Language and Identity Construction among Iraqi Diaspora Communities: A Theoretical Perspective and an Integrative Sociolinguistic Framework of Investment, Translanguaging, and Heritage Language Maintenance in a Fragmented Diaspora

Abstract

Migration is not just a change of location for a language community, but a reorganization of the nature of that community's language. This paper presents an integrative theoretical approach to the issue of language use in the construction, negotiation and contestation of identity of the Iraqis in diaspora, a group of population whose internal diversity of religion, ethnicity and mother tongue has not been systematically dealt with in sociolinguistic theory. Existing research on the Arabic-speaking diaspora tends to characterize migrants as a linguistically homogeneous Arab group, while existing research on Iraq's minorities tends to conceptualize them individually and as separate from the other Arabic-speaking minorities, that is, the Assyrian, Chaldean, Kurdish, Turkmen, and Mandaean communities. The aim of this paper is to link these distinct literatures together in one frame by connecting the concepts of investment and imagined communities with translanguaging theory, and to suggest a framework of mediating factors for this group, which consists of: confessional and ethnic plurality, layered and discontinuous migration waves, and a contested rather than single homeland which influence and transform the concept of identity as done through language. The resulting framework is used in generational, digital and minority-within-minority contexts. Implications for heritage language teaching, resettlement and interpreting services, and community language planning are presented, as well as the current state of the framework's restrictions and future studies to test it in the field.