THE LEARNER DEVELOPMENT JOURNAL
学習者ディベロップメント研究部会誌

ISSN: 2433-5401
https://ldjournal.ld-sig.org

The Learner Development Journal Issue 5: Engaging with the Multilingual Turnfor Learner Development: Practices, Issues, Discourses, and Theorisations
Author: Andy Barfield
Title: Re-interpreting University Students’ Multilingual Lives: Connections, Questions, andWider Issues in Society
Date of publication online: 2021
Author contact: <abarfield001f@g.chuo-u.ac.jp>

Published by the Japan Association for Language Teaching
Learner Development Special Interest Group, Tokyo
http://ld-sig.org/
Copyright 2021 each respective author

The APA citation reference for this paper is:
Barfield, A. (2021). Re-interpreting university students’ multilingual lives: Connections,questions, and wider issues in society. In A. Barfield, O. Cusen, Y. Imamura, & R. Kelly(Eds.), The Learner Development Journal Issue 5: Engaging with the Multilingual Turn for
Learner Development: Practices, Issues, Discourses, and Theorisations (pp. 104-124). Tokyo:
The Japan Association for Language Teaching (JALT) Learner Development Special
Interest Group.

Articles are published in the Learner Development Journal under a Creative Commons Attribution
License (CC BY), of which CC BY 4.0 is the most recent version. Under this agreement, authors grant users
the right to unrestricted dissemination and re-use of the work. They ask only that proper attribution
is given to the work.

NARRATIVE ACCOUNT
Re-interpreting University Students’Multilingual Lives: Connections, Questions,and Wider Issues in Society
Andy Barfield, Chuo University <abarfield001f@g.chuo-u.ac.jp>
In this narrative account I explore how university students see their linguistic repertoires and what connections
they make to wider issues in society. The site for this exploration is a weekly general education lecture course
taught in Japanese and English on “Multilingual Issues in a Globalising World” at a university in Tokyo. The main
tools of this exploration are language portraits and written reflections by four students, and later interviews
with them about their portraits and reflections, as well as discussions with colleagues teaching the course, my“response community,” and two reviewers for this issue of The Learner Development Journal. These different
interactions lead to questions of linguistic privilege, discrimination, and oppression, as well as to a considerationthat a critical stance towards the multilingual turn in learner development may need to take account of the deeprooted historical and political impacts of imperialism and nationalism.
このナラティブアカウントでは，大学生が自身の言語レパートリーをどのように考えているのか，またそれを幅広い社会問題にどのように関連付けているのかを探求する。東京都の大学で，毎週日本語と英語で開講される「グローバル社会における多言語主義問題」という一般教養の講義で調査を行った。その講義を受講した4人の学生の言語ポートレートと振り返りを収集し，それらに関するインタビューを行った。また，「レスポンス・コミュニティ」として私と共に講義を担当する同僚，そして「The Learner Development Journal / 学習者
ディベロ ップメント研究部会誌」の本号の2人のレビュアーとも議論も行った。これらの異なる相互作用は，言語的特権，言語差別，言語的抑圧に関する問題に焦点を当てるとともに，学習者の発展における多言語的転回に対する批判的な姿勢は，帝国主義とナショナリズ
ムの根深い歴史的・政治的な影響を考慮する必要があるかどうか考えることに至った。
ဤဇာတ္ေၾကာင္းၿပန္ေဖာ္ၿပခ်က္သည္ တကၠ သိုလ္ေက်ာင္းသား/သူမ်ားက သူတို႕ ၏ ဘာသာစကားစံု အသံုးၿပဳႏု ိင္မအေပၚအၿမင္
ွု၊ ဘာသာစံုစ
ကားသံုးမွအား
ုလူမအသိ
ွုုင္းအ၀ိုင္းတြင္ၿဖစ္ပ်က္ေနေသာ က်ယ္ၿပန္ ့ေသာ ဘာသာစကားသံုးစဲြမွ ု ၿပႆနာမ်ား ႏွင့္မည္သို ့ေသာ ဆက္စပ္မမ်ားၿပဳ
ွုလွပ္ု ၿခင္းႏွင့္ စပ္လ်ဥ္း ေသာ ေလ့လာမွၿဖစ္ု ပါသည္။ ယခုေလ့လာမွသည္
ုအပတ္စဥ္သင္ၾကားေသာ အေထြေထြ ပညာေရးပို ့ခ်ခ်က္ အတန္း“ႏု ိင္ငံတကာ ဆက္ႏြယ္ ေနေသာ ကမၻာၾကီး (globalizing world)တြင္ ၿဖစ္ပြားေနေသာ ဘာသာစံုၿပႆနာမ်ား” တြင္ၿပဳလုပ္ေသာ ေလ့လာမွၿဖစ္
ုသည္။ ဤေလ့လာမွသည္
ုေက်ာင္းသား ၄ ေရးဆဲြေသာ ဘာသာစံု႐ုတ္ပံုမ်ား၊ ထိုေက်ာင္းသားမ်ားႏွင့္ေတြ ့ဆံုေမးၿမန္းေဆြးေႏြးမွမ်ား
ုႏွင့္အတန္း

အတြက္ ေရးသားထားေသာ စာတမ္းမ်ား၊ ထိုအတန္းအားအတူသင္ၾကားေနေသာ ဆရာ၊ဆရာမမ်ားႏွင့္ ကၽြန္ေတာ္၏ေဆြးေႏြး၀ိုင္းအဖဲြ ့၀င္မ်ားႏွ့္င့္ ေဆြးေႏြးေသာ စကား၀ိုင္းမ်ား၊ The Learner Development Journal (သင္ယူသူ ဖြင့္ၿဖိဳးတိုးတက္မဂ်ာနယ္ွု) သံုးသပ္သူမ်ား၏ မွတ္ခ်က္ႏွင

ေဆြးေႏြးသံုးသပ္မမ်ား
ွုအေပၚအေၿခခံ၍ ေရးသားထားပါသည္။ ထိုအၿပန္အလွန္သံုးသပ္ေဆြးေႏြးမွမ်ားသည္
ုဘာသာစကားခဲြၿခားမွ၊ဖိူ ႏတ္ွ ိ မွ၊အ
ူခြင့္ထူးခံရယူမမ်ား၊သင္
ွူယူသ(ူ ေက်ာင္းသားမ်ား)အားဘာသာစံု အသံုးၿပဳမွ ုသို ့ေၿပာင္းလဲရာတြင္ ကိုလိုနီ၀ါဒႏွင့္အမ် ိဳးသားေရး၀ါဒ၏သမိ္ုင္းဆိုင္
ရာႏွင့္ ႏု ိင္ငံေရးဆိုင္ရာ နက္႐င္ွ ု ိ းေသာလႊမ္းမိုးမွအား
ုအေလးေပးစဥ္းစားရန္လိုအပ္ေၾကာင္း သိၿမင္ေစသည္။

