Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 5 • December 2021

Engaging with the Multilingual Turnfor Learner Development: Practices,
Issues, Discourses, and Theorisations
Table of Contents
Introduction
Engaging with the Multilingual Turn for Learner Development: Practices, Issues, Discourses,
and Theorisations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3
Andy Barfield, Oana Cusen, Yuri Imamura, & Riitta Kelly

Narrative Accounts
Multilingualism in the Foreign Language Classroom: The Curious Case of French in Mumbai 9
Vasumathi Badrinathan
Reconciling with English: An Autobiography to Ruminate Over the Different Meanings That
English Has for Us . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
Akiko Nakayama
Evolving Journeys of Multilingual Teachers of English in Japan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
Oana Cusen
Reflections on Co-Teaching Multilingual University-Level Language and Communication
Courses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
Riitta Kelly and Jussi Jussila
Exploring Understandings of Multilingualism in a Social Learning Space: A Duoethnographic
Account . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
Isra Wongsarnpigoon and Yuri Imamura
Narrative Inquiry: Learning to Walk on Shifting Sands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
Lorraine de Beaufort
Re-interpreting University Students’ Multilingual Lives: Connections, Questions, and Wider
Issues in Society . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
Andy Barfield

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Table of Contents

Practice-Related Reviews
Book Review and Critical Dialogue about The Making of Monolingual Japan: Language Ideology andJapanese Modernity (Heinrich, 2012) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
Ellen Head and Chie Tsurii
Imagining Fair Language Policies: A Practice-related Review of Piller’s (2016) Linguistic
Diversity and Social Justice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136
Huw Davies
Visually Tapping into the Lives of Learners: Review of Kalaja & Melo-Pfeifer’s (2019)
Visualising Multilingual Lives: More Than Words . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
Melike Bulut Albaba
A Learner’s Review of Horner & Weber’s (2018) Introducing Multilingualism:
A Social Approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
Brennan Conaway
Exploratory and Critical Reading About the Multilingual Turn with Japanese Students: Review
of Conteh & Meier (2014) and May (2014) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
Alison Stewart
A Practitioners’ Collaborative Review of Researching Multilingualism: Critical and Ethnographic
Perspectives (Martin-Jones & Martin, 2017) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
Andy Barfield, Oana Cusen, Yuri Imamura, and Riitta Kelly

Commentary
Openness, Creativity, Collaboration and Narrativity Paving Our Road Towards Critical
Multilingual Practices in the Classroom. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181
Maria Ruohotie-Lyhty

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Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 5 • December 2021

INTRODUCTION
Introduction to Engaging with the Multilingual
Turn for Learner Development: Practices,
Issues, Discourses, and Theorisations
Andy Barfield, Oana Cusen, Yuri Imamura, & Riitta KellyThree years ago the four of us serendipitously met at the JALT2018 conference in
Shizuoka, Japan, and shared with each other our interests in learners’ multilingualism
and learner development. Enthusiastic about researching and understanding such
issues further, we agreed that it would be exciting to explore the multilingual turn forlearner development with a wider group of teachers. This was the genesis for the proposalthat we made to the Learner Development Journal Steering Group in May 2019 for Issue 5 of
the Learner Development Journal (LDJ5). Proposal discussed and accepted, we next draftedand publicised a Call for Inclusive Practitioner Research and Reviews. We were extremely
fortunate to hear back from teacher-researchers of various languages (English, French, andJapanese) working in Finland, Hong Kong, India, Japan, and Turkey/UK. From mid-February2020 members of this new community started communicating with each other, and, over the
next 18 months, the work for LDJ5 took shape. In this introduction we recall the original Callfor Inclusive Practitioner Research and Reviews, as well as highlight the particular genres ofwriting that LDJ5 features. After introducing certain practices that contributors followed overthose 18 months, we conclude with a short overview of the papers in LDJ5.
In drafting the Call for Inclusive Practitioner Research and Reviews, our intention was toencourage writers and reviewers to explore the multilingual turn from various points of view
related to learner development, inviting them to look at practices, issues, discourses, andtheorisations in the field. For this particular issue of the LDJ, we emphasized the narrative
point of view, as well as our intention to create a space for voices from different contexts.
Conventional academic writing can often be a distancing experience for writers, reviewers,
and readers; we wanted to break away from that kind of traditional writing style and, instead,create a community where everyone’s personal voice could be heard, just as if we were talking
to each other as teachers. Thus, we hoped to encourage the contributors to turn their research
into stories and shape them into narrative accounts. By creating an interactive community
where the writing could be advanced with the help of discussions, we aimed to nurture an
environment where writers could work together, share their evolving understandings, anddiscuss the development of their research and writing, and, by doing so, benefit from eachother’s points of views. Our reviewers were also an important part of this process.
Whilst offering the contributors the support of the community, we also wanted to give them
freedom to explore a wide variety of areas and viewpoints to do with the multilingual turnin learner development. These included themes and issues dealing with the importance ofmultilingualism in languages education, the influence of multilingual approaches in moving
beyond current norms and notions, learners’ use of multilingual resources in becoming moreautonomous, challenges and puzzles encountered in engaging with multilingual practices,
and insights gained while raising children multilingually. Writers were encouraged to move
between theory and practice as they worked on producing “narrative accounts” of their
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Introduction to Engaging with the Multilingual Turn for Learner Development: Practices, Issues, Discourses, and Theorisations

own teaching and research, and “practice-related reviews” on a choice of books addressing
multilingual issues in education and society.
What do we mean by narrative accounts and practice-related reviews? In the narrative
accounts, each contributor focuses on issues that arise from their life regarding themultilingual turn and take on a position (or positions) from which they choose to write
their accounts. As editors, we tried to help contributors explore their own style of narration.
For example, one of the contributors uses her response community members as a means ofreconstructing her learner’s narrative. By doing so, each narrative account becomes a uniquepiece with new insights into the multilingual turn. For practice-related reviews, authors
connect their reading to themselves based on a particular position (or positions) that they
have adopted. They also relate their reviews to their own localised learner development
practices, as well as to concerns that emerged from their reading. So, these practice-related
reviews are not conventional book reviews, but rather individual stories of practice andreflection. For both narrative accounts and practice-related reviews, all contributors assume
an exploratory stance in their writing, which allows them to experiment with new forms ofgenerating, analysing, and composing their texts.
In the development process for LDJ5, an important early step was the formation of“response communities” in February 2020. Every contributor was assigned to at least one
group to discuss their research and writing in progress. The response communities wereorganised by genre (3 narrative account groups, 2 practice-related review groups). As
might be expected, not everybody started at the same point in the research-writing cycle.
Some had already completed their research and wished to write up their inquiries in new,more experimental ways; others were in the middle of doing, or yet to carry out, theirresearch. Everybody, though, had made a proposal for their LDJ5 project, which became
the starting point. From then on, the response community groups acted as a home base, so
to speak, for contributors where they might have “sustained conversations” (Clandinin &Connelly, 2000, p. 165) about the development of their research and writing—a safe place inwhich to video-conference and discuss their incomplete work, share doubts, and talk overdifferent directions they might take. Importantly, all four editors took part as writers in the
response communities. Each of us wrote a narrative account, as well as worked together ona co-written practice-related review. We participated alongside contributors and observed
the interaction in each response community from the inside. Inevitably, we could not shed
our position as editors completely, but, for the first 12 months of the project, we held off onproviding any editorial feedback on writers’ drafts.
During this period, contributors went through “insider” development within the response
communities, as well as “outsider” review with members of the Learner Development Journal
Review Network. The latter took place from October to December 2020, and contributors hada choice between “blind peer review” and “open peer review.” With blind peer review, writers
and reviewers did not know each other’s identities. This feedback was mediated by theeditors, with reviewer comments anonymised. For open peer review, writers and reviewers
could dialogue directly with each other. In February and March 2021, writers completed“first full drafts” and received further feedback. This came from one member of the Journal
Steering Group, and two LDJ5 editors. To personalise the process, the editors also recordeda short video discussion about each draft so that writers could get a closer sense of how we
saw their writing at that stage. “Second complete drafts” followed in May and June, withwriters finishing “complete final drafts” between July and September, from when editing for
publication took place through to December 2021. The whole process was incremental andinvolved different stakeholders taking part at different stages as each piece of writing grew
towards completion.

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Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 5 • December 2021

Andy Barfield, Oana Cusen, Yuri Imamura, & Riitta Kelly

What follows now is a brief introduction to each contribution to LDJ5, including a closingcommentary by Maria Ruohotie-Lyhty.

