connecting communities: identity, language and diaspora

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Connecting Communities: Identity, Languageand DiasporaJean Mills aa School of Education , University of Birmingham , UKPublished online: 22 Dec 2008.

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Connecting Communities: Identity,Language and Diaspora

Jean MillsSchool of Education, University of Birmingham, UK

This paper compares government and media views on citizenship, language andidentity with the perspectives of a particular group of British citizens who are fluentspeakers of English but retain an allegiance to their other languages. Firstly, itdiscusses recent official and newspaper reports in the UK relating to issues ofcitizenship and language. In these pronouncements English is cited as a crucialmeans of engagement with what is termed ‘the wider community’, whereas lack ofEnglish and use of a heritage language may be seen as preventing such engagement.The paper goes on to compare notions of community in these examples ofauthoritative discourse to the lived experience of a particular group of Britishcitizens who are fluent speakers of English but who retain an allegiance to theirother languages. These are a group of mothers of Pakistani heritage. It will be seenthat in this group there is an alternative construction of community in that theheritage language represents community as being a crucial identifier and bond to theimmediate and wider diasporic group.

Keywords: bilingualism, heritage/community language, identity, citizenship

IntroductionIn September 2002 the Independent newspaper, a UK national ‘quality’

broadsheet, in responding to comments by the Home Secretary, DavidBlunkett, ‘on the nature of Britishness’ (Morris & Beard, 2002: 3), publishedtestimony from eight multilingual Britons on their use of English and theirheritage languages. These testimonies, reflecting origins in Estonia, Spain,Hong Kong, Bangladesh, India and East Africa, highlighted the diversediaspora communities in Britain today and perspectives on the complexnature of relationships between being a British citizen and the use of Englishand other languages. This latter phrase itself immediately indicates one of theequations in these discussions, English as the norm, heritage languages as the‘other’. In examining these relationships, this paper intends to comparenotions of community in examples of authoritative discourse to the livedexperience of a particular group of British citizens. In the former, English ischaracterised as the way to be a full citizen, participating economically andsocially in the ‘wider community’; lack of English and sometimes use of aheritage language as cutting off such engagement. In the latter group,however, it will be seen that there is an alternative construction of communityin that the heritage language represents community in being a crucialidentifier and bond to the immediate and wider diasporic group.

The paper has two focuses: firstly, official pronouncements on language andcitizenship will be considered, alongside reporting on those in sections of the

1367-0050/05/04 253-22 $20.00/0 – 2005 J. MillsThe International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism Vol. 8, No. 4, 2005

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press. In the second part, the reader will encounter the perspectives of a groupof multilingual mothers and their children and their notions of language andidentity. These testimonies come from a group of 10 mothers and 10 of theirchildren from the English Midlands, who are Muslim and of Pakistaniheritage. Over a period of two years these participants were interviewedusing a semi-structured methodology. In analysing their responses, one aim isto take issue with hegemonic constructions of female passivity (as do Ahmad,2001: 138 and Bhachu, 1995: 226) and another aim is to scrutinise the notion ofhomogeneity in the discourses addressed below, by pointing up the power andsalience of heterogeneous experience. This is an attempt, with Werbner (2002:5), ‘to consider what diasporic citizenship really means’.

Discourses of Language and CitizenshipThis discussion takes as its starting point examples of authoritative

discourse on language issues relating to ethnic minority communities in theUK. The later discussion will be specifically related to the Pakistani heritagecommunity in the West Midlands. In his discussions of official discourse,Blackledge (2003: 331) states that ‘there is a persistent and insidious discoursewhich is hostile to diaspora communities in Britain’. He goes on to examineexamples of different discourses such as those concerning visiting the heritagecountry and the construction of the identities of minority groups. I intend tofocus on associated topics of mother tongue use and English acquisition, not topursue the discourses involved but to relate them to the more complex andnuanced perspectives of the individuals involved.

The three examples I will use as my starting point are derived from HomeOffice sources and reports about them in the UK press. Each demonstrates theway selective reporting and the, sometimes necessary, precis of complex issuescan sustain simplistic and potentially negative readings. The first example is apiece written by David Blunkett (2002) ‘Integration with Diversity: Globalisa-tion and the Renewal of Democracy and Civil Society’. This was widelyreported in the broadsheet press and on television news as being critical ofAsian families, particularly for failing to speak English in the home. Forexample, the Independent (Morris & Beard 2002: 3) devoted a full-page featureto it in its main Home News section, with a subheading, ‘Home Secretary facesbacklash over his provocative demand that ethnic minority families shouldspeak English at home’. Opening with ‘The call by David Blunkett, the HomeSecretary, for Asian families to speak English at home . . . ’, the piece goes on toinclude a range of responses from multilingual Britons. The section the paperrefers to was contained towards the end of Mr Blunkett’s 11-page essay in adiscussion on diversity and citizenship.

Of course, one factor in this is the ability of new migrants to speakEnglish � otherwise they cannot get good jobs, or share in wider socialdebate. But for those long settled in the UK, it is about social class issuesof education, housing, jobs and regeneration, and tackling racism.I have never said, or implied, that lack of fluency in English was in anyway directly responsible for the disturbances in Bradford, Burnley andOldham in the summer of 2001. However, speaking English enables

254 The International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism

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parents to converse with their children in English, as well as in theirhistoric mother tongue at home and to participate in wider modernculture. It helps overcome the schizophrenia which bedevils genera-tional relationships. In as many as 30% of Asian British households,according to the recent citizenship survey, English is not spoken athome. (Blunkett, 2002: 10)

The two examples both show interesting shifts; the Independent uses emotivelanguage (‘provocative’) and doesn’t contextualise the Home Secretary’scomments. In turn, the Home Secretary himself moves from a widerdiscussion of community and social benefits of speaking English to a linkingof English in the home with ‘modern culture’ and lack of English with‘schizophrenia’ between generations. The language here suggests fragmenta-tion within these families and potential fragmentation of society in that theymay be cut off from mainstream, ‘British’, society. Linking the ‘historic mothertongue’ with lack of participation in ‘wider modern culture’ associates theselanguages with backwardness. As May (2001: 14) notes:

the pejorative views of minority languages held by many majority-language speakers (as well as some minority-language speakers)remains pervasive and ongoing. Similarly, the intrinsic association ofmajority languages with modernity and progress, and minority lan-guages with tradition and obsolescence, remain equally hard to break.