Keywords
language portrait, linguistic repertoire, linguistic privilege, linguistic discrimination, linguistic oppression
言語ポートレート，言語レパートリー，言語的特権，言語差別，言語的抑圧ဘာသာစကားသံုးစဲြမွ ႐ုု တ္ပံုမ်ား၊ ဘာသာစကားစံု အသံုးၿပဳႏု ိင္မ၊လူွ ု မွအသိ
ုုင္းအ၀ိုင္းတြင္ၿဖစ္ပြား ေနေသာ က်ယ္ၿပန္ ့ေသာ ၿပႆနာမ်ား၊
ကိုလိုနီ၀ါဒႏွင့္ အမ် ဳိ းသားေရး၀ါဒ၊ သင္ယသူ စူ မ္းစစ္သးုံ သပ္ဖြံ ၿ့ ဖိဳးမွ

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Andy Barfield

Starting Points

I“When I was small, I resisted to use it (Korean) in public. Now it’s my identity.
mixed heritage student in Tokyo

Kaori,1 an mid-February 2020 I meet up with my colleague Yoko to talk over the changes thatare starting to take shape for the coming academic year in a general education course,
Multilingual Issues in a Globalising World, that we co-coordinate and teach in the Faculty of
Law at a university in Tokyo. Eight colleagues (from Politics, Law, and the Chinese, English,
French, and German departments in the faculty) each teach two or three classes of thisrotation course in a 14-week semester. Yoko herself is a specialist in south-east Asianpolitics and speaks Japanese, English, Indonesian Bahasa, and Thai fluently. My backgroundis in applied linguistics, and in our lunchtime meeting I hope to share some initial thoughtsfrom interviews that I had recently done with students about their linguistic repertoires. I
start by mentioning what Kaori, one of the interviewees, had experienced. She had grown
up in Tokyo, using Korean at home with her mother and Japanese with her father, butbecame reluctant to use Korean outside of the home. For several years Kaori had restricted
her language use to Japanese in public, although she now sees using Korean as central toher identity. This leads me to recall some of the pressures that my son (born to my wife,
his Burmese mother, and me, his British father) went through growing up trilingually inJapan with English and Japanese, together with some everyday family Burmese. He had astrong desire to be the same as his peers, but had a di cult period during elementary school
where he felt ashamed of being different. That our son had mixed heritage and was fluent
in Japanese and English was only ever acknowledged by one of his teachers in six years ofelementary school. Otherwise his cultural and linguistic diversity was invisibilised.
I ask Yoko whether she has ever felt similar restrictions on her language use. She respondsthat language rights have long been a fundamental issue in her life. Born in Japan, she comesfrom Fukui prefecture, which she finds is not so familiar to many people: Ah Fukushima ,“Ah Fukuoka!”, others often say. When she moved to Tokyo to go to university, Yoko started
realising how Tokyo-centric everything is, and since then questions of identity have comeup for her throughout her adult life. Many students from local areas/outside Japan may think
about that, Yoko ventured, but in Tokyo people are mostly unfamiliar with how language
discrimination is experienced by minorities.

Had she felt positioned as provincial or unsophisticated I ask. Always but Yoko wasgood at adopting new languages and could switch between her local Fukui variety of Japaneseand standard Japanese (which is based on the Tokyo variety). She remembers deciding
during her one-year at high school in the US that she would purposefully use Fukui-ben
when she came back from the US to Japan. At university in Tokyo as an undergraduate, Yoko
had used standard Japanese most of the time, but would switch into Fukui-ben whenever
she was with friends from Fukui. She still does this when she meets up with her high school
generation for reunions: It’s densenteki / 伝染的 [contagious],” she remarks, using a term
beginning to circulate in the mass media in early 2020.
Unlike Yoko, I have limited experience of using a non-standard variety of my main
language, English. I grew up in a small commuter market town, Berkhamsted, in the green
belt around London, using standard Southern British English (SBE). If I once had a local
variety of Hertfordshire English when I was younger, it was soon standardised throughfamily, school, mass media, and other middle-class language socialisation processes. As
1.

Student and colleague names in this narrative account are aliases.

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SBE became my natural (and beguilingly unmarked, prestigious) variety of educated British
English, I acquired, without being aware, a certain linguistic privilege (Deguchi, 2020;
McIntosh, 1988 Subtirelu, 2013). After working in Paris for 6 months in my late teens,
I studied French and German language and literature at university, spending a year atJohannes-Gutenberg University of Mainz in (then West) Germany as an exchange student.
By the time I graduated, I could use French and German more or less fluently, and still speak
both languages with some degree of facility now and often with different colleagues on theMultilingual Issues in a Globalising World (MIGW) course. As well as living and working in Japan,
I have lived and taught in France, Spain, and the former Yugoslavia, so, together with myintermediate proficiency in Japanese, I speak some Serbo-Croat and Spanish, some phrases
and expressions in Burmese, as well as a few words in many other languages. That is mymultilingual self. Like Yoko, I know and use several different languages, and we have sharedinterests in languages, politics, and language issues in society.
We are talking a few weeks ahead of the declaration of the COVID-19 pandemic. While wehave the sense that a multilingual consciousness is “gradually gaining foothold in Japanesesociety” (Shoji, 2019, p. 193), we also recognise that such advances are ideologically contested(Horner & Weber, 2018) and that for people from minoritised communities, whether
Japanese or non-Japanese, language discrimination frequently figures as a contentious issue
in their lives (Gottlieb, 2006 Barfield, 2019). A month or so earlier Foreign Minister Taro
Aso had once again announced that “No other country but this one has lasted for as long as 2,000
years with one language, one ethnic group and one dynasty” (Yamaguchi, 2020). Kaori and Yoko’s
experiences, and my family’s too, both confirm and contradict the ideological sway that suchmonolingual myths still hold in Japan.
As Yoko and I talk further, we agree that for us a central part of education is for students
to connect their personal experiences to issues in society, and move back and forth between
issues in society and their own lives. It is also important for students to engage withquestions of equality, discrimination, and social justice. We aim to nurture such criticalawareness in the MIGW course, but we are never completely sure how that works forstudents. In the introductory lecture, for example, we look at the linguistic landscapesof global cities like Tokyo, Manchester (England), and Singapore, as well as introduce
the concepts of linguistic repertoires and language portraits. Emphasising the impacts ofnation-state building on language use, we delve into how languages and varieties (and theirusers) are socio-politically constructed. We also present historical perspectives on language
standardization and linguistic diversity in Japan, including minority language communities
and newcomer immigrant groups in Japanese society. Subsequent lectures in the course take abroad interdisciplinary focus on multilingual issues in different European and North American
societal contexts (Canada, France, Germany, South Tyrol, Sweden) in the spring semester,and in various Asian societies (China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Myanmar,
Taiwan, and Thailand) in the autumn. Questions to do with the impacts of colonialism,
imagined national communities, global languages, multilingual education, language rights,
and majority/minority relationships are constantly re-threaded through the course. To help
students take up and engage with the many topics that come up over the course, they havepair discussions every 20 minutes or so, as well as write a weekly reflection about key issues
that a lecture covers.2 As for languages used in MIGW, roughly half of the lectures are given
2.