Narrative Accounts
Multilingualism in the Foreign Language Classroom: The Curious Case of French in
Mumbai .... Vasumathi Badrinathan
Vasumathi’s narrative account discusses her awakening to the multilingual turn in language
education, accompanied by the multilingual usage perceptions of six teachers of French in
Mumbai. She juxtaposes the rich multilingual make-up of Indian society with strongly held
teacher beliefs about monolingual target language use in the classroom and about students’existing linguistic resources hindering their acquisition of new languages. Vasumathi
concludes with a call for the recognition of all these multilingual resources, and for the
implementation of multilingual teaching strategies.

Reconciling with English: An Autobiography to Ruminate Over The Different Meanings
That English Has for Us …. Akiko Nakayama
Akiko uses her narrative account to embark on a journey of self-discovery by working
through her own fraught relationship with English, aided by the discussions she had with
Jina, a Korean student struggling to navigate the use of Japanese and English. Akiko’s
narrative intertwines two threads, Jina’s and her own, around attitudes to language learningand use, and the independence they have gained. She also includes experiences involving her
mother and grandmother, and thus provides an innovative look at the gendered aspect oflanguage learning.

Evolving Journeys of Multilingual Teachers of English in Japan …. Oana Cusen
In her narrative account, Oana documents a personal journey of reconciling her status asa non-native English speaking teacher (NNEST) with the multilingual practices in her
personal life. Through conversations with other foreign NNESTs in Japan, Oana reflects on
the contributions that such teachers can make to their learners’ multilingual development, as
well as ways for foreign NNESTs in Japan to bring multilingualism and multiculturalism tothe language classroom.

Reflections on Co-Teaching Multilingual University-Level Language andCommunication Courses …. Riitta Kelly and Jussi Jussila
Writing dialogically in their narrative account, Riitta and Jussi introduce a language andcommunication course taught multilingually (in Finnish, Swedish, and English) by teams ofteachers with different specializations at a university in Finland. They engage in a reflective
dialogue about their experiences as teachers involved in the planning and implementationof this course, and look at how these experiences have changed them as language teachingprofessionals.

Exploring Understandings of Multilingualism in a Social Learning Space: A
Duoethnographic Account …. Isra Wongsarnpigoon and Yuri Imamura
Isra and Yuri take a duoethnographic approach in their narrative account to discuss thecreation of a multilingual environment in the self-access center at a university in Japan. They
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Introduction to Engaging with the Multilingual Turn for Learner Development: Practices, Issues, Discourses, and Theorisations

juxtapose their perceptions and experiences as advisors in the center with students’ interview
data on the topic. They also show how their understanding of ways to foster a multilingual
culture in the center has evolved through their duoethnographic exploration.

Narrative Inquiry: Learning to Walk on Shifting Sands …. Lorraine de Beaufort
Lorraine uses her narrative account in LDJ5 to revisit a narrative inquiry she had previously
conducted with a student of French in Hong Kong for her doctoral research. Lorraine
focuses on how the narrative text is co-constructed by researchers and participants; she also
reconstructs previous narratives with the help of her LDJ5 response community. Through thisprocess, Lorraine discovers new insights into the value of narrative and its importance forlearner development.

Re-interpreting University Students’ Multilingual Lives: Connections, Questions, andWider Issues in Society …. Andy BarfieldIn his narrative account, Andy addresses issues on two sides of the same coin, namely
linguistic privilege, and linguistic discrimination and oppression. He reflects on his own
languaged life, as well as that of a colleague with whom he teaches a general education course
on multilingual issues. Andy’s narrative account then focuses on the reconstruction of thelanguage portraits of four multilingual students, and explores potential connections to wider
issues in society.

Practice-Related Reviews
Book Review and Critical Dialogue about he Ma ing o Monolingual apan: anguage
Ideolog and apanese Modernit (Heinrich, 2012) …. Ellen Head and Chie Tsurii
Ellen and Chie employ a dialogic approach to discuss questions of native speakerism, and how
those are connected with the prevalence of monolingual ideologies in Japan since the timeof the Meiji Restoration. They also relate issues arising from Heinrich’s analysis and their
discussion to their own approaches to English teaching in Japan.

Imagining Fair Language Policies: A Practice-Related Review of Piller’s inguistic
iversit and Social ustice …. Huw Davies
Huw bases his review of Piller’s work on the theme of fair language policies in the Japanese
education system. He argues that in order to truly move beyond the notion of Japan as amonolingual nation, it is necessary to consider the needs of linguistic minorities in education
policies and practices. Only in this way can effective multilingual practices be developed
within the Japanese context.

Tapping into the Lives of Learners: Review of Kalaja & Melo-Pfeifer’s (2019) isualising
Multilingual ives: More han ords …. Melike Bulut Al Baba
Melike reviews Visualising Multilingual Lives: More Than Words from a number ofdifferent perspectives that inform her life: language teacher and teacher educator, as wellas multilingual language user and parent. She reflects on how visual narratives like theones described by Kalaja and Melo-Pfeifer can be applied as research methods in various
multilingual contexts.

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Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 5 • December 2021

Andy Barfield, Oana Cusen, Yuri Imamura, & Riitta Kelly

A Learner’s Review of Horner & Weber’s (2018) Introducing Multilingualism: A Social
Approach …. Brennan Conaway
Brennan brings his recent experiences as a Master’s TESOL student to bear on his review ofIntroducing Multilingualism: A Social Approach. He covers issues related to the global
spread of English, societal multilingualism, and multilingualism in new media, among
others. Brennan also maps significant personal shifts in his understanding of these issues
and other language ideologies.

Exploratory and Critical Reading About the Multilingual Turn with Japanese Students:
Review of Conteh & Meier (2014) and May (2014) …. Alison Stewart
Alison adopts a unique approach to her practice-related review, not only by reviewing
two books in tandem, but also by including a detailed analysis of the insights she gainedby reading these books with her students at a university in Tokyo. While highlighting theimportance of introducing new ideas about multilingual theories and practices, Alison
also explores certain doubts about pushing the students to change their views of language
education based on these new ideas.

A Practitioners’ Collaborative Review of Researching Multilingualism: Critical andEthnographic Perspectives (Martin-Jones & Martin, 2017) …. Andy Barfield, Oana Cusen,
Riitta Kelly, and Yuri Imamura
In this collaborative review of Researching Multilingualism: Critical and Ethnographic
Perspectives, Andy, Oana, Riitta, and Yuri each focus on a particular chapter in the book thatspeaks to them either personally or professionally (or both). Working with what is inessence a book written for researchers of multilingualism, they draw out connections totheir own experiences and interests as practitioner-researchers, as well as relate these to themultilingual turn for learner development.

Commentary
Openness, Creativity, Collaboration, and Narrativity Paving Our Road Towards Critical
Multilingual Practices in the Classroom …. Maria Ruohotie-Lyhty
Maria read through all contributions to LDJ5 with a keen critical eye, and in her commentarydraws out particular themes she sees emerging across the narrative accounts and practicerelated reviews. She points out that critical multilingual practices are collaborative, based on
openness, and on careful ethical consideration and creativity. On this basis, Maria observes
that “narratives, narrative research, and the process of narration” are central resources in thedevelopment of critical multilingual practices.
As editors and practitioner-researchers, we are delighted to share this work with you.
Throughout the LDJ5 project, we have been deeply committed to supporting writers in
exploring and experimenting as they created their own innovative texts outside the mouldof conventional academic writing. In some ways, we sought to foster among contributors asense of creative, collaborative, and critical autonomy for writing about the multilingual turnfor learner development. We invite you, as the reader, to join this journey and take these
multilingual explorations further.
—Andy Barfield, Oana Cusen, Yuri Imamura, & Riitta Kelly
Jyväskylä, Finland, Kobe & Tokyo, Japan
December 2021
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Introduction to Engaging with the Multilingual Turn for Learner Development: Practices, Issues, Discourses, and Theorisations

LDJ5 Reviewers
ʶElizabeth Bekes, freelance teacher trainer, Cuenca, Ecuador

ʶPaul Collett, Shimonoseki City University, Japanʶ

Melodie Cook, University of Niigata Prefecture, Japanʶ

Simla Course, Akdeniz University, Turkey

ʶDonna Fujimoto, Osaka Jogakuin College, Japanʶ

Chika Hayashi, Seikei University, Japanʶ

Daniel Hooper, Hakuoh University, Japanʶ

Shu Hua Kao, Chihlee University of Technology, Taiwan

ʶHugh Nicoll, Miyazaki Municipal University, Japanʶ

Jim Ronald, Hiroshima Shudo University, JapanʶColin Rundle, Soka University, Japanʶ

