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: Lorraine de Beaufort
Title: Narrative Inquiry: Learning to Walk on Shifting Sands
Date of publication online: 2021
Author contact: <lorrainedebeaufort@gmail.com>

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:
de Beaufort, L. (2021). Narrative inquiry: Learning to walk on shifting sands. 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, andTheorisations (pp. 92-103). 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
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is given to the work.

NARRATIVE ACCOUNT
Narrative Inquiry: Learning to Walk on Shifting
Sands
Lorraine de Beaufort, ATILF Research Centre, University of Lorraine,France <lorrainedebeaufort@gmail.com>
With its potential to illuminate both the processes of learning and their connections with various aspects ofcontext (ranging from the personal to the sociopolitical) in which learning takes place, the research approach of
narrative inquiry has, in recent years, been attracting more attention from educational researchers. However,relatively little work has been done to explore the ways in which narrative texts emerge as the result of a processof co-construction between participants and researchers. Extending the work carried out in my doctoral study,
which focused on stories of learning French in Hong Kong, in this paper I describe how I reconstructed thenarrative account of one participant (“IC”) with two colleagues from The Learner Development Journal (Issue 5) who
discussed and responded to my writing of this narrative account in six online meetings over a period of one year.
I then reflect on the value of this reconstruction process, covering the additional insights gained into IC’s
narrative as well as more general reflections on the nature and value of narrative inquiry as a tool for
educational research and learner development.
学習のプロセスと，学習が行われているコンテクストにおける様々な側面（個人的なものから社会政治的なものまで）との関連性の両方を明らかにする可能性を秘めたナラティブ・インクワイアリーは，近年，教育研究者の間で注目を集めている研究手法である。しかし，参加者と研究者の共同作業の結果として，どのようにナラティブ・テキストが生まれてくるのかを探る
研究は，これまでほとんど行われていない。本稿では，香港でのフランス語学習の物語に焦点を当てた私の博士課程での研究を発展させ，一人の参加者（IC）のナラティブ・アカウントを，Learner Development Journal（第5号）の2人の同僚と共に再構築した手法を説明する。再構築のプロセスとして，1年間にわたって6回のオンラインミーティングを行い，議論した。このプロセスの価値を省察し，ICの物語から得られた新たな洞察と，教育研究や学習者ディベロップメントのツールとしてのナラティブ・インクワイアリーの性質と価値に関する考察を行う。
En raison de son potentiel à éclairer à la fois les processus d’apprentissage et leurs liens avec divers aspects ducontexte (allant du personnel au sociopolitique) dans lequel l’apprentissage s’inscrit, l’approche de recherche desrécits de vie intéresse les chercheurs en éducation. Néanmoins, relativement peu de travaux ont été menés pour
explorer la manière dont les textes narratifs émergent à la suite d’un processus de co-construction entre lesparticipants et les chercheurs. Comme prolongement du travail réalisé pour mon étude doctorale qui portait sur
des récits d’apprentissage du français à Hong Kong, je décris dans cet article comment j’ai reconstitué le récit
d’une participante (“IC”) avec deux collègues du Learner Development Journal Issue 5 au cours de six réunions enligne sur une période d'un an. Je réfléchis ensuite à l’intérêt d’un tel processus, m’intéressant à ce qui a émergé
de nouveau en lien avec le récit d’IC et en réfléchissant plus généralement à la nature et à l’intérêt des récits devie en tant qu’outil de recherche pédagogique et de développement de l’apprenant.

Keywords
narrative inquiry, French learning, narrative co-construction, learner development
ナラティブ・インクワイアリー，フランス語学習，ナラティブを用いた共同構築，学習者ディベロップメント
récits de vie, apprentissage du français, co-construction narrative, développement de l’apprenantI

C was one of the four participants in my doctoral study on the topic of French learning in
Hong Kong (de Beaufort, 2019; see also de Beaufort, 2021). This study used the approach of
narrative inquiry (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000; Connelly & Clandinin, 1990; Clandinin, 2013)
to produce an account of the participants’ experiences. What I intend to do in this paper is tofocus on one participant, IC, firstly to reconstruct IC’s narrative, drawing on the additional
perspectives of two readers from our Learner Development Journal Issue 5 (LDJ5) group, and92

