Identity construction through English as lingua franca: A study on a group of international students from China at a UK university

Abstract

The global spread of English has made English a global lingua franca. As the number of non-native speakers has outnumbered native speakers and English is currently being used for international communication in most places of the world, it has been argued out that English is no longer a property owned by native English speakers only, by all the speakers who are using it (Widdowson, 1992). The research area of English as a Lingua Franca (hereinafter ELF) has grown, and more recently, it has been referred to as a "multilingual Franca" (Jenkins, 2015b), which has helped to conceptualise identity in multilingual and multicultural settings as fluid, changing, and intricately linked to language and culture. Although recently, there is a growing body of studies that have focused on international students in ELF settings (e.g., Björkman, 2017; Virkkula & Nikula, 2010), less is known about Chinese students' identity construction in an international higher education setting. In addition, there is a short study exploring the influence of English users’ shared language background on how they perceive their identities and their language practices. Therefore, the current study intends to close this gap by using interviews, diaries and focus groups to explore a group of Chinese international students’ identity construction at a UK international University over six months. The data collected in this study were analysed with thematic analysis from a narrative account. The findings suggest that participants’ identity construction is complex and that conflicts often occur when participants account for their understanding of their own identities through their use of English. In addition, the way they perceive their identities is dynamic and changing, their understandings of their identities, and their interpretations of their language practices keep shaping and reshaping. In particular, grounded on the notion of Chinese speakers’ use of English as lingua franca (ChELF), it has been found that Chinese speakers who are from the same linguacultural background showed a sense of belonging to an imagined Chinese community in relation to their use of English, which showed their acceptance and tolerance to the legitimacy of their own use of English, as well as other international students’ English. At the same time, they also perceived themselves as members of an imagined international community, which indicates that their perceptions of their own identities through English are multileveled.

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Identifiers

ORCID for Yuren Li: orcid.org/0000-0002-0191-3683

ORCID for Marion Demossier: orcid.org/0000-0001-6075-1461

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