Youth’s individual language policy in shaping family-community citizenship

ABSTRACT

This study examines minority youth’s daily language life in the family and ethnic community domains. It focuses on young ethnic minorities in a subtractive language context in Vietnam and how they construct their individual language policy through their language practices, beliefs and management in responding to language policies of the family and community of which they are members. Ethnographic interviews with college-age students were the main data sources. Findings suggest that the youth’s L1-oriented individual language policy was strongly informed by their family and ethnic community’s (in)visible language policies, peer culture and the culture of respect, as well as the broader local and mainstream social settings. The youth’s individual language policy reflected their awareness of family and community desires for them to speak the ethnic language and nurture positive L1 attitudes tying to their family-community citizenship. Developing young people’s sense of family-community citizenship through language, as well as building family – community partnership for conserving a common L1-priority policy among members, may be potential grassroots initiatives which can help effectuate minority language maintenance efforts.

KEYWORDS:

• Individual language policy
• family language policy
• community language policy
• family citizenship
• community citizenship
• language maintenance

Introduction

In the sociopolitical context where the present study takes place, the dominance of Vietnamese – the language of the Kinh majority people – as well as the Government’s language policies that implicitly legitimate the superior and privileged position of this language, have contributed to minoritising and devaluing languages of ethnic groups other than the Kinh. The discourses about the Vietnamese language, which is spoken as a mother tongue (L1) by more than 80% of the population in the country, as the national and common language for uniting people of all ethnicities have been widely transmitted through education, media, and other social institutions. The idea that Vietnamese is the language of capital and resource for linguistic minorities to enhance their economic and social development is common among both Kinh and minority people (Nguyen 2022a). The Government’s policies which are declared to be supporting minority people’s rights to use and be educated in their L1, in addition, are not fully implemented in practice. In mainstream mixed-ethnicity schools where minority students are placed in the same education system with their Kinh majority counterparts, Vietnamese is often used as the only language of instruction to teach all subjects, and most minority students do not have chances to formally learn their L1. Many of them, moreover, have to start their early schooling with no or little knowledge of Vietnamese.

Experiencing the Vietnamese-based schooling from primary until tertiary level, minority students are fully exposed to this majority language. Minority students are, hence, immersed in a ‘subtractive’ language environment (Skutnabb-Kangas 1981) where they learn Vietnamese at the expense of their L1, and their exposure to Vietnamese in school and society can hinder their L1 aptitude, as this can cause the loss of their L1 within one or two generations. In that environment, Vietnamese often penetrate into many ethnic families and communities as young people who go to school and interact with Kinh people bring the mainstream language home and use it more frequently in these L1-dominant domains (e.g. Nguyen and Hamid 2017). What language policies are implemented by minority families and communities in the face of such influences by various sub-national institutions, and how minority youth manage their language life under these family and community policies, are important questions that require investigation.

Studies on family language policy often examine families as a separate unit which detaches from their ethnic community where there are other members and families of the same linguistic, ethnic and cultural background. The role of ethnic communities, together with families, in language maintenance and shift is often mentioned in a cursory fashion as small pieces of the findings, which do not constitute the focus of these family language policy studies. As families with a minority – especially an indigenous – background are sometimes clustered into their ethnic community (Nguyen and Hamid 2021), the linguistic lives of these families may not be isolated from their surrounding social contexts, including the community cluster in which they are situated (Curdt-Christiansen and Sun 2022). Ethnic communities also have an informal language policy which regulates norms and expectations of language behaviours, which usually ‘just happens’ as a result of social interactions among community members (Sallabank 2010). Our understanding of grassroots-level language policies in relation to minority language maintenance and shift, for that reason, can be enriched by examining minority individuals’ language life in both family and community domains. Research, in addition, scarcely considers young people’s individual language policy under the influence of language policies of the family and community where they are living (see Nguyen 2022c for an exception). Young people who are often mature enough to be aware of the status of their ethnic language in relation to other languages in their family, ethnic community, school and wider society in rapidly changing linguistic ecologies (Wyman 2009) can be important language policy actors in the process of language maintenance and shift.

The present study attempts to contribute to the sparse literature on these issues. It examines minority youth’s everyday language life in the family and ethnic community domains in a subtractive language environment in Vietnam. The study sheds light on the role of young people whose individual language policy as reflected in their language practices, beliefs and management both results from and constitutes language policies of the family and of community of which they are members.

Theoretical framework

Individual language policy under the backdrop of family-community policy contexts

Minority youth’s language life in their family and ethnic community in the present study is examined through the lens of Nguyen’s (2022c) individual language policy, defined as a kind of policy that individuals discursively construct and apply to their own language behaviours. The concept is built in reference to a combination of theories, including Hornberger and Johnson’s (2007) ethnography of language policy, Spolsky’s (2009) tripartite-component language policy model, and Bonacina-Pugh’s (2012) proposition of language policy within individual language behaviours. Nguyen (2022c) highlights the multiple layers of individual language policy in explicating the concept, pertaining to several notions including level, process and goal, among others (see Ricento and Hornberger 1996; Johnson 2013). Nguyen, in discussing such various elements related to individual language policy, attempts to locate individual language policy in a broader language policy context and describes individual language policy as the most basic layer of the complex language policy cycle operating in the environments which the individuals are living and engaging in.

