Reflexive language attitudes and language practices among school‑aged Chinese Australian immigrant bilinguals

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https://doi.org/10.1007/s12564-021-09678-w

Reflexive language attitudes and language practices

among school‑aged Chinese Australian immigrant bilinguals

Yilu Yang¹

Received: 9 August 2020 / Revised: 31 January 2021 / Accepted: 2 February 2021 / Published online: 19 February 2021

Abstract

This study examines the reflexivity of immigrant children in forming their language attitudes (LAs). Considering the special cultural environment of the Chinese community in Australia, which refers to the community’s well-matched cultural powers with Australia, this research explored Chinese Australian children’s conflicting but reflexive LAs and language practices. By drawing on in-depth qualitative interviews and longitudinal participant observations conducted in multiple schools, this study classified Chinese Australian children into four types according to their perceptions and behaviors toward language learning and use and examined each age group’s characteristics. The study further analyzed the mutually influential relation between cultural environment, family, immigrant children, and their LAs. These findings shed light on immigrant children’s agency in forming and reconfiguring their LAs. This is an important addition to the existing knowledge about bilingual children’s language choices, language development, and language education.

Keywords Immigrant bilinguals · Immigrant children · Reflexivity · Language attitudes · Chinese Australian children

Introduction

The twenty-first century has witnessed the increasing signifi- cance of transnationality, with the unprecedented movement of people around the world. More people are experiencing or have experienced switching and negotiating between more than one language. This shift in demographic realities entails enormous challenges for educators and language learners (Cummins 2000). People’s perceptions of the dynamics and complexity of dual-language have therefore emerged as an essential issue. In this respect, school-aged immigrant bilinguals have attracted much research attention because of the key cognitive–developmental stage they are in (Piaget 1955, 1970) and the special characteristics of their cultural environment.

This research examines the agency of Chinese Austral- ian immigrant children in configuring their beliefs of per- ceived language use. It also analyzes their idea formulations regarding language roles in their social experiences (Heath 1977) as members of an immigrant community. This issue

is particularly important for children immersed in the parallel yet dual-track and conflicting sociocultural environment of the heritage culture and host country culture. Therefore, this research focuses on how these children respond to this unique sociocultural environment through their behaviors of learning and language use, which are largely shaped by their language attitudes (LAs).

The history of Chinese migration to Australia has seen Chinese immigrants grow in enormous numbers since the early 1990s, when 45,000 Chinese students lived in the country (Gao 2017). Since then, Australia has observed a rapid increase in its Chinese population, reaching 1,213,903 in 2016 (ABS [Australian Bureau of Statistics] 2017, 2018).

Among people who claim Chinese ancestry, 46% and 22%

preferred Mandarin Chinese¹ and Cantonese, respectively, as their most preferred language to speak at home. Addition- ally, an ABS report revealed that about 21% of Australians spoke a language other than English at home (ABS 2016), with Mandarin being the next most common language after English.

* Yilu Yang

yilu_yang@outlook.com

1 School of New Media and Communication, Tianjin University, Tianjin 300072, China

1 “Mandarin” is a commonly used term in Australia, referring to the standard Chinese language. Standard Chinese, which is based on the Beijing dialect, is China’s official national spoken language and serves as a lingua franca within the Chinese context (Chinese Acad- emy of Social Sciences 2012).

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Well-educated and highly skilled immigrants (Gao 2020) change the population composition, increasing the preva- lence of Chinese-language use in the Chinese Australian community. Rather than being overwhelmed by the mainstream language (English) and Chinese-language attrition, Chinese people in Australia currently live in a dual-track language and cultural environment. By speaking the same language and sharing cultural memories, isolated Austral- ians of Chinese ethnicity form a Chinese-speaking society within Australian society, taking English as their official and mainstream language and Chinese as one of their most frequently used languages within the community. Chinese is spoken not only by adult immigrants from China and Chinese-speaking areas but also some Chinese Australian children to communicate and socialize. The sudden and rapid population increase has led to a new characteristic of a language environment that poses a challenge to Chinese Australians’ language-use habits, thus reconstructing their perceptions of Chinese and English.

The changing statistics mentioned above raise several questions about the Chinese language in Australia: What are the Chinese-language attitudes of Chinese Australians, especially Chinese Australian children who are in key stages of cognitive development and language skills enhancement?

Do Chinese Australian children adopt the same LAs toward bilingualism, especially the Chinese-language side? Do LAs change over time? The core questions that this study attempts to answer are as follows:

1. How would one characterize the LAs of Chinese Aus- tralian children immersed in a dual-track cultural environment?

2. How do their LAs influence their language practices?

This study is set against the broad background of the growing population mobility worldwide. Considering the changes in Australia’s Chinese population composition in recent decades and the consequent transformation of its language environment, this research takes Chinese Austral- ian children as research objects to explore how school-aged Chinese Australians, who are simultaneously immersed in the formed Chinese-speaking society and wider English- speaking society, perceive the Chinese language and their bilingual skills. It also explores how their LAs shape their language learning and use behaviors. This study highlights the dynamics and reflexivity in this process, arguing that these children reshape their LAs according to their changing language environment, conflictual LAs within their families, and their cognitive development rather than independent external forces.

Specifically, this article begins by reviewing the conflicting features and reflexivity of LAs in the multilingual circumstance and Chinese bilingual children’s LAs and

language practices in multilingual contexts. This section then contextualizes this issue in the Chinese community in Australia, where Chinese and English are two well-matched powers that consistently configure children’s LAs, followed by the methodologies carried out by this research. The main body classifies the LAs and language practices of children in conflicting cultural and language environments and further suggests different features displayed by children in different developmental stages. Then, this section explores the reflexivity of the children’s LAs and analyzes the factors that facilitate it, including their dynamic language environment, conflictual LAs in their homes, and their cognitive development. The final section concludes the study.

Language Attitudes and Practices in the Multilingual Context

LAs pertain to people’s thoughts about a language and what they are prepared to do about it (Baker 1992). Baker (1992, pp. 12–13) proposed a multicomponent LA model that consists of “cognitive, affective, and readiness for action.”