The second example comes from The Report of the ‘Life in the United Kingdom’Advisory Group (Home Office, 2003), subsequently dubbed the Crick Report,whose remit was, ‘To advise the Home Secretary on the method, conduct andimplementation of a ‘‘Life in the United Kingdom ’’ naturalisation test’. Pressresponses to this document focused particularly on the nature of the tests, as inthe Guardian (2003: 9), Migrants will face exams in quest to become British , notingthe introduction of a certificate in English language proficiency, with somelater acknowledgement of the report’s embedded discussion of identity.

The Report itself states:2.6 Who are we British? . . .We do not imply that identities are ever fixed;in fact identities are often more fluid than many people suppose. Manypeople in the United Kingdom describe themselves as having sharedidentities . . . .2.8 to be British does not mean assimilation into a common culture sothat original identities are lost . . .There is no reason why loss of adistinctive identity within a wider British identity should occur toimmigrants from the new Commonwealth or from elsewhere. This isapplicable both to the relationships between individuals and betweencommunities . . .2.9 Use of the English language itself is possibly the most importantmeans of diverse communities participating in a common culture withkey values in common . . . large areas of Wales and some parts ofScotland furnish clear examples that bilingual cultures are not inherentthreats to the unity of the state and to the integration of diversecommunities, old and new. Speaking mainly one language in the home

Identity, Language and Diaspora 255

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and mainly another at work has not threatened the integration of eitherstate or society

The final example comes from the Heslington Lecture, given annually toexamine the place of religion in the modern world, delivered by the HomeSecretary in October 2003. This was reported in the Times (Ford, 2003) as‘Blunkett calls for Muslim teachers to learn English’, opening with, ‘The HomeSecretary has called upon Muslim teachers to learn English as a way ofpreventing a ‘‘clash of cultures’’ in Britain.’ The complete copy of the speech,entitled ‘One nation, many faiths � unity and diversity in multi-faith Britain’,as with the documents above, again addresses community cohesion andidentity. The ‘language issue’ appears in a few lines two-thirds of the waythrough the speech:

The clash of cultures, within individual lives as well as withincommunities, the uncertainty of the second and third generation, theseare all political issues � but they are also issues in which teaching andcommunity attitudes can make or break the direction in which youngpeople in particular choose to go . . .This is not just a problem for Britain:our European partners are wrestling with the same questions. In France,which has 5 million Muslims, a real debate is under way. At the momentin France, 60% of Muslim preachers do not speak French. We should beworking with the Muslim community to ensure we are not going downthe same road. (Blunkett, 2003: 3)

The following points can be made about these documents. Although themain topic of each was civic engagement, reporting of them highlightslanguage issues as being problematic in particular ways. The people referredto are undifferentiated, they are ‘Asians’ or ‘Muslims’. These groups arecharacterised more in terms of lack of English, rather than linguistic diversity.This is so even when the bulk of the discussion focused on wider matters, sothat even the Independent article, which included eight very positivebiographical statements from multilingual Britons of different ages, socialclass and heritage, had seized upon a small, albeit significant, aspect of thepiece overall. All three documents link language and identity with concern forthe role spoken English plays in participation in a ‘common culture’ and inpromoting community cohesion. The issues are perceived as:

. proficiency in English gives access to good jobs;

. lack of English in the home and in certain religious contexts preventsparticipation in wider society;

. identity and language have dual aspects in that the role of language inboth the maintenance of certain cultural identities and in identifying withBritish society is considered.

The latter discussion, particularly, employs assumptions without teasingout the implications. On the one hand, in Document One parents are enjoinedto speak English and their mother tongue at home in order to participate inwider culture. The Crick Report employs the terms ‘assimilation’ and‘integration’ (interestingly, the two terms used by Home Secretary, Roy


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Jenkins, in 1966 which characterised debates about what was termed racerelations at that point, see Brah, 1996: 25), arguing that diverse identities can bemaintained but that English enables integration of diverse linguistic commu-nities. Finally, in the Heslington lecture there is the implication that religiousteaching communicated in a heritage language is particularly dangerous inleading to the ‘clash of cultures’, echoing Huntington (1993), as if languageboth isolates communities and grips speakers in particular mind sets.However, there may not be such a simple correspondence between Englishproficiency and identification with majority society, as Hoffman’s study ofIranians in the USA suggests. This indicated that in spite of Englishproficiency and considerable assimilation, many Iranian settlers had scantidentification with US society (Hoffman, 1989).

The perspectives on language, culture and identity I have noted carryweight because they are pervasive in being reported by ‘quality’ nationalnewspapers and because of their origins in authoritative and official texts.Although they may employ many of the same terms, there are differingperspectives from individuals for whom these are living issues, as I now wantto show. The individuals concerned are second-generation mothers and third-generation children, who are Muslim, British citizens, of Pakistani heritage,living in the West Midlands, UK. As will be seen, all are fluent in English andhave varying fluency in what they termed their mother tongues, Urdu, Punjabiand Mirpuri. Significantly, all but one of the mothers had gained degrees asmature entrants to university, coming from first-generation families withbackgrounds in the UK as shopkeepers, landlords and in the manufacturingtrades. They are aspirant, but not economically privileged. In these terms, theyare, therefore, comparable to those in Ahmad’s 2001 study of the impact ofhigher education on 15 female Muslim students in London. This studysimilarly highlighted the ways in which ‘South Asian Muslim women arecontinually negotiating and renegotiating their cultural, religious and personalidentities’ (Ahmad, 2001: 137).