Akiko Takagi, Aoyama University, Japanʶ

Katherine Thornton, Otemon Gakuin University, Japan

ʶ

Stacey Vye, Saitama University, JapanLDJ5 Support TranslatorʶHaruka Ubukata, Kanda University of International Studies, JapanLDJ5 Journal Steering GroupʶTim Ashwell, Komazawa University, Japanʶ

Dominic Edsall, Ritsumeikan University, Japanʶ

Tanya McCarthy, Kyoto University, Japan

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Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 5 • December 2021

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://ldjournalsite.wordpress.com/

The Learner Development Journal Issue 5: Engaging with the Multilingual Turnfor Learner Development: Practices, Issues, Discourses, and Theorisations
Author: Vasumathi Badrinathan
Title: Multilingualism in the Foreign Language Classroom: The Curious Case of French in
Mumbai.
Date of publication online: 2021
Author contact: <vbadrinathan@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:
Badrinathan, V. (2021). Multilingualism in the foreign language classroom: The curious
case of French in Mumbai. 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. 9-24). 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:, University of Mumbai, India<badrinathan@gmail.com>
I-

このナラティブ・アカウントは，言語的に異質な都市であるムンバイの外国語教室（フランス語）で，多言語主義がどのように扱われているかを理解しようとするものである。インドでは，外国語学習の分野における多言語は，ほとんど注目されていない。本
研究では，ナラティブ・インクワイアリー手法を用いて，6人のフランス語教師の生きたを探る。このナラティブは，教師自身の言語との関係や言語的アイデンティティを 省的に示す一方で，教室 での多言語アプローチのための限られたスペースを明らかにしている。教師のビリーフ，言語学習プロセス，社会文化的要因が，教室 での言語の理解と使用に影響を与えている。教師の中には，自分の教授法に多言語アプローチを導入することに反感を抱かない一方，消極的で躊躇してしまう者もいる。このことは，多言語 略の認識を強化することが早急に必要であることを指摘しており，ムンバイの外国語教室における言語の豊かさを認知することが求められている。

-

Keywords
多言語主義，ナラティブ・インクワイアリー，多言語教育ストラテジー，外国語としてのフランス語，ムンバイ

In this narrative account, I study the narratives of six French language teachers in
Mumbai city. Thereby I hope to gain an insight into the understanding of the concept ofmultilingualism by these teachers, as well as their classroom pedagogy involving French
and the other languages. At the outset I ould like to brie y retrace my o n personal
experiences with languages, with learning French, and with multilingualism. Subsequently,
I shall provide three vignettes relating to language in the educational space in order tocontextualize this study. Further I shall proceed to the teacher narratives and their analysis.
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Multilingualism in the Foreign Language Classroom: The Curious Case of French in Mumbai

I myself speak ith uency more than three Indian languages, in addition to English andFrench. At home in Mumbai, I grew up speaking Tamil. English was always a part of myreading, riting orld, and my education, so in other ords it as a second first language
if I could use that term. I speak, read, and write Hindi and Marathi with ease, the latter being
the regional language of the state of Maharashtra where Mumbai is situated. I also speaka smattering of imperfect Gujarati (language of the neighbouring state Gujarat, commonly
heard in Mumbai) and Malayalam (language of the Southern state of Kerala to which I was
exposed in my early years). I later studied Spanish and Russian at some point of my life. I
began learning French in school, was fascinated by the language, and continued further toac uire my degrees of speciali ation in this language. As I did not learn my first language
Tamil at school, I learnt to read and write the language with external coaching. Besides
teaching, I seriously engage with Indian classical music and on this front, I am constantly
handling a wide lyrical repertoire in several Indian languages. This is the multilingual selfthat I am as an individual and as a language teacher.
Having provided this brief autobiography that contributes to my own understanding ofmultilingualism, I shall now proceed to present the three vignettes I spoke about at the
beginning, as a means to conte tuali e this study. The first is the reminiscence of a teacher
ho taught me language in school, the second speaks of an Indian film and its relevanceto languages and the third of my own personal journey as a teacher towards a broader andempowering perspective of multilingualism.
While at school, I learnt Marathi the local language which was compulsory until a certain
level before exercising an option to choose French. My Marathi teacher enjoyed the language
she taught, spoke often to us in Marathi and explained poetry in simple Marathi that I still
remember and cherish. Marathi being close to Hindi in script and vocabulary, a language
hich isidely spoken in India, it as not di cult for most students in the class tounderstand and draw from their linguistic resources. The teacher would use English and some
Hindi as an intermediary to explain. Somewhere in my mind, these classes had a profoundexperience on me. Decades later as I look back on the Marathi classes, I understand why
they impacted me. Marathi is a regional language, spoken by many in the city of Mumbai,
often heard on the streets, and a common language of a large majority of the domestic
workers or house maids that many families employ. Teaching Marathi through Marathi witha touch of English and Hindi was the right blend to teach a regional language. It was not an
all-English class nor as it an all-Marathi class. The hegemony of English as shatteredand a space, though small, yet po erful, as created for regional Marathi in a non-invasive
way. Although the teaching style was traditional, which was not surprising given that thisas the late 0s, the teacher as avant-garde in the sense as she made all comfortable ith
her explanations, balanced the known languages (English, Hindi) with the target language(Marathi), encouraged the students to think of equivalents in Hindi and make connections
with known cultural symbols. She used her own multilingual background (Marathi, Hindi,
English) to construct supporting knowledge for her multilingual students through theirlanguages. Although I cannot meet this teacher today unfortunately to understand herthought processes, I would certainly conclude that her positive beliefs about the language
she taught underpinned her teaching methodology. She knew how to harness the languages
that the class had, she gently dismantled the binary approach of English and the otherlanguage as well as a purely monolingual approach to teaching and learning Marathi. This
example remains with me as an abiding model of expanding boundaries of language teaching
and creating a space for multilingualism within the class.
The second vignette that I ish to present is from an a ard- inning Indian film, e ton(Masurkar, 201 ). The film is set in rural India, against the backdrop of the Indian national

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Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 5 • December 2021

Vasumathi Badrinathan

elections. A team of election o cers attempts to set up a polling booth in a violent anddisturbed rural belt, home to forest tribal people. One of the polling o cers is a local girl,who otherwise by profession is a school teacher in the same belt. At one point, she describes
her daily ork and e presses ho di cult it is for her school children to understand the te t
books, as they are in Hindi, whereas the children speak and are familiar with Gondi, the local,
home language. Gondi is the language spoken by the aboriginal peoples or the Gonds from thecentral and south-central regions of India. So, as a teacher familiar ith this language hichis also her own, she explains the content to the school students in Gondi. This anecdote fromthe film reveals t o distinctive elements negligence or disdain to ards the local language
and an institutionalized instructional strategy that is unidimensional. The other element,
the more positive one, and very relevant to this study, is the e ort by the teacher to bringin the familiar language, making learning meaningful for her audience through linguistic
familiarity. Multilingualism is thus present not just in the classroom, in the city, and in myo n life e perience, but is also part of public discourse and modern media o ering di erent
perspectives as the film se uence sho s.
I now move on to discussing my own experience as a teacher of French. When I beganteaching French as a foreign language in Mumbai more than three decades ago, as a young
novice teacher, I as altogether enchanted ith the idea of the foreign tongue the mystery,the e oticism it o ered, and above all, in the depth of my mind, the unpronounced, implicit
norm of the native teacher. This meant, teach in French, speak in French and try to emulate
the native speaker model.
Trying to reach up to this model amongst other things, meant speaking the right way,with the “correct” accent and imitating the famous melodious French rhythm. Equippedwith meagre experience and eager to learn and experiment, as a young teacher, the only
path I could fall upon was my own experience with learning French. And this was throughthe medium of English. Thus, English became the via media for negotiating what could not
be transferred e ectively through French. This as the norm that became the mirror for
my early teaching practices. In juxtaposition with my Indian experience of learning Frenchthrough English, I ould place a French-only pedagogy, hich as prevalent in the courses
taught by French native teachers, and hich I took at the Alliance Fran aise, a French-run
institute for learning French. As I gre and matured as a teacher, the di erence bet een
the two approaches struck me. On the one hand, there was the Indian model that used
English in order to teach French (not forgetting the fact that French, or any foreign language
education is o ered only in institutions of English-medium instruction). On the other, there
was the imported model of teaching French through French. Let us admit that the latter wascertainly more e ective in ac uiring spoken skills and pronunciation, but far less practicalin the mainstream educational context of India. Grappling between the two models, and myincapability to surmount this dilemma, I took the middle path. I taught for around five years
in a bilingual model, French through French when possible but more often than not, Frenchthrough English. Only t o languages e isted in my class French and English.
The multilingual turn for me took place some years later through une pected uarters
firstly my o n class and secondly, a colleague s class. Back then, I confronted problems ofpronunciation with French for the learners. Those gifted for phonetics grabbed the nuancesof French ithout di culty. The challenge as for the rest, ho struggled ith sounds thatwere foreign to them and mispronounced them by grafting Indian phonetic sounds on them,hich is a common phenomenon. hile I tried to find e cient ays of dealing ith thispedagogically, I stumbled upon a student who was faithfully transcribing the pronunciationin his notebook into Tamil, his home language, for better understanding. Finding this tobe a brilliant idea, from that moment onwards I began integrating Indian languages that
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Multilingualism in the Foreign Language Classroom: The Curious Case of French in Mumbai

