Learner Narratives of Translingual Identities

A Multimodal Approach to Exploring Language Learning Histories

Patrick Kiernan

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9783319954370
• eBook ISBN: 9783319954387
• Topic: Sprachen & Linguistik
• Subtopic: Sprachen unterrichten

This book addresses translingual identities through an innovative multimodal analysis of the language learning histories of a class of advanced learners of English in Japan who grew up between two or more languages. The author explores both the translingual experiences of those in the classroom and how they use language and gesture when describing their experiences to each other. This approach uses three perspectives: it looks at the worlds and identities the interviewees construct for themselves; at their interpersonal communication; and at the way they frame their experience. Finally, it offers some lessons based on the observations of the class which reveal the values they share and the key to their success as language learners. It will appeal to applied linguistic and educational researchers, particularly those with an interest in narrative approaches to exploring educational contexts, as well as language educators and policy makers interested in gaining a learner perspective on language learning.

© The Author(s) 2019

Patrick KiernanLearner Narratives of Translingual Identitieshttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-95438-7_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction

Patrick Kiernan¹

(1)

Kenkyuto, Meiji University, Tokyo, Japan

Patrick Kiernan

End Abstract

Aiko :

On school property, you can’t speak any Japanese. And like when you are at that age, you don’t want to stick with the rules, you just want to break the rules so, I was kind of naughty.

Yoko :

(laughs)

Aiko :

That’s why, um I’d speak English in front of my teachers, then spoke Japanese outside. Like, you know, while they’re not watching. So, like my English was kind of Japanese mixed English. So like…

Yoko :

So international, so international. (both laugh)

Aiko :

What are you doing kyo mitai na [like today], kyo [today] what are you doing? (both laugh) Just one word’s like Japanese, and then my mum, I didn’t even realise, I was speaking it. Like, “That’s so omoshiroi [interesting].” Omoshiroi desu ne mitai na [like, that’s so interesting]. I thought it was, and apparently, it was really weird, listening to it so my mum told me “Oh, my god, Aiko you speak weird language!”

Yoko :

(laughs)

Aiko was recounting her experience of attending an English-based international elementary school in Japan. This short extract illustrates how her use of Japanese and English was a focus for evoking her childhood identity. She framed her use of Japanese as “naughty” and naughtiness itself as a natural childish reaction to the English only rule imposed on her by her school. However, her story also shows how this childish act of independence leads her unconsciously into an apparently deviant habit which even her own mother, who gave birth to her in the US so that she would be able to grow up with dual nationality, regarded as “weird.” She suggested that she acquired an unconscious habit of mixing Japanese and English, a practice referred to by linguists as codeswitching (Nishimura 1995, 1997), code-mixing (Muysken 2004), or the term most closely associated with the focus of this book: translanguaging (Canagarajah 2011; García and Li 2013). These would not be terms known to the students themselves even though the practice was one which I believe resonated deeply with the sense of personal identity that Aiko and her classmates shared.

To Yoko, the classmate and friend who was interviewing Aiko, this practice was “so international” but also funny. Part of the reason she probably regards it as funny is because she recognized it as an unconventional but familiar practice that she shared with Aiko because, like her, Yoko spent her childhood between schools in Japan and overseas. For such people, practices like translanguaging are not simply a mode of communication made possible by knowing two languages but are intimately related to who they are. Practices such as translanguaging reflect a sense of identity they share in contrast to the majority of students at their university. This turned out to be an experience and sense of identity that was also shared in various ways by all of the students in their freshman English class and this book is about that experience which I call translingual identity .

An abstract conception such as translingual identity is inevitably a messy phenomenon to describe, especially when attempting to do so in relation to the specific narratives and words of actual people in a context as specific as the interview quoted above. Nevertheless, at the risk of initial over-simplification, in order to develop as clear a definition of translingual identity as possible, I will try to situate the approach taken in this book in relation to some relevant parameters. While there are numerous potential dimensions of identity, three clines that are appropriate for situating the study described in this book would be what might be called the psychological-sociological cline; the essentialist-transient cline; and the individual-community cline. At the extremes of the psychological-sociological cline would be (at the psychological end) an account of identity as a product of the mind and (at the sociological end) a socially determined account of identity. Likewise, the essentialist-transient cline would have hypothetical extremes whereby identity was (at the essentialist end) viewed as permanent unchanging sense of self, and (at the transient end) as something in a constant state of flux. Finally, the individual-community cline would be concerned with identity understood as a property of individuals versus identity in relation to communities. Having posited these three dimensions and their extremes as a heuristic, we can then broadly differentiate approaches and trends describing identity by mapping them in relation to these three clines. So, for example, Marxism could be positioned as an account of identity which was sociologically and community oriented and towards an essentialist account of identity; Erik Erikson’s (1980) account of the way identity changes over the course of a life time could be located as individual and psychologically oriented, while emphasizing an essentialist core that focuses on a specific dimension of transience—the transformation of aging; and Zymunt Bauman’s (2005; Bauman et al. 2011) notion of liquid identity is one that is explicitly transient but concerned with individual identity from a sociological perspective.

This book explores identity as it is evoked in individual narratives in the ongoing talk and semiotic context of video recorded student interviews which are concerned with their life histories. This approach means that I inevitably engage with some broad spans along these spectrums. So the interview focuses on an individual life story of the interviewee but also reveals something of the experience of the interviewer and is implicitly connected to shared points of reference with the class as a whole. Hence this study is concerned with exploring identity both as an individual phenomena and as one connected to the intimate community of a class. This study draws primarily on sociolinguistic resources such as Halliday’s (2003a; Halliday and Matthiessen 1999) Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), which is sociological in orientation, linked for example to Bernstein’s (2000) code theory through Ruquia Hasan’s (2005) work on language and society. Yet, through the narratives the learners also illustrate how their experiences have impacted their psychology, particularly their sense of self. Finally, while the topic of the interviews is concerned with a developing sense of personal identity and so overlaps, in some sense with Erikson’s (1980) idea of life stages, the interviews and the approach to analysis is focused on identity as it is evoked through the transient medium of spoken language. Perhaps the best way to reconcile such conflicting notions of translingual identity is to suggest visualizing the speech act as the stone hitting the pond, creating ripples which spread out in the minds of the speakers and potentially beyond, in this case, potentially extended to the readers of this book.

This book is, therefore, about translingual identity as explored through narratives of language learning histories—in this case those of a class of Japanese freshman university students. Translingual ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Introduction
• Part I. Theoretical Concerns
• Part II. Learner Narratives of Translingual Identity
• Part III. The Translingual Community
• Back Matter