Volume: 8  Number: 4  Page: 253–274

Connecting Communities: Identity, Language and Diaspora

Jean Mills School of Education, University of Birmingham, UK

This paper compares government and media views on citizenship, language and identity with the perspectives of a particular group of British citizens who are fluent speakers of English but retain an allegiance to their other languages. Firstly, it discusses recent official and newspaper reports in the UK relating to issues of citizenship and language. In these pronouncements English is cited as a crucial means of engagement with what is termed ‘the wider community’, whereas lack of English 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 of authoritative discourse to the lived experience of a particular group of British citizens who are fluent speakers of English but who retain an allegiance to their other languages. These are a group of mothers of Pakistani heritage. It will be seen that in this group there is an alternative construction of community in that the heritage language represents community as being a crucial identifier and bond to the immediate and wider diasporic group.

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

© 2005 J. Mills

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