The first element, ‘level’, is described as external forces that mediate individual language policy, such as macro national language policy, meso/micro school, community and family language policies, or language interventions from other people (Nguyen 2022c). As the present study explores minority youth’s individual language policy in responding to their family’s and ethnic community’s policies, family and community can be seen as the most direct and important forces that have an impact on their language behaviours in these domains – although other forces from school, other institutions, and the mainstream society are also considerable. The second element, ‘process’, is associated with the construct of individual language policy which comprises of three components: practised language policy, perceived language policy, and negotiated language policy (Nguyen 2022c). Practised language policy represents in individuals’ language practices – policy within practices – where they utilise various clues and cues to legitimate their language choice referring to certain norms and rules regulated by communication situations and contexts (Bonacina-Pugh 2012). Family and ethnic community, for example, are where minority youth can (or have to) use their L1 most frequently compared with other domains. Here they may either just maintain their customary L1 habit or need to respond to family and community language policies that prioritise the L1.

Family and ethnic community’s customary language life and (in)visible language policies (Curdt-Christiansen 2009), moreover, can create ideological spaces that contribute to shaping young people’s perceived language policy, which is reflected in their language beliefs – policy within beliefs (Nguyen 2022c). Perceived language policy is, thus, where they draw on family/community language norms and rules in figuring out their language beliefs or language ideologies. These ideologies can be about the nature, usefulness, and meanings attached to different languages in their life in these domains and beyond, as well as about hierarchies of linguistic value, and the way these languages are connected to identities and stances (Jaffe 2009). Family’s and community’s strong L1 policies, for instance, can have influence on young members’ perceived language policy which informs their ‘modernist nationalist’ language ideology where they consider only a single language, often their L1, as the legitimate marker of their ethnic identity (Jaffe 2007).

Negotiated language policy, whereas, is mirrored in individuals’ language management – their explicit responses to overt external language interventions by maintaining or adjusting their language practices/beliefs – policy within management. Individuals’ negotiated language policy, hence, can be seen as their negotiation of their practised and perceived language policy under observable external influences (Nguyen 2022c; 2019; Spolsky 2009). When minority youth are reminded by parents or community peers that they should regularly maintain their L1 in interactions with people in the family and village, for example, the former needs to respond to this intervention by supporting or rejecting the L1-priority policy.

Family-community citizenship

The third element representing the multiple layers of individual language policy, ‘goal’ (or ‘destination’), can be described as an outcome of individual language policy which individuals deliberately or unconsciously want to reach. ‘Goal’, thus, can reveal how minority youth’s individual language policy contributes to the maintenance or shift tendency of their ethnic language. Among different goals of youth’s individual language policy, building a strong family-community citizenship can be a critical key where they, as members of an ethnic minority group, are stimulated to preserve their ethnic language under the huge pressure of shifting to the mainstream language in a subtractive language environment. The idea of citizenship here is to emphasise not only one’s membership of and sense of belonging to their family and community, but also one’s rights, responsibilities and co-commitment in relation to that membership. Family citizenship, for instance, is described by Donati (2017) as a set of rights, obligations, tasks and functions family members need to take and perform to ensure the solidarity among the members. Community citizenship, in a similar vein, is related to a range of social and cultural rights and responsibilities of members of a community which are necessary to maintain the community’s solidarity, trust, and togetherness (Phillips and Berman 2001). Family-community citizenship as a goal of youth’s individual language policy is, thus, constructed when they manage their own language policy adhering to the language rights and responsibilities which they, as members of their family and ethnic community, should exercise to maintain their solidarity with other members. Minority people’s ethnic language can be, thus, a legitimate marker of their family-community citizenship where maintaining the L1 is one of their rights and responsibilities associated with that citizenship. Arguably, family and community language policies that implicitly or explicitly encourage youth to consider constructing and/or consolidating their family-community citizenship can be seen as a grassroots initiative that plays a vital role in the family and community’s language maintenance efforts in the face of mainstream tensions.

The study

Research site and participants

In the Central Highlands of Vietnam where the research site of this study is located, Jarai, Sedang, Bahnar and Rhade are the largest minority groups in terms of population. In the past, ethnic minorities are indigenous to this land and did not have much contact with the Kinh until the Government’s 1970s–1990s resettlement projects which aimed to increase the number of Kinh settlers and encourage minority people to adapt to the majority’s life style (Hardy 2005). Since then, many features of the Kinh’s culture have had a profound impact on all minority communities here. It is, however, observed that the organisational structure of many minority groups living in a united block in which the life of each individual is influenced by community members, and where families are clustered into the ethnic community (Nguyen and Hamid 2018), has contributed, to a certain extent, to the groups’ efforts in maintaining their ethnic language, culture, and social life style under the pressure of mainstream assimilation.

