Preece, S; (2016) An identity transformation? Social class, language prejudice and the erasure of multilingual capital in higher education. In: Preece, S, (ed.) The Routledge Handbook of Language and Identity. (pp. 366-381). Routledge: London, United Kindom.

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Abstract

This chapter examines what happens to the identities of working-class linguistic minority students when their linguistic practices come into contact with those of the 'academic tribes' (Becher and Trowler 2001) that they seek to join. I argue that learning the language and literacy practices of the academic community involves power and identity. In the case under discussion, institutional discourses framed linguistic diversity as a problem to be fixed rathe than a resource to be used thus erasing the multilingual capital in their midst and positioning the bi/multilingual students on the academic writing programme as in need of English language remediation. This ascribed identity troubled the participants' identities as a person worthy of a place in higher education, by stigmatising their linguistic repertoires and categorising them as in danger of failure. The identities that the students inhabited to resist their institutional positioning were not always conducive to the scholarly enterprise.

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