The current guideline for the weekly reflection encourages students to write in more than one language: 総括
を書く際は，日本語のみならず，可能な限り英語，またはその他の言語も使用してみてください。例えば，前半で日本語，後半で英語を使用する，あるいは日本語と英語を交互に切り替えながら書くなど，自身が書きやすいように工夫してください。もし日本語をメインで使用したい場合は，それでも結構ですが，英語またはその他の言語を使用することに挑戦してみてください。As you write yourreflection, try to use Japanese, English, or other languages as much as possible. You decide. For example, you
can try to write the first part in Japanese, and the second part in English, or you can switch from one language

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Andy Barfieldin Japanese, with a quarter in English, and the remainder in both Japanese and English. At
the end of either semester students choose a multilingual issue to research and write a shortreport in Japanese, English, or both languages.
Despite these efforts to make MIGW student-centred, it sometimes seems as if the issues
covered in the course are at some distance from the students. What then can we do tounderstand and appreciate better the connections that the students themselves make, see,and develop, from their own languaged lives to different multilingual issues in a globalisingworld Just as importantly, what can we do to help students make connections from thecases and issues that the course covers to their own lives And what might we learn fromthe students in the process These questions come up in the lunchtime discussion with Yoko
in early 2020. They follow on from a new focus in the initial lecture in the 2019 autumn
semester on showing and talking through example student language portraits (LPs), and thenasking the students to produce their own, annotated with comments in Japanese, English, orboth languages. Later, in January 2020, at the end of the autumn semester, I had interviewed
a small group of students, including Kaori (the student mentioned above), about their LPs andlinguistic repertoires to develop deeper understanding of their languaged lives and the diverse
connections they made to wider issues in society. This led to further conversations withcolleagues, as well as to other interviews with students about connections from cases andissues in the course to their own lives.
In this narrative account I would like to share the stories of four students taking the
MIGW course and reflect on the responses of myself and others to their experiences andperspectives, particularly to do with issues of linguistic privilege, discrimination, andoppression that their stories illuminate. These three phenomena cluster around recurrent
questions of language power and inequality, as well as linguistic restriction, choice, andaccess (Coulmas, 2018). I see linguistic privilege as referring to the material and immaterial
advantages that an individual gains from acquiring (a) particular language(s), or a prestigious
variety of (a) particular language(s) (Skutnabb-Kangas, 1986, 20153). Advantages may
include, for example, “easier access to social, political, and educational institutions, (and)access to an additional form of capital” (Subtirelu, 2013), as well as not being negatively
evaluated because of accent (Lippi-Green, 1994 Gallagher-Guertsen, 2007). Thus, anindividual growing up with the dominant, fully legitimated, standard language of a society
will have greater educational, employment, and social opportunities than another person
whose main language has low status and is not widely used within the same society. Second,
I take “linguistic discrimination” as the unjust and prejudicial treatment that individuals
experience based on the language(s) or variety of a language that they use (or do not use).
Linguistic discrimination also includes unequal access to power and resources that individuals
have on grounds of language (Skutnabb-Kangas, 1986, 2015). Language discrimination canbe perpetrated intralingually, as well as interlingually: Individuals who have acquired aprestigious variety of a global language such as English, for example, may well have greater
employment opportunities, just as those who do not have the standard variety of a particularlanguage may often face prejudice and stigmatisation (Lippi-Green, 1994 Skutnabb-Kangas,
1986, 2015 Subtirelu, 2013). In contrast, I understand linguistic oppression as ongoing
systematic marginalisation and eradication of (a) language(s) used by minorities withina particular state (Roche, 2019), ultimately leading to erasure. Language oppression has
been defined as the enforcement of language loss by physical, mental, social, and spiritualto the other as you write. If you prefer to write mostly in Japanese, that is OK, but try to use some English (oranother language) too.
3.

Skutnabb-Kangas discusses this in her 1986 work, but the original publication in Phillipson & SkutnabbKangas (1986) is not readily accessible. The 2015 discussion by Skutnabb-Kangas can be retrieved online.

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coercion (Taff et al., 2018, p. 863). A case in point is the destruction of the indigenous
language, culture, and lifestyle (Okazaki, 2019, p. 361) of the Ainu in Japan.
With questions of linguistic privilege, discrimination, and oppression emerging at different
points in the stories further below, I will consider, in the final part of this narrative account,
what this may entail for how we look at the multilingual turn in learner development. I
continue by focusing on learners’ language portraits and the connections that the four
students make to wider issues in society.

Linguistic Repertoires and Language Portraits
I first became interested in language portraits in 2015 through a workshop that Alice Chikgave at the JALT international conference (Chik, 2015). A few months later during teacher
education work that I was doing in Burma/Myanmar, my co-facilitator and I used different
ways of doing language portraits with the teacher trainer participants. The language diversitythat they brought into life in their language portraits was completely inspiring for us (Barfield& Morgan, 2016). Since then, through trial and experimentation, I have come to use different
portraits as near-peer role models (Murphey, 1996, 1998) to help students imagine their own
ways of representing their linguistic repertoires.
Linguistic repertoires are constituted of an array of linguistic, communicative, and semiotic
resources. They are highly individualised, variable, dynamic, and mobile and can offer
insights into the peculiar biographical trajectory of the speaker (Blommaert, 2008, p. 16).
Users’ repertoires include “concrete accents, language varieties, registers, genres, modalities
such as writing” (Blommaert, 2010, p. 102) and “ways of using language in particularcommunicative settings and spheres of life, including the ideas that people have about such
ways of using, their language ideologies” (Blommaert, 2010, p. 102). Importantly, the view of
linguistic repertoires put forward by Blommaert and other researchers such as Busch (2012,2015, 2017, 2018) is both intralingual and interlingual. It is not only a question of the different
languages that individuals use, but also of the range of ways in which they use a particularlanguage. In other words, exploring linguistic repertoires involves looking at individuals’
language use, experiences, and beliefs both within and across languages.
One useful way to understand how individuals see their languaged lives is for them tovisualize their linguistic repertoires through drawing language portraits (Kalaja et al., 2008
Pietik inen et al., 2008 Krumm, 2010 Busch, 2012 heteroglossia.net, n.d.; Chik, 2014), andto share stories and experiences that emerge for them from reflecting on and talking about
their portraits. While some researchers have also looked at how LPs can be multimodally
extended through the use of video (Kusters & De Meulder, 2019), multiple drawings (Prasad,
2014b), personalised drawings created from digital photos (Farmer, 2012; Prasad, 2014a), andvisual narratives (Melo-Pfeifer & Fidalgo Schmidt, 2014), it is striking that much LP researchtends to take an interlingual view and give greater emphasis to users’ experiences withseparate languages. Yet, within individuals’ experiences with their first languages, there aremany potentially fertile connections to wider issues within the communities, networks, andsocieties that they are part of. For this very reason, in the MIGW course, we ask students toconsider both intralingual and interlingual perspectives for their own language portraits.
Language portraits are most often created within a silhouette outline (heteroglossia.
net, n.d. Chik, Markose, & Alperstein, 2018). In the MIGW course, we have come to use ahybrid approach somewhere between free-form and silhouette outlines where we present
several near-peer LPs (i.e., LPs produced by other learners close in age and experience tothe students in question) as examples of how students might produce their own Language
Portraits. Figure 1 shows one near-peer LP created by a MIGW student that we use to raise

