Indigenous Students’ Negotiation of Cultural Differences:The construction of linguistic identities amongst Amis students in Taiwan

Wen-Ding HUANGUniversity of Bristol, UK

Paper presented at the British Educational Research Association Annual Conference, Institute of Education, University of London, 5-8 September 2007

The main purpose of this article is to investigate the Amis students’ construction of linguistic identities and to review the implementation of the educational principle of ‘dual cultural identities’. The analysis of the Amis students’ linguistic identification will be conducted in the light of Cornell and Hartmann’s (1998) constructionist approach that incorporates both the primordialist approach and the instrumentalist and circumstantialist approaches and stresses the interaction between individuals and the environment in identity construction. Based on the constructionist perspective on ethnic and ethnocultural identification, the article adopts both the circumstantialist and the primordialist approaches to analyse the Amis students’s construction of their linguistic identities. First, as the circumstantialists suggest, the article examines the sociocultural environment where the Amis students reside by interrogating how different languages functioned in two case study schools and the communities the two schools served. The impact of language function on the Amis students’ linguistic identification is then explored. After that, the influential forces from within the Amis group on the Amis students’ identification with their mother tongue is scrutinised in terms of the primordialist perspective. Grounded on the above analysis, the general picture of the Amis students’ construction of linguistic identities is portrayed. This article is concluded by reviewing the implementation of the ‘dual cultural identity’ educational principle and proposing a critical constructionist approach to cultural-identity construction.

Key terms: indigenous student, primary schooling, cultural difference, cultural identity, cultural politics, language education, Taiwan

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As Mercer puts it, ‘identity only becomes an issue when it is in crisis, when something assumed to be fixed, coherent and stable is displaced by the experience of doubt and uncertainty.’ (Mercer, 1990:43) For Taiwan’s indigenous students, the difference in schooling between Han and their traditional ethnic cultures is one of the main sources of the experience of doubt and uncertainty. Their cultural accommodation to the mainstream Han culture and their negotiation with cultural differences are hence the issues of great significance. Since 1996 when the Commission on Education Reform proposed the guiding principle of ‘dual cultural identities’, it has become a common phase and principle in Taiwanese educational discourses pertaining to indigenous students torn between their own and mainstream Han cultures. Despite the seeming desirability of this principle, there have been difficulties or even paradoxes when the principle was put into practice. Therefore, this article will probe deep into the indigenous students’ construction of cultural identities, and the potential difficulties in their pursuing ‘dual cultural identities’.

Research Background: From Assimilation to ‘Dual Cultural Identities’

Academic studies, based on physical characteristics and cultural traits, generally subsume Taiwan’s existing indigenous people under the Austronesian ethnolinguistic group (Bima, 2001; Huang, 2005). They were generally classified into highland indigenous people and plains indigenous people mainly according to where they resided and to what extent they are assimilated into Han culture. Today, there are eleven officially recognised highland indigenous groups including Amis, Atayal, Truku, Bunun, Paiwan, Puyuma, Rukai, Saisiyat, Tsou, Thao, Tao. The only officially recognised plains indigenous group is Kavalan. The population of the Amis people is the largest.

Taiwanese indigenous peoples and their cultures have been marginalized for a long time. This is because they have been subjected to the minority status since the beginning of the period of European colonialism in 1642. At the present time, they can be regarded as minority ethnic groups in terms of both population and power relation. As far as population is concerned, indigenous peoples as a whole in Taiwan are the smallest ethnic group who makes up less than two percent of the population. In the political domain, they are dominated by the majority Hans. Most of them are in the lower socio-economic status and have difficulty in gaining social mobilisation. In addition to kinship, the cultural differences between their cultural heritage and that of Han people in Taiwan are manifested in language, custom, manners, values, religion,

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lifestyle, thinking style, and worldview. Due to the previous assimilationist policy, their cultural heritage had been marginalised and neglected in schooling. It has been widely noticed that indigenous groups are losing their own traditional culture rapidly (Tan, 2002).