learners ere familiar ith, to transcribe ba ing French pronunciations. This came ith
fairly satisfactory results. The second occurrence was, when walking past a class, I noticed
and heard a colleague putting up the pronunciation of a French sentence in Hindi on theboard. This as met ith large-scale criticism. The stigma of using one language to teachanother reinforcing the “holier than thou” monolingual norm awoke in me the awarenessof the hegemony of the “one language” model in language classes together with the implicit
ostracizing of the other languages present in situ, thereby making the learner feel inadequate
for possessing those languages, even if indirectly.
The above three scenarios that I have presented bring out the scene of teaching inIndia often a tug-of- ar bet een target language and the other languages in uestion
or bet een language and the sub ect matter, as in the film (Masurkar, 201 ). There is an
inherent paradox here that I would like to highlight. Indians are rarely monolingual. They
know and use at least two languages right from birth if not more. Hence, learning a foreign
language alongside should not be problematic. But the underlying current of high and low
languages along with the inherent sociolinguistic hierarchy based on negative discrimination
around such individual and societal heteroglossia comes into play. Those having nonEnglish education are referred to as “the vernaculars” ot the “vernacs,” or coming from the“vernacular medium” which has taken on a derogatory sense probably since colonial times
in India when the British started categorising major Indian languages as vernacular (seeMishra, 2020). This idely-used terminology is discriminatory and pushes local and regional
languages to the margins. The other issue to contend with is a pedagogical one. Learning
French becomes easier if one has prior knowledge of English, given that both languages sharesome commonalities. In this process, those not comfortable with English are left behind in
the race. They either do not opt to learn a foreign language, and even if they do, they findthemselves at a disadvantage as compared to the English language speakers who advance
faster. This approach also raises issues of inclusivity through the language framework.
This initial lead-in helps foreground the teacher narratives that follo in the second halfof this narrative account. I shall now present my research design before moving on to a brief
exposition of the sociolinguistic fabric of Mumbai city, of the notion of multilingualism itself,
and finally to the teacher narratives themselves.

The Research Design—Looking Closely at Narrative Enquiry
It has been my concern to address the role of languages other than the target language, in thiscase, teaching French in Mumbai. This is inextricably linked to the teacher as a person, his or
her beliefs, their journey with languages, perceptions relating to language, and the relationshipbetween being, negotiating between languages, and teaching one of them. How do they perceive
languages As porous, non- ater-tight, breathing freely, and developing in a healthy language
ecology, or as individually separate entities that do not engage ith each otherI rely upon the narratives of six teachers teaching French in the city of Mumbai tounderstand their perspectives about the language they teach, the languages they and theirstudents know, and the convergent space which is the classroom. These teachers (all ofthem omen purely by coincidence) hose age range is bet een 4 0, speak about their
lived experiences, their relationship with languages, and French language teaching. Someof these teachers were born and raised in Mumbai, and some came into the city later. All ofthem know and use several languages in their daily lives. They have grown up with somelanguages, adopted some others along the way, and share a varied relationship with theselanguages. The teachers ork in diverse settings school, college, university and theirprofessional e perience ranges from 10 toyears.

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Vasumathi Badrinathan

I prefer the word discussion rather than interview as it sets the stage for narration;interviews implicitly set a hierarchy and thereby a barrier. What are the languages theteachers kno and use Do they use these languages in the French classo did they learn
Frenchhat determines their instructional practice Can they dra upon the languagesof the learners and their o n to teach French Through these and other uestions, I intend
to explore the language biographies of these teachers, their linguistic repertoires, and theinterrelationship between languages, teaching, knowledge creation through the multilingual
frame, and the multilingual identity. The main frames of discussion include the biographicaldimension of the teachers dealing with multiple languages, their own language learning
tra ectory, and finally their role and e perience ith multilingualism ithin the Frenchlanguage classroom.
In discussing in depth ith these teachers, I hoped to establish a free- o ing chain ofthought where they would speak without inhibitions and without succumbing to the pressureof giving the “right or correct answers.” What I am interested in here is the possibilityof looking closely at teacher narratives and how this impacts their classroom approaches
towards language teaching. In doing so, I wish to establish a “dialogic relation” between
the intervie er and the intervie ee so that the free o of thoughts and ideas is generated
without obstacles and the participants speak willingly and freely of their journeys. I have
known some of these participants for several years, and this personal relationship made iteasy for them to speak ithout inhibitions. All the semi-structured discussions took placeover the telephone due to the pandemic crisis.
In undertaking a narrative en uiry methodology, I ish first to understand the languaged
lives (Ellis, 201 ) of French language teachers. As I said earlier, most Indians use t o ormore languages in their daily lives. Therefore French language teachers also navigate between
multiple languages home languages (for not al ays is ust one spoken at home), languages
at work, languages at the marketplace and so on. The workplace may restrict them to one
language at an o cial level, usually English. o ever, the other languages they deal ith
and the relationship with all of these contributes to a language teacher identity that I hope
to comprehend through the narratives. Before I proceed, I ould like to d ell brie y on thenotion of multilingualism and the sociolinguistic fabric of Mumbai, which frames my study.

The Sociolinguistic Context of Mumbai City
In order to understand this study it is imperative to thro light, albeit brie y, on thesociolinguistic fabric of India and the city of Mumbai. The Indian constitution recognises
22 scheduled languages (o cially recognised in the th schedule of the Indian constitution).
Besides the scheduled languages, as many as 99 non-scheduled languages ith several
dialects under each of these languages are also mentioned in the constitution. Indiansociolinguist Pandit (1972) provides the classic and much quoted example of the Indian
multilingual mosaic.
A Gujarati spice merchant in Bombay uses Kathiawadi (a dialect of Gujarati), with hisfamily, Marathi (the local language) in the vegetable market, Kachi and Konkani in
trading circles, Hindi or Hindustani with the milkman and at the train station, andeven English on formal occasions. Such a person may not be highly educated or wellversed in linguistic rules but knows enough to be able to use the language(s) for his
purposes. (p. 79)
This exemplary situation of a linguistically heterogeneous Mumbai (as Bombay is known
today), holds true even today. It is further complicated by frequent code switching and
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Multilingualism in the Foreign Language Classroom: The Curious Case of French in Mumbai

varieties of Hinglish (mix of Hindi and English in colloquial usage) in formal and informal
discourse that have found a place in the current linguistic reality of the city.
English has a strong presence in India and its educational system, alongside Hindi, both ofhich are recognised as o cial languages, not to mention the regional o cial languages ofthe di erent states in India. English dominates as the language of higher education, although
it still remains a language of urban and metropolitan areas. The hegemony of English in
the hierarchy of languages is undisputed, often creating a secondary position for regional
languages that I have mentioned before.
rban multilingualism has been described as a crisscrossing net ork of many di erent
languages co-e isting in the same space (Siemund et al., 201 , p. 4), and this resonates ith
Mumbai, one of the most culturally and linguistically diverse cities of the world. Vertovec(200 ) refers to a super-diversity (in an European conte t of migration), hich has beenreadily adapted into a “linguistic superdiversity” (Duarte & Gogolin, 2013). In a context suchas Mumbai, the dynamic and complex interplay of languages can lend itself to the concept of asuperdiversity of languages. As the city gre into a financial stronghold and cinema capital of
the country, the diversity of its populace was enriched. This brought in a plethora of languages
and cultures especially palpable in Mumbai s ethnolinguistic enclaves, hich are interesting
spaces in themselves (Chik et al., 201 ). Today this diversity has gro n multifold, adding to its
comple ity of cultures and languages. As King and Carson (201 ) argue, the city space is a testbed” for an exploration and understanding of society and its cultures. In this context, the cityof Mumbai is my space for exploring the multilingualism of its French language teachers.

