The multilingual lived experience of Mongol-Chinese in China

ABSTRACT

This paper explores the multilingual lived experience (MLE) of four Mongol-Chinese individuals. This lived experience is set in the multilingual context of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region (IMAR) of China. Compared to the ethnic majority Han people, who are Mandarin (Putonghua) speakers, and who study English as a L2, Inner Mongolian ethnic minority students’ experience is often trilingual, with Mongolian as their L1, Mandarin as their L2, and English as a L3. The study is presented in two analytical stages. First, Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) is used to understand the MLE of the Mongol-Chinese participants. IPA shaped the selection of these participants, the semi-structured interview methodology, and the processing and coding of the interview data. The subsequent presentation of the participants’ MLE includes two super-ordinate themes: (a) multilingual experience in school, which appeared to be influenced by externally determined linguistic challenges, and (b) multilingual experience beyond school, which contributed to an ethnic consciousness and a wish to use Mongolian more. Second, post-structuralist theory is used to provide a broader interpretation of the MLE, as well as more general conclusions about the relationship between language and identity in the IMAR and China, with potential relevance also for other multilingual contexts.

KEYWORDS:

• Mongol-Chinese
• multilingualism
• identity
• interpretative phenomenological analysis

Introduction

In China, there are 56 officially designated ethnic groups (Zhou 2011). Compared to the Han majority and the Mandarin language, ethnic minorities and their languages, like Mongol-Chinese and Mongolian, tend to find themselves at ‘China’s edge’ (Bulag 2002). This marginal experience has been explored from different perspectives, including educational and language policy (Adamson and Feng 2009; Feng and Adamson 2018; Tsung and Cruickshank 2009), linguistic aspects of trilingualism (Gil 2006; James and Park 2011; Zhao 2010) and rights to minority/heritage language instruction (Zhu 2014). However, there are few attempts to understand minority individuals’ multilingual lived experiences across different stages of education and life. Such idiographic understanding, based on individual voices, can provide educators and policymakers with first-hand knowledge of the challenges and opportunities of multilingualism.

Thus, the contribution of this paper is an account of Mongol-Chinese individuals’ multilingual lived experience (MLE) from primary school to tertiary education and beyond. The paper starts with a brief description of the Inner Mongolian Autonomous Region (IMAR), the Mongol-Chinese as an ethnic and linguistic group, and how Chinese language and educational policy has affected the IMAR. This is followed by a review of post-structuralist theory to understand language learning and identity development (Darvin and Norton 2015; Norton 2000, 2016; Norton and Morgan 2012). Next, we describe the rationale for using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA), the participants, the semi-structured interview method used, and – finally – how the data was processed, coded, and analysed. The main body of the paper is a thematic presentation of the four Mongol-Chinese participants’ MLE. This is followed by an interpretation of the themes identified drawing on post-structuralist theory. Finally, the paper reflects on what the implications are for the IMAR, China, and other similar multilingual contexts.

Language and education in the IMAR

The Inner Mongolian Autonomous Region (IMAR) is the ‘home’ of the Mongol-Chinese. The Mongolian language is the official regional language and heritage language for the ethnic Mongols in the IMAR, but Mandarin (Putonghua), as the national language of China, is widely used. With the promotion of Mandarin throughout China from the 1950s, 80% of the IMAR residents use Mandarin as their main language (Chinese Ministry of Education 2021). Based on The Seventh National Census in the IMAR (2021), there are 4.2 million Mongol-Chinese (17.66%), 18.9 million Han (78.74%), and a smaller number of other ethnic groups (e.g. Hui, Manchu) in the IMAR. There appears to be no reliable data on the number of Mongolian L1 speakers, but Janhunen (2012) has noted that half of Mongol-Chinese residents lost their heritage language. Thus, Mongolian, as one of the official languages in the IMAR, is normally included in public domains, such as public signs, bus stations and airport broadcasts. However, Mongolian is not used much in social interaction in public arenas due to the greater number of Mandarin speakers. In addition, the geographical and cultural affinities that the IMAR shares with Mongolia means that the Mongol-Chinese and their Mongolian heritage language has a slightly different signification as compared to other groups and languages in China (e.g. Hakka, Manchu). This potentially strengthens their Mongolian ethnic identity but also contributes to an outsider status in a Han and Mandarin-dominated country.

The IMAR educational system includes Han–Mandarin-dominant schools that follow the Chinese national curriculum. There are also bilingual/multilingual (ethnic) schools, but these vary in their linguistic policy and practices (Dong et al. 2015; Yi and Adamson 2017). According to the Law of Regional National Autonomy (2005),

Schools (classes and grades) and other institutions of education where most of the students come from minority nationalities shall, whenever possible, use textbooks in their own languages and use their languages as the media of instruction. (Article 37, emphasis added)

Despite the opportunity for decentralised decisions, there appears to be a shift in favour of Mandarin-dominant curricula (Dong et al. 2015). This shift was reinforced in August 2020, when the IMAR Educational Department announced that three core subjects – Chinese Language and Literature, History, and Politics – needed to be taught in Mandarin and make use of nationally approved textbooks. This policy was (and is) viewed as a threat to the preservation and/or development of Mongolian as a heritage language, with associated resentment and a series of protests taking place across the IMAR (and neighbouring Mongolia).