A series of high-profile protests launched by the Alliance of Taiwan Aborigines (ATA) and other indigenous organisations in the 1980s have promoted public awareness of the importance of preserving indigenous cultures and promoting indigenous people’s ethnocultural self-identification. Many educational programmes and measures aimed at reviving indigenous cultural heritages were proposed and implemented by a range of government agencies. Amongst the efforts of reviving the indigenous culture, the consultants’ report produced by the Commission on Education Reform (CER) is of great significance in the sense that it is an important reference document for educational policy decision makers. In the Consultants’ Report on Education Reform IV, the commission advises that the principle of ‘double cultural identities’ should be the common guideline for the educational practices for indigenous students. It suggests that ‘Education should, on the one hand, help indigenous students to meet the demands of modern life and explore individual potential. On the other hand, education should ensure the entitlement for all indigenous students to learn their own ethnic culture so as to conserve their cultural heritage’ (Commission on Education Reform, 1996).

Although the principle of ‘dual cultural identities’ had been proposed and become the common guideline of the education for indigenous students, the indigenous students’ pursuing for ‘dual cultural identities’ is not without difficulties. In order to reveal the potential difficulties in indigenous students’ pursuing ‘dual cultural identities’, the article will focus on the Amis students’ construction of their linguistic identities. Prior to the investigation of the Amis students’ linguistic identification, the theoretical insights from various perspectives on ethnic identification will be discussed to underpin the research’s viewpoint of linguistic identification.

Theoretical Insights from Various Perspectives on Ethnic Identification

There has been much debate concerning how a person’s ethnic and ethnocultural identity is formed. Amongst various theoretical standpoints proposed by different researchers, three existing perspectives of ethnic identity are renowned and often referred to: the primordialism, the instrumentalism and circumstantialism, and the constructionism. The primordialist perspective focuses on the intense and internal

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aspects of ethnic group solidarity, and the subjective sense of belonging associated with ethnic group membership. One of most important sources and starting points of ethnic solidarity and belongingness is the family ties which lie at the heart of the concept of ‘primordial’. According to the proponents of primordialism, it is the social relationship and cultural practice within our ethnic group that have an ineffable and coercive power to drive our strong attachment to our ethnic group and to make us ethnic. The primordialist perspective can not only contribute to the understanding of individuals’ identification with their ethnic group, but also provide an important ground for the explanation of their attachment to and internalisation of their own cultural heritage. In the interaction with parents and significant others in the ethnic community, children internalise their cultural heritage and construct their ethnocultural identities. This process also generates an effective sense of attachment to their ethnic culture. Language, beliefs, norms, and nonverbal behaviours are intertwined with intimate personal relationships between relatives and between community members. This is how a sense of ethnocultural identity develops, and people can not simply do away with the initial cultural attachments which they have developed at a tender age. This also suggests the important role of family and community in providing an adequate environment for the younger generations to construct their positive identities with their own ethnic culture.

By way of contrast to the primoridalism, the advocators of instrumentalism maintain that ethnic identity should be understood as a medium through which individuals are organized to defend or pursue their interests. In other words, ethnic groups are interests groups for which ethnic identity serves as an effective strategy. Following a similar line, a person’s identity with particular cultural elements, either in-group or out-group, can also be seen as instrumental, and the identified cultural elements are treated as tools for political, economic, or social advantages.

Based on instrumentalism, the researchers who are coined ‘circumstantialists’ focus more on the contexts and conditions that lead to the emergence of interests and the ethnic identities through which these interests are expressed. Their analyses concentrate on the circumstances that put ethnic individuals and groups ‘into particular positions and encourage them to see their interests in particular ways’ (Cornell and Hartmann, 1998: 59). That is, the emphasis is laid upon the specific social, political, and/or economic conditions that give rise to certain interests, and thereby shape the expression and saliency of ethnic or ethnocultural identity and the importance ethnic and ethnocultural identity assumes.