As the concentration of my study was to be on mothers and children, andthe chosen method called for a degree of reflection on their part, 10 bilingualfemale students with families, known to the interviewer on a personal andprofessional basis, were approached and agreed to take part. All the motherswere fluent in English and, in addition, spoke Punjabi or Mirpuri, thelanguage variety of the Mirpur region of Northern Pakistan. Some also spokeand had literacy skills in Urdu. The mothers were studying for a range ofqualifications including BA and BEd degrees, and a postgraduate teachingqualification (PGCE). Over a period of two years the mothers wereinterviewed on audiotape, using a semi-structured approach. One school-age child of each mother was interviewed after the mother’s first contributionand, in a final interview in the cycle, the mothers were interviewed againhaving read and kept their own and their children’s transcripts. It wasintended that the children’s views would inform the mothers’ opinions andthat the period of time and this method would build in a period for reflectionand rumination on the part of the participants.


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The initial impetus of my study was to investigate the perceptions that thisgroup of bilingual mothers and their children had of their languages so thatthe research questions at the outset focused on the following areas:

. What did the respondents understand by the terms ‘bilingual’ and‘bilingual education’?

. What were their attitudes to their own and their family’s bilingualism?

As the study evolved beyond its piloting stage the research question cameto concentrate more precisely on the relationship between, on the one hand,the participants’ attitudes and feelings towards the different languages in theirrepertoire and, on the other hand, their multiple identities as bilingual mothersand their children’s experiences of, and attitudes towards, these languageissues. For both groups it was seen that their languages were crucial formaintaining their sense of identity as being both British and Pakistani (Mills,2001, 2004).

Consequently, one of the purposes of the present discussion is firstly tohighlight the heterogeneity of experience revealed by this data and ‘to exploreways in which people might represent themselves and seek a voice’(Woodward, 2002: 162). To talk of ‘Asians’ or ‘Muslims’ in official discoursemay be unavoidable generalisations, but it masks the different experience andoutlooks of individuals and groups within these constructions on the groundsof gender, religion, social class, ethnicity, and in my data age and educationalexperience. As van der Veer (1995: 14) points out, in commenting onstereotypes, ‘the Asian woman has long been the sign of the backwardnessof Asian cultures in the orientalist imagination’. ‘Migrant women’s agency andtheir self-defining roles are largely ignored in the literature and in mainstreamportrayals, which describe them as passive recipients of their cultures’(Bhachu, 1995: 223). This is far from the case in this data, particularly for themothers involved.

However, in the context of the documents under consideration, first I wantto address relationships between language, identity, culture and community.The view that identity is an immutable entity, an essentialist view, has beensuperseded in academic discussion (if not replaced, as Bhavnani & Phoenixpoint out) by a social constructionist standpoint whereby: ‘identity is not onething for any individual . . .Rather, it may be a place from which an individualcan express multiple and often contradictory aspects of ourselves’ (Bhavnani& Phoenix, 1994: 9; see also Pavlenko’s discussion on essentialist approaches,Pavlenko, 2001: 118f). A consideration of how identity is expressed bylanguage has to bring into focus the ‘two ways . . . language creates people’sidentities. On the one hand, the language someone speaks functions as abehavioural attribute . . .On the other hand, language supplies the terms bywhich identities are expressed.’ (Tabouret-Keller, 1998: 324). Identity is, then,as Tabouret-Keller indicates, both a social construct, characterised by objectivefeatures, and a personal, subjective construct, characterised by individualmental processes and choices (1998: 324). We identify, and are identified.‘Identity involves personal investment, often on a massive scale, to the extent


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that people are willing to die to claim or protect their own identities, but it isalways socially located.’ (Woodward, 2002: vii).

Moreover, as language both mediates and connects the individual identityand the social identity it acts as a powerful symbol, representing ‘notonly affiliation with a community or group, but all kinds of allegiance’(Tabouret-Keller, 1998: 319). Thus in the case of the documents above, groupsare identified, characterised, by the languages they employ in a negative waybecause it is perceived that they use those languages to identify with particularsubject positions (Weedon, 1987: 112) which are typified as cutting them offfrom ‘modern culture’. In this case, the symbolism acts as an external marker.However, for the individuals involved, such as those who appear later, it canoperate in the opposite sense and connect them to vital aspects of theirexperience:

There can be many measures of self-identification, such as sense ofbelonging, pride and sense of satisfaction in one’s own culture andshared religious practices. The range of measures used by researcherssuggests the complex range of factors people employ in constructingtheir ethnic identity and the need to recognise that ethnic identity is notan entity but a complex of processes. (Woollett et al ., 1994: 120)

As Koven (1998: 411f) notes, bilingual people draw upon a rich diversity oflinguistic and cultural repertoires which construct their sense of self, to theextent that many state that they feel as though they are different persons asthey manage a range of registers across their different languages.

As this discussion of the dual aspect of identification and being identifiedsuggests, language is highly significant as a marker of identity in maintaininggroup boundaries and, therefore, can act to maintain a group’s sense of itsethnicity (Edwards, 1995: 126). Edwards maintains that group identity is notdependent on any one marker, but, rather on the maintenance of boundarieswhich convey an objective and subjective sense of groupness. There are,therefore, several indicators that mark or maintain social boundaries (Ferd-man, 1990: 188). In Edwards’ view the loss of a language does not, in itself,entail a loss of identity nor lead to an erosion of group boundaries as thelanguage can continue to have a symbolic or emotional appeal. In the databelow, for example, the mothers did fear the effect of language loss on theculture, whereas for some of the children it had more of an emotional appeal.However, as May (2001: 13) points out, this process may say more about powerrelations than voluntary renunciation in that both groups are responding tosocial and economic pressures which appear to bring about language change.

Smolicz, in particular, employs the term ‘core value’ to identify thoseaspects of its culture which a group itself identifies as fundamental. He writes:

They generally represent the heartland of the ideological system and actas identifying values which are symbolic of the group and its member-ship. It is through core values that social groups can be identified asdistinctive ethnic, religious, scientific or other cultural communities.Rejection of core values carries with it the threat of exclusion from thegroup . . .Whenever people feel that there is a direct link between their


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identity as a group and what they regard as the most crucial anddistinguishing element of their culture, the element concerned becomesa core value for the group. (Smolicz, 1984: 26)

With Edwards, Smolicz notes that groups differ in the extent to which theyconsider language as central. Some ethnic groups, almost by necessity, aremore language-centred than others. Smolicz comments also that language maybecome an agent of hegemony, as the adoption of a particular language maywell entail absorbing the cultural beliefs and values embodied in it (Smolicz,1991: 35). This feature was commented on by some of the mothers. While theremust, by definition, be shared cultural features, variation will also exist so thatindividual members will differ, both in terms of the strength of theiridentification, and in the ways they respond to the group’s cultural norms.