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Andy Barfieldstudents’ awareness of their own linguistic repertoires and of possible ways to make theirown language portraits.

Figure 1. Near-peer Language Portrait Used in the Multilingual Issues Course4
The portrait illustrates how individuals can express a strong sense of their intralingual
range. In this case the student highlights their Tokushima accent and dialect, standard
Japanese, texting, and keigo (a polite and respectful register In Japanese, used according toage and status). The student also includes their use of Chinese and English. The upper body,arms, and head all represent the student’s intralingual range in Japanese, with the Tokushima
variety colouring the head and face. Other languages (Chinese and English) are shown in thestudent’s legs and have less pictorial prominence. They are just one part of this individual’s
linguistic repertoire. Moreover, such a near-peer LP is immediately tangible for students andlets them imagine how they might draw their own LPs.

Language Portraits and Connections to Wider Issues in Society
In January 2020 I asked for interview volunteers from the autumn semester MIGW courseand ended up interviewing six students about their original Language Portraits that they had
made at the start of the autumn semester in late September. In these interviews I wanted tomove beyond the experiential and probe what connections the students saw between theirlanguage portraits and wider issues in society. First, I invited the students to interpret andtalk about their language portraits. Then, drawing on recent work done by Hatoss (2019)
into unpacking monolingual ideologies, I asked the students to consider, based on theirown experiences and understanding of multilingual issues in society, what they noticed as
dominant language ideologies in Japan, and why people might have particular views towards
others who speak or use language in different ways. I next guided each interviewee to place
their A4 language portrait in the middle of an A3 sheet of paper and make notes around their
4.

The figure shows a screenshot of a slide used in the opening lecture.

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original portraits so as to extend their LPs to the wider societal perspectives that they noticed.
The interviews concluded with a final discussion about what they had each noted. Theinterviews were carried out in English for the most part, with students free to use Japanese
when they wanted or needed to. Each interview took 45-60 minutes. For reasons of space, I
will limit the focus here to the original and extended LPs of two students, Kaori and Nanako,
by providing an interpretative commentary of their language portraits and the extended
connections towards issues in society that they each made.

Kaori’s Language Portrait: Connections and Questions
Kaori grew up in Tokyo, and used Korean at home with her mother and Japanese with herfather, but for a period of her life became reluctant to use Korean outside of the home. As she
started talking about her LP (see Figure 2), she was quick to identify standard Japanese as her“mother tongue.”

Figure 2. Kaori’s Language Portrait
While her parents and siblings use standard Japanese at home, Kaori also stressed theimportance of Korean in her life, which she referred to as her second language:
My second language is Korean. My mother is Korean so sometimes I use Korean at home and I
like watching Korean TV programmes. Listening was from the beginning and I learnt grammar
when I was six.
Initially Kaori’s mother spoke Korean to her and Kaori responded in Japanese. As a childshe started reading in Japanese, and sometimes watched TV and videos in Korean. “I have to
use Japanese because I live in Japan, but I want to use Korean and sometimes I think in Korean,” Kaorisaid, adding “My brain is Korean and that Korean is an unfinished project for her: I still haveto learn writing or reading but I only think in Korean.” Nowadays Kaori sometimes uses Korean
with her mother, other times Japanese.
Kaori has occasionally used Korean in her part-time job. When a Korean customer cameto the furniture shop where she works, she tried to explain in Korean and the customer

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was grateful to her. Kaori also talked about using keigo working at the cash register. As foruniversity, Kaori uses colloquial Japanese with other students, and keigo with her teachers.
English and Chinese feature in Kaori’s life too. When Kaori was 15 or 16, she went to thePhilippines to study English for a few months. At the school she made Korean friends and still
keeps in touch with them by Line (a popular messenger app in Japan):
Until I went to the Philippines, I didn‘t use Korean, except my mother, so I didn’t have chance toKorean people but after when I got to the Philippines I got Korean friends and I tried to speak. ...
I didn’t think I could make them understood but I could and I got confidence.
Unusually, Kaori also started learning Chinese at high school and had already been learning
Chinese for four years. While she uses Korean in text messages with a friend (“My Japanese
friend can speak and write Korean, and we have the same hobby so sometimes we text in Korean”), she
did not feel that there were public spaces where she could use Chinese or Korean freely.
This internalised sense of restriction was a theme that Kaori elaborated in talking about her
extended LP as shown in Figure 3. Kaori now identifies strongly with her Korean heritage.
From her teen years onwards, this became a central part of how she sees herself.

Figure 3. Kaori’s Extended Language Portrait
At her junior high school there were no other mixed heritage or foreign children, andKaori confided about her identity with her close friends only. As her name was Japanese, noteven her teachers, apart from her homeroom teacher with whom she was particularly close,knew that Kaori had a diverse background. In contrast, at senior high school, many of her
peers came from mixed backgrounds (“there are many haafu5 students like me”), and this waswhen she started to accept and value her own diversity. Later, by making Korean friends in
the Philippines, Kaori’s confidence grew in using Korean and a rming her Korean identity.
Reflecting on the issues in wider society, Kaori observes that, for many Japanese, people
5.