How Do We Understand Multilingualism Today?
In this section, I ill brie y discuss my understanding of multilingualism throughout thisnarrative account, which is central to its interpretation. The above example given by Pandit(preceding section) in the 1970s already points towards a broad understanding of individual
multilingualism (the European discourse prefers the distinction multilingualism to mean asocietal phenomenon and plurilingualism, referring to an individual s linguistic repertoire).
Pandit s trader is a multilingual individual, possessing many languages at his disposal that hecomfortably uses as per convenience to communicate (Pandit, 1972).
Conventional understanding today of the term multilingualism has changed in recent
years ith the upsurge of a large body of research in this field (Makoni & Pennycook,2012
ei, 201 amongst others). Multilingualism can no longer be understood in the
restricted sense of two monolingualisms meeting in a commonplace, but language itself
is reconceptualised as a multilingual, multimodal and multisensory meaning-making
resource (Otheguy et al., 2019, p. 2 ). In the conte t of language-rich Mumbai as in thelarger context of India, it would be diminishing to consider multilingualism in any otherform. Languages commonly meet in daily social and professional lives. Hybrid sentences suchas the following are very common in Mumbai in daily communication, as well as in public
spaces on signs, for example: “Pets ikde allowed nahi (Marathi-English: Pets are not allo edhere), “chatpata taste ( indi-English: referring to a taste that only an Indian ould kno
precisely tangy and hot at the same time). These e amples present language as a comple
yet spontaneous net ork of communicative and a ective elements. It is this specific natureof Indian multilingualism that is its natural pluralism and that extends continuously throughthe country, hich researchers called organic pluralism (Khubchandani, 199 , p. 9 ) a
non-competitive, interconnected language space ithin a society. Mumbai is perhaps one of
the best examples of this interconnectedness and language synergy in India. We may recall
here the interesting notion of “multilingual franca,” proposed by Makoni and Pennycook

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Vasumathi Badrinathan(2012), and hich is not far removed from Pandit s trader, ho today could still be theemblematic resident of Mumbai city. Following this overview of multilingualism, I seek to see
how this interplay between languages translates into the foreign language classroom.

Through Their Lens: Teacher Narratives
Having now laid out the background, I move to the core of the narrative account, which is
the teacher narratives. In the following subsections, I present a partial reconstruction of the
discussions that I had with the teachers. Subsequently, I shall proceed to an analysis andunderstanding of the narratives. Six French language teachers spoke through their personal
experiences, their beliefs and their relationship with the languages they know and they use in
their social, personal, and professional lives. The discussions with the teachers were mostly inEnglish to facilitate integration into the narrative accounts. However, at times, some teachers
used some French in our discussions.

Growing Up With Languages
In talking ith the teachers, my intention as to understand the di erent languages thatthey negotiated growing up and in their daily lives. I use pseudonyms for the teachers, tokeep close to the genre of the narrative account and to introduce a personal human touch towhat the teachers share about themselves and their narratives. The teachers that participatedin the study are Heena, Hetal, Natasha, Neeti, Rabia, and Sanjeevani. I will provide a briefbackground of these teachers that will help the reader relate better to them.
eena s ( years old) home language is indi, and she has an a nity to ards English. She
migrated to Mumbai after her marriage. etal (4 years old) gre up in Mumbai, and orked
in another profession before eventually becoming a French teacher. Her home language is
Gu arati. atasha (years old) gre up in the state of Gu arat and, like eena, moved to
Mumbai after her marriage. She eventually became a French teacher in a school. Her homelanguages are Gu arati and English. eeti (years old), native to Mumbai, speaks Gu arati athome, and teaches French in a school. Rabia ( 0 years old), also a native of Mumbai, gre up
speaking Hindi and English and feels connected to the Urdu language. She teaches university
students. Sanjeevani (34 years old) works in a school. She is native to Mumbai and her homelanguage is Marathi.
It is obvious that the teachers grew up naturally negotiating multiple languages in their
daily lives. Sanjeevani is very conscious of her Marathi roots and the strong presence ofthe language at home, safeguarded through intergenerational communication and throughliterature in print.
We speak Marathi at home. Hindi of course was always around us and then we watched Hindi
movies! And we picked up colloquial Hindi and regularly used it with our friends. All my education
was in English. Sometimes we speak in English at home. When we visited my grandparents or
my elderly relatives, we only spoke in Marathi and that continues even today. I learnt to read
and write Marathi as we learnt it in school and then at home, there were always Marathi books
around at home, Marathi newspapers and all that you know. (Sanjeevani).
atasha and eena are also eager to point out the di erent languages present at di erent
points in their lives. atasha identifies language shifts due to geographical mobility and ho
she embraced a new language Marathi without any perceived resistance.
When growing up, we always spoke Gujarati at home. At school we learnt English. And withneighbours we spoke in Gujarati. Later, when I moved to Mumbai, I spoke Hindi, and now a
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Multilingualism in the Foreign Language Classroom: The Curious Case of French in Mumbai

smattering of Marathi, which I understand well but do not speak as well. Much later in my life I
learnt French and I continued with it. Between my husband and I we use Gujarati and English.
(Natasha)
We spoke Hindi growing up. And English was always present as it was the medium of learning inschool and then the reading culture at home. Hence I read a lot in English. And French came inlater in school. I pursued it as it fascinated me. (Heena)
However it was the conscious reliving of their language identity through their narratives
that brought this awareness of the importance of languages in their lives to the fore.

The Journey with Learning
Another theme that emerged as I helped teachers relive their language learning experiences,
was the place of French in conjunction with other languages in their personal and linguistic
space. Hetal, for example, recalled learning French after she had already graduated:
I started learning French rather late in my life. I was working in an office before and then got
tired of it and explored French. I continued learning. Once I achieved a good level in the language,
I felt eager to start teaching and got an opportunity to teach in a school. Thus I began teaching.
I like teaching French. I am happy I can speak Gujarati, English, French, Hindi and Marathi. I
find myself connected with languages. Somewhere it’s satisfying to deal with languages, and to
speak it. My family thinks I am obsessed with French, though! (Hetal)
Speaking multiple languages and using them for di erent purposes reveals theinterconnectedness of these languages ithin the socio-professional language ecology ofthese teachers. Hetal uses adjectives such as “connected,” “satisfying,” and “obsessed”
that display her attachment to languages. The choice of language use, though varied, is not
random and is often determined by the context and the usefulness of language as we see inthe quotes below. Heena, while retracing her language learning journey, expresses positive
feelings and takes pride in being a language teacher and the power of expression.
I began learning at school, then in college, and thus began my journey. I speak Hindi at home anda good bit of English. Of course business outside the house is in English or Hindi, and at work I
teach in French and English. I feel proud actually that I can be a language teacher, happy to workwith languages. I do not know how to express it correctly but it makes you feel nice. (Heena)
Rabia “cherishes” the aesthetic dimension that French has given her through its literatureand cultural depth.
I got the opportunity to learn French in school. I loved the language and continued and here I
am with thirty six years of teaching experience behind me, at college, at university. I was always
fond of literature. I have a Masters in English literature and French literature. Going deeper into
the language, I discovered literature in the original, which is not the same thing as reading thetranslated work. I discovered French songs, French paintings and how the language had spreadover so many countries. I cherish my association with English and French, and of course, Hindi
and Urdu which are so close to me on a daily basis. Such closeness to language gives me a certain
dimension to your personality, to your aesthetics. (Rabia).
eeti, urged into re ection by her narrative, clearly en oys her transaction
languages.

ith multiple

Gujarati is my first language. I share a bond with this language. We speak it at home, with myparents. Of course, English is always there, ever-present! I have never really thought about this16

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in detail, but as you ask me, it is quite interesting, to be dealing with so many languages all in
one go! Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati, and of course French. My Marathi is not so good, I manage
though! I do enjoy it. (Neeti).
However, one element that clearly emerges is that the learning process of languages ismarked by the use of English, and of learning language “the correct way,” as the observations
from Heena and Sanjeevani below show.
When I learnt in the seventies, we did not learn how to speak. It was more of written work, stresson writing, on correct grammar of French, the right spelling, the correct verbs etc. Now there is aneed more than ever to communicate. So one needs to modify according to that. (Heena).
We worked so hard on our conjugation of verbs, we had a very sincere approach to learning thelanguage. We did not only crave for the marks. The teacher would explain the grammar welland we worked well on the grammar. That has given me a strong base today. We learnt English,
though that was the medium of instruction. In Marathi and Hindi classes also we used English
though we wrote in Hindi and Marathi. The teachers were very good in explanations. We did a
lot of writing work. The English teacher taught in English, the Marathi and Hindi teachers usedsome Hindi and Marathi in class but explanations were in English, so that everyone could follow
easily. (Sanjeevani).
Both Heena and Sanjeevani touch upon the “correctness” of language learning and theimportance of the ritten competence prevalent in their learning years. eena s narrative
clearly brings out the change that she perceives in society over a period of time andhow language learning needs to adapt to a more communicative approach, In contrast,
Sanjeevani does not explicitly touch upon this element, although her narrative reveals thecompartmentalisation between languages in the learning process.