The emergence of the English language as a subject in the IMAR schools, as well as in China as a whole, follows a slightly different trajectory. Early attempts, in the 1980s and 1990s, to include English as a subject in middle and high schools were complicated by the shortage of qualified English teachers. From this emerged a focus on quality rather than equality, with English introduced in selected middle and high schools in the 1990s (see Hu 2005). Following this, English was introduced as an ‘expected’ subject from Grade 3 of primary school in 2001 (larger cities and centres) and 2002 (all areas). However, local governments were able to decide ‘the objectives and steps for the establishment of English courses in primary schools in their regions based on the actual situation’ (Chinese Ministry of Education 2001). This means that most children in the IMAR, either in Mongolian or Mandarin-dominated school, started to learn English in Year 3 of primary school (for more detail see Adamson and Feng 2014; Dong et al. 2015; Yi and Adamson 2017). In middle and high schools, where the Higher Education Entrance Examination (Gaokao) is a driving force, the English language is an established subject. Furthermore, the English language is a significant subject also in universities in the IMAR; most Chinese universities require students to pass the standardised CET4 (undergraduate) or CET6 (postgraduate) English language examinations.

Post-structuralist theory

In order to provide an interpretation of Mongol-Chinese individuals’ MLE, we will draw on Norton’s post-structuralist theory of language learning and identity development. Norton’s theory fits with the recent social turn in the field of Applied Linguistics (see Block 2003) and lends itself to the holistic and idiographic interpretation that we aim for.

Post-structuralist theory views language and identity development as a site of struggle. In the words of Darvin and Norton (2015, 43), ‘communicative events, as the interaction of voices from different social positions, are indexical of ideological processes of dominance and contestation’. This struggle, or contestation, is shaped by ideologies, which are ‘dominant ways of thinking that organize and stabilize societies while simultaneously determining modes of inclusion and exclusion, and the privileging and marginalization of ideas, people, and relations’ (Darvin and Norton 2015, 44). Following Bourdieu's (1991) market metaphor, Norton likens language to a form of linguistic capital that may be ‘exchanged’ into economic, social, or cultural capital. In addition, linguistic and other forms of capital may constitute symbolic capital, a form of social power, when privileged within an ideology. Pertinent examples include Mandarin, which over time has gained privileged status within China, and the English language, which has a great deal of symbolic capital on international arenas (Williams and Stelma 2022), also including China.

Norton’s particular contribution to post-structuralist theory is the notion of investment (Norton Peirce 1995). Investment is an agentive process that is shaped by, and shapes, identity, ideologies and capital. Language learners may invest in a language if they believe that this may lead to future gains in economic, social or cultural capital. If, in addition, this includes gains in symbolic capital and hence social power, this may further enhance levels of investment. To bridge between the investment in language learning, its future benefits, and identity development, Norton draws on Markus and Nurius’ (1986) psychology-based future selves theory and Anderson's (2006) notion of ‘imagined communities’ to suggest that ‘an imagined community assumes an imagined identity, and helps to explain a learner’s investment in the target language’ (Norton 2015, 378). Thus, the imagined community and identity of, e.g. English language learners may include ‘global multilingual citizenry’ (Norton 2015, 387) or that of an ‘overseas returnee’ (Guo and Miao 2021). Any perceived future opportunities for education or work, such as studying at a prestigious university, working in a large city, or moving to another country, can form part of a desirable possible self, and hence an imagined identity within an imagined community.

However, the ability of any individual to imagine future selves and identity is constrained by the social, cultural and economic capital accorded to them by the ideologies that govern their present contexts (Norton and Pavlenko 2019). Existing research also addresses how opportunities for language use, or social interaction in a ‘target’ language, may shape identity development (e.g. Creese and Blackledge 2015; De Fina 2007) with the possibility of this identity being situated and possibly hybrid (Otsuji and Pennycook 2013). However, overcoming such constraints, and actually shaping identity, may be a particular challenge for ethic minority individuals, and may require ‘shifting, unequal power relations’ (Zhao 2010, 79). This means that the space for multilingualism to flourish, and social mobility (as per Norton’s model of investment) to thrive, is not a given (Heugh 2014). In the IMAR, Mongolian does constitute a local form of linguistic capital, but within the arenas of education and work it has comparatively less symbolic value, especially when the IMAR is labelled as ‘backwards’ and ‘poverty-stricken’ (Barabantseva 2011, 89).

Finally, the extent to which investment in language learning is agentive, or driven by ethnic consciousness, is contested. Alongside the social turn in applied linguistics, there may also have been an ‘intentional turn’. For instance, Ushioda (2009) considers language learners as ‘self-reflective intentional agent(s)’ who are not only influenced by their context but also have the initiative to shape their own context. We recognise that Ushioda’s intentional agent is an analytical dualism designed to emphasise the role of individuals in a broader complex system of interrelations. However, we are uncertain about the exact role of individual agency in language learning and identity development. Research in other contexts reinforces our theoretical hunch. For instance, Dubiner's (2021) research with Arab-Hebrew bilinguals in Israel showed that much of their language use was shaped by educational and social circumstances, and thus not necessarily agentively considered. The extent to which Mongol-Chinese individuals consciously consider their investment in languages is something that this study will address.

