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Description
This qualitative study explores how students at a provincial Vietnamese university construct and negotiate their English-related identities within the intersecting discourses of nationalism and globalization. Drawing on Bonny Norton’s concept of identity investment and Zoltán Dörnyei’s L2 Motivational Self System, the research investigates how learners imagine their future participation in global communities through English. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 28 undergraduate students at Long An University and were analyzed thematically. Findings show that students maintain strong local identities while imagining themselves as aspiring global professionals. English is perceived as a strategic resource for flexibility rather than a marker of cultural replacement. However, identity is mediated by institutional requirements, perceived linguistic validity, and unequal access to learning resources. The study contributes to English as a Lingua Franca and identity research by underlining how global English identities are negotiated in a resource-constrained higher education context.
