"Do You Know Your Language?" How Teachers of Punjabi and Chinese Ancestries Construct Their Family Languages in Their Personal and Professional Lives

Abstract

Abstract This study focuses on how teachers of minority ancestries construct and represent their family language identities. Drawing on poststructural (Hall, 1996; Norton, 2000), postcolonial (Ang, 1994; Luke & Luke, 2000) and sociocultural (Holland, Lachicotte, Skinner, & Cain, 1998) theory on culture, identity, and language we explore the complex nature of the linguistic identities of 25 teachers of Chinese and 20 teachers of Punjabi ancestries. We consider the different ways in which respondents of these ancestries represented their identities in minority languages in various sociocultural settings and the implications of these representations for employment. Accounting for this diversity should contribute to reconstructing authoritative discourses (Bakhtin, 1981) regarding employment of racial minorities in public education and thus to making mainstream institutions more equitable and inclusive.