Individual Language Policy as a Technology of the Self: Youth’s Multilingual Practices in the Educational Domain

This article examines indigenous youth’s multilingual practices in the mainstream educational domain in Vietnam and their construction of self as reflected in these practices. Through the lens of individual language policy and technologies of the self, it explores how the youth made language choices in interactions with different peer groups in a mixed-ethnicity college setting. Data were obtained from interviews with a group of indigenous students of diverse ethnic backgrounds. Findings suggest that the youth’s individual language policy followed two main directions: (a) adhering to the Vietnamese dominance and moving towards the mainstream norm and/or (b) valorising multilingualism and moving away from the mainstream norm. The youth’s peer culture-directed individual language policy could be seen as a linguistic technology of the self which they used to constitute their centripetal self and/or centrifugal self, and thereby contributing to reshaping the college’s language climate with hybridity and polycentricity.