The term haafu
Japanese parent.

half is commonly used in Japan to refer to persons who have one Japanese and one non-

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who use different languages are just others.” She explains, “They accept but ‘sen o hiku / 線を引く’ [they draw a line].” Kaori illustrates this by imitating typical comments that might bemade in response to people speaking different languages around them: nihonjin kadoka …
gaikokujin dato gaikokugo shabetteru to … ahh nanka chigau / 日本人かどうか...外国人だと、外国語喋ってると...あぁ 何か違う” whether you are Japanese or not
if it’s a foreigner speaking a foreign
languageahhh there’s something different about this]. Kaori recalled that when she wassmaller, she felt she should not use Korean in public spaces: “When I was small, I thought I must
not speak Korean in public space…” If she were to use Korean in public, Kaori felt that she would
not be seen as Japanese by others: “... People think she’s not Japanese ...” Her mother however
had no such reservations about using Korean in public, and when she did, Kaori secretly
whispered to herself, “Don’t speak, don’t speak.” At that time of her life Kaori had a deeply felt
need to be seen as normal, “Yes, now it’s my identity but at that time when I was small, I want to
be normal child. Normal meant being Japanese-speaking, and learning a second language
meant English, as most people in Japan assume, Kaori noted.
Kaori also expressed the view that people can be fearful of minorities because of the shogai/ 障害 [barriers or obstacles] that they may need to deal with if they recognise people asdifferent from themselves. All the same, Kaori felt that societal norms are changing because
people from minority groups and communities had become more open about expressing theiridentities as part of their own kosei / 個性 [individuality]. Although she now claims a more
complex and diverse identity for herself, she still struggles to use Korean publicly in her daily
life.

Nanako’s Language Portrait: Connections and Questions
Nanako comes from Kansai, the region of Honshu that includes the cities of Kobe, Kyoto,
Osaka, and Nara and that extends over seven prefectures.6 In her LP (see Figure 4) Nanako
highlights “Kansai-ben,” the Kansai region variety of Japanese, at the top, with notes about
keigo (a polite and respectful register in Japanese), standard Japanese, and Persian on her
left, and English and Spanish on her right. Nanako begins by explaining that Kansai-ben isher main language and that she uses it for talking with her friends at university in Tokyo, nomatter where they come from. She thinks in her head in Kansai-ben ( Kansai-ben is the coreof my speaking ), and everyone in her family uses Kansai-ben, including her father, although
he comes from Gifu prefecture. Nanako’s home is a city in Shiga prefecture, and all throughschool from elementary school onwards she remembers everyone (children and adults) using
Kansai-ben. School textbooks were written in standard Japanese, but Nanako read them with
Kansai-ben intonation. So, Kansai-ben is at the centre of herself for Nanako.
Nanako started using keigo in club activities at junior high school when she joined thewater-polo club. She spoke keigo with teachers and her seniors, and in turn as she becamea senior, she expected the new juniors to use keigo with her. “If I didn’t speak keigo, people
would dislike me,” she explained, as they would think she was not showing them respect:“It’s a Japanese way. She also uses standard Japanese when she does her part-time job as aswimming instructor at a fitness club. She does not want the children to get distracted byher Kansai-ben. Rather, she wants to be sure that they can understand clearly what she says.
Nanako also opts for standard Japanese when she writes reports at university (adding that
she would do so too if she were at university in Kansai) because universities use standard
Japanese: “I don’t feel strange so much.”
Our conversation moves to how Nanako likes learning English. She started with English inher first year at elementary school. At that time she was not particularly interested in English,
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but that changed at junior high school when she started learning grammar and vocabulary
and doing translation. She realised she understood grammar and how to make sentences. She
could also remember English words. Nanako’s image of English was transformed as a result.

Figure 4. Nanako’s Language Portrait
At university, Nanako decided to take Persian as her second foreign language. Originally
Nanako had wanted to study Spanish, but she didn’t get into the university where she
hoped to do this, so she decided to take up Spanish in addition to Persian. She wanted to
do something different from other people, she commented. Nanako started Spanish withdokugaku / 独学 self-study and then did a volunteer job where she could do some basic
translating and interpreting for Mexican companies and retailers in Tokyo. Later, in the firstsemester of her third year, Nanako took a public lecture adult education class in Spanish at auniversity in central Tokyo.
When I ask Nanako about tensions she has experienced to do with language in her life,
she mentions that sometimes her Kansai-ben way of speaking is not understood by otherstudents. When this happens, she explains what she wants to say, but she doesn’t feel any
negative judgment from others about her use of Kansai-ben. What she does notice, though, isthat others (for example, teachers in the MIGW course) tend to put a broad label of “minority
language” or “minority variety on Kansai-ben, whereas she sees a range of varieties within
Kansai-ben across the different prefectures of Kansai. For Nanako, Shiga-ben, for example,
is different from Kyoto-ben, and Osaka-ben is completely different from Shiga-ben too.
She feels it is important that her minority variety is recognised as there are differences inculture too. So, for Nanako, gengo no taiyousei / 言語の多様性 [linguistic diversity] is very muchconnected to her sense of local identity. Yet, if such finer linguistic diversity is not recognised,
her own identity is similarly neither seen nor recognised. It is not so much a question for
Nanako that “we are the same but different,” but rather that “we are similar (but not the same).”Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 5 • December 2021

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In her extended portrait, Nanako places English in relation to what, in her view, are minority
languages, Japanese, and dialects in Japan (on the left side of her extended portrait in Figure 5),commenting that they should be preserved because they embody regional culture.

Figure 5. Nanako’s Extended Language Portrait
Nanako also includes different varieties of Kansai-ben (in the top right corner), observing
that Kansai-ben is used informally in schools between students and by teachers, and thatstandard Japanese is the formal variety in secondary education in Kansai. From the startof the interview when Nanako said, “Kansai-ben is my main language,” she expresses a verystrong sense of using language differently from the dominant Tokyo and standard Japanese
norms at the ideological centre of multilingual issues in Japanese society.

Learning from Kaori and Nanako’s Stories
Kaori and Nanako put forward detailed interpretations of their linguistic repertoires fromboth interlingual and intralingual perspectives. They each locate the language that they
identify most strongly with in their head and shoulders (Korean for Kaori, and Kansai-ben for
Nanako). Their portraits seem to point to an embodied language hierarchy in the top-down
axis. In Kaori’s case this goes from Korean to standard Japanese (with keigo and texting) to
English, then Chinese, whereas in Nanako’s case the hierarchy is configured with Kansaiben at the top, then standard Japanese, with English and keigo in her arms, and Spanish inboth legs, with Persian at the bottom of the hierarchy. It is also noticeable how personal
relationships, particular domains, and specific places rather than wider societal conditions
figure in their interpretations. Friendship networks play an important role for Kaori infinding her way to use Korean more freely, while Nanako’s use of standard Japanese is largely
confined to her work at the fitness club and report writing at university.
Kaori and Nanako have each faced language discrimination, but in differing ways. Kaori
followed the monolingual norm in her surrounding environment and became ashamed ofusing Korean. Later, the external conditions changed for her in high school and during her
stay in the Philippines where she could see, hear, and interact with others using different
languages. Although she began using Korean again, this remains largely a home language for

