This chapter centers on the identity negotiation of international students as a dynamic, context-specific, and multifaceted process (Cho et al., 2022). Such a process is also relational in that the identities of international students always involve an ongoing dialogue between self and others (Bakhtin, 1990). From a critical perspective, this chapter particularly draws on linguicism and transnational habitus. Additionally, the chapter underscores the significance of written discourse as an empowering tool for international students.
Linguicism
Linguicism is defined as “ideologies, structures and practices which are used to legitimate, effectuate, regulate, and reproduce an unequal division of power and resources (both material and immaterial) between groups which are defined on the basis of language” (Skutnabb-Kangas, 1988, p.13). Skutnabb-Kangas (2015) argued that linguicism is often produced through three processes: glorification, stigmatization, and rationalization.
The first process is the glorification of the dominant/majority groups, their language, cultures, norms, traditions, institutions, levels of development, and observance of human rights. The second process is stigmatization in which subordinated groups, their languages, cultures, norms, traditions, institutions, levels of development, and observance of human rights, are stigmatized. As a result, they are seen as traditional, backward, not able to adapt to an advanced capitalist technological information society and so force. In the final process, the relationship between the groups is rationalized economically, politically, psychologically, educationally, sociologically, and linguistically. The dominant groups are always normalized and made to seem functional and beneficial to the minorities/subordinated groups.
Linguicism is often found in research relating to people’s linguistic experiences. For example, Sharmin (2022) used multimodal narrative practices to not only help adult immigrant women learn language but also to identify linguicism and shape identity to become an integral part of the target community (p.1022). Jean-Pierre (2018) found out that both English-speaking and French-speaking postsecondary students in Quebec, Canada experienced linguicism fueled by certain stigma theory. Dovchin (2019) examined how Mongolian immigrant women in Australia encountered linguistic homogeneity, discrimination and alienation in varied ways but established linguistic resistance strategies to combat linguistic racism using crossing as a resistance strategy and crossing as a passing strategy (p. 337). Similarly, Cho (2017) engaged bilingual preservice teachers in counter-storytelling to contest the linguistic discrimination they encountered in their schooling experiences and in turn develop culturally relevant teaching strategies for their future students.