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Lorraine de Beaufort

secondly to reflect on the insights gained from this process of reconstruction. Clandinin andConnelly (2000) present readers as the third pillar of narrative inquiry, the two others being
the inquiree (IC) and the inquirer (me). I am interested in exploring what can be learned fromtaking such an approach, especially with two readers who, at the start of this process, knew
nothing about IC and little about the Hong Kong context.
What I also wish to do is to take some distance from a process I have been deeply involved
with for several years. The process of data collection and inquiry lasted from the spring of2014 to the summer of 2018 with IC, and formally ended in May 2019 when I submitted thecompleted version of my thesis. My participation in the LDJ5 project is thus also a way for me
to deal with a frustration I experienced during my doctoral study, namely that I did not havethe opportunity to discuss with others the connections between IC’s life and her engagementwith learning French. Occasionally, I had wondered if my interpretation of the meaning of
French for her was plausible (Polkinghorne, 1995, p. 18; Clandinin & Connelly, 2000, pp.
184–185) and trustworthy (Barkhuizen et al., 2014, p. 90). Asking two outsiders to give metheir views about the meaning of French for IC would be useful for me as a researcher, Frenchteacher, and French speaker working in Hong Kong.
More generally, the theme of multilingual learner development in LDJ5 is of great interest
for me. Hong Kong is a fitting place to study multilingualism; it is a territory with two
official languages (English and Chinese),1 and the education policy is one of biliteracy andtrilingualism (Cantonese, Mandarin, and English). In addition, people like the participants inmy study might have studied or been in contact with regional dialects or additional languages
such as French. I myself am originally from France although I have lived outside France formore than 25 years, mainly in Asia (China, South Korea, and Macau) and in Hong Kong where
I have resided since 2005. Professionally, I am a language teacher (French and English).
At home, I mostly use English with my British husband. Apart from French and English,
I speak a little Mandarin, having lived in Mainland China for about five years. I also havesome familiarity with German, Hebrew, Korean and Italian from my school years or from mytravels.

Organisation of This Narrative AccountThis narrative account is organised as follows. I first provide some introductory backgroundabout IC and briefly introduce the concept of co-construction which led to IC’s narrative. Thisis followed by a summary of my interpretation of the role of French and other languages inIC’s life, drawn from my original doctoral study. Moving on to the reconstruction process
I undertook with my two LDJ5 readers, which constitutes the heart of this paper, I first
introduce the three questions I asked my readers. These formed the basis for discussion in our
six Zoom meetings, which lasted between 1.5 and 2 hours and took place between March 2020
and March 2021. These meetings also served to exchange ideas on the process of narrativeinquiry and to reflect on ourselves as researchers and participants in the LDJ5 project. After
presenting my colleagues’ responses to my three specific questions, I then summarise myoverall reflections on these interactions, covering both the insights gained into the narrativeinquiry process and the possible applications of narrative inquiry in education.
1.

Article 9 of the Basic Law of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China
stipulates the co-official language status of English alongside Chinese. However, as Poon (2010, p. 7) notes,“Chinese” is “ill-defined” but in Hong Kong it is usually taken to mean written Modern Standard Chinese andspoken Cantonese. Poon further explains that “[t]he spoken form of Modern Standard Chinese is Putonghua(or Mandarin), which is the national language in Mainland China and Taiwan. The written form of Cantoneseis not accepted as standard written Chinese used in formal writing because Modern Standard Chinese isunanimously accepted as the only written form used in Mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and overseas
Chinese communities.” (Poon, 2007, p. 7)

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In what follows, I include hyperlinks in various places. These are intended to give thereader the opportunity to access the text in the way and order s/he wishes, thus allowing for a
deeper reading of this exploration. The hyperlinks are numbered for convenience of reference
and there is no specific order in which to access them. Although there is no obligation to
click on any of the hyperlinks, I recommend reading PDF1, which concerns IC’s experience oflearning French and is the narrative I initially asked my two readers to read.

