ABSTRACT
This chapter is the first of three case-study chapters and focusses on three girls - Lan, Van and Putrea - who are arguably the most culturally conservative of the eight girls. It explores the evolution of their friendship groups at school and the ways in which they negotiate a range of linguistic and cultural practices to construct strong heritage identities and comply with parental expectations around being a “good girl”. These girls were notable for their ongoing study and use of heritage languages in daily life, however showed quite different motivations for heritage language maintenance. While being generally culturally conservative, they also can be seen to be crafting hybridised identities that take quite different forms and respond to specific circumstances each of them finds themselves in.