This notion of group identity and identification relates directly to the threedocuments under discussion, as there is one message promoting a liberaldiscourse of acceptance of diversity, community cohesion, and participationand the positive role that language (in this case English) can have in engagingindividuals and groups in that process alongside another message in whichother languages are barriers to such engagement. In the Crick Report there is aclear link between nationality, the qualities of being British, civic responsibilityand use of English. However, there is not a clear articulation of what May(2001: 11) calls:

the contingent nature of national identities. National identities like anyother, are created out of particular socio-historical conditions, arevariable in salience depending on context, are subject to change, andare always outworked in a complex interrelationship with other forms ofsocial relations and identity.

Consequently, the positive acknowledgement of cultural difference anddiversity, such as that in Crick, raises issues of the contribution of bilingualidentities to being ‘British’ and how group and individual identities are relatedto notions of community.

In the polarities of identifying and identification, two views of communityappear to be at work, in the official documents, community as civicresponsibility and in the data community as promoting an essential sense ofbelonging in terms of identification. Both aspects are connected to theperception of the power of language in ‘its capacity for generating imaginedcommunities, building in effect particular solidarities ’ (Anderson in May, 2001:131). ‘To be British’ is one imagined community in these documents, beingmultilingual is another. In this regard, May (2001: 13) critiques

the view held by some sociolinguists that particular languages areperipheral to one’s identity, and the related implication that minoritylanguage shift is an inevitable, voluntary and beneficial process forminority groups. (cf. Edwards, 1985, 1995)

Moreover, as Parekh (2000: 208) points out, liberal discourse on Britishidentity is limited in that it divides ‘national life into public and privaterealms, and confined cultural diversity to the latter’.


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Thus, in the data below, a significant concern was the role of all therespondents’ languages in connecting them to different communities. Thesewere their immediate family, their locality, their extended family, possibly inthe heritage country, the imagined community of their heritage country whichthey may never have visited and the faith community of fellow Muslims. Theconnection by language to these communities was an act of identity bypositioning the respondents in time and space. ‘In order to have a sense of whowe are, we have to have a notion of how we have become, and of where we aregoing’ (Taylor, quoted in Giddens, 1991: 54), that is, awareness of the twindimension of ‘roots’ and ‘routes’ (Woodward, 2002: 135f). For these people,language was a key aspect of a diasporic imagination. Hall (1993) states theviewpoint similarly: ‘Identities are the names we give to the different ways weare positioned by, and position ourselves within, the narratives of the past’(quoted by Rassool, 1997: 200).

Thus, the respondents’ languages linked them to two dimensions of home:the private, domestic sphere and a geographical, spatial territory. AsWoodward puts it, ‘The place left retains importance in shaping collectiveand individual identities’ (2002: 48) and consequently can figure as the ‘mythicplace of desire in the diasporic imagination’ while at the same time oneparticipates in ‘the lived experience of a locality’ (Brah, 1996: 192). It isimportant, therefore, not just to acknowledge this aspect but to try to describehow it might occur as it highlights the nature of the relationship betweenmultiple identities and diasporic identities, how one person can ‘hold togethermany identity positions at once’ (Naidoo in Woodward, 2002: 71). As Hallexpresses it:

Diaspora refers to the scattering and dispersal of people who will neverliterally be able to return to the places from which they came . . . and whohave succeeded in remaking themselves and fashioning new kinds ofcultural identity by consciously or unconsciously drawing on more thanone cultural repertoire . . .They are people who belong to more than one,speak more than one language (literally and metaphorically); inhabitmore than one identity . . .They speak from the in-between of differentcultures, always unsettling the assumptions of one culture from theperspective of the other, and thus finding ways of being both the same asand different from the others amongst whom they live . . .They representnew kinds of identities’. (in Woodward, 2002: 63)

Moreover, as Werbner (2002: 17) notes, ‘Pakistanis belong in a taken-for-granted way not to a single diaspora but to several different diasporas � Asian,Muslim, nationalist Pakistani, Punjabi � a hybrid diaspora’. One crucialcommunity was, therefore, the faith community and the fact that the motherswere also all Muslim had resonance in the data in particular ways. Aspractising Muslims, they indicated by various references how seriously theyviewed their mothering and their religious duties and explicitly and implicitlyacknowledged a religious construction of their role as educators in rearingchildren and in imparting knowledge and awareness of Islamic values(Schleifer, 1988: 34). For example: ‘I am telling them how the world wascreated and about the very basics of our religion . . . it’s important because a


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Muslim mother’s role, her only role for us as a Muslim, is for her to bring upher children in Islam.’

Reciprocally, in Islam, children are encouraged to revere this role in theirmothers by the injunctions from the sayings of the Prophet Mohammed, theHadith: ‘stay with her because paradise is under her foot’ and ‘‘‘Who is moreentitled to be treated with the best companionship by me?’’ The Prophet said,‘‘Your mother’’’ (Schleifer, 1986b: 7�8). The role of the mother ‘involves heractive participation in the affairs of her family’ (Schleifer, 1986a: 61).Furthermore, Islam, irrespective of local custom, stresses the importance offamily and community, which again was evident in the data. Indeed, in anintriguing semantic association as regards this study, the term ‘Ummah’, orcommunity, which appears 64 times in the Qur’an and is used by Muslims toconvey the power of the fact that they all belong to one faith community,derives from the Arabic root word ‘umm’ which means mother (Shah, 1998:44). Obligations within the Ummah are closely allied with those pertaining tothe immediate family, and that network of kinship relationships known as the‘bradari’, a term for which there is not a direct equivalent in English. ‘Itbecomes a doubly emphasised phenomenon, deeply embedded in ideologyand culture, creating a network of relationships that is complex but extended,fluid and encompassing’ (Shah, 1998: 45).