Introducing IC
IC was born in Hong Kong in a Cantonese-speaking family. Her father migrated to Hong Kongfrom China’s Guangdong province at a young age, after the Chinese Civil War, and her mothercomes from Macau. IC speaks the three main languages of Hong Kong (i.e., Cantonese,
Mandarin, and English) as well as knowing some French and some Japanese. I first met IC
during the academic year of 2006–2007, when she took two beginner French courses withme at a Hong Kong university. When I started my study in 2014, she was 27 years old. It tookroughly four years—from the spring of 2014 to September 2018—for her stories of learning
French to cohere into the narrative I presented at the end of my doctoral study and that I
revisit here with my two LDJ colleagues.
I chose IC for this collaborative reconstruction for the same reasons as I included her in
my doctoral study report. Among the other participants, she was the most able to verbalize
her experiences in a detailed manner whilst demonstrating sustained curiosity about theinquiry. Every time we met, she asked about the progress of the study and her interest
stimulated the self-reflection process and led to deep and interesting exchanges during theinterviews. As the inquiry progressed, I came to realise that IC was gradually finding her own
purpose for participating in the study, for example by enabling her to better understand herexperiences and emotions during a transitional phase in Hong Kong’s history. In other words,
IC’s example seems useful not only because of the content of the interviews, but also because
her case deepens our understanding of participants’ involvement in narrative inquiry andillustrates its power to transform (Barkhuizen, 2011, p. 397; Barkhuizen, 2009) and empower(Clandinin interviewed in O’Donoghue, 2012; McKenna, 2017). The transformational potentialof narrative inquiry makes it highly relevant to considerations of multilingual learnerdevelopment.

The Co-construction Process with IC
Narrative co-construction means that narratives emerge as a result of complex interactions
between human actors and their environment. The researcher does not, and cannot,
simply “step back.” Clandinin notes that narrative inquiry must begin by questioning
one’s assumptions and reflecting about the complexity in himself/herself as a condition tounderstand the complexities in others (Clandinin interviewed in McKenna, 2017; Clandinin,
2013, p. 36). This is to say that narrative inquiry starts with a process of becoming “wakeful”
about all the narratives that shape us as people and researchers: “You cannot be wakeful tosomeone else if you are not wakeful to yourself” (Clandinin, interviewed in McKenna, 2017).
Acknowledging co-construction thus means that the observer becomes “part of what isviewed rather than separate from it” (Charmaz, 2000, p. 524, cited in Shkedi, 2005, p. 5; seealso Clandinin, 2013, p. 24). During the inquiry process, whilst participants are reliving andtelling their stories, the narrative inquirer is drawn into recalling and reliving past experiences
and as s/he does so, new perspectives emerge. It is in this space where two experiences and two
lives interconnect that a narrative text emerges, as was the case with IC and me. In noting this,94

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I refer to the principle of “verisimilitude” in narrative accounts (Polkinghorne, 1988, p. 161).
Verisimilitude includes, as one of its aspects, that the reporting of stories should “resonate withthe experience of the researcher” (Webster & Mertova, 2007, p. 99).

My Interpretation of the Role of French and Other Languages in IC’s Life
The main overall insight of my doctoral study of learning French in Hong Kong was that
French could be characterised as an affordance for identity construction. French, along withother languages in the participants’ lives, can be seen as a symbolic tool to exercise agency
and resist being positioned in a certain way. Even with what would, in conventional terms,
be described as a limited level of proficiency, IC uses and appropriates aspects of French toagentively and creatively perform individual acts of resistance “in the interstices of power”
laid bare in an otherwise constricting and normative environment (Barfield, 2019, p. 128;
see also Pennycook, 2010, p. 129). This is also to say that languages are a way for IC to“assemble” herself according to what is important to her (Rampton, 2006, p. 12) (click onPDF2).
Linking between the micro level of individual practices and the macro level of group
identities and political structures, French also appeared in IC’s story as a way to symbolicallyre-assert Hong Kong’s identity as a multilingual and multicultural city at a time of severe
political crisis.
To clarify, I started meeting participants for my doctoral study in the spring of 2014. The
autumn of 2014 will be remembered as a significant moment in Hong Kong’s history, as Hong
Kong people, and especially a large number of youth (university and secondary students)
assembled in the central districts of Hong Kong and paralyzed the heart of the city, including
the financial and business districts for a period of about four months. This protest movement,
known as the Umbrella Movement, gave voice to Hong Kong people’s wish to hold elections
for their Chief Executive, the highest post of political power in this territory of about 7
million people. A significant portion of the Hong Kong population felt that it was time topush for this basic democratic right, as progress towards this goal had been promised in theagreement made between China and the U.K. in 1997.
Not surprisingly, the crisis brought about many tensions in Hong Kong society and ignited
passionate debates about Hong Kong’s identity. IC’s concern for Hong Kong’s future and its
ability to retain what she saw as its distinctive identity dominated many of the stories sheshared with me at the time of the inquiry. At the same time, she expressed her concern about
her own ability as an individual to make choices and live the life that she wanted to (click onPDF3).