The study

This section provides an overview of the empirical research on which the paper is based. The data and data gathering methodology is that of a larger project led by the first author (Author one, in preparation).

The two research questions that this paper addresses are:

1. What is the longer-term multilingual lived experience (MLE) of Mongol-Chinese in the IMAR, China?

2. What is a post-structuralist interpretation of this multilingual lived experience?

The two research questions suggest two stages. The first stage is empirical and shaped by IPA. The second stage is intended to enhance the relevance of the outcomes of the IPA stage to policy and practice in the IMAR, China, and other similar contexts. The remainder of the current section describes the methodological aspects of the first stage, starting with a rationale for the use of IPA, then a description of the participants, data generation, ethical issues, and the steps taken within the IPA data analysis.

Rationale for interpretative phenomenological analysis

The use of IPA both motivates and is motivated by the focus on multilingual lived experience. The notion of lived experience is informed by phenomenology (the way we experience the world) and hermeneutics (the theory of interpretation) (Van Manen 2016). IPA views people as socio-historically situated and experiencing subjects (Eatough and Smith 2017; Smith, Flowers, and Larkin 2022), and focuses on ‘the sense they make of their experience rather than the structure of the phenomenon’ (Eatough and Smith 2017, 194). Thus, IPA requires researcher(s) to get as close as possible to the participants’ individual experience. The hermeneutic aspect of IPA insists that participants be given opportunities to interpret their own experience as freely as possible. Once data has been generated, IPA includes a second hermeneutic; a researcher (or researchers) needs to interpret participants’ interpretation of their experience.

Another aspect of IPA and phenomenology is that interpretation of experience is temporal rather than introspective (Van Manen 2016). As a temporal method, IPA may focus either on smaller parts of past experience or may focus on ‘how the whole experience is meaningful in the context of one's life as it has been, is being and might be lived’ (Eatough and Smith 2017, 196). Also, Gadamer (2004) points out that lived experience ‘makes a special impression that gives it lasting importance’ (53). Thus, based on our conviction that language and identity development are long-term phenomena (see the previous section) that have lasting importance, we view MLE as a long-term (and most often continuing) process, including experiences from the home, primary school to tertiary education, and more recent social and professional experiences. This view shaped the data generation, which provided opportunities for the participants to give voice to the entirety of their experiences.

Participants

The participants selected needed to (a) self-identify as ethnic Mongol-Chinese, (b) speak Mongolian as their L1, Mandarin as their L2, and English as their L3 (reflecting the order of exposure rather than fluency), and (c) have completed university-level education. The first criterion was a natural part of the research aim. The second criterion ensured that Mongolian was a first ‘home language’, providing the participants with a common linguistic starting point in life. The third criterion was to ensure that the participants had a wide range of multilingual experiences, including in higher education, and that they had the ability to fully participate in a Mandarin or English language interview. IPA research is distinct by its commitment to idiography (Smith, Flowers, and Larkin 2022), and the number of participants, therefore, needed to be small to allow the participants’ contributions to be analysed in-depth. The four participants’ key biodata is presented in Table 1.

Table 1. Participant Bio-data.

Pseudonym	Age	Education	Employment	Self-assessed fluency
Jargal	28	BA (Mongolian-based) MA Human Resources Management (Mongolia) (Completed)	Local Government Civil servant in IMAR	L1>L2>L3
Duuren	27	BA (Mandarin-based) MA Financial Management (in Belarus) (Ongoing through online learning)	Local Government Civil Servant in IMAR	L2>L1>L3
Sarnai	26	BA (Mongolian-based) MA English Literature (In the UK) (Ongoing)	Not Applicable	L1>L2>L3
Geriel	34	BA (Mongolian-based) PhD English Literature (Mongolia) (Ongoing through part-time online learning)	University Lecturer (IMAR)	L2>L1>L3

All of the participants, except Geriel, had ethnic Mongol parents, and with Mongolian as their home and heritage language. Geriel had a Mongolian L1 father and a Mandarin L1 mother, with both languages spoken at home. All the participants except Duuren completed an undergraduate degree at a Mongolian-medium university. However, some teachers in these universities are Han, and thus do not speak Mongolian, and even Mongolian speaking teachers sometimes prefer to teach in Mandarin or to mix the two languages.

Data generation and ethical issues

Given the focus on lived experience and IPA’s commitment to idiography, in-depth interviews were conducted. These were semi-structured interviews with 12 open-ended questions enabling the participants to develop extended responses. Following established practices in qualitative research (e.g. BERA 2018), participant information sheets and consent forms were sent to each participant ahead of the interview, thus providing information about the purposes of the study and how the data would be used.

A potential ethical challenge was that politically sensitive issues might arise in the interviews. The 2020 IMAR Educational Department policy reform (see an earlier section) meant that Mongol-Chinese heritage language and identity were sensitive topics. In addition, since the participants had to be interviewed online (see below), the extent to which such online communication was private was a concern. To mitigate against these concerns, the researcher told the participants, by way of voice calls, that they could decline to answer any questions they felt uncomfortable with, that they could select whichever online platform they trusted more, and that they had a week to make their decision about whether to participate.

