This article is based on interviews with two teachers who work in a Vietnamese community language (CL) school in Australia. It explores the teachers’ descriptions of how they came to teach at the school and what they consider to be the purpose of teaching Vietnamese. The analysis sheds light on CL teacher identity, including how teachers position themselves in relation to others in and beyond the CL school context. Excerpts are represented using poetic representation, to bring out existential and emotional experiences in the teacher narratives. The result reveals how the teachers’ expressed experiences of isolation and disconnection in a broader, monolingual context, contrast with their descriptions of involvement and connection with the local community after joining the Vietnamese community language school. Social and ideological factors emerge as salient factors shaping the subject positions the teachers perform. The article thus sheds light on the complex identity work performed by CL teachers, revealing their on-going commitment to developing communication, knowledge of culture and multilingual identity within families and communities living in diasporic contexts.

A photograph and scientific project description published in a peer-reviewed journal exploring the spaces where the sciences and the arts meet.

A poem and scientific project description published in a peer-reviewed journal exploring the spaces where the sciences and the arts meet.

This chapter presents a narrative analysis of interviews with seven parents whose children attend community language schools teaching Swedish and Vietnamese. There are few studies exploring parent perceptions of the community language school, the languages taught there and the reasons parents describe for enrolling their children. This study fills this gap. The analysis shows that parents place importance on passing on language, culture and an understanding of diasporic identity to their children. Both dynamic and more static understandings of language and language development underlie parents’ utterances; they do not express an expectation that their children will develop or use the languages they study in the same way as themselves. However, all parents stress that they do not want their language or culture to be lost in their new diasporic context. The schools are also described as places where parents with similar languages and backgrounds can meet. Community language schools in this study can thus be understood as vehicles for transferring the Swedish and Vietnamese language and cultural identity to the next generation as well as a meeting place for adults sharing similar backgrounds.