My LDJ5 Colleagues’ Responses to IC’s Narrative
As already mentioned, during the original study I did not have the opportunity to reflect
on my inquiry with another narrative inquiry researcher. Several times during my study, I
felt the need to discuss the connections I had started to make between the various levels ofcontext (personal, institutional and socio-political; see Barkhuizen, 2016, p. 663) and IC’s
accounts of learning French. Amongst the questions I asked myself was whether it would bepossible for somebody with less firsthand knowledge of the Hong Kong context to understandmy interpretation of the meaning of French in IC’s life. Thus I was curious to find out how
much of my co-construction experience would resonate with new readers.
I asked my two LDJ5 colleagues—our team of three making up one of the response
communities as part of the LDJ5 project—to read IC’s final research text in the doctoral study
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Narrative Inquiry: Learning to Walk on Shifting Sands(click on PDF1) and to answer three questions. The questions and the responses from Reader
A and Reader B are presented below in verbatim form so that the readers of this paper can“hear” the comments without interference from me. I then discuss the comments in thefollowing section.
1. Does this text make sense to you, or do you feel you need more information to come to theconclusions I have come to?
Reader A: I get IC’s sense of unease and foreboding, and the unsettledness that she feels
both in Hong Kong and living outside Hong Kong—of floating life, so to speak.
One of your conclusions is that “one of the main roles of French (as well as other languages
and cultures, particularly English) was to symbolically re-assert Hong Kong’s identity asa multilingual and multicultural city at a time of severe political crisis.” I would also takethat as re-asserting her own identity as a multilingual and multicultural rights-conscious /rights-custodial HK citizen person at a time of severe political crisis. In other words, it may
be important to extend the articulation of “multilingual and multicultural” to include civil,
social, political rights, and language rights—that she has particular freedoms in her own life
and in her work not to be a slave to others, but rather to be interdependent and autonomousin the exercise of her rights, responsibilities, and freedoms.
Reader B: I remember you wrote somewhere something like an interview excerpt with IC,
Britain occupied a small village and made HK, then Britain left, and now mainland China
came to hold HK. When I read this, I had an impression that IC had a strong sense of history.
I assume being multilingual is an essential part of her HK identity, as you mentioned. I guess
the political agenda that affected her identity would not be only the current one, but also ahistorical one. It seems like the story of French is popping up a little bit suddenly for me.
One thing I don’t understand is why IC doesn’t appreciate Hong Kong culture. She says
Hong Kong culture is not sophisticated. Even though she had a great pride for the Hong Kong
identity as a cosmopolitan, why could she not have the same pride for the Hong Kong culture?
Even that is exactly the symbol of a mixture of diversity. What is the time span between
interviews? Is there any chance that the change of political situation during the period affects
IC’s perception of HK culture and her identity?
2. Do any of IC’s experiences resonate with you?
Reader A: Very much so. The struggle to localise myself in other lands resonates verystrongly with me. I’m struck by how IC decides to return to HK and make her life there tore-establish/re-create her sense of belonging, of “non-fractured” living, if you will, but riskseven greater fracturation socio-politically. I feel in contrast an ongoing sense of dis-location
in my life in Japan. I am here, but I am not of here.
Reader B: Yes, the experiences both you and IC had marginalized when you were using
English in Britain and Kibbutz resonates with my experiences in the US and Korea. The
difference between you/IC and me is I ran away from being in the situation which threatensme, but you stayed.