Teaching French
I now focus on the role of language in the professional space and lives of these teachers. I am
interested in knowing how they handle the multiple languages of the classroom, the teaching
techniques they employ to tap the multilingual resources of their students, the struggles andchallenges they may encounter in this process. I see the same enthusiasm and proximity withlanguages as a motivating factor for these teachers. Natasha is well aware of the challenges
ithin the classroom that make a communicative approach di cult.
I like teaching, communicating with students. I always wanted to be a teacher, to learn not justto read and write but to speak French as well. Therefore when I began teaching, I wanted tocommunicate this ability to the students. But you see inside the classroom it becomes difficult.
There are 45 students of varying levels. And in 50 minutes, we have to complete the task andleave the room. We cannot achieve everything. (Natasha)eeti echoes

atasha s vie s, but makes her best e orts under such circumstances.

How is it possible to teach spoken French fluently to the students? Many are not interested. Manyfind it difficult to understand. This is the challenge and I enjoy it. (Neeti)
Rabia s use of English as a medium for teaching French is the same as eeti s. English,
above all, performs the important function of bringing clarity and understanding in theclassroom.
I like to teach, I like being a teacher (…). I learnt with detailed explanations of grammar. That’s
how my grammar base is strong. One cannot explain all this in French to young thirteen andLearner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 5 • December 2021

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Multilingualism in the Foreign Language Classroom: The Curious Case of French in Mumbai

fourteen year olds. The base has to be reinforced, and they have to perform well in the exams.
Therefore, we have to explain the same through English. (Rabia)
All the teachers deal with a class that is linguistically heterogeneous in terms of languages
present within, with English being the medium of instruction. The presence of several
languages in class often comes through in the teacher narratives as the weakest link in thelearning process in the eyes of the teachers it is a hindrance to the right accent, or thereason for code-s itching. hile there are multiple languages present in the classroom in thestudent repertoire, the teachers do not treat them as a resource or an advantage.
For Neeti, the stress is on “mastering” a language correctly and achieving target language
proficiency.
I constantly encourage my students to speak in French. They do resort to English in the class all
the time or chat in their own languages some of them. I have told them not to do so manytimes, but do they listen? Many are not interested in really mastering the language. They wantto get good scores. They want to tell everyone, they have learnt the language, but how wellthey learn it is another thing altogether. Actually they do not always want to master languages.
What’s the use of improperly learning a language? But nowadays I notice see, how they speak
English? Half the sentence in English and one half in Hindi or using Hindi words in between toconnect sentences. Can you believe it? (Neeti)
Rabia is very conscious of straightening out accents that occur because of other languages
that the learners have in their repertoires.
When I teach, I do use English as a medium of communication. Sometimes, I recognise thelanguage they speak at home in their French accent or even their English accent. I try to correctit, but somewhere it lingers on. It is difficult to get rid of that. I keep telling them don’t speakin Hindi in class, pay attention to your French pronunciation. (Rabia)
Heena brings out the “messy” part of knowing many languages and mixing them up and is
deeply concerned about the lack of desire to learn “perfectly.”
Half-baked learning has become the norm. Even their English is full of mistakes. Their Hindi,
it’s all a mix of many things including English and what not. Whenever they get a chance, they
are chatting with their friends in Hindi, or sometimes Marathi or Gujarati, you know they makefriends with others who speak their language. So no one is concerned about learning correctly,
learning perfectly. (Heena)
San eevani echoes eena s vie s and, although she dra s e amples from other languages,
she does not perceive it as a resource, but rather as the root cause for the imperfections inlearning the target language.
It is important for the students to learn to speak in French at least a little bit. I do try. But I have toresort to English, how will they understand otherwise. Sometimes to correct their pronunciation,
I give examples from Hindi or Marathi. For example parent. They mispronounce it in French.
Then I tell them, it’s like “paapdi” or “chaat”… But the main problem is there is confusion
between the languages they already know and French. So they mix up pronunciations. That’s avery big problem. And when they write also, it’s the same issue. All the languages get mixed up
and it becomes a mess. That’s why in class I tell them, concentrate on your French! (Sanjeevani)
etal is honest in confessing that she has never re ected on integrating the otherlanguages towards teaching French, although she is well aware of the presence of many
languages in class.

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Yes I do know most of my students speak at least three or four languages I have students who
speak Tamil, Kannada, Bengali, Gujarati, Tulu etc at home. Of course, all of them speak English,
Hindi. Sometimes good Marathi also. Sometimes you hear them chat in Hindi in the class andEnglish is omnipresent. I haven’t really tried using their languages to explain or teach French. I
find some time to speak in French though this component does not count for much in the exams.
(Hetal)atasha is the only teacher ho refers to a positive multilingual element her e perience
ith idiomatic e pressions in di erent languages and comparing it ith French e pressions.
Once we were having a discussion in class on idiomatic expressions. And students came up withinteresting expressions in Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati etc the languages they know or speak athome. It was very nice to compare these expressions, some which are common, others which arenot. (Natasha)
Rabia brings in other languages in class but is apologetic about it, and is quick to add thatshe does not want to “make it a habit.” Neeti too has a tone of regret about using anotherlanguage (English) while teaching French and underlines that it is more out of compulsion (tofacilitate understanding) than choice.
Sometimes I write the pronunciation in Hindi on the board, it helps, but I don’t do it often. Only
sometimes. I don’t want to make it a habit. I stick to French and English by and large. But there
are also limitations. I do not have much time in class. (Rabia)
You have to explain the grammar and other difficult concepts in English. Only then everyone
understands. (Neeti)
Others, like Sanjeevani, who do take the help of local languages while teaching seem tohave di culty accepting that this can be a useful and meaningful strategy for target language
proficiency.

Discussion
By virtue of their retrospective character, narratives encourage a re ective thought process.
The narrative extracts that we have looked at in the previous section reveal teacher beliefs at
a personal, social, and professional level.
At a personal level, the teachers I talked with are conscious of their multilingual identity.
They recognise their strong multilingual repertoires, through the pleasant personale periences that they narrate and an evident pro imity ith di erent languages. This allo s
us to understand how they negotiate between languages and view themselves as users ofthese languages. They move e ortlessly bet een their many Indian languages and a foreign
language that is French. In this process, they construct a “hybrid” identity as a foreign
language teacher. By this I refer to a distinct sense of identity of one negotiating between,
and inhabiting languages, and also occupying these many spaces simultaneously one thatis local and rooted in home languages and cultures, the other emerging from the foreign
language and culture and the resultant third space, to borrow from Bhabha (1994), mediatedby the presence and knowledge of the foreign language.
However, I notice that this positive sense of identity does not percolate favourably within
the classroom. The narratives regarding classroom practices and events often embody thenotion of “monolingual superiority.” A language, if we know one, should be well mastered.
The presence of other languages in a person s life even ith varying levels of mastery,though acknowledged, is neither perceived nor understood as a strength. While the teacher
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Multilingualism in the Foreign Language Classroom: The Curious Case of French in Mumbai

