Post-colonial Identity Construction Among International Students In London

This is a case study on post-colonial identity construction among four multilingual speakers in the United Kingdom.Unlike other research focusing on post colony and its implications on identity,the paper involves transnationalism as another factor influencing post-colonial identity.With a growing trend of globalization,the construction of a post-colonial identity would inevitably encounter world cultures,values and ideologies,and eventually generate the emergence of a more global identity.The present paper also investigates the roles of Medium of Education and Attitudes towards Local Language(s)in constructing post-colonial identity.The research findings have proved that English Medium Education plays a key role in establishing elite and prestigious identities within post-colonial contexts.The influence of attitudes towards local languages on participants' identities has exemplified the existence of a “Third Place”(Bhabha 1994;Li 2011),in which multilingual speakers carve out new,creative and flexible post-colonial identities.Finally,data collected from this paper have also revealed that Transnationalism could both strengthen local identity and cultivate a global one.