Since then, researchers have explored how LAs represent and reflect personal values, thoughts, and reactions (Dyers and Abongdia 2010), cultural attachments, economic and political power, and social functions of a certain language (e.g., Bacon 2018; Blommaert 2006; Curdt-Christiansen 2016; King 2000; Song 2010).

While studies on LAs have focused on language learning and people’s affective reactions to different languages in the classroom environment (e.g., Norri-Holt 2001; Saville- Troike 1989), some of them lacked the larger societal context that shapes such attitudes (Dyers and Abongdia 2010).

LAs, the wider sociocultural environment, and individuals are mutually influenced. The LAs of individuals with low self-reflexivity are largely influenced by the external environment they are immersed in. Meanwhile, those with relatively high self-reflexivity continue to shape and reshape their LAs, which may reconfigure their cultural and language environment. Therefore, LAs “should not be understood as fixed characteristics reflexive of an individual’s core being”

(Bacon 2018) since they are always context-bound, dynamic, and heterogeneous. Rather, LAs, like language ideologies, are viewed as performative (Rosa and Burdick 2017) and presented by an individual’s language learning and use behaviors (Dyers and Abongdia 2010). People subconsciously express their language perceptions through routine conversations about and in a particular language.

Issues regarding LAs are even more complex in the multilingual and multicultural context because of the conflicts between the mainstream language and less dominant languages. In the bilingual context, Myers-Scotton (2006) defined LAs as subjective evaluations of both languages

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and their speakers, that is, whether these perceptions are held by individual speakers or in groups. Minority-language groups develop LAs to guide their routine language use and social interactions when they integrate into mainstream society. Their LAs coexist in the multilingual context and affect their families’ language behavior patterns (Alsahafi 2020; De Houwer 1998, 2015). In such settings, the excessively dominant presence of one language may cause tensions with other languages. Many individuals who speak a minority language do not shift but remain loyal to their native tongue (Fishman 1966). However, young migrants with limited dominant-language skills have found less success in educational attainment (Dong 2009; Kanno and Kangas 2014; Mijares and Pastor 2011), causing friction between the attitudes of the mainstream language and the minority language. Some ethnic-minority parents might develop positive views of their children’s heritage-language maintenance while others might have negative opinions of language attrition (Alsahafi 2020).

Policies from the macro perspective and family inclination from the micro perspective may help researchers understand how LAs are shaped in the multilingual context. National-level policy is often one of the most influential factors that influence minority community members’

perceptions of the mainstream language and the heritage language. For example, the English-only policies imple- mented in California during the late 1990s were a driving force against the use of minority languages (Arya et al.

2016; Callahan 2005; Ovando 2003). However, not all national and state policies were enacted against the development of minority languages. In the Australian context, based on the researcher’s observations and interviews, several main Chinese community schools in Victoria are much larger than their counterparts in New South Wales:

the former had approximately 5,000 enrolled students while the latter had only several hundred. This is due to different policies enacted in each state. Victoria’s financial support for community schools promotes the preservation and development of community languages, which stimu- lates heritage-language learners’ enthusiasm for learning, maintaining, and developing the heritage language.

Compared with macro policy impacts, family members’

LAs operate at the micro-level in forming children’s LAs.

Several studies have found that parental beliefs influence children’s LA constructions, such as Spanish-speaking families in New Zealand (Berardi-Wiltshire 2017), Chi- nese-speaking families in Singapore (Curdt-Christiansen 2009), and Russian-speaking families in Israel (Moin et al. 2013). While parental attitudes toward languages are essential to children’s LA formation, family members do not always share certain characteristics with LA groups;

that is, a family may have members with diverse and contradictory LAs.

Chinese migrant bilingual children’s language attitudes and practices

For many centuries, China has been the world’s single largest source of immigrants (Li 2015, p. 1). Academic interest in this salient population has inspired several attempts to explore the complexity of the bilingual education of the Chinese diaspora. Some scholars examined this issue from a utilitarian viewpoint and considered Chinese heritage-language learning as capital (Li 2007; Mu 2014, p. 37), suggesting that efforts made to learn and maintain the Chinese language could also be seen as a worthwhile investment to achieve economic and cultural benefits (Wong and Xiao 2010).

Chinese bilinguals are motivated to learn Chinese as a heritage language. Therefore, it is common for many immigrant countries with Chinese populations to imple- ment Chinese language education programs. Chinese language, as a supplementary education in both mainstream and community schools, benefits both the U.S. education system and Chinese communities (Chen et al. 2010;

Kondo-Brown and Brown 2008). Some research has been conducted regarding Chinese heritage-language education in the European context, such as in the UK (Zhu and Li 2014), Scotland (Hancock 2014), and the Netherlands (Li and Juffermans 2014, 2015).

Another research strand entails the vital role of LAs in preserving heritage languages and cultural identity. Chan believed that “a new type of Chinese identity is emerging—that of the Chinese cosmopolitan” (Chan 2005).

Some studies, however, described generational differences regarding Chinese media use and television viewing pref- erences; the Chinese family had a generally cosmopolitan orientation (Cunningham and Sinclair 2001, pp. 82, 85).

In some studies on Chinese immigrant identity issues from dialect backgrounds, scholars described the experiences of dialect speakers and offered “a glimpse into their multiple identities” (Wong and Xiao 2010).

Language policy research, another important academic strand, influences ethnic minorities’ LAs and language choices. Support from institutions inside and outside ethnic communities can shape the positive attitudes of Chinese heritage-language learners (Li 2006). However, some scholars have revealed that negative attitudes emerge when schools enforce an English-only policy and devalue their students’ first languages (Li 2002; Valdés 2001).

Similar to California’s English-only policies during the late 1990s (Arya et al. 2016), Curdt-Christiansen (2014) further found that “when facing the socio-political and educational realities in Singapore, the parents had little choice but to place Chinese and English into an opposing position.” This means that policies might act as a force

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against the development and preservation of Chinese heritage language.

