Is bilingualism linked to national identity?: Evidence from a big data survey

• Rining Wei ^[2] ; Barry Lee Reynolds ^[1] ; Mengxia Kong ^[2] ; Zhixin Liu ^[2]
  1. [1] University of Macau

     University of Macau

     RAE de Macao (China)

     
  2. [2] Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, Suzhou, People’s Republic of China
• Localización: Journal of multilingual and multicultural development, ISSN 0143-4632, Vol. 45, Nº. 8, 2024, págs. 3078-3092
• Idioma: inglés
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • Psychological variables remain a much under-investigated sub-category of individual differences (IDs) compared with cognitive ones. The present paper aims to gain a better understanding of the psychological effects of bilingualism by investigating national identity (NI), a socio-psychological construct, based on big data, that has rarely been examined. Drawing upon the 2015 Chinese Social Survey (CSS), which utilised a nationally representative sample (N = 10242), we employed a ‘more refined’ version of hierarchical regression analysis on the influence of foreign-language (FL)-based bilingualism and other sociobiographical variables on NI. Out of the 18 initial independent variables, satisfaction with life (1.7%–2.2%) and age (1.2%–1.4%) emerged as important predictors for NI as their minimum effect size value (ΔR2, see the range in brackets) exceeded the ‘typical’ benchmark (1%); in contrast, the influence respectively from FL mastery (.006%–.040%) and FL use (.000%–.004%) was negligible. In other words, our key finding is that a person’s FL-based bilingualism had little to do with his/her NI. Implications for China’s plan to reform FL (e.g. English) learning are discussed, and future research directions are also proposed.