The interviews took place during the global Covid-19 pandemic (the spring of 2021), and therefore employed online video-conferencing (WeChat), something which the participants had ready access to. Each interview lasted approximately 1.5 h and they were audio-recorded. The participants were given a choice of being interviewed in either Mandarin or English, or to switch between these two languages when they felt this helped to interpret their experience. The actual interviews were conducted largely in Mandarin, but with occasional use of English. The researcher (first author) did not have the required fluency to conduct the interviews in Mongolian. There was some concern about whether the data generation might be affected by the symbolic power associated with Mandarin or English. However, all the participants had been using Mandarin since primary school, and two of the participants (Duuren and Geriel) self-assessed their proficiency in Mandarin as superior to their Mongolian (see Table 1). Finally, the researcher’s self-identification as Mongol-Chinese also helped to reduce any sense of power imbalance.

(Interpretive phenomenological) data analysis

With lived experience articulated directly by the participants, transcription and translation of the interview data are integral steps of analysis (Oxley et al. 2017). When the output of research is in English (as in this paper), and the interviews make use of another language, transcription and translation require shifting the participants’ original meaning-making into a different linguistic, sociohistorical, and cultural system. This means that discrepancies are inevitable (Stelma, Fay, and Zhou 2013). To minimise such discrepancies in this research, an initial transcript was prepared in Mandarin, then translated to English, and – finally – these two versions of the transcript were sent to the participants for member-checking. Moreover, at all subsequent analytical stages, the original Mandarin transcripts were available to support interpretation.

After transcription, translation and member-checking, the analysis followed broadly construed IPA guidelines (Smith and Osborn 2008; Smith, Flowers, and Larkin 2022). First, the researcher (the first author) read the transcripts several times, while making exploratory notes. The double hermeneutic of IPA required the researcher to ‘stand in participants’ shoes’ as well as to ‘stand outside’ to think about ‘what it means’ for the participants (Larkin, Watts, and Clifton 2006). In this activity, the researcher’s identity as Mongol-Chinese enhanced her ‘empathy and suspicion’ towards the data (Eatough and Smith 2017). Next, the researcher used her initial notes to identify emergent themes, and then, in consultation with the other two authors, the emergent themes were clustered to generate super-ordinate themes. Consistent with the idiographic commitment of IPA, these analytical steps were repeated for each of the four cases – one by one. Finally, the themes of the four idiographic cases, including all the emergent (but at this stage refined) and super-ordinate themes were combined to build a final thematic map. This final mapping included super-ordinate themes and sub-themes, optimised to capture shared patterns in four Mongol-Chinese participants’ MLE – as presented in the next section.

The multilingual lived experience

The participants’ MLE is presented in two super-ordinate themes: Multilingual Experience in School and Multilingual Experience beyond School. Each of these super-ordinate themes is developed, below, using the ‘voices’ of the participants. To avoid obscuring these voices, the presentation is intentionally descriptive. However, the double hermeneutic of IPA is evident in the thematic structure, the selection of extracts, the connections made between extracts of data, and in the form of interpretive statements such as ‘may be understood as’, ‘may explain why’, and so on. In the interest of transparency, we have underlined these interpretive statements throughout.

Multilingual experience in school

This presentation of the participants’ MLE takes their shared childhood experience with, and fluency in, Mongolian as an uninterrogated starting point. The first super-ordinate theme, then, addresses the participants’ experience related to, or within, their formal education, from primary school to university. The first sub-theme – Being an Early Bird – focuses on the participants’ experience of taking extra classes in both Mandarin and English ahead of primary school. The next sub-theme – Responding to Linguistic Challenges – focuses on how the participants’ language learning efforts shifted in response to the demands put on them in the school context. The third theme – Learning English as a Task – focuses on the experience of preparing for a number of English language exams (i.e. the Gaokao and CET4 and 6). The final sub-theme – Imagining Linguistic Futures – focuses on how learning English language at school enabled, or failed to enable, the participants to imagine future possibilities.

Being an early bird

The four participants were all early birds in their multilingual development. All four developed their Mongolian and Mandarin languages early in life, and with the exception of Geriel, this applied to English as well. Geriel was a bit older and entered the school system before English was a subject in primary school. Geriel also grew up in a bilingual Mongolian–Mandarin household. Thus, her early-bird experience was not shaped by education as much as it was for the other participants. For Jargal, Sarnai and Duuren, however, primary school was an important influence on their multilingual early bird experience. Reflecting on the time that she started primary school, Jargal said she had ‘no foundation’ in Mandarin.

Regarding Mandarin, because I had no foundation … I mean I did not speak Mandarin before the second grade … it was a bit difficult for me at the beginning, so I went to private tutorials after school. At that time, I had to pay a lot of attention to Mandarin. (Jargal)

The word ‘difficult’ in this extract may be understood as the effort learning Mandarin required (rather than the difficulty of the language itself). However, it was not always an experience of difficulty, as is evident from Duuren’s recollection of these early years.