This article considers the abovementioned factors when discussing Chinese Australian children’s LAs, as Chinese immigrants represent one of the world’s largest immigrant groups. Australia, on the other hand, is a typical immigrant country whose national policy is inclusive and supports mul- ticulturalism. Rather than being overwhelmed by the host country’s culture and language, many immigrants undergo a dual-track “culturalization” process, especially Chinese immigrants influenced by the sending country, among others. However, the existing literature has not expounded on this emerging characteristic. In other words, the current scholarship on LAs in the multilingual context and on the high-level agency of language-use subjects could not ade- quately explain the activities of a new immigrant community in an immigrant country such as Australia. This paper then introduces a focus on children’s reflexivity and contextualizes conflicting LAs in the Chinese Australian community to develop its argument.

The reflexivity feature of LAs in the Chinese community in Australia

Reflexivity refers to cause-and-effect relations, especially in sociology, which entail human agency in identifying social changes and situating themselves in a continuously changing social structure. It also emphasizes the circular associations between human beliefs and social changes.

As a social theory, reflexivity has been broadly applied in sociology, economics, and anthropology. The few studies that approached language-use analysis using self-reflexive inquiry (Banes et al. 2016) did not provide a systematic and comprehensive investigation of the reflexivity of immigrant children’s LAs in a dual-track language environment where their heritage language and the mainstream language are well-matched. This is because many existing studies have explored the conflicts between the mainstream language and less dominant languages in the multilingual context and proposed that the overdominance of the mainstream language may diminish minority-language maintainers’ motivation and enthusiasm to use the minority language (Corson 1991;

Curdt-Christiansen 2016; Song 2010).

However, the current discussion is not suitable for explaining the LAs and language practices of immigrant children in a dual-track sociocultural environment, such as Chinese Australian children. Hence, this study was conducted in a language context where English as the official language and Chinese as the heritage language are well- matched language powers for Chinese Australian children.

Within the Chinese community and family, these children use Chinese to communicate, socialize, and culturalize.

Meanwhile, in the wider social context, they use English to interact and expand their social circles. Especially in recent decades, with the rise of China and Australia’s historic shift toward Asia, “China has provided many new immigrants with the opportunity to be economically successful” (Gao 2017), which affects Chinese parents’ perceptions of the Chi- nese language. Many are aware of the potential usefulness of being able to speak Chinese, which promotes a supportive language environment for children to develop Chinese language skills. However, the existing analyses of Chinese immigrant children’s LAs have not fully considered the language environment’s specialty, changes, and influence.

Accordingly, the current body of knowledge on LAs in a multilingual context, such as the Chinese community in Australia, has not sufficiently reflected how children’s LAs influence their language learning behavior and language use in multiple social settings. In the abovementioned dual- track language environment, children are active agents in constructing and reconstructing their LAs according to the external environment, which configures their language setting. However, there is a scarcity of literature that discusses reflexivity: children’s self-examining, self-developing, and self-fostering approach to analyze their LA construction.

This is especially true for immigrant children, who are influenced by conflicting cultures and languages more significantly than others.

This article focuses on Chinese Australian children and investigates why and how bilingual immigrant children’s LAs possess reflexivity, considering its prominence in shap- ing LAs in a dual-track language and cultural environment.

More specifically, this study explores the mutual influence between external factors and immigrant children’s LAs and the effect of their self-examining LAs on their language learning and use. This contributes to our understanding of immigrant children’s LAs and language practices, especially in a society with high-speed population mobility.

Methods

Fieldwork site

Fieldwork was carried out at multiple schools in Victoria, Australia. All school and participant names in this article are pseudonyms. School J is the main data collection site, complemented by two primary schools, School G and School R. Established in 1992, with about 5000 students studying Chinese language and culture, School J has become one of the largest and most prestigious Chinese community schools. School G enrolls several children from Asian backgrounds. School R is a renowned English–Chinese bilingual school. These institutions provide representative and diverse research objects.

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Participants

The participants include Chinese Australian children, their parents, and teachers and managers in the abovementioned schools. Age and ethnicity were two key variables in the selection of school children. “School-aged” refers to the age group of children from preschool attendance to secondary school graduation, which generally ranges from age 4 to 16.

Chinese Australians in this age group were selected because they are at a crucial stage in developing their cognition and bilingual skills (Piaget 1955, 1970; Piaget and Inhelder 2008). It is also a key developmental stage for increasing their abstract reasoning and exploring their perceptions of the self and of the world (French et al. 2006, p. 4). Therefore, the manner in which they use the Chinese language, develop their bilingual skills, and perceive conflicting but coexisting languages is more typical than among Chinese immigrants of other age groups. Additionally, participants of a wide age range could provide insights into the changes occurring in these children’s LAs.

In this research, Chinese Australian immigrant children included both Australian-born children of Chinese ethnicity and Chinese children who immigrated to Australia in their early childhood, who are called “1.75 generation migrants”

(Rumbaut 2004). Meanwhile, “1.25 generation migrant children,” who immigrated to Australia in their adolescent years, were excluded because “1.75 generation” immigrant children have more in common with their second-generation counterparts than with those from the “1.25 generation.”

The parent interviewees included both male and female parents who had children ranging from age 4 to 16. Sev- eral grandparents who mainly raised these children were included as well. The teacher interviewees were selected from different grades from preschool to Year 12, considering the Chinese language skill levels of the students in their class.

Data collection and analysis

Fieldwork was conducted from February 2017 to Decem- ber 2018 and adopted multiple methods to collect empirical data, including participant observation, interviews, and documentary reviews. Focusing on school-aged Chi- nese Australians’ LAs, this study carried out 102 in-depth interviews and extensive observations in 17 classrooms from preschool to Year 12 in the abovementioned schools.

The researcher obtained ethical clearance and permission before the field visits.

Interviewee selection, which was done via snowball sampling, considered gender, age, language skill level, and family composition to gather diverse and typical data. The participants in this study included children, caregivers, and teachers in Chinese classes. All interviews were conducted face-to-face. Table 1 provides the interview details.

The children were asked to articulate their perceptions of their bilingual skills and dual-language use. The interviews with the children were conducted in either Chinese or English, depending on their preference, but were undertaken in plain language to help them understand the questions. The caregiver interviewees, who were all first-generation migrants who moved to Australia as adults, were asked to discuss topics associated with the children’s Chinese language use and perceptions of the Chinese–English bilingual mode. The teacher participants were selected from different grades (preschool to Year 12).

