A typology of host language engagement as symbolic, cultural and social capital

This study aims to examine how host language engagement among international scholars operates as symbolic, cultural, and social capital across academic and everyday contexts. Drawing on interviews with 31 international scholars from 14 countries across 16 Chinese universities, it develops a five-mode typology of host language engagement: instrumental, strategic, performative, integrative, and transformative. The findings show that instrumental and strategic engagement support basic functioning and institutional access but rarely yield durable legitimacy; performative engagement generates situational recognition without sustained conversion; integrative engagement facilitates cultural understanding and relational participation; while transformative engagement enables relational immersion and identity reorientation, although institutional recognition remains uneven. Across modes, engagement outcomes vary with linguistic difficulty, time availability, opportunities for sustained use, and institutional arrangements, as well as scholars’ dispositions, prior linguistic experience, trajectories in China, and disciplinary positioning. Theoretically, the study extends Bourdieu’s capital theory by clarifying how the conversion of host language engagement into symbolic, cultural, and social capital is shaped across interactional, institutional, and relational contexts. It also refines Norton’s investment framework by situating engagement within broader structural conditions beyond individual orientation. Practically, it highlights the need for institutionally embedded, practice-based support that recognises host language engagement in academic practice and supports its sustained conversion.