My family and friends from school were all Mongolians, but I was more interested in Mandarin at the time. I guess the reason why I liked Mandarin learning is related [to] my short-time experience in pre-school; I went to a Chinese [pre]school for a while, maybe for a week. It may have [had] an impact on me. (Duuren)

When asked for further details, Duuren explained that she was invited to attend this pre-school by relatives of her family, and that she attended the preschool with her younger cousin.

The early bird experience of learning Mandarin seemed to come to an end when the participants started doing well on exams. When Jargal considered her Mandarin competence to be comparable to her Mongolian she explained that there was ‘nothing to review for exams’, and when Sarnai was asked why she stopped attending extra Mandarin classes, she said:

My Mandarin got better … I don't know … Maybe because there were more written exams and students were not asked to read something out loud. So I did not pay much attention to the speaking or pronunciation of Mandarin. (Sarnai)

The participants’ early bird experience of learning English was slightly different. Jargal and Sarnai both attended extra English classes one year before they were taking this language as a subject in primary school. However, the motives for attending such English classes were not always remembered by the participants.

Interviewer: Why do you think your mother cared so much about your English study?

Sarnai: I forgot why [she sent me to study English] in the second grade. She seemed to be afraid that I could not keep up [with the classes]. Public schools provide English in the third grade, so she wanted me to learn something in advance because I was very stupid when I was a child. I mean I was very shy.

Broader societal considerations may have been a factor, also, as evident from Jargal’s comment.

English courses were provided in school in the third grade, but my dad sent me to private English tutorials when I was in the second grade … My hometown is a small place, and learning English just got popular at that time, so they might think I should learn it in advance … Because of this extra year of learning, I knew more than my friends and had a sense of superiority. The more I learnt it, the more interested I was. (Jargal)

Jargal compared her Mongolian-speaking hometown to ‘a small place’. The uneven distribution of social educational resources between her ‘small’ hometown (where, according to Jargal, English had just become popular) and Mandarin-dominated ‘big’ cities may explain why her parents sent her to English classes. The interview data also suggests that the lived experience of being an early bird with the English language appears to have been positive for Jargal, giving her added confidence, or ‘a sense of superiority’, and that this became motivation for her further English learning.

Responding to linguistic challenges

The early bird experience highlights how the participants, often guided by their parents, paid more attention to whichever language that, at any particular point in time, was more important or more difficult. Early in their educational experiences, Mongolian was considered the easiest language and was given less attention; none of the four participants attended extra Mongolian classes. For Geriel, this extended to Mandarin as well.

I grew up in this [bilingual family] environment and I did not feel a big difference between speaking Mongolian and Mandarin. I learnt and spoke these two languages naturally. There was no difficulty when I was learning them ⁣⁣during my school time. (Geriel)

For the other three participants, both Mandarin and English represented linguistic challenges at the start of primary school, as detailed by the early bird theme (see above). As Sarnai explains:

Because I speak Mongolian as my first language, I did not think I needed to learn it deeply, so Mandarin and English were supposed to be more important for me … Although I did not study Mongolian very hard, my scores were good… So I thought the other two languages were more … hmm … I had to study hard. (Sarnai)

However, this linguistic challenge shifted as the participants moved through the educational system. For instance, when Jargal moved to Hohhot (the capital of the IMAR), which was a Mandarin-dominated ‘big city’, her Mandarin improved and she realised this language was not difficult anymore.

I came to Hohhot at the start of middle school. There were more Mandarin-speakers in the big city, so my Mandarin level also improved a lot. It was not something I did on purpose. It happened when the environment changed. It [Mandarin] became better naturally. So I did not pay much attention to it anymore. (Jargal)

Sarnai’s experience was similar to Jargal’s, with her focus shifting away from any explicit effort to improve Mandarin in middle and high school. For Duuren, however, Mandarin remained a challenge into university.

I feel that everyone was more or less sad for the rare chance to speak Mongolian. We were taught in Chinese all the time (during 4 years at university). It happened that I wouldn't express myself very clearly at the beginning when I tried to communicate with my Han friends. But it gradually got better. (Duuren)

Learning English as a task

As the participants progressed through the educational system, the English language represented a very particular linguistic challenge that, in the IPA analysis, appeared to warrant its own sub-theme. In middle and high school, learning English appeared more like a ‘task’ associated with examinations. Thus, the participants were compelled to study English language to succeed on tests rather than for broader educational reasons.

Jargal and Sarnai appeared to have similar feelings towards learning English in middle and high school. Jargal articulated this as ‘[I just] followed the trend’ and Sarnai said she was just ‘going through the formal process’.

