The Spacing of the Hegemonic Chora in the Curriculum of First-Language Attrition

Many studies have focused on the process of language acquisition for newcomers’ children and the ways in which linguistic acculturation can be achieved. Fewer studies, however, have looked at the insidious effects of learning a new language upon one’s mother tongue and ethnic identity within the context of immigration. This study draws on Julia Kristeva’s conceptualization of “the chora” in Revolution in Poetic Language (1984) to illustrate how acquiring a new language can trigger a process of ethnic erosion in terms of one’s first language and identity. This study argues that schools enunciate a new chora, a maternal surrogate that generates a process of “spacing,” which can cause ethnic values to erode. Over time, this duplicate chora dominates the learner’s world through language. The ethnic chora dissipates, giving room to the new one, as the first language becomes a relic that everybody appreciates but no one understands.