All adult respondents were interviewed in Chinese since most received their education mainly in China or Chinese- speaking areas. The researcher transcribed and translated all Chinese notes into English, followed by an analytical process that involved data coding for each interviewee and a descriptive method to categorize, archive, and manage data by question and topic.

Table 1 Participants’

characteristics

*Their age at the time of the interviews

**Those who chose “2” immigrated to Australia before age 5 and are among the “1.75 generation migrants” (Rumbaut 2004)

Children (n = 45) Caregivers (n = 27) Teachers (n = 29)

Age* mean (SD) 9.98 (3.56) 41.04 (6.78) 39.21 (5.94)

Gender (%)

1 = Female 29 (64.44%) 15 (55.56%) 21 (72.41%)

2 = Male 16 (35.56%) 12 (44.44%) 8 (27.58%)

Australian-born**

1 = Yes 27 (60%)

2 = No 18 (40%)

Length of time in Australia

(in years) (SD) 10.67 (3.91) 14.21 (6.07)

Years of Chinese teaching

experience (SD) 10.03 (5.34)

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A typology of children’s reflexive language attitudes

Observation and interview data indicated that Chinese Australian children have mutually conflicting perceptions of Chinese and English. Despite growing up in a similar cultural environment and the same era, they have varying LAs and language practices because of different family conditions, personal experiences, and individual perceptions of their changing environment.

This section classified Chinese Australian children into several language ideological groups according to their different LAs and language-use behaviors shaped by these LAs. This was mostly based on the children’s opinions and behaviors pertaining to Chinese language use, which were obtained via a self-classification approach. Their opinions of and behaviors in using a language form their LA. Based on the empirical data analysis, these participants were categorized into four types according to the consistency between their LA and language practices: positive users, blind followers, negative maintainers, and stiff resisters.

The young Chinese speakers were classified as such not to differentiate them but rather to help us understand that they may have reflexive perceptions when responding to their changing environment.

However, two important points must be considered. First, in some situations, some of the children could not be easily classified into any of the groups because they had language- use features belonging to more than one group; indeed, there may be overlaps across groups. Second, while the children usually belonged to one group of language users in a certain period, they might display other groups’ characteristics over time and as their environment changes. LAs are formed and reconstructed because of reflexivity, which should be understood from a dynamic perspective. The next section discusses the driving force of the changes surrounding LAs, with the main focus being the type of LAs formed in certain periods and the characteristics of each age group.

Positive users

The children were positively motivated to learn and use Chinese by fostering their language-learning interest, com- municating with family members, developing competitive capacity, or preserving cultural ties with their Chinese ori- gins. This group of children was inclined to be strongly motivated by internal or external factors. They usually adopted a positive viewpoint on the future usefulness of Chinese. Therefore, they were engaged in learning Chinese through schooling and maintaining their Chinese language skills via daily use.

An essential indicator of this group of children was their reluctance to be participatory learners. Rather, they were fully involved in the process of Chinese language learning and use and expected benefits from being able to speak the language. One representative case was a Shanghai family with two Australian-born sons aged 22 and 11. The elder brother, Phillip, who studied medicine at the University of Melbourne, is fluent in speaking Chinese and always travels to China alone. Taking Phillip as a model, Robert learned Chinese in Year 6 in an elite class at School J. At home, they speak a combination of English, Mandarin, and Shang- hainese. I interviewed Robert and their mother, Mrs. Li, and observed Robert’s classroom for several weeks. Robert sat in the classroom’s front rows, frequently and positively responding to the delivered content. Mrs. Li stated that Phil- lip set a good example for his brother after achieving a score of 53 in the Chinese portion of the Victorian Certificate of Education (VCE) examination, which is extremely high.

Robert learned Chinese carefully with a positive attitude.

Mrs. Li said, “I think learning Chinese is very important. I send my children to the elite class in the Chinese community school and hope they could be fluent bilinguals in the future.

Try your best to learn it or give it up! We do not prefer to learn as a participant” (September 2, 2017).

Blind followers

Blind followers, to some extent, are participatory learners.

This group of young Chinese learners and users have no explicit motivation to learn Chinese. Many children in this group were sent by their parents to learn the Chinese language, but they do not present any noticeable unwillingness or resistance to it. They learn because others learn. They use the Chinese language because others use it. They espouse a wait-and-see attitude toward Chinese language learning and use.

Because Chinese adults who migrated to Australia were uprooted from a cultural and language environment with which they were familiar, they may feel strongly insecure in their new environment and uncertain about the future. In such a circumstance, they mimic what others do with regard to children’s educational issues. Influenced by their parents, many Chinese Australian children learn and use Chinese through peer imitation and their willingness to reduce risks.

This is especially true for those in the lower grades, who are too immature to form independent perceptions of the language or understand what it means to speak Chinese.

According to the class observation, this group of children always attended class on time but with a rather indifferent learning attitude. While few of them sufficiently interacted with their Chinese teacher, they would switch to English after class. They usually did not have a strong motivation to speak Chinese fluently or achieve a high exam score. This

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phenomenon is quite common in Chinese heritage-language learners and could be observed among all age groups. For instance, Alice, who has a Year 1 New Zealand–born son, migrated to Australia several years ago. She said, “My child takes learning Chinese for granted because all his Chinese friends learn Chinese” (March 25, 2017). Meanwhile, Isa- bella, a Year 8 student, stated, “China is everywhere and many friends around me learn Chinese, so I learn Chinese”

(June 3, 2017).

Negative maintainers

Negative maintainers are children who learn the Chinese language negatively and want to preserve their Chinese skills rather than develop them. According to the participant observations and interviews, while this group of children sat in the classroom and seemingly learned Chinese, they could not concentrate on the class content in most situations.

Compared with positive users and blind followers, who learn Chinese with subjectivity, negative maintainers learn the language under the influence of their parents or peers.

Hence, they are not self-motivated to learn and use Chinese.