Data for the present study are taken from two larger-scale projects investigating minority youth’s language and culture life at the same research site. The projects’ participants were students or recent graduates of a community college in the Central Highlands, who were recruited through convenience and purposive sampling. Purposive sampling ensured participant diversity in terms of gender, ethnicity, and study major. Convenient sampling was where the researcher invited students whom she knew and had a good relationship with, as well as considered their availability and willingness to participate. Many participants were the researcher’s former students. As she belongs to the Kinh majority group and all the participants are ethnic minorities, she might be considered by the students as an ‘outsider’ who was not familiar with their language, cultural, and social life. They might, hence, need to consider what they can(not) tell this outsider in the interviews. However, the researcher believes that her good relationship with the participants allowed her to gain their trust so they were comfortable to share private stories (Nguyen 2022b). Twenty-eight students, 18 females and 10 males (age 18–25), of Bahnar, Jarai, Rengao, Sedang, Halang, or Jeh ethnicity agreed to participate in the study. Pseudonyms are used for all of them to protect their anonymity.

Data collection and analysis

One-to-one interviews, in which the researcher and participants could talk comfortably and privately, was conducted to gain in-depth insights into the latter’s language and culture life. Interviews allowed the researcher to gather a large amount of information about stories happening across times and contexts recounted by the participants. Ethnographic interviews (Bauman and Adair 1992) were carried out, where the participants proactively engaged in the talk and expressed their own opinions, and where they not only answered the researcher’s questions, but also shared other things in their life. Data about the participants’ language beliefs and language practices in family and ethnic community domains constitute the empirical basis of the present study. The conversations lasted from 1.5 to 3 h each, depending on the participants’ availability. All interviews were in Vietnamese and were audio-recorded with the participants’ consent.

Interview data were transcribed verbatim and went through several coding rounds. The data coding and analysis suggest that the participants’ frequency of using their L1 and Vietnamese in their family and ethnic community, as well as their beliefs about the role and position of the languages in these two domains, were varied. However, only cases with a stronger L1 orientation (14 among 28 cases) were presented in this study to highlight grassroots initiatives used by family and community members in their efforts of maintaining their ethnic language (see Table 1). Data relevant to the study’s topic were analysed referring to the Grounded Theory Approach (Strauss and Corbin 1998). There were three main analysis stages: open, selective and axial coding. Open coding is where multiple themes were emerged directly from what the participants said. Selective coding is where some themes in the first stage were selected and grouped into categories such as language practices in communication with parents, language practices in communication with young people in the community, language beliefs, language management, etc. Axial coding is where data segments were connected with the study’s theoretical concepts such as practised language policy, perceived language policy, negotiated language policy, family citizenship, or community citizenship. A few interview extracts in the subsequent section were discussed elsewhere in other research outputs of the two projects.

Table 1. Information about the focal participants.

	Number	Total
Gender		14
Male	6
Female	8
Age (at the time of interview)		14
18	1
19	4
20	4
22	1
23	1
24	3
Ethnicity/L1		14
Bahnar	4
Jarai	2
Rengao	7
Sedang	1

Findings

In this section, the participants’ construction of an L1-oriented individual language policy through their language practices, beliefs, and management in responding to their family’s and ethnic community’s (in)visible language policies are discussed. The discussions are presented by context (family and community), and this may suggest to readers that the youth differentiated their language behaviours in the two contexts. It is, however, necessary to note that from the researcher’s observation (as a long-term resident in the research site) and her conversations with the participants, family and ethnic community are often inseparable domiciles for many minority people in the region. In the conversations, some participants mentioned the word ‘home’ (in stating that they should speak their L1 at home, for example) in referring to either or both their family and ethnic community. This indicates the importance of minority groups’ organisational structure in which families cluster into the community (in both a physical and mental sense) in their language and culture maintenance endeavours.

Individual language policy in the family domain

All 14 participants related that their mother togue was the norm in communication with parents, and that this was a customary language habit among parents and children, although their parents knew a little Vietnamese. For the youth, L1 practices had been part of the parent–child relationship since they were born, so they felt ‘more comfortable’ (Y-Duong) with this language. Y-Na explained: ‘maybe it’s because I’m used to it or because my mother tongue makes it easier to communicate […]. But at home it (the language) comes from myself, my mother tongue which I speak, like, I’m familiar with it’. The customary L1 habit in this parent–child relationship, which had been established by the youth’s parents, had become a kind of invisible and un-spoken language policy which the youth had accustomed to in shaping their practised language policy for this form of interaction. In doing so, the youth built their family citizenship where they customarily sustained their language rights and responsibilities as a child member who should maintain connections with their parents and follow the parents’ language habits and policy.

