Re-envisioning Heritage Language Education: A Study of Middle School Students Learning Mandarin Chinese

This article takes a language ecology perspective on the interdependence of multiple Chinese languages in the heritage communities and classrooms of middle-school students. We describe how these students struggle with Mandarin as an imposed identity and consider productive classroom exercises of linguistic rescaling that help them to critically examine the diversity of Chinese languages. This study addresses the dearth of critical examination of non-Mandarin Chinese heritage students’ lived experiences by showing interactions in which they actively engage in disrupting and dismantling conventional notions of “Chinese”.