I was interested in [English learning], but the main reason was to ‘cope with’ the exam. If I was really interested, I would have spoken English well when I was in middle school … So, I think the purpose of English learning [in China] was for the exam … Just follow the trend, I guess. (Jargal)

I liked English, but I felt like those extra English classes were more like going through a formal process because I didn't really understand the class. (Sarnai)

Geriel similarly considered English learning as a task rather than an interest. She considered it her responsibility to study hard for all her subjects. She did not believe English was useful in the IMAR but recognised that it played an important role in the exam-oriented education system. As she said,

English was only used in schools, and it was not a useful or common language in Inner Mongolian society. In school, it was mainly for tests. So I thought all subjects were important, not only English … So, I learnt English as a task to complete. (Geriel)

The Learning English as a Task sub-theme was also a part of the participants’ experience in high school, when the participants were preparing for the Gaokao – the Chinese University Entrance Examination. A high score on the English component of the Gaokao is essential to be admitted to a better university in China. For instance, with the Gaokao in mind, Duuren summarised her attitude towards English as being ‘interested in learning but not very active’ because she also needed time to study other subjects.

I was just interested in learning but not very active to learn English … There was lots of study pressure in high school. I needed to spend more time on other subjects like mathematics and physics after class as well. (Duuren)

Even in university, English was perceived as a ‘task’. For instance, when Duuren was asked about her English learning experience at university she said,

There was a requirement for graduation. Only the students who have passed College English Test [CET 4/6] were eligible to be awarded a degree, so I tried my best to prepare for the College English Test at that time. (Duuren)

In sum, all four participants used expressions such as ‘had to’, ‘needed to’, ‘task’, ‘a formal process’ and so on to describe their experience with the English language in the later parts of their school experience, rather than expressions that might identify more closely with a personal interest.

Imagining linguistic futures

While reflecting on their early MLE, the learners made associations between the languages they were learning and possible futures. Mandarin was associated with moving to bigger cities and employment opportunities, and English was mainly associated with communicating with foreigners, travelling, or moving abroad. The associations for the English language are exemplified by Geriel’s comment about the limited use for English in the IMAR.

Interviewer: You seem to emphasize the importance of English learning throughout your school time. But, as you mentioned, it is not a very useful language in Inner Mongolia. Why did you value English learning so much?

Geriel: It can help you ‘go out’. If you go out, English learning is very meaningful and important, just like you [referring to the researcher who was studying in the UK]. However, it is useless if you do not ‘go out’, unless your job has a requirement for English [proficiency].

The researcher (the first author) understood Geriel’s ‘going out’ as going to other provinces of China, where jobs might require English, or going to other countries, as evident from Geriel’s ‘just like you’ comment. At the same time, the abstractness of ‘go out’ may also signify that, when Geriel was younger, she did not imagine any concrete English language future for herself. Similarly, Duuren admitted that, as a child, she did not imagine the situation she found herself in as an adult.

Interviewer: Did you think about going abroad or studying abroad when you were studying English?

Duuren: No. [The imagined way of using English was to] communicate with foreigners in China or travel abroad. I have never thought that I would benefit from English learning at the academic or career development level. Doing this English-medium postgraduate course [in Belarus] was not in my plans at all.

Thus, whilst the participants seemed to have a good sense of the potential usefulness of English in abstractly imagined futures, when they were younger none of them had any concrete imagined future where they saw themselves using English.

Multilingual experience beyond school

This second super-ordinate theme addresses the participants’ MLE later in life and of wider social and professional situations. The first sub-theme – Struggling with a Mandarin-dominated Society – focuses on the lack of opportunities to use Mongolian in the Mandarin-dominated social and professional contexts of the IMAR, and how this appeared to arouse a Mongol ethnic consciousness. The second and connected sub-theme – Choosing to Use Mongolian – focuses on their active use of Mongolian when given the opportunity.

Struggling with a mandarin-dominant society

During the period of data generation, both Duuren and Geriel were living and working in the IMAR. Immersed in a Mandarin-dominated work environment, they admitted that their fluency in Mongolian had declined. Note again that 80% of the IMAR residents use Mandarin as their main language (see a previous section).

Almost all my colleagues are Han, and I am the only Mongolian-speaker at my workplace. I felt that there was less and less occasion or environment for me to speak Mongolian, the only chance to speak Mongolian was to talk to my family or previous Mongolian classmates … I think my Mandarin and English are getting better, but Mongolian declines. I think it's because of the big [social and professional] environment. (Duuren)

The Mandarin-dominated language environment not only undermined the participants’ fluency in Mongolian, it also seemed to awaken an ethnic consciousness, as evident in the following extract from Geriel’s interview.

I did not have any ethnic awareness in my entire student days … When I was at school, my classmates and teachers were all Mongols, so Mongolian was the common language. At that time, I did not feel that I was missing anything. But since I started to work, I found that there were very few occasions where Mongolian could be used. Gradually, I had such a consciousness that I need and want to speak [Mongolian], because there are fewer and fewer opportunities for Mongolian language, so I cherish it even more. (Geriel)

It appears that Geriel was missing the right to speak her heritage language, and this may have extended to ‘missing’ her right to be a Mongol individual in China. Jargal expressed a somewhat similar sentiment, although this was prompted by the new educational policy introduced in August 2020 (see an earlier part of this paper).

This year, I began to pay more attention to the Mongolian language. Because of the policy, I feel that I extremely cherish it [Mongolian] now, [so] I want to know more about my language and culture. (Jargal)

In fact, both Jargal and Geriel used the word ‘cherish’ (珍惜 – Zhenxi) to describe how they felt about Mongolian as their heritage language in their later Mandarin-dominant social and professional experience.