Some participants said they limited the use of Vietnamese in communication with parents, as their parents did not know Vietnamese well and/or did not like speaking this language. For them, perhaps, it was important to respect the parents’ language expectations. Even if their parents could speak Vietnamese, maintaining their L1-based practised language policy was important for the youth to show respect to the former, as in the case of Y-Diopris. Y-Diopris stated: ‘When using languages in talking to my parents, I’m still polite. I never reply to my parents in Vietnamese when they ask me in the local language’. Her practised language policy in these situations was reflective of her determination to fulfil her language responsibilities by avoiding Vietnamese in communication with the parents and maintaining the implicit family language policy. Y-Diopris’ perceived language policy related to ‘being polite’ – the choice of L1 when speaking to her parents - might be based on the idea of respect. Respect, hence, might be the norm that guided her belief that, in this situation, using L1 was a sign of politeness (and thus, using Vietnamese could be perceived as being rude). This ideological perception of language(s) of (im)politeness might reflect (1) her understanding of the parents’ customary language habit and (2) her position in the parent – child relationship in which the parents were older and had more power than her (Nguyen and Hamid 2021). It is, hence, suggested that the youth’s idea of family citizenship was implied in their discourses about elderly parents and practices of respect (Meek 2007). In line with this discussion, Y-Trinh also related that she used Bahnar, her mother tongue, most of the time in communication with her parents:

[With] parents, [I] use Bahnar language 80% of the time, sometimes [I] use Kinh language (Vietnamese) […]. [If I use] too much Kinh, yes (the parents will disapprove that), it’s like, disrespecting my language […]. I think [my parents] won’t like it (using too much Vietnamese).

Y-Trinh’s belief that one’s overuse of Vietnamese in talking with parents was a sign of disrespecting one’s mother tongue suggests, again, that the youth’s language choice in interactions with their parents drawn on the discourse and practices of respect. She seemed to imply that avoiding the L1 could be a manifestation of disloyalty to the language and of denial of language responsibilities in the family. Y-Trinh’s L1-oriented perceived language policy might guide her towards conforming to the parents’ L1 preference in both ‘what she actually did with language’ and ‘what she thought should be done with language’ (Spolsky 2009) in her efforts to accomplish her family citizenship associated with the L1.

Some participants revealed that they maintained their mother tongue in home communication, even with their siblings, who also went to school and were exposed to Vietnamese on a daily basis. Although the youth’s frequency of ‘inserting’ Vietnamese into their L1 in talking with their sisters and brothers was a little higher, they did not switch to Vietnamese and did not break their family’s L1 policy in the home domain. For them, it was better to keep their L1-priority practised language policy in speaking to their siblings because that was ‘between ethnic people’ (Y-Chung) and they were ‘at home’ (Y-Huong). Y-Na, likewise, said that she and her siblings used Vietnamese only when they could not find similar words in their L1. As she stated:

Y-Na

: When we (siblings) communicate with each other, we never use Kinh language (Vietnamese).

Researcher

: Even a few words?

Y-Na

: Not even a few words. For example, like social media or something like a phone or something, we don’t have these words in our language, we can borrow [Vietnamese words]. If we say ‘you want to have some rice’ ‘where are you going’ we use our language. If our language lacks some words, we use Kinh language.

For the youth, perhaps, their ethnic language was still key in communication with siblings who belonged to their generation and were also fluent in Vietnamese, even in situations where their L1 resources were not enough for the conversation. Vietnamese use in this domain was, hence, just an exception, as they had to switch to Vietnamese only when they could not find the equivalent words in their mother tongue. The reasons for this L1-priority practised language policy might be, as stated by Y-Huong and Y-Chung, because they were ‘at home’ and they were in communication ‘between ethnic people’. The youth’s home setting and people in such a setting might, thus, constitute a micro L1-only regime in which each family citizen’s individual language policy should adhere to the family invisible and unspoken language policy. As the youth were ‘at home’, they were expected to execute their language rights and responsibilities ‘between ethnic people’ and exercise their citizenship of the family collectivity.

In minority families which are influenced by assimilation pressures from the mainstream, parents’ language attitudes are among important factors in the implementation of family language policy. Parents are often those who set up the family’s customary language habits and manage their children’s language beliefs and practices in this domain. The youth in the present study also reported their experiences of language interventions from parents, who expected them to maintain and use the L1 properly to fulfil their family citizenship. Many participants related that their parents were sometimes worried that the former would forget their ethnic language. A-Xan, for example, told that he needed to use Bahnar, his mother tongue, at home because his mother did not want him to speak Vietnamese, reminding A-Xan that he seemed to fail to remember a lot of words in the L1. As he explained ‘I’ve been here in school for a long time, so I forgot some [words in] our language. But my mom doesn’t want me to speak too much Kinh (Vietnamese). She said she’s afraid that I forgot [my language]. Because I seemed to be a bit lost in [using my] language’. Similarly, Y-Chung related:

It (speaking the L1 frequently) is, on the one hand, because of my habit. On the other hand, my parents said although I went to a higher level of education and could speak Kinh language (Vietnamese) better, I still had to speak the ethnic language at home, to preserve our language. Because recently we sometimes pronounce a few Bahnar words incorrectly, and there are some difficult Bahnar words which I don’t know.