As Cressey notes in her study of Pakistani young people in a Midlands cityin the UK, the influence of the system remains even when its precise workingsmay be unfamiliar:

In Pakistan there is a social system of kith and kin similar to a clan orcaste system. This has emerged historically from local customs, landownership patterns, family businesses and trades and the influence ofHindu forebears. The narratives of the young people show lack ofknowledge about the workings of this social system and lack of interestin continuing to live according to it. None-the-less they recognise that itis an influential system of mutual expectations and traditional stratifiedrelationships, which impacts on decisions made by their elders. (Cressey,2002: 45)

As with some of the respondents considered below, these young people had asense of their roots but did not necessarily wish to reproduce all aspects oftheir heritage culture.

To sum up at this point in the discussion, the foregoing analysis indicates thecomplex and subtle part that the ‘historic mother tongue’ plays in individuallives and group identity. Diasporic communities differ widely both information and in the role that language plays in self-definition. I now moveonto the data to indicate what some of these intricacies might be. The groupunder discussion expressed this relationship in complex ways which reflectin significant ways on the assumptions behind the documents under scrutiny.

The Role of EnglishA significant issue in the documents above was the equation of lack of

English with lack of engagement in wider society. This was not a matter of


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contention for these respondents. Clearly English had been a key factor in theeducational success of all of the adult respondents, as they were graduates andfive had taken English as a specialism during their studies. In their subsequentcareers, five had gone on to qualify as teachers, one as a community worker.One member of this group had followed this by studying for a Masters degree.There were also examples of engagement with the ‘wider community’,through meeting English friends, charity work across the city, supply teachingin a range of schools, writing for community newspapers. The simple equationof adherence to a mother tongue, apparent reluctance to learn English and lackof achievement obviously did not apply. English was also endorsed asessential for educational success and all had promoted their children’s Englishacquisition before they entered school:

One of the reasons I did think as well was to teach them English was togive them a good start at school. (N)

It’s important for them whilst they’re here to at least have a grasp ofEnglish and to be competent at it to get somewhere in life. (K)

I still feel that children should have their education in school, Englisheducation and then come home. (R)

I thought ‘they’re going into school, it’s going to be English and it’s veryimportant. (R)

I do want them to have an education, speak English. (S)

All commented that English was mainly spoken in their homes between themand their husbands and especially among their children.

There was evidence also that all the children had achieved considerablesuccess in the educational system. Of the older children, one was about to starta law degree, one was studying computing at college, one went on to start adegree subsequently. In addition, of the other children of secondary schoolage, two were already at selective school, having gained places at the smallnumber of grammar schools in the area, whilst of the four primary agechildren, three cited English as their best subject in school.

However, the mothers’ relationship with and perspectives on English werenot as straightforward as this scenario suggests. This was connected inparticular ways to their families’ situation. For example, all the mothers weresecond-generation settlers, of whom three were born in the UK, the othersarriving as children between the ages of 10 months and 7 years, with two beinglater arrivals at ages 10 and 14. One respondent had an English mother andcited English as her mother tongue, but had taken steps to improve her Urduand Punjabi to become accepted by her husband’s family and to satisfy herown desire to communicate proficiently. All the others could rememberstarting school speaking no English and generally acquiring it in an informalway:

I do have a vague memory because I know I didn’t know the nurseryrhymes that they were singing at the time and I was just looking roundthinking, ‘What?’. (N)


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I went to school with no English. I can remember my first day my momjust saying to me, ‘If you need to go to the toilet just say ‘toilet’ and thatwas it. (R)

I remember finding it difficult to say certain words and being made funof as well. (R)

I don’t remember ever learning English. I think it’s just something thatcame. (S)

For the two older arrivals, the acquisition was more memorable, particularlyas it involved life-changing experiences:

I had to grow up quickly because we came in ’70 and I lost my dad in ’73.My dad had a heart attack, so he was on a life support system for threeto four months after so we were forced into learning English, likecatching a bus, having to listen to people talking and we couldn’tunderstand . . .Most of my teaching of English was watching televisionand the children’s programmes. (T)

I could speak but I used to be shy so I didn’t try . . .When I came, myaunt had a business and I used to help out . . . so I would have tospeak . . . I think the shyness just went away as, having S. when he wasborn, because he was a baby and he couldn’t make fun of me if I saidsomething wrong. (T)

Of the two mothers who remembered having extra English support,one commented: ‘I think about the experience in a negative sense . . . Ifelt stupid . . . Something I was lacking in’, but went on to say, ‘I think aboutit . . . having nothing at the age of five then doing a degree and so on. Englishis my strong point, it’s my specialism.’ (K).

Their attitudes to and abilities in their languages, were, therefore, affectedby these experiences in significant ways. Firstly, they did not appear to regardtheir own acquisition of English as having been a problem, there was noexpression of being held back educationally by the pattern of acquisition. Inparticular, all presented the scenario that they had maintained their mothertongue, albeit to different levels of fluency, because they had continued tocommunicate in it at home as they were growing up, usually with their ownmothers, and in the wider community:

When I arrived home my mom would speak to me in our homelanguage. Sometimes when we were brothers and sisters we wouldspeak to each other in English, she didn’t used to like it. She used to sulk,because she felt left out of the conversation. (A)

Up to the age of five I had no contact with English talk. (K)

I used to be told off for speaking English in the house by my parents.When you are in the home you should speak your own language but wenever wanted to do that. (N)

We just picked it up over the upbringing. My father tried very hard thatwe speak our mother tongue at home. (N)


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My dad would turn round and say, ‘Don’t you know how to speak Urduor Punjabi’. As soon as my father came home we had to speak in eitherUrdu or Punjabi. But as I said we communicated only in Punjabi withmy mother. (S)