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3. How likely is it that IC’s experiences would resonate with learners in your culture?
Reader A: I think so, for students who may have returned or were born into mixed homeenvironments and live multilingually with different languages, or live with a diverse linguistic
repertoire in Japanese (including the use of non-standard varieties of Japanese). IC’s story,
from one perspective, is one of return migration, and how migration leaves individuals—
especially the first generation—fractured about where they belong or desire to belong.
Reader B: One thing it is interesting to me is the lack of genchi / 現地 [the place the language
is used]. One of my students conducted a small interview project in which she asked theuniversity students who are taking a second foreign language course even though it is notcompulsory. She found a couple of participants told their desire like “I want to go to ××, anduse the language.” In IC’s story, I could see the point [that IC is not particularly interested invisiting France]. I am wondering why.

Insights Gained from My LDJ5 Colleagues
Insight 1: IC’s Narrative Resonates with a Wider Audience
One outcome of the process of reconstruction is that it has confirmed that readers living inand coming from other cultures could identify with IC’s narrative, even though they may have
had relatively limited knowledge of Hong Kong. Reader A shared this comment about what it
meant to be multicultural and multilingual:
I wonder if this is the contested condition of groups who are positioned as minorities
in disproportionate power imbalances as much as it is a normal state of affairs forsocieties that espouse multilingual policies as part of their imagined community. One
can imagine a similar claim being made in terms of officially multilingual societies?
I reflected that although it might be true that IC’s situation was similar to the positionof any minorities living in a dominant culture (in our LDJ group, we talked about dialects
and minorities in Japan), I nevertheless believe there are still distinctive aspects in different
stories.
For IC, the representation of herself as multilingual and multicultural was important for her
in a very personal way as well as a social way. First, even though her links with the Frenchlanguage were tenuous (she said she had half-forgotten it) and even though she had notionsof French culture which lay mostly in her imagination (for example, she said: ‘it’s[French
culture] just a creation… a perception’), these connections gave her a feeling of being more
accomplished not only because other Hong Kong people would look at her differently, but also
because she was aware that learning languages would transform her general outlook on life:
IC: They [Hong Kong people] will be impressed that you can speak a third language, they willkeep giving you some French to ask you to translate it, they may ask you is Agnes b. pronounced
as Agnes b…
IC: …people who are able to speak different language are having a broader sense in looking atthings because language…making you look at things differently
And she wanted her audience (me, to start with, and other people who would come to readher narrative account) to appreciate this accomplishment, perhaps partly because she camefrom a family which did not have the same cosmopolitan outlook. In the inquiry, she talked
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at length about a trip to London with her sister, who had rarely mixed with foreigners as she
had. She described to me with many details the differences she had noticed between her sisterand herself during that trip, for example:
IC: So last year… because I had a business trip in London so she [her sister] travelled with me
which is her first time to go to London, Paris and Amsterdam and... I can feel that euh… she has
a less exposure internationally than me
From multiple opportunities to interact with people from different cultures, IC was
gradually observing changes in the way she thought about things, and she became proud of
the doors this opened in her mind:
IC: I’m not a Chinese traditional person yeah... ...I’m quite o-p-e-n (said slowly) in terms ofthoughts yeah... positively I’m opened to change
IC: When you step up outside you can see the reality differently
Moving from the personal to the social, she repeatedly talked about the multiculturalcharacter of Hong Kong society in trying to explain the uniqueness that Hong Kong identity
entails, as well as to emphasize its complexities (click on PDF 4). For example, a part of Hong
Kong’s identity is inextricably linked to its past as a British colony, and this is still inscribedin an official document, the much-prized BNO (British National Overseas) passport:
IC: I get a BNO passport that means I’m born in Hong Kong before 1997, which is still under thecolony of Britain. And...those local people like me will regard having a BNO passport is a realHong Kongese more than getting a Hong Kong passport
Emphasising the multicultural character of Hong Kong is currently to be understood in thelight of the ongoing socio-political tensions in Hong Kong. Reader A reflected that reinforcing
Hong Kong’s multicultural identity appeared to be a way for IC to “recreate and reproduce
a cultural, socio-political and linguistic alternative to the threat of/growing domination ofChina.”
However, more than emphasising one’s multiculturality as a way to differentiate oneself
or claim space as a minority in a culturally dominant environment (as suggested by Reader
A), I see IC’s recurring narrative of multiculturality as an urgent cry for help, a need toconvince others (mainly me, and other readers of her narrative) and to inform the world of
the situation in Hong Kong:
IC: I want those non-Hong Kongese people to understand so for example I have friends from
France, Taiwan, Britain, somewhere else, I want them to know what exactly is happening in
Hong Kong
Having said this, it could also be that I am influenced today by what has been happening in
Hong Kong since I concluded the study. In 2019, the political tensions in Hong Kong escalated
and led to decisive intervention by Beijing in the form of a national security law, which
Hong Kongers are still learning to live with today. In other words, my reconstruction of IC’s
narrative is influenced by my having experienced some of the events in Hong Kong since theend of the original study, as elaborated in the next section.