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As several researchers (Cornell and Hartmann, 1998; Scott, 1990; Verkuyten, 2005) suggest, both primordialist and instrumentalist and circumstantialist approaches should be regarded as complementary rather than contradictory. Hence, there have been a few attempts to combine the primordialist and the instrumentalist and circumstantialist approaches to ethnic identity (e.g., Scott, 1990). Amongst these efforts, Cornell and Hartmann’s (1998) constructionist approach is of significance. The fundamental essence of the constructionist approach which Cornell and Hartmann (1998) outline is the statement that ethnic identities form in an interaction between circumstances and individuals. On the one hand, the constructionist view on ethnic identity shares the circumstantialist idea about fluidity that identities change in their nature and significance across time and situations due to the pursuit and defence of the interests. On the other hand, the constructionist perspective retains the key insight from the primordialism that group members may be bound to one another by their participation in a common culture. However, it stresses that the primordial ties are constructed. It is embodied in the significance human beings attach to them, a significance that is changeable and contingent. From the above discussion, it can be argued that, beyond both primordialist and instrumentalist and circumstantialist approaches, the constructionist approach highlights the active and creative role played by ethnic individuals in identity construction. In what follows, the analysis of the Amis students’ ethnocultural identification will be based on the constructionist approach in that it provides a comprehensive framework for the analysis of the construction of ethnocultural identities.

Research Design and Methods

According to the constructionist perspective, case study is adopted as the research strategy in order to attain the research purposes. Case study can be a proper strategy to investigate the interaction between the Amis students and their real-life environment in schools, families, and communities, and in turn to understand the Amis students’ formation of ethnocultural identities in depth. The two selected case study schools were mainly composed of the primary students of Amis origin. Both of them will be presented in the article by pseudonymous Amis names, Panay and Futing. The major participants in the research were the 4th to 6th Amis graders in the studied primary schools. The data collection was conducted over a period of six months in the two researched schools and communities. Questionnaires were given to the Amis students. Participant observations in the two studied schools and communities and semi-structured interviews with the school teachers, the Amis students, their parents, and the community members were also conducted to collect

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data. Meanwhile, research-related school documents and teaching materials were also collected in the field.

Amis Students’ Construction of Linguistic Identities

As mentioned above, the article adopts Cornell and Hartmann’s (1998) constructionist approach as the standpoint to investigate how the Amis students constructed their linguist identities. Cornell and Hartmann combine the primordialist angle and the instrumentalist and circumstantialist perspectives, and stress on the interaction between individuals and their environment. In what follows, the language functions revealed in the studied schools and communities will be first examined in that the analysis of language function in a certain context can reveal the socio-political condition that, as the circumstantialists suggest, puts the Amis students into particular positions and encourages them to see their interests in particular ways. grounded on the above analysis, this article will explore how the Amis students perceived the difference of language function between Mandarin and the Amis language and how their perceptions of both language affected their linguistic identification. Following that, according to the primordialist perspective, the analysis of the impact from the Amis students’ families and communities on their linguistic identification will be conducted.

The Analysis of Language Function

There are three manifest functions of the Amis language and Mandarin identified in the researched field: language as bridge, language as performative stage, and language as game for fun. All of them are discussed further below in turn.

Language as Bridge

As Joseph (2004) indicates, there are two primary purposes of language which can be identified. The first is to represent the world to ourselves in our own minds; in other words, to learn to categorise things using the words our languages provide us with. The second purpose of language is to communicate with others as it is impossible for human beings to live in isolation. In terms of the first purpose, language can be regarded as a bridge between ourselves and the outside world. Through the representation of the world by language, one can learn the world through other’s description and explanation, either oral or written, and conduct higher-level and abstract thinking which are supported by language (Stubbs, 1983). As far as the

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second purpose is concerned, language can be regarded as a bridge between people, groups, or nations.