They all commented on the difference in their own homes with their ownchildren, where English was now the main language used and where therewas often a struggle to maintain use of their mother tongue and a struggle forthe children to use it with any degree of fluency. This reflects May’s (2001: 134)view that, ‘the social and political circumstances of those who speak aparticular language will have a significant impact on the subsequent symbolicand communicative status attached to that language’ and Bourdieu’s (1991)perception that symbolically dominated groups may become complicit invaluing official languages above their own. The following statement wastypical and encapsulates several aspects of this situation:

When my parents came to this country, I was about seven years old and Iwas put into mainstream school with no language other than English. Iwas expected to use English and I had to pick up whatever English wasgoing. When I arrived home my mom would speak to me in our homelanguage, which is Punjabi, and over the years, I find that I am morefluent in English now than I am in my mother tongue. But I can stillcommunicate because when I was married all my in-laws spoke Punjabi.But now my children speak very little Punjabi because I can commu-nicate to them in English, and they prefer English because it’seasier . . .My husband is a fluent English speaker and we also manytimes when we are alone, we even speak English with one another. (A)

Whilst another commented, separating the domestic context from the need tofeel rooted: ‘I couldn’t say even now English was my home language, eventhough it’s more dominantly spoken in my house now’ (R).

In looking back, therefore, to their decision to promote English, there wereseveral expressions of regret that they had done so at the expense of Urdu orPunjabi. Moreover, and this is intriguing considering their own educationalsuccess and their educational aspirations for their children which they knewwould be achieved through English, such was the nature of this regret thatthere were comments from four mothers reflecting a view that the childrenwould have ‘picked up’ English anyway, just as the parent had picked upUrdu or Punjabi in the home.

I used to worry they’d have too much Punjabi and not learn Englishenough to cope, but now I feel that now they have picked up the English.(A)

The English it comes automatically, as soon as you enter school. For thefirst two I focused on the English because I said ‘They are going to needthat and they won’t understand’. When it came to N., I thought, ‘No, I’llgive it a try . . . I’ll try and teach her Urdu and hopefully that stays withher and she will pick up the English anyway. (N)


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My mom kept telling me off about it. ‘English they’ll pick up anyway butthey should know their own language’. (N)

I was really adamant that they went to school with English which I thinkI shouldn’t have done now . . . I’m sure they would have picked it up andI think a lot of my relatives whose kids, because we are losing it, homelanguage . . . are giving other people advice, ‘Don’t put too muchemphasis on English while your kids are younger. They’ll pick it upany way when they get to school . . .Let them really become fluent intheir home language and English will come as a second . . . I think athome we should just speak our own language and as they go to schoolencourage them to speak English and I think they will pick it up noproblem. (R)

Nevertheless, this was not a generally held, strong view. On the other hand,only one mother expressed concern about the problems young children mightencounter if they began school speaking no English.

In addition, four of these mothers had also sought out Urdu literacy classesto enhance their own abilities, even though they were already caring for theirown homes and studying for other qualifications at the same time, while theother six expressed regret about their lack of ability in spoken and writtenUrdu. It is significant to consider why there was such regret, when it appearsthat personally and socially they and the children have achieved considerableacademic success in which the mother tongue does not seem to have played apart. As one respondent put it:

My family has been living here over thirty years and we’re all at thatstage now where we suddenly realised we have become conversant inEnglish and we have what we wanted to do in life, we’ve sort ofachieved something here, but we realise that’s not all there is . . .We’rethinking, ‘Hold on, this isn’t the be all and end all, there are things thatwe need to take into account.’

She continued

I see it mirrored in a lot of Asian families where they’ve realised thatthey’re good at English, they’re doing well at school but they’ve got toretain something of the culture. Otherwise it gets lost. (K)

All the respondents focused on this aspect: the role of all the languages intheir repertoire as crucial connectors to real and imagined communities. Thisoperated on several levels. Firstly, of course, it was seen on a functional level,that lack of competence in a language prevented the children from commu-nicating adequately with grandparents, older relatives, from joining in atfamily and community events, and on family visits to Pakistan they alsoappeared as outsiders who had to ask for translation and who couldn’t keepup with the conversation. However, this deficiency was not simply viewedinstrumentally as an impairment that hampers transactions, as for example,poor French might on holiday in Europe. What concerned parents as much, ifnot more, was how this prevented children from absorbing Pakistani culture.


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That’s the worst thing because those children that have the languagewhen they are adults they will be sitting within the culture and with theeldest family. (A)

They’d lose a sense of touch with their own community and culture. (N)

I think that’s part of maintaining my culture isn’t it? (R)

If you listen to a song in Urdu it makes a lot more sense. If you translateit into English it doesn’t have the same sort of feel to it . . .my two sistersand brothers can read and write and I’ve heard them when they’rereading a story book, then it makes so much sense when they read it inUrdu because you get that other, the whole culture and everything flowsinto it. It’s a different feel. (R)

It’s not just words it is culture. (T)

It’ll be a big shame if we lost it because there’s a sort of community beingand belonging because you’re alienated if you don’t know the languageand, although you might look the same, dress the same but if you can’tspeak the language you are not the same as they are. Alienated from thecommunity, from the culture, society � all these factors do make you oneand do make you belong. So if you lose one you lose all. (S)

The mothers elaborated on what they considered these essential features ofthe culture to be. The most significant of these was respect: ‘It’s ok to have themoney and to have the English and whatever but to gain respect andunderstanding.’ (A).

Simply using Punjabi and Urdu expressed respect for the listener, especiallyfor older people, and brought respect which reflected on the child and on theparents and their child rearing. In particular, it was noted that the languagesthemselves have this feature built in in a way that English doesn’t. ‘In otherwords, the traditionally associated language reflects and conveys its culturemore felicitously and succinctly than other language’ (May, 2001: 133). Forexample, the words for kinship terms are more wide ranging and subtle thanEnglish and express the nuances and precision of relationships. In addition,Urdu and Punjabi employ honorific and familiar address to convey socialdistance, familiarity and affection:

The other day, like in English you would say ‘you’ to everybody whereasin Urdu Punjabi there’s a word ‘tu’ and ‘tusi’, ‘tu’ means it’s sort of like ifyou say it to an adult it’s very very rude, or somebody you don’t know.And my daughter said that to me and I shouted at her and she says‘Mom I didn’t mean it’. And I said ‘No, but I’ve told you so many times,please don’t say that, especially if you say it to your grandparents. If yousay it to your grandmother it’s going to fall back on me’. Especially themother, because it’s, ‘Oh you didn’t train your children properly. Theydon’t know how to respect the elders. So it comes down to that culture,that family side of things. (R)

These principles are, therefore, built into the language and the parents viewedloss of the languages as a potential loss of family values. There were also moral


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and spiritual values they felt more comfortable expressing in their mothertongue or which they felt could not be adequately translated without losingmuch of their power.

