Language Practices and Performances of Identity of Young Adults Within Spaces of a Private University in Bangladesh

Abstract

This paper explores in what ways students from diverse education, demographic, and socio-economic backgrounds interpret spaces and locate themselves within a vertically built hi-tech cosmopolitan private university in Bangladesh. The data are drawn from an ethnographic study on a group of students in a private university in Bangladesh. The analysis of the data shows that the interpretation and realisation of university spaces of these students are relational and relative. These spaces are the site of exhilaration and excitement, on the one hand, and constant struggle, and resistance, on the other. They carry students’ enthusiasm of being part of the newer Western education movement in Bangladesh; they bear with their dreams, desires, and aspirations, not to mention, their conflicts and contradictions and struggles and anguishes; these are also the spaces where they engage in subversive activities and perform alternative identities. These spaces, with students’ individual and collective realisation, transform students while they are transformed too in the process. The paper concludes that the pro-English hi-tech university gives rise to alternative realities for students and these realities need to be understood critically and sympathetically.