Insight 2: The Changeable Nature of Narrative Texts Reflects the Changeable
Nature of Lived Experience
An important insight gained from the feedback I received from my LDJ5 colleagues is thatinterpretations of others’ experiences vary according to what is happening in one’s life at the98

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moment of reading, as suggested by Reader A:
I’m writing this a couple of days after president Trump has declared publicly his
intention to suppress the vote in the USA, and the 75th anniversary of the end of Second
World War (or “defeat of Japan” according to some media sources). Sombre images andmemorials to the devastating loss of life and wanton destructiveness of industrialised
warfare in WW2. And then there’s the pandemic, and all the impacts that it is having
and will continue to have, not to mention the climate crisis, and whatever litany ofcrises we might wish to focus on…. I get IC’s sense of unease and foreboding, andthe unsettledness that she feels both in Hong Kong and living outside Hong Kong—of
floating life, so to speak.
Reader A’s comments suggest that his perception of unease and conflict in IC’s narrative
was heightened by media accounts of events taking place elsewhere in the world at thetime (click on PDF5). This is to say that the construction, reconstruction and interpretation
or re-interpretation of narratives always depends on perceptions of the surrounding
environment at the time of writing or reading the narratives. Just as the researcher has
one set of experiences and perceptions, readers can find their own set of resonances ina narrative. This does not mean that the original version was unreliable or in need of
improvement, but rather that narrative texts are inherently changeable and never finalised(Clandinin & Rosiek, 2007, p. 13; Connelly & Clandinin, 1995, p. 9).
The changeable nature of narrative texts also means that it is not only the result (thetext) that matters, but also the process of deep reflection that the construction of the text
triggers. As Clandinin repeatedly notes, taking part in narrative inquiry should be a form of
empowerment for the participants, especially those who feel marginalised or are not usuallylistened to (see Clandinin being interviewed by O’Donoghue, 2012, and McKenna, 2017).
Regarding the specific benefit of narrative texts for readers, Clandinin and Connelly (2000, p.
42) also note the “vicarious testing of life possibilities” that these texts inspire as they offer
the power to imagine oneself differently.

Insight 3: New Perspectives on IC’s Comments about Hong Kong Culture
During the inquiry with IC, I had the recurrent impression that she had an unshakableattachment and love for Hong Kong. Thus, I found it interesting that Reader B picked up
on IC’s parallel harsh criticism of her culture, which I had noted but not fully analysed orunderstood. Getting Readers A and B’s perspectives helped me understand IC’s apparent
criticism better. Reader A’s comments below helped me revisit the connection between IC’sremarks and the wider socio-political context in Hong Kong:
Reader A: As I was reading through again, I questioned why IC should find it so hard to see“home-written” / “locally produced” HK literature and/or arts as being sophisticated orprestigious. That perhaps points to a cultural struggle of re-adjustment and re-appropriation
to re-locate herself within a Hong Kong world of reference and resonance at the time of such
political tension and confrontation with the PRC. My own understanding of this tension isthat the Basic Law runs until 2047, so, for the young generation now and people of IC’s age
everyone who is resistant to the PRC’s take-over of HK, they are already experiencing within
their lifetimes—and which they would face in any case (no matter the democracy protests andpolitical moves happening now)—and are seeing a fundamental and intensifying realignmentof their region as a political and economic entity, but also of their everyday lives andlifeworlds towards the PRC. So, at a deeper level, while IC struggles to locate her cultural
identity as Hong Konger in terms of literature and the arts at the same level as French culture
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Narrative Inquiry: Learning to Walk on Shifting Sands(or British or European), she is also struggling to locate an identity free of […] the PRC. A
post-colonial dilemma as colonisation by the PRC grows?
Reader A’s perception echoes that of other observers of the situation in Hong Kong.
Although the central demand of the 2014 protest movement—known as the Umbrella
Movement—was for a greater say in the election of the region’s chief executive, themovement was also symptomatic of the deep level of anxiety in Hong Kong regarding its
identity at this juncture of its history:
The Umbrella Movement and all the protest movements that came before it were
never just about the immediate issue at hand—whether the universal suffrage or theprotection of heritage buildings or support for democracy in Mainland China. These
protests have always had at their core anxiety about Hong Kong’s identity. (Dapiran,2017, p. 108)
Dapiran’s view is that Hong Kongers have never had a free rein in determining theiridentity, and continue to be subject to external forces (British colonialism in the past, andassimilation into a homogenising “greater China” today).
Thus, IC’s impatience regarding Hong Kong culture’s lack of self-awareness (she suggested
that it lacked creativity and confidence and was only able to copy other cultures) can beunderstood as a prompt from IC for Hong Kong to embrace its unique identity. In his accountof Hong Kong culture at the time of the return of sovereignty to China, Abbas (1997) notedthat one of the effects of colonialism was that Hong Kong “did not realise it could have aculture” (p. 6), but he also suggested that Hong Kong was experiencing the emergence of“some original and yet untheorized” form of culture (p. 7). IC’s struggle to locate Hong Kong
culture does indeed appear to be part of a continuing crisis of post-colonial identity, but also
one which contains the possibility of recovering what has always been there but is somehow
hidden (click on PDF6). This is an interesting new insight for me, which again points to theinherently changeable and multidimensional nature of narrative texts.