Choosing to use Mongolian

Connected to the previous sub-theme, but distinct nevertheless, as adults all four participants chose Mongolian as their preferred language in multilingual contexts. This was the case even for Duuren and Geriel who self-assessed their Mandarin as better than their Mongolian. Thus, in this adult experience, the Mongolian language appeared to signify an emotional bond and a symbol of identity. For instance, when Duuren was asked which language she would speak if the interlocutors were trilinguals, like her, she said:

Of course Mongolian, when speaking my mother tongue I will feel closer to the person I am talking with … It is impossible to communicate in Mandarin even if our Mandarin is good … I think I should use Mongolian first. If it does not work, we could change to Mandarin. It is a kind of … ethnic awareness … Well, would you not feel strange if two foreigners in China talked to each other in Mandarin rather than their native language? (Duuren)

Duuren’s word choices in this part of the interview seemed salient and powerful. This includes the word ‘strange’ to describe her feelings about speaking Mandarin to other Mongolian speakers, and the hypothetical situation of ‘two foreigners in China’ – in effect distancing herself from the Han majority. Thus, Duuren’s post-education multilingual experience appeared to result in a heightened agency around language choice.

I always hope that I could study Mongolian and read Mongolian books more … I browse some Mongolian news on purpose now … Because I am worried that I might forget the Mongolian language one day. There are many people around me who have forgotten how to write in Mongolian because they don’t use it often. I don’t want to be one of them, I don’t want to forget my mother tongue. (Duuren)

Geriel also talked about her developing appreciation for the Mongolian language and her ethnic identity.

Now I am a teacher, I actually prefer to teach in Mongolian. Hmm … When I am getting older and experiencing more, I start to cherish my own ethnic culture and tradition. There is an emotional bond between me and my ethnic thing [culture, language, arts and more]. (Geriel)

However, choosing to speak Mongolian was not always linked to ethnic identity or consciousness. Jargal was more directly concerned about communication. Although her social and work environment was dominated by the Mandarin language, when she used Mandarin she felt that communication was superficial.

Although there are opportunities to speak Mandarin, such as in a shopping mall, I still speak Mongolian most of the time … I mean the people who I speak to most are Mongolian speakers, so I am more comfortable speaking Mongolian, which is also the most fluent one. (Jargal)

In sum, as adults, the participants seemed to value the Mongolian language more than they did when they were younger, and their lived experience in a Mandarin-dominant society played a role in reawakening their appreciation of their Mongolian language, and for some of them also their Mongolian identity.

A post-structuralist interpretation

The above thematic analysis, while including individual variation, reveals overall patterns in the Mongol-Chinese participants’ MLE. This section uses post-structuralist theory (see above) to interpret the MLE of the Mongol-Chinese participants. The discussion proceeds in four parts, each reflecting one aspect of the MLE.

(a) The participants’ early multilingual lived experience was shaped by emerging educational challenges.

The emerging educational challenges that this aspect of the MLE refers to will have been governed by the ideologies at play in the participants’ homes, the educational system, the context of the IMAR, and China as a whole. Again, ideologies are ‘dominant ways of thinking’ that determine ‘modes of inclusion and exclusion, and the privileging and marginalization of ideas, people, and relations’ (Darvin and Norton 2015, 44). The participants grew up in a context dominated by a centralising Chinese ideology, with a consistently expanding presence of Mandarin-medium schools, and with English as a compulsory language from early in the primary years. In the Bordieuan ‘marketplace’ of the participants’ early school experiences, Mandarin and English constituted privileged linguistic capital. In their later educational experiences, the participants treated English learning as a task; as students they were supposed to do well on exams. To an extent, their investment in languages was determined by the instrumental need for learning whichever language posed the greater challenge at any point in time. This means that the participants’ investment in these languages, while clearly substantive, was not driven by Ushioda's (2009) ‘intentional agent’. This means that:

(b) This school-based multilingual experience was driven by contingency rather than conscious choices.

In post-structuralist terms, the investment in language learning was shaped by dominant ideologies, and in the case of the English language it was akin to a ‘formal process’. This lack of agency may have had implications for the participants’ ability to imagine future identities where they were users of the English language. Any imagined identities or future selves would, at best, be fuzzy imaginations, as in Geriel’s suggestion that the English language can help you ‘go out’. Despite its symbolic power within the dominant ideologies, Geriel saw only limited linguistic capital for the English language in the IMAR. This may explain why the participants found it hard to imagine a potential future where English might constitute linguistic capital for themselves, let alone imagine how they might transform this linguistic capital into other forms of capital. It may be that the participants invested in a more abstract ‘imagined empowerment’. According to Zhao (2014), ‘imagined empowerment’ is similarly shaped by dominant ideologies, but may engage young ethnic minority individuals in envisioning a less concrete empowered state for themselves. This may define some aspects of the participants’ investment in Mandarin, but the ‘imagined empowerment’ of English may have been somewhat limited to gaining better access to higher education. In sum, the participants’ started life at the margins of a Han and Mandarin-dominated society, and this may have compromised their ability to imagine concrete futures for themselves.

