China.

1. Introduction.- 2. International student mobilities (ISM) and African students in China.- 3. Setting the context: The hierarchical ordering of languages in the world.- 4. The logic of linguistic exchanges and model of investment.- 5. Chinese language ideologies reflected in African students’ discourses.- 6. Discourses on Chinese as ‘linguistic capital’ .- 7. Sleepless in China: Linguistic investment and a burden of perfectionism.- 8. Transcending time and space: new images of the world and self.- 9. Conclusions and implications.

Erscheinungsdatum	07.05.2024
Zusatzinfo	1 Illustrations, black and white
Sprache	englisch
Maße	148 x 210 mm
Themenwelt	Schulbuch / Wörterbuch ► Wörterbuch / Fremdsprachen
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Sprachwissenschaft
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Pädagogik ► Erwachsenenbildung
Schlagworte	Africa • China • Identity • International Higher Education • International Students • linguistic capital • linguistic investment
ISBN-10	981-97-2174-1 / 9819721741
ISBN-13	978-981-97-2174-0 / 9789819721740
Zustand	Neuware