If I do nothing about it now then the next step is it’s going to be hisreligion or if it’s not his religion the language of the religion because ifhe’s not got the Arabic then he’ll be reading in English, the Englishtranslations of the Qur’an and that would affect his understanding or thepractice of his faith. (A)

May be it’s the values I’ve learnt through my own language but I willalways try to find an example of it. ‘This is what has happened’. Then Ijust suddenly go into my own language. I don’t know whether it’s thevalues that belong to me, belong to my culture or whatever, and thatthey come out in your own language. (R)

Furthermore, there was also a hierarchy in choice of language which alsoexpressed and attracted respect. Urdu was cited throughout the interviews asthe language of literature, high culture, education and educated people andhaving characteristics of being ‘sweet’ and polite, rather than being perceivedas crude and harsh in sound and expression like Punjabi and Mirpuri. Finally,the mother tongue had a role in self-respect, self-esteem:

It did give them support and made them feel good about their ownculture . . .You must remember who you are and what you are. (A)

You’ve got to be proud of who you are and what you speak. (R)

You have to keep that culture because you are supposed to be proud ofwhat you are and I’m a proud man. (Z)

It’s important to know who you are and where you’ve comefrom . . .You’ve got to be confident of who you are and then you willbe taken seriously. (A)

As the last quotation suggests, the languages also connected them to whatwas termed their ‘heritage’ so that even if they had not visited Pakistan ornever intended to visit, it acted to identify their roots:

It tells me where we originate from. (U)

We must still try to maintain our heredity. (A)

I think our language is our heritage really. (S)

And, in an almost word-for-word echo of the Taylor quotation above:

It’s part of our heritage, it’s part of what makes us what we are . . . It’swhere you’re from, where you’re going to . . . it gives you more thanliving in the now. (K)

Involvement in a wider diasporic community was, therefore, a significantfeature of the respondents’ sense of belonging and their connection to thiscommunity was conveyed in a variety of ways. The most obvious, was,naturally, visits to Pakistan, sometimes experienced by the mothers as they


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were growing up and also later when they had taken their own children.Experiences of and attitudes towards these visits were varied. For somefamilies this was quite a regular feature of their lives and they were in thehabit of making repeat visits and also entertaining visiting family members;for others it had been a one off when they were younger. Two respondents hadbeen on an extended visit shortly after marriage to meet their husbands’family for the first time and to take their first child. Another family had senttheir eldest son to Pakistan for a year to undertake part of his education therewhen he was 10. Only two of the mothers had not visited Pakistan and of theseone was planning a holiday to take her sons who had been born and educatedin the UK.

This affiliation had slightly different nuances for different respondents. Aswell as meeting family members, strengthening bonds between people theyhad not met before and joining in celebrations, some of the mothers wanted toshow the children where they had experienced their early lives. One familyhad bought a piece of land. One mother explained:

I have said to my husband, ‘We’re going to Pakistan anyway, I haven’tbeen there for years and that’s where I learnt a lot of my Mirpuri’,because at home, you know, it was a very limited experience and you dopick it up. I think that is the best way to pick it up, so I’m not worried. Ifanything, I’ll go every year to give her some language experience. (K)

On the other hand, one mother cited a negative experience of a young malerelative of visiting Pakistan, one was not interested in visiting and another didnot want to return to a place which had unhappy memories for her but knewher children were very keen to visit: ‘I haven’t got a draw to go back home,whereas my children, they love Pakistan.’ (S) Other ways of linking with thiswider community for both parents and children came through watchingsatellite television and videos of Indian films.

There were, therefore, continual reminders and a pervasive consciousnessof being part of a much wider community linked by language and culture.This was not necessarily in Pakistan itself, as two families also had relatives inGermany and one family in Holland who they had exchanged visits with, sothat the languages of connection were Punjabi and Urdu rather than English.One father had also come from Kenya in the 1970s where his family had livedfor nearly a hundred years but who still related to the heritage culture ofPakistan. Another mother, similarly, had no desire to visit Pakistan butnevertheless felt that language maintenance was paramount:

That link is not important. I’ve got relatives over there, aunts and uncles.If I had to go back I would go back, but it’s more than that . . . it’s just myway of saying, ‘Right, we’re still Asian. We’re still Asian. We can’tchange that’. (R)

However, the most potent language that bound the respondents to culture,to both an immediate and a worldwide community, was Arabic, the languageof the Qur’an and, therefore, the language that embodies religious belief. Allthe mothers could read Arabic and all had ensured that their children attendedclasses to learn, taught their young children themselves, or, if no classes were


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available locally, employed a teacher to visit their homes. It was emphasisedhow crucial this was, more crucial in fact than learning Urdu, so that when thetwo competed for attention, Urdu was dropped:

Arabic we have to learn . . . I’m trying to make them learn it the way itwill be of value to them because there’s no point in learning it parrotfashion because you don’t understand the Qur’an. (S)

The language of the faith is Arabic. My husband and I had to decidewhich subject to drop for our eldest son. We had to drop the Urdulanguage because we wanted to keep the Arabic because that’s to dowith our faith. (A)

Several mothers also noted the pressure on children of classes on top of theirschoolwork so that although they wished them to learn Urdu, they also didn’twant to add Urdu classes to their existing commitments. Two had visitingteachers who could combine Urdu and Arabic classes. One family hadundertaken the Hajj and both mother and child commented specifically onmeeting and communicating with Muslims from other countries:

