ABSTRACT
The ethnic minority students of Bangladesh need to use the dominant language, Bangla, to interact with other communities where their indigenous languages remain unrecognised. Hence there is a necessity of investigating the indigenous students’ beliefs and perceptions about their languages and negotiation of identity and understanding how they maintain their languages and construct their identities through linguistic and cultural resources from their L1 (ethnic language), L2 (Bangla), and L3 (the priority foreign language, English) in the perceived monolingual context of Bangladesh. This case study adopts a critical ethnographic approach and probes questions to explore ten tertiary-level ethnic (Chakma) learners’ cognitions and practices of translanguaging and trans-identity. A qualitative analysis of the data revealed that the participants’ identities were highly influenced by their instrumental needs to accommodate mainstream Bengali society, resulting in the endangerment of their L1 and the marginalisation of their indigenous identities. Possible policy interventions, including the implementation of transformative pedagogy, to ensure inclusive academic and social integration have been suggested.