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her. Nanako, on the other hand, grew up using Kansai-ben within her family, at school, andin her social life. She could freely use Kansai-ben in her life. For Nanako, Kansai-ben seems
to have a social, economic, and cultural prestige, as well as recognition, that is completely
absent for Kaori in relation to Korean. At the same time Nanako is sensitive to others
overwriting her own linguistic and cultural practices and imposing labels that mask her own
diversity within a non-majority way of doing things.
It is noticeable that both Kaori and Nanako themselves see the wider issues largely interms of practices that directly affect their lives rather than in relation to specific ideologies
or wider social, political, or economic conditions, or systems within Japanese society.
Their understandings come across as naturalised in that they are mostly focused on theirexperiential worlds. While this goes hand in hand with the personalised reflection that
language portraits engender, it also results, in hindsight, from my asking the students tomake written extensions outwards from their language portraits to dominant language
ideologies in society, and to particular views that people may have about others who speak or
use language in different ways. In terms of coming to appreciate and understand important
language issues in Kaori and Nanako’s immediate social worlds, this extending process was
effective. Yet, this also made me aware that the process of connection and extension goes
both ways not only from how individuals relate their own experiences outwards, but also
how they mediate external conditions and factors in society inwards to themselves (Clandinin& Connelly, 2000). As these extensions were initially made through writing, it seemed well
worth reconsidering the use of reflective writing in the course itself.
In turn this led to changes in the reflection tasks in the 2020 MGIW course. One of the key
adjustments we made was to ask students (a) in Week 1 to make their language portraits
together with a longer reflection in Japanese, English or both languages, and (b) in Week 12 tolook back at Weeks 1-12 and write about three common issues that they saw across different
lectures and cases in relation to their own lives and to changing conditions in society. For thissecond longer reflection the students were asked to use Japanese, English, or other languages
as much as possible. I would like to look next at what these two longer reflective tasks led tofor two other students, a year later at the end of the 2020 autumn semester.

Making Further Connections
Ji-woo and LiMing are both international students doing their undergraduate studies who
took the 2020 MIGW course. In January 2021, after the end of classes, they volunteered to beinterviewed about their language portraits and the connections that they had explored in theirsecond longer reflections. The interviews were held in English and Japanese, video-recordedin oom, and lasted 45 minutes (Ji-woo) and 60 minutes (LiMing). I have reconstructed
below two short narratives for Ji-woo and LiMing about their multilingual lives and theconnections they made to wider issues in society.

LiMing’s Story
LiMing was one of the few students who made a digital drawing of her language portrait(see Figure 6 below). She grew up with her grandparents in Shanghai, and the first languagethat she started using was Shanghainese (shown as purple hearts in her language portrait).
From the age of 3 when she started going to kindergarten, LiMing started learning and using
standard Mandarin or “Putonghua” (the reddish orange in her head, body, and upper legs), andcontinued to speak Shanghainese with the members of her family. When LiMing was six years
old, Putonghua became the sole language in her school education apart from English, which she
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began learning in the first grade (shown as turquoise in her arms). This continued for the next
9 years. Then in Years 10-12 LiMing went to an English-only international high school.

Figure 6. LiMing’s Language Portrait
From the age of 3 LiMing also learnt Japanese by herself (the yellow part in the middleof her arms and lower legs) from watching Japanese anime. Until three years ago she could
speak Japanese, but not read and write it. In preparation for university in Japan, she attended
a language school in Kyoto for one year to learn Japanese grammar, reading, and writing. As
we talk, she mentions that she is obsessed with a Japanese animated film these days, so she
is writing fan fiction in Japanese and Chinese to capture the tone of the characters. LiMing
understands and speaks some Korean from watching Korean TV variety shows. She also hassome basic proficiency in Cantonese that she acquired from her grandmother, who comesfrom Guangdong province, in south China, bordering Hong Kong.
LiMing still uses Shanghainese with her family (“I drew my heart with purple is because, I still
think as a Shanghainese”), and she speaks warmly of using this regional language and keeping
close relationships with the older generation. As a Chinese citizen and as a Shanghainese sheloves to speak in the Shanghai variety: “The happiness that you find someone who can speak insome dialect outside of your country or hometown is beyond description.” Yet, in the striking redorange of her language portrait, Putonghua has become the main language in her life and,
together with English, it has displaced Shanghainese.
Language loss runs through LiMing’s sense of wider societal changes. She is concernedwith problems of communication between the older people and the young. The old have noneed to shift from their local or regional language to Putonghua, whereas younger people whohave learnt in school to use Putonghua as their main language have no need to speak local
or regional languages. The two generations lack a common language. LiMing is also alert to
the impact of the promotion of Putonghua (together with Standard Chinese characters) as thenational lingua franca in China. Children in China now have to finish learning to read pinyin(the o cial romanised system for writing Putonghua) in pre-school so that they are ready touse standard Chinese from the very start of elementary schooling. LiMing sees these policies

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as creating great pressure on young children in their education and on parents in talking with
their children. Another effect is that the use of regional languages like Shanghainese is fast
decreasing and their status has become devalued. “All languages are equal …,” observes LiMing
in a rueful tone. However, the priority given to English as the primary foreign language in
China further restricts the use of regional and local languages, as well as access to otherforeign languages within formal education.

Ji-woo’s Story
Born and raised in Gyeongsang province in south-east Korea, Ji-woo sees standard Korean(green in her head, shoulders, and upper body in her language portrait) as the language that
she uses most often.

