Xin ZHANG, Assistant Professor of Chinese Language and Intercultural Communication is scheduled to give a seminar in March (see below). Please email fx28@duke.edu if you want to get the Zoom link.

Presentation date& time: March 25 (Thursday) 20:00-21:00 Beijing Time via Zoom
• 30mins presentation
• 30mins Q&A

Being able to function in a Chinese workplace is what many learners of Chinese as a Second Language (CSL) report as their long-term motivation and the ultimate goal of learning Chinese language and culture. Yet few empirical studies have investigated CSL learners at the most sophisticated level to understand what leads to and constitutes their multilingual experience and identity co-construction as a foreign professional in modern Chinese workplace. The project examines foreign professionals (including academians) with advanced Chinese skills working in a multilingual environment in China where being able to use Mandarin is integral to the subjects’ professional standing and performance. Engaging the current debate over a “multilingual/multicultural turn” in fields concerning language learning and development as well as intercultural engagement, this project adopts, and contributes to the theorization of, Third-Space personae as a key analytical notion in understanding the negotiated and co-constructed nature of selfhood/identity in multilingual and intercultural interactions.

This paper focuses on the ways race and native-speakerness as well as their ideological manifestation in a Chinese context interfere with selfhood/identity negotiation of heritage and non-heritage (white) CSL speakers. We examine if and how Third-Space personae mediate the racialized expectations of these foreign professionals in multilingual Chinese workplaces.

  • Zhu Hua, Professor and Chair of Educational Linguistics, University of Birmingham
  • Xiaobin Jian, Associate Professor of Chinese, The Ohio State University