tailieunhanh - “[the] northern [dialect] sounds foreign to me”: Vietnamese heritage speakers’ investment and identities

This study investigates Vietnamese heritage speakers’ investment and identities in relation to the Vietnamese dialects they are exposed to. The findings suggest that the participants constructed and reconstructed different identities and their levels of investment in language learning varied due to their experience with the social worlds. | JOURNAL OF SCIENCE OF HNUE DOI Social Sci. 2016 Vol. 61 No. 12 pp. 36-47 This paper is available online at http THE NORTHERN DIALECT SOUNDS FOREIGN TO ME VIETNAMESE HERITAGE SPEAKERS INVESTMENT AND IDENTITIES Nguyen Thi Thu Ha Faculty of English Hanoi National University of Education Abstract. The trends of globalization and transnationalism have drawn researchers attention to the issues of heritage speakers as well as their investment and identities. Speakers of Spanish Chinese Korean are thoroughly studied while not much research has been done in the realm of Vietnamese heritage speakers and their dialects. This study investigates Vietnamese heritage speakers investment and identities in relation to the Vietnamese dialects they are exposed to. The findings suggest that the participants constructed and reconstructed different identities and their levels of investment in language learning varied due to their experience with the social worlds. Keywords The Northern dialect sounds foreign Vietnamese heritage speakers investment identities. 1. Introduction Language teaching and learning is now closely linked to globalization and speakers from diasporas heritage speakers HSs in particular become a topic that attracts a wealth of research in the field of sociolinguistics 7 1 . While the issue of identities and investment of Spanish Korean and Chinese HSs has been widely studied 4 12 13 14 research on Vietnamese heritage speakers is still limited. As understanding the learners their investment and their identities is an essential part of heritage language HL teaching researching Vietnamese HSs will expand our subject knowledge as well as enrich the existing literature on HSs in general. This research examines the investment and identities of the Vietnamese HSs at a university in the US Pacific in relation to the dialects they are exposed to. Using grounded theory the study hopes to shed light on the HSs struggle in claiming