Tilburg University Chineseness as a Moving Target Li Jinling

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Methodology: Sociolinguistic-ethnography 35 travelling to China and speaking Chinese as a single topic. The discussions on these threads were observed among hundreds of topics because these most explicitly focused on language matters, from a more political and a more personal perspective respectively. My colleague in the IDII4MES project, Kasper Juffermans, had joined the classroom observations occasionally in the previous two fieldwork phases (see Creese & Blackledge, 2014, for reflexive researcher vignettes of him and other researchers in the project), while in the online forum where Dutch is the medium of communication, he also played an active role in the observations. We worked as a team complementing each other’s strengths and weaknesses and combining in our ethnography an insider’s view with an outsider’s perspective – both in terms of membership of the school community and the wider Eindhoven Chinese community and with respect to our multilingual repertoires (Creese & Blackledge, 2012). We discussed and analyzed pieces of data together, and drafted and revised internal research reporting as well as research papers for publication collaboratively, helping each other, in turn, to render the strange familiar and the familiar strange (Erickson, 1977). The Chinese website www.gogodutch.com targeting the recent Chinese diaspora was also approached. Established in 2001 by new Chinese immigrants from the PRC, this website soon became the largest website for Chinese students and professionals residing in the Netherlands, reflecting the changing composition of the Chinese diasporas in recent years. In short, the blurring of the off- and online dimension of data collection generated different and unexpected voices and insights, facilitating the collection of richer data (Baker, 2013). Having documented and reflected on my own journey of doing ethnographic work in the Eindhoven Chinese School as well as the wider on- and offline Chinese diasporic communities, I will now describe the access to the other fieldwork sites and Chinese teaching activities which happened prior to the project, but generated useful data. As a former language teacher in the Eindhoven Chinese School (2006-2010), I participated in two-week training programs for overseas Chinese teachers organized and sponsored by the Ministry of Overseas Chinese Affairs in different cities in China in July 2006 and 2007. For two weeks overseas teachers from all over the world were given the opportunity to take advanced Chinese language courses. I attended a Putonghua course in Shanghai Normal University in 2006 and a Multimedia course in Daliang Normal University in 2007. With various classes of forty participants going on at the same time, there were over a hundred overseas Chinese teachers with whom a social program was shared. This was an opportunity to get to know the worldwide network of Chinese heritage schools and to get acquainted with language teachers working within them. Thus, contacts were established with Chinese teachers from diverse parts of the world, including Mrs. Deng, the grade 8 teacher from the Utrecht Chinese School whom I later observed in her class. Every year around Chinese New Year, a number of Chinese organizations organize parties in Amsterdam to celebrate Chinese New Year with all the heritage Chinese school teachers. This was another occasion to get to know the Dutch national network of Chinese complementary schools and to get acquainted with fellow Chinese language teachers. Thus, contacts were established with Chinese teachers from diverse parts of the country. At one of these occasions, I met Mrs. Liu, the head teacher of the Chinese
36 Chineseness as a Moving Target school in Utrecht, 8 whom I later met again in a preparatory meeting for the 2007 Overseas Chinese Teachers Training in Utrecht. In 2008, I started writing a personal blog (in Chinese) about my experiences as a teacher of Chinese and about my migration experiences of living in the Netherlands. Through this blog, contacts with various Chinese women in the Netherlands and worldwide were created. One of the contacts or friendships that emerged out of my blogging activity were with Mrs. Xie who migrated to the Netherlands in 2007. Originally from Beijing, she had become a teacher at the Utrecht Chinese School. She is an avid follower of my blog and frequently writes back about her own teaching and migration experiences. The other contact that I have established from the blogging activity was with Jessie, a former Cantonese language teacher at Eindhoven Chinese School from 1999 to 2003. In Section 4.2, an interview conducted with her to acquire a more detailed picture of the background of teachers in relation with the changing sociolinguistic landscape of the Chinese community is presented. In the early 2000s, Chinese was being introduced as an