A-Xan’s and Y-Chung’s stories about their parents’ explicit reminders of speaking their L1 properly, where the latter expressed their discontent at the ways the youth used their ethnic language, suggest that the parents declared a more visible L1 policy of the family. Understanding their parents’ language concerns, the youth were more aware of how rightly and frequently they should use the mother tongue to retain the L1 resource for themselves and protect this resource from falling into oblivion. Under such language interventions by the parents, the youth showed their desire for approval and conformed to their parents’ expectation in managing their language and performing their negotiated language policy towards accomplishing their family citizenship.

Other participants also reported their parents’ observable language interventions and how they responded to such interventions in managing their language and constructing their negotiated language policy. A-Dang, for instance, said that his parents often explicitly reminded him about preserving the ethnic language and maintaining it in the family. Some other parents seemed to be quite strict when it came to the family’s language policy, as in the case of A-Hoang, who related that his parents applied ‘language disciplines’ at home, and used to ‘punish’ their children if the children overused Vietnamese or languages other than Rengao, their L1. As he narrated:

[My mom] said that in our family, if we spoke other languages and didn’t speak our ethnic language, she would punish us […]. She said that, in the future when the world was more developed, if we mixed our language with other languages, we would gradually lose our language […]. My dad said: ‘as we are Rengao, you can communicate with your friends in the wider society using Kinh (Vietnamese) or other languages, if you can learn them; but if you are at home, you must preserve our language. Otherwise you can lose your roots and your ethnic identity’.

It is, hence, indicated that the parents’ explicit language interventions aimed to direct their children’s language use adhering to the family’s language policy and the latter’s awareness of language rights and responsibilities associated with their family citizenship (as revealed in their words such as ‘in our family’ or ‘at home’). These language interventions by the parents were one of the reasons why A-Dang and A-Hoang exercised their agency in their language management, deciding that they would manage to use the ethnic language frequently in the home domain, and thereby constructing their negotiated language policy aligning with the maintenance orientation (Nguyen 2022c). The parents’ strong ‘modernist nationalist’ statements about how using the L1 was important to keep their roots and ethnic identity, where they might suggest that as one’s ethnicity could be reflected in the language one uses, their children needed to maintain the L1 responsibility in not only the family, but also the community associated with that ethnicity, in addition, might have an influence on the youth’s language beliefs. Under such interventions, the youth were mindful of the importance of the language as a symbol of and a critical tool to maintain their roots in figuring their negotiated language policy, being aware that they, as a citizen of their family and ethnic community, should be responsible for the vitality of their L1 and their ethnic identity linked with the L1.

Individual language policy in the ethnic community domain

Similar to communication with parents, the youth participants drew on their discourses about elders and practices of respect (Meek 2007) in mainly choosing their ethnic language when communicating with elderly people in the village. The majority of them confirmed that as many older people’s Vietnamese proficiency was not good, it was better to avoid overusing this language in talking with them. As they related, some older adults in the village might not be happy that young members brought Vietnamese home and used it in an irresponsible way. Y-Nom, for example, said that villagers would think bad about her if she spoke too much Vietnamese in the community:

I hesitated [to use Vietnamese] because, if [I talked to] parents, no problem. But others, they would say: ‘that girl, though she’s just gone to school for a short time, she tried to boast’.

Y-Nom might be hesitant to use Vietnamese in talking with older adults because, as she revealed in her stories, many elderly members in her village did not go to school and could not speak Vietnamese as well as young members. Her awareness about the hierarchies between Vietnamese and the minority languages in the Vietnamese society might inform her perceived language policy by implicitly placing Vietnamese at a higher rank compared with her ethnic language. For that reason, she might hold the belief that speaking Vietnamese to those who did not know Vietnamese well could be seen as ‘boasting’ her knowledge of Vietnamese, a highly valued language.

Along the same line, Y-Chung stated that she would not use much Vietnamese in interactions with elders, being afraid that they might mind and negatively appraise her, although some old people were occasionally tolerant about young people’s language behaviours. She said:

If they hear me speaking a lot of Kinh language (Vietnamese), they may say, ‘Oh, you often go to school, it’s good that you know a lot of Kinh language’. They just say that, just praise like that, they don’t mean to be strict […]. I think it’s not fine to do that (frequently speaking Vietnamese to elderly), because old people, they can think that ‘this girl may forget our language, so she attempts to speak Kinh’.

The youth’s hesitation about using Vietnamese might have come from their fear of disrespecting people who belonged to the older generation as this might bring about risks to their relationship with these senior community members. They tried to maintain their L1-oriented practised language policy in upholding the elderly’s customary language habit and accepting their language responsibilities associated with their community citizenship. Being concerned about the elderly’s appraisal that she might ‘forget our language’, Y-Chung, in particular, figured her perceived language policy about ‘what she thought should be done with the L1’ in interactions with older people. She decided that she should not forget her responsibility for keeping ‘our’ language, which is a tool for connecting village members, enhancing togetherness and solidarity in ‘our’ community, and thereby reinforcing ‘our’ community citizenship. As a junior citizen of the community, in addition, the youth seemed to be aware that they should be considerate of how their language behaviours may fit into the situations where they interacted with old community members and into the language policy established by the seniors, which they might not want to violate.