1. Language as Bridge for Learning: The acquisition of Mandarin is so important in learning activities in schools that it is never overestimated that Mandarin acquisition is the prerequisite for the academic success. In the school-based curriculum formulated by teaching staff in Futing School, the promotion of students’ reading, writing, and speaking ability of Mandarin was set as the major goal which the formulated curriculum attempted to achieve. Both schools’ emphasis on Mandarin learning can be observed from the ratio of weekly learning period of Mandarin. In the school-based curriculum structured by Futing School for the fourth, fifth, and sixth graders, the weekly length of Language Arts consisted of nine learning periods which included seven for Mandarin, one for the Amis language, and one for English. In the school curriculum formulated by Panay School, the weekly length of Language Arts contained eleven learning periods including nine or eight for Mandarin, one for the Amis language, and one or two for English. Within the language curricula structured by both schools respectively, the teaching length of Mandarin overwhelmingly outnumbered those of the other two languages. Mandarin as an official language is regarded as a bridge which facilitates the Amis students to obtain modern knowledge, and as a kind of cultural capital which can make profit of learning more, obtaining higher academic achievement, and gaining upward social mobility.

2. Language as Bridge for Communication: In terms of communication, the selection of a language as an interactive medium often depends on the inter-intelligibility of a language to interlocutors. In such a multi-ethnic context as the two case study schools, Mandarin was dominantly adopted by both the Han and indigenous teachers to communicate with the Amis students, and vice versa, in the sense that Mandarin as the official language in Taiwan is the common language used by both indigenous and Han people. Although Mandarin was the dominant language adopted in both studied schools, it was relatively less used in both studied villages. In the multi-ethnic Futing Village1, the Amis language as the mother tongue of Amis people could be an intelligible communicative medium between people, mainly Amis people, who can speak the Amis language, whereas it has no communicative function between individuals, mainly Han people and some of Amis younger generations, who cannot speak the Amis language. Therefore, in the whole-community public events, bilingualism was required based on the communicative needs. Dissimilar to the multi-ethnic Futing Village, the Amis language played a pivotal, though not

1 Futing Village is the multi-ethnic community which Futing School mainly served, and Panay Village is the Amis community which Panay School served.

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exclusive, role in the communication of the public affairs in Panay Village in which Amis people are the absolute majority. As the administrative director of the village noted, although he is of Han origin, it was necessary for him to master the Amis language since the communication with and coordination between villagers were in the medium of the Amis language (IV-DVAD-050524).

Language as Performative Stage

Language Arts as a significant learning area in schooling consisted of more than one fourth of the total weekly learning periods. Amongst the three taught languages in schools, as analysed above, Mandarin had been laid on a special emphasis. In Mandarin classes, there were plenty of opportunities for the Amis students to display their literacy of Mandarin by replying questions posed by teachers, making sentences containing required words or phrases, reading texts loudly in front of their classmates, and gaining high scores in tests. Hence, it is beyond question that Mandarin as a learning area, is an important performative stage where the Amis students win praises, and construct their self-concepts and self-confidences.

In addition to the ‘stage’ available in the classrooms, a variety of ‘stages’ for the usage of Mandarin could also be found in the school rituals and events. In the weekly flag-raising rituals, the students of Futing School were required to read loudly or recite one article in the Mandarin textbooks in front of all students. The same activities were also held regularly every week during the period of the flag-raising ritual in Panay School. Meanwhile, the annual language competitions containing Mandarin, mother tongues, and English also provided the Amis students with the opportunities to display their language talents in both schools studied.

In order to encourage students to practice Mandarin writing skills, both schools provided students with platforms to publish their articles in which they shared their reading and daily experiences with the readers. In Futing School, each class published at least one monthly student poster to which students could contribute. These posters were displayed on the notice board in the hallway, and appraised by students and teachers. In Panay School, the platform students could communicate with peers and teachers and post their writings was the school website. After reading one book, the students could type down what they thought about the book they read and send it to the school website where everyone could read their writings and give feedbacks. Compared to the printed student posters in Futing School, the digitalised

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student column had the advantage of facilitating interpersonal communication between teachers and students, and between students.

