‘It’s not like an aspect that I’m gonna fixate on’: Chinese heritage language learners’ dynamic negotiations of language ideologies and ethnic identity

The relationship between language and heritage or ethnic identity has been widely examined in multilingualism research, yet findings remain inconsistent. While some studies report a close alignment between heritage language proficiency and identity affiliation, others point to variability and contestation. Less attention, however, has been paid to learners’ internally complex and shifting ideological orientations towards this relationship. Focusing on Chinese heritage language learners (CHLLs) in Australian higher education, this study examines how learners understand, negotiate, and strategically orient to the language–identity nexus. Drawing on multi-method qualitative data from seventeen CHLLs in an Australian university and informed by language ideology and socially situated perspectives on identity, the analysis reveals a dynamic, non-essentialist language–ethnicity relationship. Participants sometimes associated Chinese with heritage affiliation, yet also resisted treating language as a defining or obligatory marker of Chineseness. Their orientations were often ambivalent and responsive to changing social experiences and learning trajectories. These findings challenge essentialised assumptions about heritage language motivation and highlight heritage language learning as embedded in fluid, agentive identity negotiations. The study contributes to multilingualism and heritage language research by demonstrating that learners’ ideological orientations are internally complex and dynamically negotiated over time.