Many participants also revealed that they mainly used their L1 in communication with same-ethnicity peers in the community, even though most young people of their generation could speak Vietnamese well. As they explained, this might be because of their ‘habit’ (Y-Huong) and because their peers preferred the L1 and they were afraid that the peers would mind if they switched to Vietnamese (A-Diem, Y-Minh):

A-Diem

: We talk with each other in the mother tongue only […]. Sometimes [I want to speak] Kinh language (Vietnamese) with my neighbour friends, but I rarely have opportunities to do so. They don’t want to speak Kinh. So we mostly speak in our mother tongue.

Y-Huong

: We only use our own language [in communication among young villagers] […]. Also, I feel like when I’m talking to my own people, I think since I have my own language, I should use my own language. Unless I’m socialising or interacting with people [from other ethnic backgrounds], I don't use it.

The youth’s discussions on their L1 use in communication with young community members suggest that same-ethnicity peers can play an important role in maintaining the ethnic language in the community and encouraging young people to value their community citizenship. As Y-Huong, A-Diem and Y-Minh considered their relationship with peers in the village, they decided to keep using their mother tongue in talking with these people and thereby carrying on their L1-oriented practised language policy. Y-Huong’s strong emphasis on ‘my own people’ and ‘my own language’, moreover, reveals her perceived language policy which attaches importance to in-group values, solidarity, and peer relationships. Her idea of her own language and her own people might also be related to her profound sense of group membership and community citizenship which she should fulfil through her responsibility to implement the community’s L1 policy when interacting with young members in this domain.

Youth, in addition, may sometimes denigrate the use of the mainstream language among their same-ethnicity peers, although these situations often reflect momentary interactional power plays (Wyman 2012). Many participants shared interesting stories about how their village peers engaged in actions for strengthening the L1-only policy in the community by intervening in other young people’s language use. A-Anton, for instance, said that that there was an explicit language policy in his community, that members should only use their ethnic language in the village. He related that young people, when got together, often reminded each other about avoiding Vietnamese and using their L1 properly: ‘They would hate me if I tried to speak Vietnamese. They would say “You want to show off? […]. You think I don't know Vietnamese?”’ Similar to Y-Nom (as discussed earlier), A-Anton and his peers seemed to imply the higher status of Vietnamese in the society compared with their ethnic language. As he observed, over-using Vietnamese when talking with village peers might be seen as ‘showing off’ one’s Vietnamese knowledge, and that was an unwelcomed behaviour, given that not all young people in the community could reach the college level of education and speak a good Vietnamese like him.

A-Anton then revealed that he, in turn, intervened in his village friends’ language use. In the following extract, he also mentioned some people with good education who tended to overuse Vietnamese in the village:

In my village there are some people who are studying in Saigon, Hanoi. They visit home once a year. We had some drinks together and [they] spoke Vietnamese. But, [we] scolded them: ‘Just left home only one year, you want to show off? Forget your roots? In the future if there are ten people like you, this village’s going to be in disorder, losing roots’.

In line with such discussion, A-Dang shared that his community peers would hate him if he spoke Vietnamese to them because they thought that he was ‘showing off’ his Vietnamese knowledge. As he narrated:

Researcher:

Your [village] friends also go to school and know Kinh language (Vietnamese)?

A-Dang

: But they don’t want to speak Kinh language, they will say I look down on them. If they speak the local language and I [still] speak Kinh, they will say I look down on them […]. Like those who work far away and speak Kinh when they come home, villagers hate that very much […]. They (villagers) will say that I’m, like, insolent, keep showing them that I know Kinh language by speaking it to them […]. [They] say that I’m showing off […].

Researcher

: How about you, what do you think?

A-Dang

: I also think like them. We have to speak our mother tongue, not [speak Kinh language] every day.

Researcher

: If someone in your village talks to you in Kinh language, will you have reactions?

A-Dang

: Yes, I will surely. If they know the local language, but pretend to talk to me in Kinh, I will hate them.

The language interventions among young villagers, as described by A-Anton and A-Dang, indicate that youth may impose language ideologies on each other in implementing the community’s L1-only policy. Data also reveal that the participants seemed to experience explicit language interventions from their village peers more than from their siblings, although they all belonged to the same generation and had common language interests. This suggests that peers might have more influence on young people than siblings. The participants strategically managed the peer pressure from a negative to a positive force by creating opportunities for themselves to use their mother tongue (McCarty et al. 2009) in interactions with the peers. In doing so, they constructed their negotiated language policy conforming to the peers’ expectations and adapting to the community’s language policy. For the youth and their peers, perhaps, overusing Vietnamese (which was an out-group language) in this domain might be seen as a deviation from the language rights and responsibilities of each community citizen, and this would possibly polarise community members and violate their community citizenship (Nguyen and Hamid 2021). We can also see that the youth, in turn, also intervened in other friends’ language use, in suggesting that they would ‘hate’ or ‘scolded’ these people who tried to speak too much Vietnamese, believing that this was a sign of community ‘disorders’ and ‘losing roots’ among some members who attempted to forget that they were a community citizen who should not disregard the community’s linguistic solidarity.