To an extent, some Chinese language learners, especially those in early childhood, are “forced” to learn and use Chi- nese. In one family, for example, both the mother and father are Chinese Singaporeans, and they have an Australian-born son, James, aged 8. The father, Michael, has a strong interest in Chinese and kept learning it until he graduated from high school when he lived in Singapore. However, Michael said James is reluctant to learn and use Chinese:

He felt speaking Chinese was a really difficult thing when he was sent to learn Chinese in Year 1 class, because we spoke English mostly in daily conversation before his schooling. However, I will help him understand the importance of being able to speak Chinese and will keep sending him to learn it until graduation from high school. (May 6, 2017).

This phenomenon also exists in middle- to high-grade classes. Mrs. Zheng, a teacher of a Year 8 class, expressed that her students’ parents did not expect their children to

learn something from the class. Instead, they merely wanted to retain the Chinese language environment for their children even for only several hours during weekends (September 25, 2017). In such cases, one can imagine that children with such psychological statuses preserve their Chinese language skills and are unwilling to develop their bilingual skills.

Stiff resisters

The least positive Chinese learners are resisters. This group has given up learning Chinese and has refused to integrate it into their daily lives. Most children with Chinese backgrounds can speak the language essentially because of their dual-track living environment, or at least they could understand Chinese to some extent. However, they could not be strictly regarded as “learners”. In such cases, these children only acquire Chinese subconsciously rather than learn it consciously.

Their reasons for giving up on learning and using Chinese are complicated. Some of them quit because their parents do not believe learning Chinese is a serious matter. Others find it too challenging to catch up when they enter the intermedi- ate level. Some give up because they want to rid themselves of “Chineseness” and become Westernized. Regardless of their reason, these results come from their continuous reflec- tion on their changing society and self-examination, which the following section will discuss.

Features of different age groups

Generally, the typology discussed above considers the extent of Chinese Australian children’s positivity in learning and using Chinese. As Fig. 1 illustrates, positive users, blind followers, and negative maintainers are on the right side of the corroborated axis, with only resisters situated on the left side. The positivity values of positive users, blind followers, and negative maintainers are positive but decrease suc- cessively. In contrast, resisters show almost no positivity in learning and using Chinese at all. Each group may overlap with the adjacent group.

Fig. 1 Chinese Australian children’s positivity in learning and using the Chinese language

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This study involved children of a wide age span. Thus, observing classrooms ranging from preschool to Year 12 and interviewing some students may provide a broad picture of the continuous progress of Chinese Australian children’s LAs and language practices. The analysis of interviews and participant observations showed that young children—

mainly those in preschool and primary classes—had a high potential to be blind followers than children in secondary school classes mostly because of their immaturity. In contrast, children in high grades were inclined toward more explicit aims and motivations to attend or quit Chinese classes and learn Chinese positively or negatively because of their cognitive development and improved decision-making abilities.

As stated above, young children lacked explicit motivation and a sophisticated, mature understanding of the utility of speaking Chinese, as many of them were sent to Chinese classes by their parents. Learning the Chinese language is a risk-avoidance decision by these families, who adopt a wait-and-see attitude to conform to Chinese community practices. Other young children were motivated to attend Chinese classes partly because of peer companionship. That is, learning a challenging language for hours, especially for young children, may sometimes mean more opportunities and time to have fun with their Chinese friends, whom they do not always meet in school. Thus, young children in preschool and primary school tended to be blind followers in their Chinese language learning process.

With increased cognitive development, children would improve their ability to make the right decisions for themselves and hold more explicit aims than young children to learn what interests them. They tend to signal an intention to learn the Chinese language positively or negatively. Since Chinese is a more appropriate and effortless subject than other subjects, some Chinese Australian children hold more positive views of learning Chinese and expect to achieve high scores in the VCE examination. After attending high school, many of them will experience a boost in their Chi- nese language skills in their three-year intensive learning.

In contrast, according to the data analysis, others who negatively maintain Chinese usually quit learning before high school because of the high pressure from the VCE examination, which forces them to urgently decide what subject to choose in the final exam. These negative maintainers usually convert into stiff resisters in high school, as they exert effort in learning the subjects they choose.

Though this classification is explicit, when applied to the Chinese Australian children specifically and other immigrant children broadly, identifying language user types may be difficult. However, this typology of immigrant children’s LAs could provide insight into the probable behaviors they may hold under the covert influence of LAs and their rationales for addressing language use with conflicting attitudes. Their

LAs and language practices are subjective, dynamic, and transformable from one type to another, given their variable environment and complexity.

Self‑reflexivity in LAs and the driving forces behind its formation

Chinese Australian children live in the same broad cultural environment albeit with differences in their respective families. However, as discussed in the above section, they have varying, even conflicting, attitudes toward the Chinese language. Nevertheless, their contradictory LAs have a high reflexivity level because of the special cultural environment in which they are immersed as well as their negotiations between language imagination and realities. This specifically refers to their longitudinally dynamic and transversely dual- track cultural environment at the macro level; their conflicting LAs within the family at the micro level; and their self- examining, self-developing, and self-fostering perception of the Chinese language at a personal level.

Longitudinally dynamic and transversely dual‑track cultural environment

The construction and transformation of children’s LAs have been significantly influenced by their changing external cultural and social environment (Schüpbach 2009), and Aus- tralia is no exception. However, what is special about Chi- nese Australian children is that, besides being influenced by the external environment, their LAs also shape their external cultural and language setting. Thus, LAs reconfigure people’s perceptions of the Chinese and English languages, which is a mutually influential process involving three com- ponents: the dual-track language environment of Chinese Australian children, school-aged individuals who learn and use Chinese, and their continuously adjusting LAs.

From a longitudinally dynamic perspective, the rise of China and the ever-closer Sino–Australian relations change people’s perception of Chinese and increase Chinese immigrants’ enthusiasm for maintaining their “Chineseness.”

Despite the political ups and downs in China–Australia relations (Lowy Institute n.d.), Chinese Australians’ language choice has been increasingly influenced by demographic transformation and economic ties rather than political factors. Compared with the pre-1990s era, when people did not place importance on learning and preserving Chinese skills, recent decades have witnessed an increase in Chinese migrants, who emphasize the capacity to speak Chinese and send their children to Chinese classes. Not only does this indirectly help develop Chinese education in Australia; it also subtly influences Chinese Australian children’s perception of Chinese and “Chineseness.”

