Bilingual and Bicultural Development of Chinese American Adolescents and Young Adults: A Comparative Study

Abstract

Speaking the language of one's origin has symbolic importance for maintaining one's ethnic group identity. This study investigates the following question: How does a bicultural identity evolve as Chinese American children grow from the period of adolescence to young adulthood? By conducting in-depth interviews of 10 adolescents and 10 young adults, this study examines the perceived benefits and costs of bilingualism in second-generation Chinese American children who are between 12 and 20 years old. This study illustrates the mixed feelings that these young people experience as they grow from adolescence to young adulthood. These feelings include confusion, uncertainty, pride, and self-affirmation. Specifically, this study finds that young adults, as compared with adolescents, show an increased intrinsic motivation to retain a bicultural identity as they grow older; hence, they perceive the benefits to be greater than the costs in bilingualism and biculturalism.

KEYTERMS:

• adolescents
• bilingualism
• Chinese language
• costs and benefits
• cultural identity
• young adults

We thank the two anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments on an earlier version of this article. We also want to express our sincere gratitude to Dr. Patrice Buzzanell and Dr. Michaela Winchatz for their helpful comments on a much earlier version of this article.

Notes

Both authors of this study are native speakers of Chinese and have had direct contacts and interactions with Chinese American children. During 2003, when the majority of data was collected, Xiao Wei Shi worked as a part-time Chinese language instructor in a Chinese Sunday School located in a northern Chicago suburb. Xing Lu is a first-generation Chinese immigrant and has been a parent of a child attending the same Chinese language school for the past nine years. Over the years, Xing Lu has observed interactions between children and parents in many Chinese American families and has had the opportunity to talk with a number of Chinese American adolescents and young adults.