Figure 7. Ji-woo’s Language Portrait
As Ji-woo grew up, the people around her spoke the Gyeongsang dialect of Korean (left leg,green), so she came to use this with family and friends. It was also the medium of instruction
and interaction for all of her school years. At university standard Korean was the norm.
Ji-woo felt that she stood out because of her Gyeongsang dialect, and she found it di cult tochange to standard Korean. Although standard Korean is now the language that she thinks
in, Ji-woo usually uses the Gyeongsang variety outside of university and with her family andfriends in her local area.
Ji-woo started studying Japanese (body, light blue) in the 11th grade at high school. She
found Japanese characters easy to learn, and much of the vocabulary was similar to Korean.
Japanese is now the language that she speaks most fluently after Korean, commenting inJapanese: “My Japanese is not as good as my Korean, but I can express my thoughts and feelings
in Japanese now. Ji-woo also uses keigo (left leg, yellow) when she gives presentations atuniversity or does her part-time job. She began learning Chinese (hands, red) at university inJapan and, now in her second year, she can have simple conversations. She speaks and reads
English (right leg, purple), which she started learning in elementary school, but she doesn’tfeel so confident about writing in English. At age 12 Ji-woo lived in the Philippines for several
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months where she learnt to speak English with a Philippine accent through talking with her
Filipino friends (right leg, pink). She also learnt some basic Tagalog (right leg, orange) in thePhilippines.
Combining languages in writing is nothing new for Ji-woo. At high school her Japaneseteachers asked her to keep a diary in Japanese, which she still does now in Japanese andKorean. In her high school English classes, for essay writing practices, she was asked to write
the first half of the essay in Korean, and the second half in English. Ji-woo explains that thestudents were not allowed to use dictionaries, so she learnt to think by herself in English. She
later prepared her applications for Japanese universities in Japanese and Korean.
Language conflict resolution, big and small, seems to underlie the connections that Ji-woo
makes to the ever-increasing problems of communication with foreigners, the problemsof language education in this global age, and the issues that minority languages speakers
face from the spread of majority languages in national policies. She expresses concernthat translation software has limitations for resolving communication problems between
foreigners and different public and state actors (such as medical services, the police, andwithin the judicial system). Rather, bilingual staff should be hired so that the risk of linguistic
misunderstandings can be lessened. With respect to the problems of language education,
she recalls having classes in elementary school where both languages were spoken. This
was a very positive experience for her, but much of her English education after that focusedon English grammar and specialised reading for university entrance examinations. She lostinterest, and now feels that foreign language education should put greater emphasis onpractical speaking and writing.
The other issue that Ji-woo highlights is to do with the problems that minority language
speakers face with the dominance of majority languages in national policies. She refers
specifically to the Jeju 4/3 Incident,” which started on 3rd April 1948 on Jeju island, south of
the Korean peninsula. In 1948 many islanders who used the Jeju language were massacredfor political reasons. Ji-woo recounts: After the incident, prejudice and discrimination against
Jaeju language users became so serious that the use of Jaeju language was banned in public on
Jaeju Island and classes were held in standard language in schools (translated from Japanese). In
2010 UNESCO identified the Jeju language as a critically endangered language. Since then,according to Ji-woo, the government and the people of Jeju have engaged in various activities
on social media and in textbook production in the Jeju language, Jejueo, to revitalise use of
the language. Towards the end of talking about the Jeju case, Ji-woo relates it to the Ainu
in Japan and the Hakka people in Taiwan, expressing the view that Jeju islanders’ activism,
government support, and international recognition could act as a positive model for othercountries in Asia in protecting their own minority language communities.

Learning from LiMing’s and Ji-woo’s Stories
LiMing’s and Ji-woo’s stories bring into focus tensions between their individual language
diversity and national(ist) integrationist policies and societal norms, within their families,
and their experiences of formal education. Although LiMing’s use of Shanghainese outside thefamily became restricted from very early on in her formal education, it remains central to her
sense of local identity and connection. Similarly, Ji-woo needed to switch to standard Korean
when she started her university studies in Korea, but has continued to use her Gyeongsang
dialect with family and friends in her local area. At the same time LiMing and Ji-Woo’s
individual stories of local linguistic displacement are accompanied by their experiences of
linguistic globalization, so to speak, in their acquisition and use of “gateway” languages,
English and Japanese languages that provide educational access for them. LiMing was able

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to go to an English-medium international high school, and then master Japanese, so that she
could do her undergraduate studies in Japan. Ji-woo, on the other hand, learnt Japanese as
her second foreign language after English, gaining full proficiency in high school so that she
could, like LiMing, migrate to Japan for her university education.
LiMing and Ji-woo each make connections from their own experiences of language change
to wider issues of language loss and oppression in China and South Korea. In her own life
LiMing faces huge generational differences in the way that the young and old use Shanghaineseand Putonghua. She notices that this difference is becoming increasingly accentuated as theuse of standard Mandarin is imposed at ever earlier ages for young children in China. On theother hand, Ji-woo looks beyond her direct experiences to issues of language oppression andendangerment for Jejueo users on Jeju island in post-war Korea. Ji-woo frames the Jeju 4/3
Incident within a historical national context yet, the more distant impacts of pre-war Japanesecolonisation and Jeju labour migration to Japan do not come into view.
Learning from LiMing and Ji-woo about these language shifts and conflicts in Shanghai and
Jeju was an unexpected outcome of talking with them about their language portraits and theirlonger written reflections. Their stories spurred me to extend my own understanding of thelanguage issues that they highlighted. I came to find out that from 1992 Shanghainese wasbanned in Shanghai schools, both in class and after class, and speakers were publicly scolded ifthey used it. Under the ban, Putonghua was imposed as the sole o cial language in class andat school ( iaoru, 2012). Currently the o cial promotion of Putonghua is being challenged bya local movement to protect the use of Shanghainese in Shanghai, but the future is uncertain:
The government doesn’t encourage people to use dialects in any situation and there is noevidence that the government is really trying to preserve them at all,” noted a local academica few years ago (Boreham, 2016). The use of Shanghainese is under threat, as are many otherlocal and regional varieties in China (Roche, 2019 Wong, 2019). LiMing’s own language life
directly touches on these wider effects of centralising language policy and linguistic oppression.
Completely unfamiliar with the Jeju 4/3 Incident, I decided to dig a little deeper. This led
me to discover that between 1948-1954 forces of the US-backed South Korean government
had brutally slaughtered 25 to 30 (25,000-30,000 people) of the Jeju population (Song,2010). Before then, earlier in the 20th century, Jeju islanders had been recruited as industrial
workers for Japan from 1914 onwards (Sunhui & Barclay, 2007), and by 1934 one in 4 of Jeju’s
population lived in Osaka (Southcott, 2013). In the Jeju community (known as “Little Jeju”)
that has long been established in Tsuruhashi in Osaka, many people, it seems, still speak theendangered Jejueo language (Southcott, 2015). Fast-forwarding to the 2000s, I then learnt
that the Language Act for Jejueo Conservation and Promotion (revised in 2011) was enacted in2007 in Korea, with an annual General Plan for Jejueo Conservation Education put into action
a few years later (The Language of Jeju Island, 2017/2020). According to Shields (2019), there
are now living on Jeju island under 10,000 people who have Jejueo as their main language. It
is only fluently spoken by an ever-shrinking group of people aged 75 and older (Shields,2019 see also Endangered Languages Project, n.d.). Notwithstanding this, Ji-woo identifies
strongly with recent initiatives to revitalise the Jejueo language and relates this to the plightof the Ainu in Japan and Hakka in Taiwan.
The language portraits, experiences, and the wider connections that Ji-woo, Kaori, LiMing,
and Nanako shared have formed a central part of this narrative account. These storied
re-interpretations have let us see questions of linguistic privilege, discrimination, andoppression from a range of interesting perspectives. In the final part of this narrative account
I would like to consider what we might take forward from their stories in reaching towards a
critical view of the multilingual turn for learner development.
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Moving Towards a Critical View of the Multilingual Turn for Learner Development?
Starting from a general concern with questions of linguistic privilege, discrimination, andoppression, I have, in this narrative account, tried to understand and appreciate better theconnections that students make between their own languaged lives and different multilingualissues in society. This has involved exploring students’ original and extended language portraits
as well as longer written reflections by which the four students in this research have mademore explicit connections between issues covered in the MIGW course and their own lives.
In their reflections, the students have moved back and forth between their languaged
lives as individuals (micro level) and broader community/group (meso) level and nation/state (macro) level societal contexts. At all levels Ji-woo, Kaori, LiMing, and Nanako haveencountered different norms, practices, pressures, and restrictions that not only regulate,but also legitimize or de-legitimize to differing and variable degrees the use of particularlanguages and their users (Coulmas, 2018). LiMing indirectly questions the claim that
all languages are equal, as she recalls the increasing restrictions that she faces in using
Shanghainese; at the same time, her story highlights the educational privilege that using
English has brought her. Ji-woo and Nanako similarly navigate linguistic inequality byswitching between local and standard varieties of their national languages in their educationand personal lives. In this respect it is striking how Kaori confronts linguistic discriminationin Japanese society as she tries to find spaces in which she can freely use Korean. Tellingly,
she initially finds such spaces outside of Japan in the Philippines where she goes to study
English for a few months. In these particular episodes all four students have the materialmeans to make such choices and develop their linguistic capital for their advantage. They are,in this sense, socially and linguistically privileged.
The paradox of privilege is something that Elizabeth Bekes, one of the open reviewers ofan earlier draft of this narrative account, took up. She observed how the students’ direct
experiences of linguistic discrimination enable them to develop more critical perspectives
on language issues in their own lives and within wider society. “The really insightful details
come from speakers who have either witnessed or have been at the receiving end of linguistic
discrimination,” commented Elizabeth. That said, she also questioned how other facets of thestudents’ identities (including their socio-economic status and their university education inTokyo) might help or hinder their understanding of multilingual issues a point that Paul
Collett, my other reviewer, raised and examined further. Paul suggested that the students’conceptions of language are differently affected by the multilingual linguistic landscapesthat they move through in Tokyo, compared to the “much more monolingual, linguisticallyhomogeneous landscapes” that students studying in provincial regions of Japan experience.
For Paul, Kaori and Nanako’s linguistic privilege, for example, is underlined by the relatively
high status of their university, the access they have to learning multiple other languages such
as Persian or Spanish, as well as the opportunities they enjoy for using in authentic situations
the languages that they are learning.
So, as much as we have come to understand the intricacies of these students’ languaged
lives, it is important to acknowledge their relatively elevated socio-economic position andthe access that this brings them. “Privilege is easy to understand if you think of it as a seriesof automatic doors that open quickly and easily as you walk towards your goal,”7 notes
7.