narratives reveal the variety of languages and acknowledge that variety, the celebration of
the multilingualism of learners or even perceiving that as a distinct advantage is absent in
how they articulate their views. In fact, some teachers are even critical of improper use oflanguage, imperfections and code switching. Only one teacher, Natasha, makes an allusion
to a positive inclusion of languages present in the class. She stands out as an example
of someone who has moved beyond the “looking down” upon local languages, and has
succeeded in de-normalising the stigmatising hierarchy. Although she did not outline in her
comments any particular reason for her significantly di erent methodology, I sensed that she
had a humanistic approach concerning languages, especially while referring to her activity
involving other languages as “interesting” and “nice to compare.” This reminds me of
Agnihotri s (2014) observation that language conceptualised as multilinguality is constitutiveof being human (p.
4). One has to first begin by accepting the other, and this means
accepting their language(s) too. This idea helps conceptualise multilingualism di erently.
Natasha, in this case, seems to be naturally sensitive toward the languages present aroundher, that her learners have, and is sensitised to this useful strategy.
It is evident that if teachers are not averse to the languages present in class, they are
struggling with the multilingualism that they are confronted with. Here, three aspects
come to the fore. Firstly, the learning beliefs of teachers, which are fashioned by their own
learning experience, give them a strong sense of mastering a language correctly. In thisscheme of things, one is empowered with knowledge only when one achieves perfection in
it. The second is the inherent hierarchy of languages that is present in society and education,and to which they are not immune. Therefore, mobilising languages other than English in
the French classroom is frowned upon, and thus it is left to the margins or spoken about
with hesitation or apology. This is also the reason for the underlying sense of guilt in using
languages such as indi or Marathi to teach, even though the teachers do find it useful intheir pedagogy. The only language that can disrupt this process is English by virtue of its
implicit superiority. This discriminating hierarchy has been normalised in the lives of theteachers and naturally trickles into their pedagogical practices. The third aspect is a lack of
a areness about multilingualism. The e ibility and movement that e ist bet een languages
at a societal level evaporate when it comes to the language classroom that is described
here. Even if some teachers are not hostile to languages other than English and French,
they are clearly unaware about integrating a multilingual approach in class, and even about
understanding multilingualism through a larger prism.
By and large, the narratives reveal that we are dealing with a notion of multilingualismthat translates as “two or more monolinguals in one body” (Creese & Blackledge, 2010, p.
10 ). Teachers are directed to ards a bilingual approach (English-French/French-English)
largely because of their beliefs being fashioned by their own learning experiences. It is anembodiment of the internalisation of the language hierarchy and the monolingual approachby the teachers. Despite alluding to bilingualism and multilingualism as guidelines,
government policies do not distinguish bet een a uid multilingualism in class and a rigid
framework of educational norms. The National Education Policy (NEP) of 2020 in India, atthe very onset, declares that one of its key objectives is “promoting multilingualism andthe power of language in teaching and learning” (Government of India Ministry of Human
Resource Development, p. 5). The policy additionally recognises bilingualism as a focus area
for teaching: “Teachers will be encouraged to use a bilingual approach, including bilingual
teaching-learning materials, ith those students hose home language may be di erent
from the medium of instruction” (p. 13). Moreover, India has long embraced the “threelanguage policy and the EP 2020 further clarifies that at least t o of these languages ill
be native to India besides making space for foreign languages in the educational system.

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Vasumathi Badrinathan

So it is clear that languages enjoy a place of importance in educational policy. However,the challenges start from this point onwards as languages that exist alongside each other,but rarely co-e ist, rarely speak to each other. This additionally contributes to a generalold- orld notion of a largely monolingual multilingualism. Kno ing many languages
imperfectly is neither a disadvantage nor an inconvenience. In fact it should be viewed as
linguistic capital, a strength hich is also dynamically shifting like the imperfect English
spoken by the youth of Mumbai, which one of the teachers explicitly mentions critically.
The hegemonic presence of English is also clear. While it is an important language, there
is no bridge between English and the other languages in these contexts. This “language
isolation” also weakens the multilingualism of both teacher and learner, and does nottranslate into enriching classroom pedagogy for foreign language learning. The two seem
strangely divorced. Use of other languages besides English seems unnecessary, and, even if
productive, remains in the margins. ere is here language and curriculum specific policies,
such as the National Curriculum Framework (National Council of Educational Research andTraining, 2005), and the National Focus Group report on the teaching of Indian languages( ational Focus Group on Teaching of Indian Languages, 200 ), could help. These policies
clearly recognise multilingualism as linked to the identity of the learner, and advocate it as aclassroom strategy by the language teacher. But this has to percolate to the teachers on the
ground, as the multilingual repertoire of both the teacher and the learner are underexploredor practically neglected.

Concluding Remarks
arratives are a fundamentally in ard element for those narrating. o ever, the firsthand accounts help the researcher apprehend the stories (Busch, 2017, p. 52) from an external
perspective. Therefore, I have attempted to make meaning of the narratives and the teacher
tra ectories. pon reading and re-reading of the narrative transcripts, three lines of thinking
were strongly visible: the “one strong language” phenomenon, the sense of guilt in using
other languages to teach the target language (in this case French), and lastly, the lack ofunderstanding of the importance of multilingual repertoires in the teaching environment.
Multilingual teachers enjoy a complex and complete toolset at their disposal, which allows
them to negotiate di erent languages for teaching, and, as Busch (201 ) puts it, createa “space for potentialities” (p. 57). The conventional pedagogy in use can change only
if teachers are made aware of ways of harnessing the languages at their disposal within
their teaching framework. There is also a need for informed recognition of the strengthsof a multilingual teacher and their multilingual lives that merit attention. Merely having
positive beliefs regarding languages does not necessarily lead to adopting a multilingual
pedagogy ( aukas, 201 ). In this regard, I perceive teacher educational programmes thatmake them aware of educational policies advocating multilingualism along with a practicalclass approach to be a solid way of engaging foreign language teachers with multilingualism
and incorporating a multilingual pedagogy. Research shows that there is a strong correlation
bet een teacher self-perceived proficiency and their plurilingual a areness (Ot ino ska,2014). To make a teacher engage better with the languages of the class, she needs to be awareof them.
Coming back to my own personal narrative with which I started this narrative account,
I had always imagined that I was an incomplete foreign language teacher, rather than aperfect multilingual teacher. It took years of experience, reading, and scholarship to makemyself aware of the merits of my multilingual self within the classroom, to fully understandthe potential of multilingualism, and to challenge the phenomenon of the two solitudes
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Multilingualism in the Foreign Language Classroom: The Curious Case of French in Mumbai(Cummins, 200 ) putting languages into atertight areas that do not interact ith eachother, which is further reinforced through the evaluation patterns in education. There wasalways a recognition of the “right grammar phrase,” the correct conjugation, the correctspelling and so on. This made the notion of the “right and correct version” the only way ofengaging with learning. Moreover, language learning within the institutional framework ishighly compartmentali ed, o ering little or no give-and-take bet een languages. Therefore,
in my opinion, it will take much more than mere teacher education to bring about a change.
While teacher training could certainly provide the needed technical solutions for integrating
a multilingual approach, the problem is located at a wider sociocultural and sociopoliticallevel. Therefore, it ill also take e perience to live and relish one s languaged self, and theunderstanding of one s multilingual identity as a reckoning force. A change of consciousness,and questioning the deeply rooted hierarchy of languages, is called for. Of course, ways toenable this force ithin the teaching-learning frame ork ill have to be created. It ill
also take the same understanding from concerned stakeholders institutions, associations,learners and their families, and decision makers. Finally, it would only be an advantage ifsuch diversity could be harnessed for foreign language teaching and learning.
If a language classroom, as Pennycook (200 ) e plains, is a transcultural contact one(p. 30), then it is incumbent on language teachers to negotiate this richness and reassert
the local in the global (Canagarajah, 2005). This in turn could also stimulate a meaningful
student-oriented and student-led pedagogy, especially in a linguistically heterogeneous classenvironment such as in Mumbai. But in order to do so, teachers ill have to first unpack theirown beliefs concerning multilingualism and confront them.
This study propels me to further expand the boundaries of narratives and encourageteachers to write down their stories with a particular focus on multilingualism. For a future
research study, a focus group discussion on multilingualism wherein these narratives could
be shared and deliberated upon, could probably be an interesting way of engaging witha pedagogy of multilingualism for foreign language teaching. Eventually, this could be astarting point for reconfiguring classroom pedagogies. There is an urgent need to articulate
strategies that allow for L1s to enter L2 spaces. This would help in not just challenging theexisting language hegemony, but also making additive bilingualism or multilingualism a
viable paradigm in the Indian conte t. In other ords, this could help create a non-guilt
multilingual approach in foreign language classrooms where teachers feel empowered tocall upon the languages of the learners. In such an approach, the presence of home and first
languages would serve as a foothold and not as a hindrance as the narratives in this research
reveal. This process could further help to validate learners linguistic identities and linguistic
capital in multilingual settings (Cummins, 2007) such as Mumbai.

Vasumathi Badrinathan is Assistant Professor in the Department of French, University of
Mumbai. Her research interests include multilingualism, technology in language learning,
and learner-teacher autonomy. She co-edited an issue of the ournal Glottopol on
multilingualism in the Asian conte t (201 ). Besides, Vasumathi is a literary translator andtranslates from Tamil and Marathi into French.
Vasumathi Badrinathan est maître de conférences au département de français, Université deMumbai, Inde. Ses principaux domaines de recherche portent sur la didactique du français
langue trang re et incluent l int gration des technologies, le plurilinguisme et l autonomie
de l enseignant-apprenant. Elle a co-coordonn un num ro de Glottopol sur le plurilinguismeen conte tes asiati ues (201 ). Vasumathi est galement traductrice litt raire.