The next stage of the participants’ MLE was their encounter with the Mandarin-dominated society of the IMAR, including workplaces. We can summarise this as follows:

(c) In their later experience of Mandarin-dominated society and work, the participants became aware of the lack of opportunities to use Mongolian.

This experience has sociopolitical roots. The lack of opportunities may result from the Sinicization of the Mongols in the nineteenth century (Bulag 2003; Janhunen 2012), the promotion of the standard national language (Mandarin), and perhaps also migration patterns resulting in the Mongol-Chinese becoming a minority in the IMAR. Moreover, the more recent reforms that gave ethnic minority languages some protection may have been insufficient to redress the earlier linguistic shifts towards Mandarin (see discussion in an earlier section). These sociopolitical developments had a direct impact, as follows.

(d) The lack of opportunities to use the Mongolian language as adults (re)awakened their ethnic identity, and/or a wish to maintain and develop their Mongolian language.

Existing literature does highlight how ethnic identity may go underground in the early years of life, but when individuals grow older, and they get more opportunities to use their heritage language, they rekindle their ethnic identity (Geerlings, Verkuyten, and Thijs 2015). Abd-el-Jawad (2006, 62), focusing on the Jordanian context, adds further nuance by suggesting that ‘the status of ethnic language may go through a period of fluctuation where conflicting or opposing factors are at play’ and that ‘there may be a phase of what may be called “resurgence”’. Abd-el-Jawad has also suggested that ‘minority groups tend to maintain some of their ethnic features, especially language, when they are considered lower [in status] than the other groups or are discriminated against and [they] feel threatened’ (61). This kind of status gap may apply, also, to the IMAR context, where the Mongolian language has less symbolic capital than the Mandarin language. Finally, somewhat closer to the IMAR context, Lu and Guo (2021) have investigated the ethnic identity construction among Zhuang (another ethnic minority in China) students who moved to larger cities (e.g. Beijing and Shanghai). They identify three forms of Zhuang identity: receivers, constructors and utilisers. It may be that the Mongol-Chinese participants in the present study were receivers earlier in life. Lu and Guo describe receivers as individuals that ‘took their ethnic identity for granted and thought it was determined by descent’ (70). Later in life, the Mongol-Chinese participants may have turned into constructors. Lu and Guo describe constructors as individuals who ‘embraced their Zhuang ethnicity and tried to, or wanted to, preserve Zhuang heritage’ (70). Thus, it may be that Ushioda’s (2009) intentional agent (finally perhaps) was surfacing. The participants’ efforts to maintain and develop their Mongolian language, in reaction to the Mandarin-dominated social environment, may have been an attempt to agentively shape their context. The effort to maintain and develop their Mongolian language fluency may also be explained by Markus and Nurius (1986) feared future self. The participants may have feared a future where they lost their ability and right to speak Mongolian. Finally, the reawakened ethnic identity and appreciation of their heritage language may have been a conscious reaction to having a dominant Other – the Han majority in the IMAR. This is a compelling interpretation of what Duuren may have meant when she said: ‘Well, do not you feel strange if two foreigners in China talk to each other in Mandarin rather than their native language?’

Conclusion

This paper has described the multilingual lived experience (MLE) of four Mongol-Chinese individuals, from primary school to adulthood. We believe that this longer-term view of MLE is a unique contribution. We accept that the MLE has been filtered by the retrospective nature of the data generation. As they reflected, the participants’ re-construction of past experiences will have been coloured by their current identities and priorities. However, at the point of data generation, the reconstructed accounts are – we believe – valid as the distilled essence of experience that is shaping the participants’ developing multilingual identity.

The MLE includes early educational experiences that were relatively devoid of personal agency, both in terms of linguistic competence or identity. The participants simply ‘followed the trend’. The notion of ideologies, from post-structuralist theory, illuminates this; the prevailing ideologies favoured Mandarin and English. These other languages enjoyed a great deal of linguistic capital, with clearly articulated symbolic power. However, as the participants entered adulthood, their multilingual agency appeared to be awakened, both by higher education experiences, travel, and – surprisingly – by the lack of opportunities to use Mongolian language in the IMAR. The latter finding, which we have struggled to make theoretical sense of (see the previous section), is perhaps especially interesting as the focus for future research.

Taking a step back, the study suggests that for multilingual experience to have positive outcomes, on shorter and longer timescales, it needs to be supported by socio-educational ideologies that provide ‘breathing space’ for heritage languages (see Cenoz and Gorter 2017) and, we suggest, the multilingual imagination of individuals. The IMAR in which the participants in this research grew up, and presently live in, did and does not appear to provide this breathing space. Although the Mongolian language is alive in the IMAR, the present study suggests that this heritage language and the associated Mongol-Chinese identity is far from flourishing. To change this, heritage languages, such as Mongolian, must have more linguistic capital in the educational system, and symbolic capital in society.

Ethics

This work was approved by the Ethics Committee of The School of Environment, Education and Development, The University of Manchester. Ref: 2020-10287-16787

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Funding

This work is supported by School of Environment, Education and Development (SEED) Studentship, The University of Manchester.