optional language subject for students in selected secondary schools across the Netherlands. Around the same time higher education colleges (HBOs) around the Netherlands also began to offer courses in Chinese for special purposes (e.g., business) in their curricula. There soon appeared to be a shortage of Dutch-speaking qualified teachers for Chinese. In response to this, in 2006 the Chinese Participation Association (Inspraakorgaan Chinezen, IOC) began to co-ordinate a training program to prepare Chinese language teachers teaching in the complementary school system for jobs in the mainstream secondary and tertiary education system. I participated in this program the second time it ran. Here, I met Mrs. Lin who was a teacher at one of the Chinese schools in Rotterdam. On the basis of my contact with Lin and the experiment I conducted in her school for my MA thesis, I felt that it would not be very difficult to gain access to the Rotterdam school again. The school, however, appeared to have a very strict school director who was unfavorably disposed towards welcoming researchers in her school. To avoid Lin from getting into trouble with her school director, I decided to leave the Rotterdam school out of our research. The Chinese school in Utrecht was approached instead. The response of Liu, the head teacher whom I had met four years ago at the New Year’s party in Amsterdam, by contrast, was very friendly and welcoming. I have similarly been welcomed in the Chinese school in Tilburg. The chairman of the Tilburg school also acts as an instructor of the Tai Chi lessons that are organized all year around on Sundays in the Eindhoven City Park (as well as in the Chinese school of Tilburg). I had participated in a few Tai Chi lessons in the park in the autumn of 2010. Official contacts with the Tilburg Chinese School have thus been established at various fronts and like in Eindhoven and in Utrecht I was also welcome to do fieldwork in the Tilburg school. The Chinese school in Tilburg is a relative young, small scale weekend school. Located in the Tilburg city center, the Tilburg Chinese School rents the classrooms from a local secondary school for Saturdays. The building is shared by a 8 Chinese schools in the Netherlands typically have a head teacher, who is responsible for the overall class and teacher arrangements, a director who is responsible for the administration (students and teacher’s admissions) and is superior in the organisation to the head teacher, and a chairperson (chairman) who is the sponsor and the highest in the hierarchy. In case of a conflict, the chairman finds a new director rather than the director finding a new chairman.
Page 1 and 2: Tilburg University Chineseness as a
Page 4 and 5: Chineseness as a Moving Target Chan
Page 6 and 7: Table of content Preface 1 1 Introd
Page 8 and 9: Preface This book is about identity
Page 10 and 11: CHAPTER 1 Introduction 1.1 What the
Page 12 and 13: Introduction 5 1.2 Globalization an
Page 14 and 15: Introduction 7 (think of Cambridge
Page 16 and 17: Introduction 9 resources by absence
Page 18: Introduction 11 the polycentric nat
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Page 36 and 37: CHAPTER 3 Methodology: Sociolinguis
Page 38 and 39: Methodology: Sociolinguistic-ethnog
Page 46 and 47: CHAPTER 4 The big in the small: The
Page 48 and 49: The big in the small: The polycentr
Page 66 and 67: CHAPTER 5 When school is out: Langu
Page 68 and 69: When school is out: Language ideolo
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When school is out: Language ideolo
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CHAPTER 6 World Wide Web: Chinesene
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World Wide Web: Chineseness 2.0 93
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CHAPTER 7 Conclusions and implicati
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Conclusions and implications 117 Th
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Conclusions and implications 119 ne
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Conclusions and implications 121 Po
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References Agha, Asif (2007). Langu
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References 125 CCG (2013). Annual R
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References 127 HERA IDII4MES (2010)
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References 129 Ma, Laurence J.C. &
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References 131 Spolsky, Bernard (20
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Appendix bold : loud ××× : inaud
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136 Chineseness as a Moving Target
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Tilburg Dissertations in Culture St
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Tilburg University Chineseness as a Moving Target Li Jinling

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