LAUSR

ABSTRACT This qualitative study investigates how migrant students from mainland China attending Hong Kong universities, as scale makers, negotiate and construct new scales and identities by utilizing their sociolinguistic resources, and how their scale making is related to such social categories as history and politics. The findings suggest that (re)scaling practices are beyond hierarchically-ordered indexical regularities, but develop and change as a shifting category, and can be considered a construct that allows for negotiation and creation of meanings. The participants show their agentiveness in defining a translocal space that advocates hybridity to their advantage. It is also found that the participants established new tacit norms and organized their identities with reference to experiences and attitudes local students lacked. Under the force or influence of political, social, economic, and interpersonal factors, rescaling practices were continuously in play, and norms were re-constructed by language users.