‘来来, 大家一起玩’ (C’mon, let’s play together): grassroots planning from a Bourdieusian perspective

This paper presents an on-going study of grassroots language-planning engagement in the Chinese transnational communities in the UK. It explores how a group of Chinese mothers organise playgroups for their children to socialise with each other in linguistic and non-linguistic plays to enrich their children’s cultural and linguistic environment. Guided by Bourdieu’s signature concepts of habitus and capital, this study attempts to understand grassroots organisations in the Chinese communities through a socialisation lens. It examines how organisers’/mothers’ sociocultural disposition about, practical knowledge of, and cultural attitudes towards socialisation become unintended forms of social and cultural capital for heritage/community language development. Data sources include observations, recorded playing activities, and unstructured interviews. Using discourse analysis and narrative enquiry as analytical framework, the study focuses on the types of activities organised, language functions and forms in socialisation, and the sociocultural dispositions articulated by the parents. The study highlights how heritage languages can be developed despite symbolic structural constraints that are unfavourable for heritage language learning. The study contributes to the field of FLP by illustrating how parents use their social, cultural and economic capital in locating and using accessible resources to help their children build a transnational cultural capital.