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From a socioeconomic standpoint, meanwhile, “Aus- tralia–China relations are characterized by strong trade bonds” (Lowy Institute n.d.). “The normalization of diplo- matic relations in 1972 paved the way for economic relations between Australia and China and put Australia in a position to benefit from the opportunities arising from the significant transition that would begin in China a few years later” (The Treasury 2012). China’s share in Australia’s total merchan- dize trade significantly increased in the early 2000s when Australia witnessed a rapid influx of migrants from mainland China. Many new migrants maintained their Chinese roots and developed businesses. Therefore, they were aware of the importance of speaking Chinese. Children, under this background, regard learning and using Chinese as an acquies- cent collective behavior, as most people around them do so.

These demographic and economic changes continue to configure the LAs of children who grow up in this environment.

This is verified by two interviewees who have been living in Australia for decades and have experienced a significant change in the country’s Chinese community. Lynn, a third-generation Malaysian–Chinese teacher who migrated to Australia in 1992, began her Chinese teaching career at School R and has witnessed the dramatic change of Chinese LAs in the country. In the early 1990s, Australia has not observed significant benefits from the rapid increase in its Chinese-speaking population. The situation in School R and peoples’ ideologies toward the Chinese language epitomized the sociocultural environment at that time. Teaching activities were unsystematic, and the textbooks were not unified.

Some of the school’s teachers even blamed the scarce enrolment on the uselessness of learning Chinese as a second language.² Lynn said, “Under this backdrop, children could not learn Chinese well, and they did not know Chinese char- acters because they did not regard learning Chinese as an important thing. They even looked down on learning Chi- nese” (June 21, 2017).

However, Chinese Australians’ perceptions of the Chi- nese language significantly changed after the Chinese community in Australia entered the twenty-first century, when Australia benefited from the hysteretic influence of the rise of China and its economic development. Lynn added, “The enrolment of students increased, which promoted the development of Chinese teaching in School R. This thus changed the local Australians’ perception of the Chinese language.

Some local Australians even purchased a real estate near the school to let their children attend this primary school to learn Chinese” (June 21, 2017).

Australians’ enthusiasm for learning Chinese has subtly influenced their LAs, especially the Chinese ideology

of Chinese Australians and their children. The usefulness of learning Chinese, both instrumentally (Mu 2014) and culturally (Francis et al. 2014), has been acknowledged by newly arriving Chinese migrants, which serves as an essential backdrop for constructing Chinese Australian children’s LAs. Another piece of empirical evidence comes from Anna, an Australian-born Chinese student who recently graduated from high school. Her parents migrated from Shanghai during the 1990s. As a witness to the increasing number of Chinese people in Australia, she said, “I could feel strongly that the number of Chinese-speaking people has increased. I felt shocked that when I went to Boxhill, which is one of the suburbs with the largest Chinese population in Melbourne, Victoria, I did not even need to speak English, because people around were all of Chinese background and most of them could speak Chinese” (September 5, 2017).

From a transverse perspective, Chinese Australian children live in a dual-track and conflicting cultural environment. During their self-negotiation process, the substantial differences between Australian and Chinese culture and society have required them to find the most suitable and comfortable situation for themselves. Like every other Aus- tralian child, they develop their English skills intentionally and subconsciously, as English is the basic language for communication and socialization. However, these children could not dismiss the continuous influence of China and Chinese culture. Beyond the cultural influence, from a prac- tical standpoint, many Chinese migrants earn livelihoods from being associated with China, with businesses ranging from small enterprises, such as restaurants, to large-scale firms and organizations, such as schools, media outlets, and cinemas. The close ties between Chinese migrants and China help these children become aware of the usefulness of speaking Chinese or at least reexamine the necessity and value of learning and preserving the language.

Additionally, some scholars stated that “China has long loomed as a threat in the Australian imagination” (Gao 2018). Especially recently, several conflicting issues, such as the National Security Legislation Amendment, have largely evoked people’s inclination toward examining and rethinking China and its relations with Australia, which then creates a social environment that is also characterized as conflicting.

This may affect children’s decisions on language choices, development, and maintenance.

Conflictual LAs within the family

Apart from being influenced by the cultural environment at the macro level, Chinese Australian children also experience the effect of their families at the micro level. The broad cultural environment in which these children are immersed is almost universally the same. Meanwhile, families’ LAs vary, with different impacts on children’s LA construction.

2 In Victoria, each primary school requires languages other than Eng- lish (LOTE) as a subject.

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In this process, these children are not passively affected and shaped by their family members and family LAs but are rather positively involved in the LA construction process.

Rather than holding unified LAs, family members often espouse different, sometimes even contradictory, attitudes toward languages. Tensions among family members con- cerning languages, especially Chinese, are common. Mean- while, conflicts are less frequent and less apparent among family members who share similar beliefs about Chinese language use and their children’s bilingual skills development. Members of other families, however, may express rather serious oppositions against learning Chinese, which may even negatively affect their children’s Chinese learning and thus their attitudes toward the language.

Selina’s case provides evidence of weak tensions among family members. Selina is part of a family of four, including her husband, their 18-year-old son, and their 11-year-old daughter, Sophia. They share similar LAs in that they exert maximum effort in developing and maintaining their Chi- nese skills. This not only promotes the children’s learning of Chinese but also positively affects their perception of the language. From the interviews with Selina and Sophia (Sep- tember 2, 2017), the researcher found that the elder brother achieved an extremely high score of 52 in VCE Chinese.

Moreover, as a university student, he currently enrolls in Chinese subjects to preserve and develop his Chinese language skills. Following her brother’s example, Sophia also expressed a strong interest in learning and using the language. In a Chinese community school, she attends an elite class that requires them to acquire relatively better language skills than those of children in normal classes. In addition, students in this class usually score higher in the final exam.

These siblings’ enthusiasm for learning Chinese is partly encouraged by their supportive family atmosphere and infre- quent tensions among their family members regarding language preservation.

Many children’s family circumstances are similar to Seli- na’s. These families promote a supportive environment for children to learn and use Chinese, which positively influences their perception of the language. However, extreme family support may lead children to the other side of the polarization, in which some of them become reluctant to learn Chinese, which means that they view the language as trivial and not worth learning and using.