The original Japanese reads: 特権とは，ゴールに向かって歩き進むと次々と自動ドアがスーッと開いてくれるもの，と考えればわかりやすい。自動ドアは，人がその前に立つとセンサーが検知して開くが，社会ではマジョリティに対してドアが開きやすいしくみになっており，マイノリティに対しては自動ドアが開かないことも多い。 Tokken to wa, g ru ni mukatte aruki susumu totsugitsugi to jid doa ga s tto aite kureru mono, to kangaereba wakari yasui. Jid doa wa, hito ga sono mae nitatsu to sens ga kenchi shite hiraku ga, shakai dewa majoriti ni taishite doa ga hiraki yasui shikumi ni natteori, mainoriti ni taishite wa jid doa ga akanai koto mo i. (Deguchi, 2020)

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Deguchi (2020) in her analysis of majority privilege. Other doors, though noticed, remain
shut for minorities. Kaori and Nanako’s, as well as LiMing’s and Ji-woo’s, changing positions
complicate this vivid picture. Under certain conditions they have majority access, and doors
automatically open before them under different circumstances, they are positioned as
linguistic minorities, and particular doors remain firmly shut.
Through learning about how these four students, my MIGW colleagues, and my LDJ5
collaborators see their languaged lives, as well as reflecting on my own, I recognise again that
linguistic privilege is reproduced and awarded within different social systems, historically,
locally, and globally. Such privilege intersects with other forms of advantage for example,
educational, gendered, social, and racial that benefit some and marginalise others(Subtirelu, 2013). From my own white, male, British, middle-class position such privilege
is ultimately linked to the legacy and enduring impacts of British colonialism, and othercolonial powers, including Japan, but I learnt little, if anything, about this in my formal
education. Where colonial legacies were addressed, it was invariably about the mythicalbenefits of colonialism for the peoples that the imperial nation had enslaved (but see Tharoor,
2016, for an extended discussion of the myth of enlightened colonial despotism). A criticalview was almost completely absent. McIntosh, a key scholar of white privilege, has writtenof the US education system that it “discourages students from recognizing systems of both
discrimination and advantage, or privilege, and from seeing that our opportunities for choice
are in part determined by the systems of power in our society” (McIntosh, 2009, p. 4). The
same holds true for my own education as much as it does for the MIGW students of theireducation in Japan and other countries. McIntosh further argues that recognising systemsof (linguistic) discrimination and privilege requires us to locate our individual experiences,beliefs, and values in relation to “many kinds of existing social, linguistic, cultural andpolitical systems (McIntosh, 2009, p. 6). We (learners, teachers, citizens) also need to learn
to see how our locations in those systems influence our experience and understandingof ourselves and the world (McIntosh, 2009, p. 6), as well as to recognize that systemichierarchies have created discrimination and disempowerment, which all of us experience
to a degree (McIntosh, 2009, p. 6). This is not necessarily easy to do, but it is part of thenecessary work that needs doing if we are to move closer to a critical understanding of ourlearners and ourselves as we engage with the multilingual turn for learner development. The
multiple social, political, gender, racial, and historical perspectives and intersections that
may be uncovered through learners’ stories and our own offer one possible starting point forpursuing such an engagement.

Acknowledgments
My thanks go to the four students for taking part in this research, and to Lorraine de Beaufort
and Akiko Nakayama for the highly enjoyable collaboration in our response community. I also
thank my open reviewers, Elizabeth Bekes and Paul Collett, as well as Tanya McCarthy of the
Journal Steering Group, and my fellow editors for their stimulating feedback, comments, andquestions.

Author Bio
Andy Barfield teaches in the Faculty of Law at Chuo University, Tokyo, where he helps tocoordinate an English curriculum in which students do self-directed research projects intosocial, political, legal, and global issues. His current research interests include multilingualissues in society, critical literacy, and fieldwork.
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Andi Barfield predaje na Pravnom fakultetu Univerziteta Chuo u Tokiju, gdje poma eu koordinaciji nastavnog programa engleskog jezika u kojem studenti rade samostalno
istra iva ke projekte o dru tvenim, politi kim, pravnim i globalnim pitanjima. Njegovi
trenutni istra iva ki interesi uklju uju vi ejezi na pitanja u dru tvu, kriti ku pismenost i radna terenu.

Review ProcessThis paper was open-reviewed by Elizabeth Bekes, Paul Collett, and Tanya McCarthy.
(Contributors have the option of open or blind review.)

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