Discussion

Findings suggest that the minority youth’s individual language policy foregrounded their agentive potential in family- and community-based language planning (McCarty et al. 2009) in their L1 maintenance efforts. Their personal policy reflected their awareness of family and community desires for them to speak the ethnic language and nurture positive L1 attitudes tying to their family-community citizenship. In committing themselves to construct their L1-oriented individual language policy, the youth were, where possible, eager to enter into positions of agency in reversing early language shift, especially in these local domains (McCarty and Wyman 2009).

Under the backdrop of their family and community’s language policies, the youth practised, valued, and negotiated the use of their ethnic language against the invasion of the mainstream language, Vietnamese. In the two domains, we can see the remarkable role of the youth’s parents and same-ethnicity peers in the former’s process of shaping their family-community citizenship through language. Parents’ and peers’ customary language practices and regular language interventions convinced these young people to keep using the L1, while the latter responded to these practices and interventions in considering the culture of respect and peer culture. Parents of the participants established a L1-based parent–child relationships and nurtured their children’s L1 habit in the family. Same-ethnicity peers looked after L1-based community relationships and urged young members to stick with the L1 commitment in the village. The participants’ L1-directed individual language policy in these contexts was, hence, deeply rooted within local relationships (Wyman 2009), where they decided to conform to family and community members’ expectations, that motivated them to execute language rights and responsibilities as a citizen of their family and community. Parents’ nurture of a sense of family citizenship through language among their children, thus, can be a critical factor in young minorities’ desires to preserve the family’s traditional language ecology and their belief in linguistic loyalty, as in the case of Y-Trinh who did not want to stop using and disrespect her ethnic language or A-Dang who approved his parents’ view about the connection between his L1 and his ethnic identity. The peer culture – in which young people who could speak Vietnamese but actively chose not to – in addition, created ideological spaces and prompted the participants to see their L1 in a more positive light (Smith-Christmas 2016). Language interventions from the participants’ same-ethnicity peers strongly motivated them to commit to the L1 to emphasise their relative position in the local peer culture (Wyman 2009), maintain their peer solidarity, and consolidate their community citizenship, as we can see in A-Anton and A-Dang’s reports. Any efforts of maintaining minority languages, thus, should be related to young people and their peers who can, together, become active agents moving their ethnic language forward in the future (McCarty and Wyman 2009). Youth interests in reinforcing their family-community citizenship may, hence, constitute crucial resources which contribute significantly to their language maintenance efforts. The key is realising, marshalling, and advocating these resources as a grassroots initiative for more strategic actions (McCarty et al. 2009) not only at individual, family, and community levels, but also at a broader social involvement and support.

As earlier posited, ‘goal’ as an outcome of minority youth’s individual language policy can reveal how their policy is related to the language maintenance or shift tendency in their family and ethnic community. The participants’ stories about their language life in these domains indicate that building a L1-based family-community citizenship was a critical goal of their individual language policy, where they attempted to resist early signs of language shift (i.e. some young members brought Vietnamese home and used it more frequently) and contributed to family-community’s efforts in reversing language shift. These efforts were ideologically informed by their perceived language policy, as during the process of (reversing) language shift, they indexically formulated ideologies about their ethnic language in relation to the mainstream language using different ‘metapragmatic filters’. Through these filters, they decided to alter their language behaviours by observing social, political, and economical changes (McEwan-Fujita 2010) in broader frames of local and mainstream contexts. These contextual changes had, perhaps, created a ‘language tension’ – between the instrumental pressure for transition to Vietnamese and the socioemotional need to maintain the L1 (Sevinç 2016) – especially among young members. Some members might sometimes desire to replace their L1 with the more instrumental and progressive language, but others who were concerned about their ethnic identity and solidarity might stand for maintaining the L1 (Annamalai 2003). However, when the invasion of the mainstream language had progressed to a particular point, many of them might realise early signs of the attrition of their L1 (Jaffe 2007). They might attempt to resist this attrition by highlighting the L1 as a legitimate marker of their family-community citizenship. For them, perhaps, an authentic family-community citizenship should be associated with the family-community’s language environment that existed before the pressures that led to language shift (Jaffe 2007). The youth’s L1-oriented individual language policy in responding to these attempts can be seen as aligning with their family-community’s efforts to reverse early language shift. The youth, their parents, their peers and other members’ implication of family-community citizenship may be, hence, just a kind of ideological constructs rather than explicit and planned grassroot initiatives for L1 maintenance as reported in other studies (e.g. Curdt-Christiansen, Li, and Cai 2024; Fluegel and King 2024, this issue). Again, the key is realising, communicating, and advocating the ideological family-community citizenship as a grassroots initiative for more strategic planning and actions.

