Negotiating identity and English performative competence: Uyghur students in tertiary education in China

Informed by the notions of performativity and performative competence, this study explores the process by which a group of internal-migrant Uyghur students develop their performative competence and the way they negotiate their identities during English language learning and usage. Data collected from interviews and observations suggest that Uyghur students are able to contest the unfavourable identity attributed to them from their own English language learning contexts and trajectories. These students are found to improve their English performative competence by strategically drawing on heritage linguistic resources. Moreover, they develop their performative competence by adopting multimodal linguistic resources. The performative competence is found to allow participants to perform a metropolitan identity. The implications of findings for relevant stake holders are discussed. Copyright © 2016 The University of Hong Kong;