Reflections on the Process of Revisiting IC’s Narrative With Two Readers
As already mentioned, my aim in participating in the LDJ5 initiative was to revisit IC’s
narrative and, using my two readers’ feedback, to reflect back on the more general processof narrative inquiry. My reflections were in two main areas, the first relating to the “truth”
value (Foucault, 1980) of research texts and the second more concerned with the effects ofsuch texts and their associated conditions of production.
My first reflection is that there cannot be one “true” narrative that stands unconditionallyabove the others. There cannot be one “correct” narrative because interpretations areconstantly changing according to the inquiree’s perspective at the time of telling the story,
the inquirer’s perspective at the time of writing the narrative account of that story, or
the reader’s perspective upon reading the narrative, as already mentioned in the previous
sections. In other words, narrative accounts and their interpretations are constantly shifting.
Connelly and Clandinin (1990) remark that writing a narrative research account is a process of“continual unfolding” (p. 9). After the original narrative inquiry, a process of reconstruction
takes place with each new audience as new perspectives arise by the mere fact of sharing anarrative, as suggested by the authors:
I tell you a researcher’s story. You tell me what you heard and what it meant to you.
I hadn’t thought of it this way, am transformed in some important way, and tell thestory differently the next time I encounter an interested listener or talk again with myparticipant. (Connelly & Clandinin, 1990, p. 9)