From the interviews, the researcher found that Rose and Mary’s family is a typical case at the other end of the polarization spectrum. Rose is in Year 5 while Mary is in Year 2.

In the interview with their mother, Mrs. Chen, the researcher noticed that the family members had different, even opposing, perceptions of learning and using Chinese. Mrs. Chen and her husband migrated to Australia about a decade ago, and both of them encourage and support their two daughters in learning and using Chinese, setting a family rule to help

them practice Chinese: “Only Chinese at home between 7 and 8 p.m.” This serves as the “language corner” in China to create a language learning atmosphere—a parenting style that is distinctively Chinese.

However, this does not encourage their children to be enthusiastic about using Chinese; rather, it leads to their resistance. Mrs. Chen said, “[A]t first we thought that if we set some limitation on language use, they could have more time to practice and use Chinese. The outcome turns out opposite to our expectation. Neither of my daughters speaks during that hour” (September 9, 2017). Indeed, parents’

overenthusiastic push for their children to learn Chinese and the children’s lack of interest in doing so are extremely contradictory. This causes confusion among the children about how to perceive Chinese, thus contributing to their resistance. This case reflects a common phenomenon among many Chinese families in Australia. That is, the extent of tension among family members regarding Chinese language use causes children to adopt different LAs toward it.

The situation is even more complicated in three-generation households. Emma has two children: a son graduat- ing from high school and a daughter in Year 5. They live with Emma’s mother and father. Emma commented that her enthusiasm for her daughter to learn Chinese is not that strong. “I think interest is the most important thing. If she does not have interest in learning it, she could give it up,”

she said (September 9, 2017). However, the grandparents insist that their grandchildren maintain their Chinese language skills. In the interview, Emma said, “My mum thinks being able to speak Chinese is important to my children because it is the main communication language between them. They insist on sending her to learn Chinese.” In Emma’s family, her daughter’s LAs are influenced jointly by the support of her grandparents and the indifference of her parents. As a result, Emma’s daughter was found to adopt a casual attitude toward learning Chinese in class, which in turn affected her parents’ and grandparents’ positivity toward learning Chinese.

The above analysis indicates that in a certain family, individual LAs may conform or conflict, leading to diverse forms of tension. Opposing LAs exist among intergenera- tional family members, which substantially influences children’s LA construction. While most Chinese parents tend to encourage their children to prioritize Chinese language use, children’s perceptions of the language and whether they consider it as important are important steps toward their self-reflexivity.

Negotiation between language imagination and reality

The analysis of the fieldwork data also identified children’s essential role in constructing their LAs toward the Chinese

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language. By obtaining information from the macro and micro environments discussed earlier, children are situated in verifying their inherent perceptions of Chinese with the reality of language use. Attending primary school is set as a wall between a closed community and a generally open space for their use of language. This section first discusses why the language community is closed before children socialize in broader society and how such a closed language community gradually opens. Then it examines the emerging conflicts between children’s language imaginations and realities.

A closed community against a gradually open space for Chinese language use

According to the collected data, these children’s language- use community is characterized as “gradually open.” This specifically refers to the time before primary school, when the scope of language used for these children is almost closed. Meanwhile, “openness” becomes significant as they step into primary school, which is an important environment for socializing with individuals other than family members. Sue is the mother of an Australian-born daughter who learned Chinese in a preschool class and who preferred to speak Chinese before attending school not only because of her fluency at this stage but also because of the “closeness”

of her language environment. Sue said,

There was almost no opportunity for my daughter to speak English before receiving formal schooling. Her action radius was really limited, ranging between home and the Chinese community. On weekdays my parents took care of my daughter and they mainly use Chi- nese. During weekends, even when we took her out to family banquets, we always chose Chinese restaurants where speaking English was not required. (September 2, 2017).

The case of Sue’s daughter shows that the language-use trajectory for Chinese Australian children is almost closed before they attend primary school. Sue compared their experience of living in the Chinese community in Australia with their trip to the Philippines, which she viewed as a more

“foreign” place for their daughter since they had to use Eng- lish to communicate there.

Children’s perceptions of Chinese are initially formed within this closed language-use community. They might regard Chinese as essential and necessary since it is the main and sometimes the only language for communication.

Some children may be curious about why people around them prefer different languages, such as English or Italian.

Neither their endorsement nor doubt about the Chinese language could be verified at this stage. However, this closed community for language use will be broken as these children

enter primary school and increasingly interact with English- speaking peers. Once this happens, children will be provided more information about language use so that they can reexamine their perceptions.

In Australian society, the Chinese community and other ethnic-minority communities exist in parallel, creating an environment for immigrant children to preserve and develop their language skills. We can apply the experience of Chi- nese immigrant children’s language learning, maintenance, and choice to other multicultural and multilingual environments. Similarly, minority communities coexist with mainstream society despite their balanced or unbalanced powers over immigrant children’s LA construction. For immigrant children from different ethnic backgrounds, these coexisting communities are mutually closed to each other before they attend primary school and before they gradually integrate into mainstream society. Within each ethnic community, immigrant children use their heritage language. However, after they enter a new society, their shift in language prefer- ences serves as a key to break barriers to different communities and open their doors. This helps children enter society smoothly. The trajectory of immigrant children’s language use expands from ethnic community to broad society. The closeness and openness of the language-use space are presented in Fig. 2.

As the first subfigure illustrates, a family environment includes several individuals, including immigrant children, parents, siblings, and grandparents, living in the same space.

Before being involved in socializing, these children are influenced narrowly by the family and broadly by the Chinese community. The door between the Chinese community and society is closed. Therefore, Chinese is used primarily before they engage in schooling and socializing.

However, as the second subfigure shows, when children attend primary school and socialize with peers who speak other languages, the door to society for using diverse languages is gradually opened. As they enter mainstream society, which is also a broad space for their dual-language use, they have many more opportunities to develop and practice their bilingual skills, especially in English. In this gradually opening process, children tend to validate their LAs through their cultural use of dual languages. However, the possibili- ties to verify the authenticity of their LAs and reconstruct them are provided by the openness of the language-use space.

