Three new Language-on-the-Move PhDs

Yesterday we celebrated the graduation of three new PhDs in our team: Dr Gegentuul Hongye Bai, Dr Laura Smith-Khan, and Dr Hanna Torsh. A number of recent PhD graduates from our team were there to mark the occasion – Dr Jinhyun Cho, Dr Alexandra Grey, Dr Shiva Motaghi-Tabari, and Dr Vera Williams Tetteh – as well as the proud supervisor of all these talented young researchers, Professor Ingrid Piller, and the associate supervisor of some of them, Dr Loy Lising.

Graduation ceremonies at Macquarie University, as elsewhere, are an opportunity to celebrate achievement. On such occasions the rocky road to success, the barriers that have had to be overcome, and the hurdles that had to be navigated are usually rendered invisible. A finished PhD does not (and should not) show traces of the struggles that went into it: the challenges of persevering when you don’t know where your research is going and whether it’s actually worth pursuing; the struggles of putting your research into good English, particularly as second language writers; or the daily effort to combine your research with family responsibilities, including being far from family, as is the case for many of our international students.

We are delighted to celebrate the success of the three young scholars who graduated yesterday. In addition to their research achievements, these include their resilience and perseverance, often against sizable odds, and we wish them well in their future careers!

The abstracts below provide a glimpse into their research and for full details visit our PhD Hall of Fame.

Gegentuul Hongye Bai, Performing linguistic and cultural authenticity: Contemporary Mongolian wedding ceremonies in Inner Mongolia

This study examines the linguistic and cultural practices of contemporary Mongolian wedding ceremonies in Inner Mongolia, an autonomous region of China, where Mongols constitute around 11 percent of the population. Situated at the crossroads of minority linguistic and cultural revival, multicultural state policies and cultural commodification, contemporary Mongolian wedding ceremonies constitute a privileged window on linguistic and cultural change in the context of rapid socio-economic transformation. The study addresses three specific questions. First, what linguistic and cultural choices can be observed in Mongolian wedding ceremonies? Second, what ideologies are embedded in these semiotic practices? And, third, how do wedding practices and ideologies serve to produce and reproduce Mongolian “authenticity” and social hierarchies?

To address these research questions, the study adopts a critical sociolinguistic ethnographic approach: a range of data were collected in Inner Mongolia in early 2016, including twenty-two video and audio recordings of wedding ceremonies, participant observation at weddings, interviews with “cultural entrepreneurs” involved in wedding planning and collection of wedding-related artefacts. Analysis focused on the discursive and material construction of a “perfect” Mongolian wedding; the ritual acts involved in weddings; and language and genre choice in wedding speeches.

Findings show that contemporary Mongolian weddings are permeated by the hegemonic ideology of Mongolian tradition based on images of pastoralism, the imperial past, and the ideal of a “pure” Mongolian language. However, in actual practice, contemporary wedding ceremonies are heterogeneously constituted and range from monolingual Mongolian weddings through various bilingual and hybrid forms to Chinese-dominant weddings. Various forms of re-stylization, reflexivity and creativity contest the boundaries of tradition and modernity, minority and majority, local and global. The study also finds that material and linguistic indexes of authentic “Mongolian-ness” are only accessible to certain groups of Mongols, mostly well-educated middle-class urbanites. By contrast, rural farming Mongols are largely excluded from performing “Mongolian” weddings.

The results of the study contribute to an improved understanding of Mongolian language and cultural change, maintenance, loss and revival in contemporary China. The research also makes a broader sociolinguistic contribution by complicating notions of minority language, culture and identity in the 21^st century.

The full thesis is available here.

Hanna Torsh, Between pride and shame: Linguistic intermarriage in Australia from the perspective of the English-dominant partner

Linguistic diversity in Australia is widely considered a social good, yet it exists in a context dominated by English monolingualism. This research sets out to examine this tension in a heretofore unexamined domain: linguistic intermarriage between English-speaking background (ESB) native-born Australians and language other than English (LOTE)-background migrants.

