AbstractsSociology

Speaking in Two Tongues: an Ethnographic Investigation of the Literacy Practices of English as a Foreign Language and Cambodian Young Adult Learners’ Identity

by Soth Sok




Institution: Victoria University
Department: College of Education
Year: 2014
Keywords: 1608 Sociology; College of Education
Record ID: 1059096
Full text PDF: http://vuir.vu.edu.au/25832/


Abstract

This study focuses on how the literacy practices in English of young Cambodians shaped their individual and social perception as well as performance of identity. It examines the English language as an increasingly dominant cultural and linguistic presence in Cambodia and endeavours to fill the epistemic gap in what Gee (2008, p. 1) has identified as the ‘other stuff’ of language. This other stuff includes ‘social relations, cultural models, power and politics, perspectives on experience, values and attitudes, as well as things and places in the world’ that are introduced to the local culture through English literacy and practices.