Language as Game for Fun

Contrast to Mandarin as the dominant language in the above-mentioned functions in schooling, i.e. language as bridge and language as stage, the function of the Amis language could be obviously found in the daily school life in both schools was making fun. For example, the Amis teacher, Lafi2, employed the Amis language to draw the Amis students’ attention to him by speaking the Amis language in a comical way (IV-D05-050322). Similarly, the adoption of the Amis language in a funny way by the Han teacher, Janice, also led to the Amis students’ entertainment (IV-D09-050425).

In Futing School where there was no Amis-speaking full-time teacher, the participant Amis students noticed the language difference between them and their Han teachers, and utilised it as a medium for playing games with the Han teachers. The following extract from the field notes is the record of the language game the sixth Amis graders played with me.

I went to the sixth grade classroom to give the students my questionnaires this morning. When answering the questionnaire, Katal asked me ‘Do you have a poki [vulva]?’ Having no idea about this Amis word, I simply asked her what poki means. She replied to me by saying ‘watch’ which was a wrong answer to guide me to the wrong direction. As soon as I gave her a positive answer [which means I am wearing a watch] according to the meaning of the word she told me, the whole class burst out laughing. One student asked me with laughs ‘Sir, you have a vulva?’ (FN-S050317)

The school teachers’ reaction to the Amis students’ language game, though not always related to sex as showed above, was ignorance without any response (IV-S01-050419; IV-MTC-S804; IV-MTC-S601). Their attitude of ignorance partly implied that they had no interest in the Amis language, or such behaviours should not be encouraged. As a matter of fact, the language games played by the Amis students in Futing School to some extent reflected both the Amis students’ attempt to create

2 The names of participants presented in the article are all pseudonymous ones.

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‘otherness’ and the ethnic boundary drawn by linguistic difference between the Han teachers and the Amis students.

Language Functions and Amis Students’ Language Evaluations

The above analysis of functions displayed in the Amis language and Mandarin in the two researched schools and communities reveals an extreme contrast. In the function of language as bridge for learning, Mandarin played a decisive role in the pursuit for academic success while the Amis language had no function at all. In terms of the function of language as bridge for communication, although the Amis language was widely used among adult Amis villagers in both communities, the place where the Amis students spent most of their day time during the week days was the schools in which Mandarin was the dominant language. Similarly, as far as language as stage is concerned, it was mandarin which provided the Amis students with the most opportunities to win applauses and build self-confidences. By contrast, rather than the above two important functions, to be more specific, the ladder for upward social mobility and the avenue towards modernity, prestige and decency, the function apparently displayed by the Amis language in the schools was the medium of frolicking language game played either by the school teachers or Amis students. According to Stewart’s (1968) functional categories, in the Amis students’ daily life, the functional domains which Mandarin filled in contains official, provincial, wider communication, capital, group, educational, school subject, literary, and religious functions, whereas those which the Amis language filled in includes merely group, school subject, and religious functions. The contrast of language function between Mandarin and the Amis language simply reflects the following dichotomy: formal/informal, useful/useless, decent / frolicsome, and modern/traditional (or progressive / backward). The image of informality, uselessness, frolicsome, and tradition projecting onto the Amis language to a large extent accounts for Gadi’s (Panay School) lack of confidence to speak out the Amis language in my interview with him (IV-B-D507), and the reason, given by Adaw (Panay School), as to why the Amis language is of no significance for him (IV-L-D505).