Findings, furthermore, reveal the importance of family – community partnership in guiding and supporting young people to develop their L1-oriented individual language policy. In such a partnership, families parallel culturally-recognised linguistic divisions within the community (Meek 2007), where different generations can, together, contribute to the role of a family and community language-policy maker (Pillai, Soh, and Kajita 2014) in establishing and encouraging a common family-community citizenship which the individual language policy of each member should, deliberately or unconsciously, aim to maintain and develop. A common citizenship does not mean that there are no differences in practised, perceived and negotiated language policy among family and community members, but rather testifies to an attempt to establish a home-family – neighbourhood-community platform where a plan of L1 maintenance-based citizenship to which different generations can contribute is put into practice. Given that the linguistic lives of a family are often not isolated from its surrounding social contexts (Curdt-Christiansen and Sun 2022), including the ethnic community, the family’s language use often intersects with that of the speech community in which same-ethnicity peers can help young people to preserve the home language (King, Fogle, and Logan-Terry 2008).

Transmitting a minority language to younger generations may, hence, require either both active efforts on parent part and a community where interactions in the language are also important for young people to maintain it outside of the family (Forsman 2016). The L1-priority policies which Y-Huong, Y-Chung and A-Dang experienced in both their family and community might, for instance, strengthen their L1-oriented individual language policy, to a certain extent. While family – community partnership in maintaining a L1-based citizenship in this study appeared to be informal, implicit, and ad hoc, there is evidence that families which are clustered into their ethnic community can have more chances of maintaining their L1. Although the study focuses on cases of positive L1 maintenance endeavours, an overview of the broader project’s findings suggests that young people whose individual language policy was informed by both their family and community’s L1-priority policies were less likely to frequently use and value Vietnamese in the two domains than those whose individual language policy was influenced by only their family or community members. As the participants mentioned ‘home’ in referring to either or both their family and ethnic community (e.g. Y-Huong), suggesting that their family was an integral part of the ethnic community, it can be indicated that for them, their family was a ‘primary home’ where their L1-oriented individual language policy was established and their community citizenship was nurtured. Their community, whereas, was an ‘extended home’ where they consolidated their sense of belonging associated with such an L1-oriented policy, and also a source for strengthening their family citizenship. The family and ethnic community, thus, constituted a partnership cycle in which family and community citizens’ sense of belonging, as well as sense of rights and responsibilities, are cultivated and reinforced. This demonstrates the important role of the ethnic language in minority groups’ establishment and preservation of their organisational structure in both a physical and mental sense: the participants, for instance, not only linked the L1 use to their being in physical family-community spaces, but also connected the L1 with their constructing and maintaining relationships in these spaces. For minority families and communities which have limited economic resources for formal L1 learning and promotion, family – community partnership as an informal ‘joint social venture’ (Schwartz and Verschik 2013) may be, hence, a potential grassroots initiative which can help effectuate minority language maintenance efforts. If such a partnership is more visibly and officially built and organised, community members can avail themselves of participation to build a consensus around the desired norms of citizenship in relation to language, where they can establish a community that is positively motivated to preserve their ethnic language (Armstrong 2012).

Conclusion

The present study, which has explored minority youth’s L1-oriented individual language policy in shaping their family-community citizenship, nevertheless, does not mean to draw a rosy picture of minority languages in a subtractive environment such as Vietnam. It focuses only on cases of positive L1 maintenance endeavours (rather than cases of language shift) to highlight grassroot initiatives that can contribute to the L1 vitality in local domains. Although minority languages in the region may not stay out of the general vortex of falling into oblivion and loss, we can see some hope, from the study’s findings, about the potential of young people who can engage in language planning from the bottom up (Hornberger 1996) through their construction of individual language policy and family-community citizenship associated with their ethnic language. Even in a subtractive language environment, there were windows of opportunity for connecting members of different generations (Wyman 2009) where they could collaborate with each other in their L1 maintenance efforts. In a long-run, however, whether these youth will be able to maintain the L1-oriented policy for themselves and their future generations is still a challenging question (Nguyen and Hamid 2016). For that reason, minority youth and their family and community are not able to act alone in their challenging language maintenance and shift battles. They need support from a larger nexus of authorising from mainstream institutions – including schools (McCarty and Wyman 2009) and governments – before their L1-oriented policies run out of steam.

Geolocation information

This study was conducted in Vietnam.

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to the guest editor of this issue, Xiao Lan Curdt-Christiansen, for her support. I would also like to thank the two reviewers for their helpful comments and feedback on the earlier version of this article.

Disclosure statement

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

Data availability statement

Due to the nature of this research, participants of this study did not agree for their data to be shared publicly, so supporting data is not available.