Speaker:  DONG, Jie,

Associate professor, Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures, Tsinghua University. Her research interests include sociolinguistics, linguistic anthropology, ethnography, identity studies, migration studies, language and the new media, language policy and planning. Her recent books include The Sociolinguistics of Voice in Globalising China (Routledge 2017),  Discourse, Identity, and China's Internal Migration: The Long March to the City (Multilingual Matters 2011). 

Abstract:  This study investigates the identity construction process of China’s rural-urban migrant children. Rural children relocate to the urban centers with their parents in a massive scale over the past decades when China undergoes rapid economic changes. While many migrant children are able to attend urban public schools, their identity construction emerges as an important issue which attracts increasing public and scholarly attention. This study draws on ethnographic data and presents four examples to illustrate the complex process of migrant identity construction from multiple perspectives. The results show that the migrant children deploy a range of linguistic features and claim multiply identities; in order for their identities to be established in social reality, they have to go through negotiation processes in which their identities are evaluated, ratified, challenged or denied. Language is at the center of such as a process.