Exploring the waning interest in Nuosu Yi education in Liangshan, China

ABSTRACT

Interest in formal Nuosu Yi language programmes has been waning in Liangshan, China, even though Nuosu Yi continues to be widely spoken among Yi residents. In this paper, we adopt Hornberger (2004. “The Continua of Biliteracy and the Bilingual Educator: Educational Linguistics in Practice.” International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism 7 (3): 155–171.)’s continua of biliteracy and a translanguaging perspective to explore this phenomenon, and draw on a qualitative study of Yi students’ and their teachers’ language practices in three schools. Data include observations of Yi students’ and teachers’ spoken practices both in casual interactions and formal classroom instruction, and photos of their formal and informal written practices. Findings revealed a literacy-oracy divide in formal Nuosu Yi education: written Nuosu Yi was prioritised at school but was not found to be widely used in daily life. By contrast, spoken Nuosu Yi, which was drawn on frequently by students and teachers in informal interactions, was largely excluded at school due to a highly standardised and literacy-focused institutional setting. The continua of biliteracy and translanguaging allowed a nuanced investigation into different kinds of language practices at school, showing how the existing communicative repertoire of the students was not considered to be an asset in formal education.

KEYWORDS:

• Continua of biliteracy
• translanguaging
• bilingual education
• ethnic minority language
• Nuosu Yi

Acknowledgement

This work was drawn on the doctoral study of the first author and was supported by Monash University under the RTP Scholarship by the Australian Government.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Zhou (2001) categorises ethnic minority languages in China into three types. Type 1 languages are those that possess both spoken and written forms (e.g., Tibetan, Mongolian and Uyghur). Type 2 and 3 languages are those that either have a writing system but only popular in spoken forms, or have no functional writing systems in history.

2 The fieldwork was conducted by the first author who is Han ethnicity and understands some spoken and written Nuosu Yi. To mitigate the language issue and to gain more insights to the Yi group, the author paired himself with a Yi facilitator throughout the fieldwork. Participants were told that the study would be written up in English. After consent was obtained from local governments and school principals before the fieldwork, consent was gained from participants. The research was not sensitive in nature as the Government promotes Nuosu Yi bilingual education in Liangshan.

3 In-class casual conversations between teachers and students were also recorded.

4 The length of each observation in informal spaces varied from 15 to 35 min. The study collected 14 observations in informal spaces, but eight of them (recorded in school cafeteria) were inaudible due to loud background noise and were not included in the study.

5 In the past, the exam papers in Model One education were presented in Chinese and Yi. The 2018 Policy has removed written Chinese in exam papers. This measure was put in place in order to promote the learning of written Nuosu Yi.

6 The teacher was the same teacher in Figure 1, who wrote Biology terms in Chinese on the left and written Yi translations on the right on the whiteboard.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jiazhou Yao

Jiazhou Yao is a lecturer in the School of Foreign Languages at Southwest Jiaotong University. His research interests include bilingual education of ethnic minority groups in China, language policy and planning, and linguistic landscape.

Marianne Turner

Marianne Turner is an Associate Professor in bilingual education and TESOL at the Faculty of Education, Monash University. She researches context-sensitive approaches to the integration of language and content in EAL, foreign and heritage language settings.