We went for Hajj last year and my daughter found how useful the Urduwas because there were certain people from different countries . . . Somehad come from Iraq, Iran and they were quite fluent in Urdu and wecouldn’t communicate in English. (M)

Nevertheless, the acknowledgement of these kinds of links coexisted withthe recognition of both aspects of their identities. Four of the motherscommented on this:

You see the people in Africa, Uganda, and they were there for manyhundreds of years and they had to go back, the Asians, and they werethe most stable society . . . I mean we are guests in this country. If we’renot guests we’re settlers, but things can change. Or even the British inPakistan, you know wherever, and I think it’s very important to knowwho you are. I’m not saying, I mean I’m here and I’m working forEngland, and I have my loyalties here because this is the country thatsupports me . . .And I do everything to support England, but we mustkeep our own culture. It’s very important. (A)

You know, o.k. we’re British but we’re still Pakistani. (T)

I’d say [I’m] British Muslim. (N)

It’s just like having part of the heritage behind you. Not that I don’tvalue the English system, the English. I mean to me personally, watchingan English film means more to me than watching an Urdu, Punjabi,Indian films . . .Do they want to lose the English side totally? . . . I thinkthere should be a balance. (R)

I’ve had the choice of both or experience of both cultures and if mychildren don’t do that . . . if they don’t have those skills then they aregoing to lose, not be able to get a choice of choosing who they are. (T)


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While two children had these views:

I would say [I belong] here, because I was born here . . .my first responsewould be Muslim because that is my religion and that is what I believe Iam . . . and then it would be British and then Pakistani after that becausethat is my ethnic origin. (U)

I don’t think we would have lost anything if we didn’t have the language[Urdu] . . . [Pakistan is] not really my country but where my parents arefrom . . . [I am] a mixture of British and Pakistani. (S)

However, in one case, a mother noted the complexity of her son’s differentloyalties and affiliations. He had been born in England, had never visitedPakistan and acknowledged a lack of fluency in Mirpuri:

Watching the Eurovision song contest we wanted United Kingdom towin. Watching England and Pakistan play a cricket match, we wantPakistan to win. And that’s in him as well. So I said to him, ‘Who do youthink we are?’ And he said, ‘My mom, Pakistani’. (R)

He commented in turn

Even though I was born here, I class Pakistan as my home country.That’s where the language originates so I call it my home langua-ge . . .My dad came from there. He brought it with him and thenwe started speaking here. So it’s from my dad’s home country aswell. (A)

These three responses from the children reflect different aspects of what itmeans to be British when one is also trying to accommodate one’s inheritanceand draw upon different traditions. In the first, U. cites a sense of belonging,appearing to endorse a feeling of affiliation to Britain as her home through her‘birth’ right. She is also able to categorise the different aspects of her ownidentity, her faith being the core aspect, with her nationality next. In the secondexample, S. describes herself as a mixture of both British and Pakistanitraditions and culture. Her parents relate to Pakistan as a country in terms oftheir own origins but she does not. Finally, for A., there is clearly ambivalence.Although he is a British citizen, born in Britain, he has dual loyalties expressedthrough support for national teams, alongside a feeling that family origins, hisidentification with his Pakistani heritage is a crucial. These constructionsreflect notions of citizenship as place of birth, as a legal definition ofnationality, as adherence to culture and tradition.

The heterogeneous responses from mothers and children also belied thepolarities of choosing between languages, choosing between cultures. Amultitude of aspects were incorporated in these lives, as they partook ofboth:

It happens wherever two cultures mix. Changes do take place whether itbe, like, in the time of the Raj when the British were in India, or herenow. It’s very important to keep your language I think. It’s not astatement. It’s not sort of saying, ‘Oh this is me and I’m going tokeep . . . ’ You’re not against anything. It’s the richness of the culture and


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the diversity and the understanding . . . I’ve learnt how difficult it is forpresent day parents to actually struggle with, juggling you know ourpersonal and religious and cultural issues and the languages andsending your children into mainstream schools, society at large, themedia, and how you need to balance it. Because we’re a British, Englishspeaking family, everything is incorporated in. (A)

It became very apparent that, without the language, you couldn’t reallykeep in touch with your roots. It’s impossible . . . It’s where you’refrom, where you’re going to. It’s more than that. It makes you a richperson; it gives you character; it gives more than just living in thenow. (K)

These testimonies encapsulate the conundrum expressed by Woodward (2002:168):

Identity travels, but it is about belonging. Roots are important, but aninsistence on fixity and essential sources makes change difficult andstultifies development. Keeping in mind the journeys we have made andwould like to make, and holding onto the moments that matter, makeroutes a more useful concept. We need to remember, in order to knowwhere we have come from, so that we can create new stories of the self,while not losing sight of belonging.

SummaryIn exploring the configuration of language and community, the discussion

has highlighted the many ways in which identity involves both the personaland the social. There was a significant difference of perspective between theexamples of official discourse and the testimonies from the interview data onhow community values are mediated by language. The personal commentthrew into relief a seeming lack of depth, analysis and, perhaps, insight intodiverse experience that exists only as hints in these pronouncements. The datareveals the nature of identity to be both complex and shifting, related as it is inthis instance to the fundamental link between language and culture andaffective dimensions concerning ambivalence towards language use, languageloss and the maintenance of cultural identity.

There was, therefore, a complex interplay for all the respondents betweentheir language repertoire, their sense of their ‘roots’ and the ‘route’ they are on.Speaking English connected the respondents to educational success and, forsome, their British identity, and speaking the mother tongue connected themto different familial, neighbourhood and heritage communities and endorsedvital aspects of their culture and identity. In this regard, individual lives tell usmore than the statistics of 30% and 60%. The recognition of such nuances isimportant in avoiding the stereotyping and homogenising of the examples ofauthoritative discourses which opened this discussion.


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Correspondence

Any correspondence should be directed to Dr Jean Mills, School ofEducation, University of Birmingham, Weoley Park Road, Selly Oak,Birmingham B29 6LL, UK ([email protected]).

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connecting communities: identity, language and diaspora

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