| This thesis is an ethnographic analysis examining the views and practices of Mandarin teachers in one Ottawa-based Chinese Language School. Set within the context of institutionalized multiculturalism in Canada, I argue that these practitioners, who participate in teaching Mandarin in the Chinese diasporic/immigrant community, take on a constant negotiation between the meanings of the Chinese language and its relationship to Chinese culture. Teaching in this context becomes a generative venue for constructing teachers' own meanings about Chinese cultural identity. To explore this, I tease out the forces or conditions, practices and experiences that are enmeshed in the making and working of such a speech community, and offer nuanced analyses of personal narratives on "Chineseness" among these international and/or heritage language teachers. As their embodied language knowledge and skills become objectified and transformed into cultural knowledge on Chinese cultural identity, individual immigrants participate in and contribute to the formation of plural links among the various discourses on Chineseness. Mandarin language teachers therefore engage the questions of Chinese cultural identity through their varied articulations and performances. The notion of "Chineseness" is, therefore, not a fixed, one-dimensional entity in this Mandarin speech community context. |