By contrast, the representation of Mandarin emerged as formal, useful, decent, and modern illustrates the Amis students’ positive evaluations of Mandarin. More than half of the nine interviewed Amis students in both schools confirmed that being able to speak Mandarin signifies being educated. Also, most interviewed Amis students (7 out of 8 in Futing School and 5 out of 6 in Panay School) agreed that Mandarin acquisition is extensively important. Most of those who recognised the importance of

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acquiring Mandarin agreed that Mandarin is useful for them to find good jobs, acquire more knowledge, and/or make more friends in the future.

In the Amis students’ eyes, Mandarin as a major communicative medium in the Taiwanese mainstream society is the necessary means for attaining higher academic achievement and, in turn, obtaining desired social and economic status. This can be partly manifested by the fact that many Amis students spoke only Mandarin in daily life. This echoes to Ogbu (1995a; 1995b) and Ogbu and Simons’s (1998) research finding that voluntary Chinese immigrants tended to instrumentally look at speaking English as a route to future employment and upward social mobility.

The Primordial Ties and Amis Students’ Identification with Mother Tongue

Nevertheless, to say that the Amis students highly recognised the importance of Mandarin acquisition does not mean that they did not identify with their mother tongue. This will be discussed more in the following analysis of the influence from the primordial tie. As mentioned above, the primordialist perspective focuses on the role of the primordial bond between members of ethnic group in the construction of ethnocultural identities, and the subjective sense of belonging associated with racial or ethnic group membership and related culture. The fact that some Amis students had a strong emotional attachment to their mother tongue can be understood as the influence of the primordial tie. It is through the intimate interaction with their family and group members that the Amis students developed a sense of belonging to their ethnic group. And the very medium the members of their group have adopted for long to communicate with each other was their mother tongue. In the process, the link between the Amis language and the intimate in-group relationship has been strengthened. As a mother-tongue teacher spoke to the students in the mother-tongue speech competition in Futing School, ‘The Amis language is our own mother, and it is untradable property’ (FN-S050505). The word ‘mother’ within the term ‘mother tongue’ implies the intimacy of mother tongue with its associated ethnic members. This is the reason why Owai (Futing School) indicated that he felt more intimate with the Amis language than Mandarin and English (IV-L-S601).

The influence of primordial tie on the Amis students’ identification with their mother tongue can also be observed in the connection between their fondness of learning mother tongue and their need for communication with their family members. The Amis language provided Amis children and their family members with a channel to

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communicate with each other and build an interactive and meaningful community. All of the five interviewees in Futing School who were fond of learning the Amis language admitted that the communication with their family members was one of the main reasons why they liked to learn the Amis language, so did the four interviewees in Panay School who liked to learn the Amis language. The need for communication with their family members was also the reason why all the four interviewees in Panay School recognised the importance of mother-tongue acquisition. Meanwhile, most of them emphasised the importance of transmitting their mother tongue from generation to generation. Hence, the influence of the primordial tie on their linguistic identities can be obviously found in the above analysis.

The bond of ethnic primordial ties was so strong that many Amis students felt obligated to pass on their mother tongue to their posterity. Among the thirteen interviewed Amis students in both schools, all of them agreed that the Amis language should be transmitted from generation to generation, except for Kolas in Panay School who regarded the Amis language as out of date.

In addition to as a communicative instrument between group members, the Amis language as an important ethnocultural element also symbolises one’s Amis membership especially in a multiethnic context where the ethnic difference is salient. The following excerpt exposes the association of ethnic membership and ethnic language.

WH: So you think it is important to acquire the Amis language?Namp: Very importantWH: Is it because it is useful in the future daily life?Namp: NoWH: Or because for the communication with your parents and

grandparents?Namp: NoWH: If not, what’s the reason?Namp: It [the Amis language] is our custom! Because we are the

children of the Amis group, we have to learn it. (IV-L-S404)

According to the above excerpt, the reason why Namp thought that acquiring her mother tongue is of significant importance is not because of the utility of her mother tongue, rather because she belonged to the Amis group where the Amis language has been adopted for a long time. The tie between her, her group, and her mother tongue

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was so strong that she regarded mother-tongue acquisition as an utterly imperative for Amis members.