The research uses two main data sets, interviews and questionnaires, to examine participants’ discursive representations of language learning, LOTE interactions, language challenges of migration for their partner and language issues in the family. Using a qualitative, theme-based analysis, this research seeks to identify the contradictory ways that participants engage with the LOTE(s) spoken by their partner.

The findings show that ESB participants create and invest in a discourse of multilingual pride while simultaneously problematising LOTE use in practice. This is most obvious in the context of LOTEs used locally as opposed to overseas. Moreover, ESB participants felt proud of their partner’s bilingualism and, at the same time, expressed shame about their own monolingualism, a phenomenon I call “language cringe”. With regard to bilingual practices, in the domain of the family, gendered parenting roles mean that it is predominantly women who assume the responsibility for both their children’s LOTE skills and communication with LOTE-speaking in-laws even when they do not have the linguistic proficiency to do so effectively.

I argue that the seemingly contradictory approach to LOTEs and multilingualism rests on conflicting social approaches to bilingualism more generally. On the one hand, linguistic diversity is practically subjugated to monolingual English-centric norms. On the other hand, discourses which valorise LOTEs and multilingualism are widely cherished as symbolic of tolerance. This research has implications for multilingualism and migration research, as well as language in education research. Moreover, it has the potential to provide a framework for those in linguistic intermarriages to understand and negotiate language/s in their relationship.

Laura Smith-Khan, Contesting credibility in Australian refugee visa decision making and public discourse

Whether or not we can trust the people who come to Australia to seek protection as refugees is increasingly a topic of public debate, across politics and in the mainstream media. Such discourse justifies harsh asylum policies. Further, questioning the genuineness of those seeking asylum means that credibility assessments have become a central element of refugee visa decision making processes. However, the way credibility is conceptualized – both in these public debates and within decision making processes – inevitably impacts on refugees’ and asylum seekers’ ability to fairly and successfully seek protection and establish themselves in Australia.

This multi-level critical discourse analysis examines these two key interconnected sites of discourse on refugee credibility. The first part examines key credibility assessment guidance aimed at Australian refugee visa merits review decision makers, and a corpus of published review decisions that discuss credibility. The second part entails a case study of a Somali refugee whose participation in a public “debate” with the Immigration Minister was heavily reported in the media. The study draws on a corpus of newspaper articles, a press release by the Minister and a handwritten statement from the refugee.

The study explores how dominant discourses, in public debates and in visa decision making, present refugees and asylum seekers and the social actors who interact with them (van Leeuwen, 1996). In particular, it aims to uncover how these discourses construct language, communication and diversity, and how they present discourse creation itself. It compares these constructions with the sociolinguistic realities in these settings, exploring how communication occurs and the individual, interactional and structural influences and limitations on refugees’ ability to communicate credibly and produce a credible identity.

The study finds that dominant discourses in these settings problematically construct credibility as an individual attribute of the refugee. It finds that this contradicts the sociolinguistic realities: credibility is constructed discursively, and whether a refugee can communicate in the manner required to be regarded as credible relies on a number of factors beyond their individual control. These include the impact of other persons involved in their interactions, and the institutional and legal structures they must navigate. However, these factors are largely erased from the discourse. Therefore, the discourse unfairly places a burden of performing credibility on the refugee, dictating criteria for this performance that are often difficult and sometimes impossible to satisfy. Beyond its immediate impacts for the individuals in question, this construction of credibility also acts to limit their ability to challenge the dominant discourse.

This conclusion has implications for the way in which credibility assessments are administered, and their broader overall validity. However, given the connections drawn between the public discourse and institutional processes, the findings suggest that meaningful improvement to institutional approaches to credibility assessment are unlikely without significant changes in the prevailing political discourse.

The full thesis is available here.

You can find Laura’s reflections on her PhD journey here or you might wish to catch her graduation speech on the Graduation Video (at 1:40:20-1:49:34).

The memorable moment when your 2 year old decides to join you onstage during your PhD graduation speech 😊❤ A day that I won't forget! pic.twitter.com/yyJwSZYant

— Dr Laura Smith-Khan (@LauraSKh) April 16, 2019