Niche market and individual practices in Tibetan language education in China: an ethnography of language policy

ABSTRACT

The implementation of minority language education policies is always socially, economically, and politically embedded. This paper focuses on the implementation of Tibetan language education policies in a secondary school dominated by students who are officially categorized as Tibetan, to investigate the nuances of individual practices as they are situated in particular institutional and social contexts. Adopting ethnography of language policy as the guiding theoretical and methodological framework, a two-month fieldwork was carried out with data collected from multiple sources. The analysis highlights social actors’ different forms of positioning regarding the unique institutional space of Tibetan language education, and pries open a local market wherein Tibetan language education has obtained a high pragmatic value for students’ pursuit of academic advancement and upward social mobility. However, it also points to dilemmas facing social actors as the pragmatic value could not directly translate into higher symbolic power for the Tibetan language. (148 words)

KEYWORDS:

• Language policy
• minority language education
• ethnography
• Tibetan
• China

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Dr. Jing Zhang is Research Associate in the School of Foreign Languages, Southeast University, Nanjing, China. Her research interests include minority education, bilingual education, and language policy.

ORCID

Jing Zhang http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9524-7759

Notes

1. In this paper, the city where the school is located, the school, students, and teachers are all referred to by pseudonyms.

2. Minzu universities (民族大学) are universities in China that mainly target ethnic minority students through preferential admission policies. In addition to providing courses that are commonly found in other universities, minzu universities are also specialized in ethnic studies.

3. All interviews presented in this paper are conducted in a local variety of Chinese.

4. This ‘Minority School’ mentioned by Lhakpa is another secondary school in Snowland.