The Portrayal of Amis Students’ Linguistic Identification

According to the above analysis of the Amis students’ construction of linguistic identities, what can be seen is that the portrayal of Amis students’ linguistic identities appears to be a mixed, dynamic, and heterogeneous picture. Underlying their construction of linguistic identities were two competitive forces. One was the realistic pragmatism. The other was the family and ethnic primordial tie. The strategy whereby the Amis students negotiated with the two forces seems to be emotionally and morally identifying with their mother tongue while cognitively recognising the practical utility of Mandarin and widely adopting Mandarin in daily life. The Amis students’ linguistic identities had been constructed within the interaction between them and the two competitive forces.

Conclusion: Toward a Critical Constructionist Perspective

The Amis students’ linguistic identification has been analysed from both the standpoint of primordialism and the perspectives of instrumentalism and circumstanialism. As the above portrayal, the Amis students’ linguistic identity can be regarded as a heterogeneous mixture. However, can this heterogeneous mixture be regarded as desirable ‘dual cultural identities’ proposed as the educational principle for indigenous students? To put it differently, can it be simply declared that the principle has been fully implemented regardless of the loss of their mother tongue? If the above mixed identity is exactly the desirable ‘dual cultural identities’, can we do justice to their strong will (including their parents and grandparents) to transmit their mother tongue from generation to generation? If it is not the case, what kind of ‘dual cultural identities’ is desirable for these Amis students and other indigenous people? All these questions raised by the vagueness of ‘dual cultural identities’ would recur throughout the implementation of the principle. Although unpacking these conundrums is beyond the capacity of the article, they are worthy of being thought of by all the educational practitioners who work with indigenous students.

Grounded on the above analysis of the Amis students’ linguistic identification, it can not be difficult to conclude that neither the primordialist perspective nor the instrumentalist and circumstantialist standpoints can provide a complete theoretical

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framework to understand the Amis students’ formation of linguistic identities. Throughout the above analysis, there are two magnificent forces influencing the Amis students’ linguistic identification: the instrumental pragmatism (which is the focus of the instrumentalist approach) and the ethnic and family primordial ties (which is the stressed point by primordialist supporters). Both forces play a part in the formation of the Amis students’ linguistic identities through the interaction between them and the ethnocultural environment surrounding them. Hence, the understanding of cultural identification should be grounded on a comprehensive approach as constructionists have proposed.

However, as far as the studies that investigate into minority ethnic members’ cultural identification are concerned, it is not enough to merely understand minority students’ cultural identification. What is also imperative is to critically interrogate the socio-cultural environment surrounding minority students in terms of cultural politics. To put it more specifically, in reviewing cultural practice, the researchers should always be aware of how minority culture are conducted, valued, and represented. To take the above analysis of language function as an example, although the Amis language had been taught in the two studied schools, what was selected to be emphasised in the school curriculum and dominantly used in daily communications was Mandarin, rather than the Amis language. As Phillipson (1992) indicates in his analysis of arguments used to promote English, and in relation to the Taiwanese context, Mandarin as the only official language owns the structural power, and hence is stressed in schooling. At the core of the selection of Mandarin as the only official and formal language is the issue of power. Through the contrast of language function between Mandarin and the Amis language, the Amis language was represented as informal, useless, playful, traditional and backward in schooling. The negative image of the Amis language can to a significant extent do harm in the Amis students’ constructing positive identities with their mother tongue and, in turn, their pursuing ‘dual cultural identities’. Hence, a critical investigation into the construction of cultural identities is imperative, and that investigation should never neglect the analysis of power behind cultural practices. Only through the trinity of cultural identification, cultural practice, and power can a critical analysis of identity construction be achieved.

Acknowledgement

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I would like to express my gratitude to those who participated in my research. Meanwhile, I would like to acknowledge the academic guidance from my advisor, Professor Leon Paul Tikly.

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