Verification from closeness to openness

The above section discusses the “closeness” and “openness”

of the language-use space, which provides opportunities for children’s reflexivity of their LA construction. The “closeness” associated with immigrant issues has been explored in the field of immigration policy. Applying Ruh’s (2013)

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“openness and rights indicators” theory, many studies focusing on this immigration issue have investigated whether certain countries’ “immigration policy” is closed or not as well as how these policies influence the immigration society (e.g., Komine 2018). However, a few of these studies, in discussing immigrant children’s reflexivity on LAs, have used the concept of “openness” in examining their language space.

Such reflexivity is predominantly embodied in how these children address conflicts between their language imagination and realities. Immigrant children’s language imagination refers to their ability to feel and deduce the meaning of speaking a language and the outcome of their ideas and thoughts of a language. Immigrant children form vague and simple ideas about the language they use before their language space opens from within the community and their family to wider society. Before socializing with others, children are mainly in contact with family members, from whom they obtain their main information for assess- ing language usefulness and forming language perceptions.

However, after interacting with nonfamily members, they receive more information on the realities of speaking and using a language, which then shapes their judgment of the language. In this process, children form their LAs, which continuously change as more information is added. Also, conflicts between language imagination and reality emerge in this process.

For some children, these contradictions are insignificant.

In this case, the children’s LAs tend to be consistent over time. Many Chinese Australian children were taught that Chinese is useful, and when some of them grow up, they find that there are indeed benefits to speaking Chinese. This means the reality they are witnessing conforms to what they have imagined and expected. Therefore, they tend to continue learning and using the Chinese language.

However, if Chinese is not as useful or important as described by the information they have received, tension arises between their language imagination and reality. These children would then tend to hesitate in continuing to learn and use Chi- nese. For example, Lily, an Australian-born Year 2 girl whose parents were from Tianjin, experienced contradictions between language imagination and reality that inhibited her learning of Chinese. She was told that learning Chinese is necessary and important since most of her peers did so. This indeed happens before children’s schooling, as many Chinese parents send their children to preschool classes to learn Chinese. Children at this stage have few friends except the ones in the Chinese community. However, Lily did not live with her grandparents, and most of the people she has known since attending primary school spoke English. Therefore, she did not find Chinese useful, contrary to what she was told. Lily said, “Many of my bud- dies cannot speak Chinese and do not learn Chinese, and they live well” (November 10, 2018). Many Chinese children with the same experiences tend to refuse to keep learning and using Chinese. This difference between children’s language imagination and reality significantly influences their LA formation.

Immigrant children also tend to verify the coherence between their language imagination and reality via the opportunity provided by the openness of the language space. In turn, the LAs formed under this influence serves as a covert power when children make language choices. Children’s experiences before and after attending primary school also shape their LA construction.

Fig. 2 A closed community against a gradually open space for language use

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Conclusion

The present study highlights immigrant children’s agency in forming and reconfiguring their LAs. It also provides some innovative analytical perspectives to explore this issue, including a typological perspective, a dual-track perspective, and a spatial perspective. It demonstrates an emerging and unique characteristic of immigrant children’s LAs: self-reflexivity. Reflexive LAs are formed and continue to be re-formed under the joint influence of the longitudinally dynamic and transversely dual-track cultural environment, conflicting LAs among family members, and children’s ongoing negotiation between language imagination and reality. Though this study focuses Chinese Australian children’s LAs and language practices, immigrant children of other ethnicities may share many aspects of their experience regarding LAs and reflexivity. There- fore, the present research provides some implications for multilingualism and immigrant children’s social–psychological development in several aspects.

First, the present study emphasizes immigrant children’s agency in the multicultural and multilingual context, which not only strengthens the theoretical debates surrounding LAs and the transnationality of immigrant children but also provides some empirical evidence to support its arguments. Specifically, these children are not passively influenced by the external environment; rather, their agentive strategy responds to the new challenges of their rapidly changing situation. This is different from the existing knowledge on LAs of immigrants who are either lin- guistically and culturally excluded in mainstream schools and mainstream society for their lack of proficiency in the dominant language (Li et al. 2020; Kanno and Kangas 2014) or overwhelmed by the dominant culture and language in the host country, thus gradually quitting heritage- language learning because of globalization (Song 2010).

Second, considering factors at the micro, macro, and individual levels, this paper discusses why children have high reflexivity and agency in their language practices.

Put another way, they not only position themselves in the balance between themselves and the external environment, the host country’s cultural environment, and the family’s language learning environment inclusively, but they also negotiate between their LAs and their language practices.

These children hold conflicting but reflexive perceptions about their heritage and mainstream languages when responding to their complicated environment and cognitive development. Therefore, they could be classified into four types according to how they behave: positive users, blind followers, negative maintainers, and stiff resisters.

This typology also confirms immigrant children’s reflexivity mentioned in the first point.

Third, the present research also discusses the changing composition of the world’s immigrant community and high- speed population mobility, highlighting the importance of examining LAs in an updated cultural environment and in multiple social settings. It also sheds light on the host country’s language policymaking and educational practices under China’s soft power expansion (Li et al. 2020) involving the Chinese community and Chinese immigrants.

This study has implications for language policymakers, who are closely related to heritage-language and bilingual education in multilingual contexts. By identifying the reflexivity of immigrant children such as Chinese Australian children, who are in a dual-track cultural environment, this study recommends that policymaking processes consider personal characteristics and some incentives be given to negative maintainers and stiff resisters. The research findings provide valuable experience and implications for policymakers to formulate sensible policies on multilingual education, language preservation, and cultural diversity.

In addition, this research provides suggestions for heritage-language teachers that emphasize not only the importance of language ontology but also the larger societal context that may shape children’s and their families’ LAs when conducting teaching activities. The research findings strengthen our understanding of immigrant children’s language learning and maintenance, heritage-language policies, and their LAs, especially in a society with high-speed population mobility.

Acknowledgements I am indebted to Professor Gao Jia from Univer- sity of Melbourne and Professor Pookong Kee from Peking University for their valuable comments. I am also grateful to all interviewees whose participation made this study possible.

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