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However, the fact that narratives cannot be “fixed” does not mean that there are noways to evaluate their effectiveness for the purpose at hand. The concepts of verisimilitude,plausibility and trustworthiness, and the involvement of additional readers (as in this study)
are among the means that narrative inquirers can use to assess their accounts. Althoughnarrative researchers often point out that narratives are constantly in flux, the need to
produce a written narrative for consumption by others creates a necessary, if temporary, formof closure.
Another aspect of the impossibility of ‘true’ narratives arises from considering the different
perspectives of readers. What happens when someone reads a narrative is that they are
confronted with resonances and questions about their own experiences. Revisiting IC’s
narrative with my two LDJ5 colleagues enabled me to become aware that some of my actions
which I had so far considered as being agentive—which in my mind were linked to notionsof strength, confidence in oneself, and self-esteem (like a story I told to my colleagues of avolunteering experience in a kibbutz in Israel)—were in fact heavily constrained by my own
psychological environment at the time (Barkhuizen, 2016, p. 663).
For IC, anger about the political situation in Hong Kong which she felt was pushing people
out in spite of their attachment to their city was acutely felt and gave rise to feelings ofdespair and hopelessness, but her feelings connected to the macro socio-political context
were equally strongly linked to a feeling of fear for herself. Re-reading IC’s transcripts makesme think anew about what IC had meant when she described French children in the firstinterview:
IC: so there’s again children playing [with] each other ... there’s a forest like with a lot of trees,
no buildings and yeah it’s a big playground and they just run and with a lot of greenery and yeah
it is what I perceived about “Oh how great French children can play in a big greenery forest...
but we can’t!” (laugh) yeah! that’s what... that’s what I perceive about French culture somehow
I had wondered many times what IC was referring to when she mentioned the “biggreenery forest.” To me, who was born in a region of deep forests in France, a forest is atonce a place of freedom and protection as well as a threatening and claustrophobic space inwhich one can get lost and hidden from view. What was IC trying to say? To me, her commentsuggests envy for the freedom French children seemed to enjoy and which French culture
seemed to embody, but it also suggests a feeling of entrapment, of not being able to achieve alife she had dreamed for herself.
The importance of perspective in narrative suggests, first of all, a wider implication forresearch, namely the impossibility of detached observation. Writing from a posthumanist
perspective on the natural sciences, Barad (2007) encourages us to see that researchers’
practices of thinking, observing, and theorizing are “practices of engagement with, andas part of, the world in which we have our being” (Barad, 2007, p. 133). Narrative inquiry
replaces the “detached observer” of positivist science with a fully human researcher,engaged with equally human participants and readers. All of them bring their knowledge
and experiences, their intellects and emotions, their prejudices and vulnerabilities to theprocesses of investigation and interpretation. The “narrative turn” in a range of disciplines(e.g., Polkinghorne, 1988, on the humanities) reflects the influence of philosophers such
as Gadamer (1977), for whom understanding is made possible by the “fusion of horizons”
involved in interaction and dialogue.
This also leads me to my second reflection, concerning the effects of research texts andtheir processes of construction. Narrative inquiry has the potential to help participants(researchers, learners and readers) develop as human beings by unsettling their perceptions
and encouraging self-reflection. It reveals to them their own complexity, which increases
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empathy and serves as a bulwark against forms of exclusion. In addition, through thinking
more deeply about other people’s life experience, we are brought to reconsider our own
experience and standpoint, including what Gadamer (1977) refers to as “prejudices” (biases)
and personal vulnerabilities. Although the process of recognising biases and vulnerabilities
might be difficult and uncomfortable, it opens the way for researchers to become more
ready to hear her/his participants’ stories in their full complexity and with the least possible
judgement and expectation. So although the results of narrative inquiry might be judged
as fleeting by some, it has an important potential benefit for both the researcher andthe researched: It forces them to recognize and value a more complex and hidden side ofthemselves and of each other.
Linked to this, one of the crucial values of narrative inquiry for education is that it provides
learners with the opportunity to discover new aspects of themselves. This can have a range ofbenefits, some directly linked to learning but others related to the rest of their lives. It may
help them to become more confident and knowledgeable, and to become more accepting ofothers through discovering their own complexities and contradictions. Conducting narrativeinquiry has taught me that as a language teacher, I need to try and grasp this complexity, togive room to all the other “stuff” in my language learners’ lives, and to see them as complex
human beings rather than as just learners.
To conclude, the “shifting sands” of narrative inquiry may appear to be disconcerting for
those accustomed to positivist concepts of detachment and objectivity. Narrative inquiry
exposes multiple entanglements and perspectives, opens up individuals to themselves and toothers’ complexities and forces researchers to place themselves in the heart of the research
process rather than above or beside it. But the path it reveals is a new and exciting one forall concerned, because it is a more meaningful and ultimately a more honest way of doing
research.

Author Bio
Lorraine de Beaufort did her doctorate in language education and sociolinguistics jointly with
the University of Lorraine, France and the Education University of Hong Kong. Since then, she
has been an affiliate researcher at the ATILF research centre of the University of Lorraine. She
currently teaches part-time in a French programme at Hong Kong University.
Lorraine de Beaufort a effectué son doctorat en sciences du langage en co-tutelle avec
l’Université de Lorraine, France et l’Education University of Hong Kong. Elle est depuis
chercheure affiliée au Laboratoire ATILF de l’Université de Lorraine. Actuellement, elleenseigne le français à mi-temps au sein d’un programme de français de Hong Kong
University.

Review ProcessThis paper was open-reviewed by Melodie Cook, Akiko Takagi, and Dominic Edsall.
(Contributors have the option of open or blind review.)

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