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Vasumathi Badrinathan

Review ProcessThis paper as blind peer-revie ed by members of The Learner Development Journal Review
Network and Journal Steering Group. (Contributors have the option of open or blind review.)

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Multilingualism in the Foreign Language Classroom: The Curious Case of French in MumbaitttInternational Journal of Multilingualism 11
dt
India as a sociolinguistic areat
Global Englishes and transcultural flows
t d
d
t
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Multilingualism and language
diversity in urban areas
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Ethnic and Racial Studies 30

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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://ldjournalsite.wordpress.com/

The Learner Development Journal Issue 5: Engaging with the Multilingual Turnfor Learner Development: Practices, Issues, Discourses, and Theorisations
Author: Akiko Nakayama
Title: Reconciling with English: An Autobiography to Ruminate Over the Different
Meanings That English Has for Us
Date of publication online: 2021
Author contact: <akknkym@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:
Nakayama, A. (2021). Reconciling with English: An autobiography to ruminate overthe different meanings that English has for us. In A. Barfield, O. Cusen, Y. Imamura, &R. Kelly (Eds.), The Learner Development Journal Issue 5: Engaging with the Multilingual Turnfor Learner Development: Practices, Issues, Discourses, and Theorisations (pp. 25-39). 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:NI, Hiroshima University <akknkym@gmail.com>
I

I

I

I

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I
I

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このナラティブ・アカウントでは，ジナと私という2人の女性が言語学習とどのように関わってきたかを紹介する。ジナは日本の大学で学ぶ韓国人女性である。日本のコンテクストでは，東アジア出身の学生のほとんどが日本語と英語のいずれかに流暢であるが，彼女には両方の言語で流暢にコミュニケーションをとる能力があった。彼女は日本語が流暢であるにもかかわらず英語に大きな投資をしていた。なぜ英語 ではない
日本に て英語なのか。これがこの研究の始まりである。二つ目のストーリーは，ジナのストーリーをリフレクシブに理解しようとする中で生まれた私のストーリーである。私は，生まれたところも育った時代もジナとは異なっていたが，二人のストーリーの間を行き し，自分のストーリーを語り直すことによって，私たちに共通する女性としての人生の目標，言語学習及び使用によって得た自由，さらに私たちにとって英語学習はどのような意味を持つのかを考察した。それにより，言語学習は，とりわけ私にとって女性の領域に結びついていることが明らかになった。また，私たちは二人ともこの近代社会の中で自立して生きるという共通の目標を持っており，この課題を達成するために，言語，特に英語学習に して私は拒否を，ジナはそれを積極的に受け入れるというコインの裏と表のような態度を持っていたことが明らかになった。
본고에서는 두 여성이 언어학습과 어떻게 관련되어 있는지에 대한 스토리를 소개한다. 첫 번째 여성은 일본 대학에서 유학 중인 한국인 진아다. 진아는 일본어가 유창함에도 불구하고 영어에 많은 투자를 했다. 그녀는 왜 일본까지 와서 영어를 중시하는가, 라는 의문이 이 연구를 시작하게 했다. 두 번째 여성은 진아의 스토리를 자기성찰적으로 이해하려는 중에 발견한 나 자신이다. 나는 진아과 다른 나라, 다른 시대를 살아왔지만, 우리 각각의 스토리를 오가며내 자신의 스토리를 다시 말하고 기억을 돌이켜봄으로써 우리에게 공통되는 인생의 목표, 언어학습과 사용을 통해 획득한 자유, 나아가 우리에게 영어 학습은 어떤 의미를 갖는지에 대해 고찰했다. 그 결과, 언어학습이 나에게는 여성의 영역에 매여 있었음을 알 수 있었다. 또한 우리는 현대 사회에서 자립하여 살아간다는 공통의 목표를 가지고 있으며, 이 과제를 달성하기 위하여 언어학습에 대해 나는 거부의 태도를 취한 반면, 진아는 적극적으로 수용하는 태도를 취하여 동전의 양면과 같은 태도였음을 알 수 있었다.

Keywords
英語のヘゲモニー，オートバイオグラフィ，ジェンダー，アイデンティテイ，研究者のリフレクシビティ，言語学習の目的영어 헤게모니, 자전적 글쓰기, 성차, 아이덴티티, 연구자의 자기성찰, 언어 학습의 목표

Prologue
The hegemony of English is having a significant impact on our lives in the East Asian conte t(Park, 2009 Seargeant, 2009). Japanese universities have created many English-mediatedprograms to attract international students (Ninomiya et al., 2009) and pressured researchers
to present their research in English regardless of their field of study. I have been involved
with international students in Japan for more than 20 years as a Japanese language teacher,and during that time I have sensed the influence of English on the students I have met. In

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Reconciling with English: An Autobiography to Ruminate Over the Different Meanings That English Has for Us

the past, there were two different kinds of international student groups, one using English
and the other using Japanese (Simic et al., 200 ). It was rare to meet a student from East
Asia who was uent in both English and Japanese. However, in the past ten years or so, I
have occasionally met international students from East Asia who can speak both Japaneseand English uently even at a university located in a small town. Jina (a pseudonym) is oneof these examples. She was an international student from South Korea, studying at Dream
Field University (also a pseudonym, and hereafter DFU) in West Japan, who majored in social
science as an undergraduate. Although she was uent in Japanese, she preferred to speak in
English and actively interacted with English-speaking international students. Jina went to
a Baltic country for an English-medium program as an e change student for one year. hy
was English so important even when she was in Japan, a non-English-speaking country Had
the advantages of learning Japanese already disappeared Jina made me reali e the hegemonyof English and made me reconsider what the purpose of learning a foreign language is when
it loses economic merits. In this autobiographical narrative, I would like to look back on thelanguage learning processes of two East Asian women, Jina and me, using our life stories, andre ect on what language learning has meant to us as learners.
This narrative account also has another purpose, which is my private goal (Maxwell,2013). I want to construct my new English writing self (Canagarajah, 2002) by reconcilingmyself with the period in my life when I did not like studying English. While studying for
my doctoral dissertation, I was ama ed by the volume and the width of the field related
to Second Language Acquisition (SLA) written in English. I wished I could join this groupsometime in the future. It was my “imagined community” (Kanno & Norton, 2003). But once
I started writing in English, I stopped writing and asked myself, “Why do I want to write inEnglish I felt I had to understand why I had so little interest in studying English. There
were several previous studies that depicted Japanese women who invested in the language
for the purpose of escaping their lives in Japan (McMahill,199 Yoshimoto, 200 ). or somegirls, English could be a tool for emancipation from conservative, patriarchal Japanese society;however, it did not seem like I fit in those cases. But that does not mean I was satisfied withthe current gender inequality situation in Japan. It is as if I had gone through the struggle
to construct a different identity and self to find my own voice, as many language learners
have done (Canagarajah, 2002; Morita, 2004; Taniguchi, 2013). When I initially started
writing about Jina, I had not recognized my ambivalent feelings toward English entangledwith my gendered life story, as well as my mother s and my grandmother s. Understanding
my feelings toward English shed light on my life story from a different angle, and thereforechanged the view I had about Jina and other women.
To achieve these multiple goals, I will share my semi-autobiography that has emerged
from re e ively in uiring into Jina s language learning e periences. hy did she invest
in English so muchhat did her e periences using Japanese mean to her
hy did I not
like studying English I have moved back and forth between Jina s stories and mine, andthrough comparison and contrast, I was able to retell and relive (Clandinin & Connelly,2000) my stories which I wrote in Japanese in the past (Nakayama, 201 b). Jina and I wereboth not only multilingual in Korean, English, and Japanese, but also sailing in this modern
competitive world as women heading towards the accomplishment of our missions of
independence. I could find a new meaning in our different attitudes to language learning byconnecting them with our mission. In addition, both of us experienced the construction of our
new L2 selves, which entailed freedom from our native cultures, albeit in different languages
and different environments. However, both of us felt uncomfortable using L2, Japanese for
Jina, and English for me. It was suggested that the feelings and emotions of L2 experiences
are good or bad, generated from the transaction with the society and the learner (Block, 2007;

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Akiko Nakayama

Duff, 2019). This transaction is uni ue to each learner because it is related to their personal
history.
This narrative account proceeds in the following order. I start with my story. As I
mentioned above, in order to write this semi-autobiography in English, I need to look backat my own history. I first share how I recogni ed the value of English, but ultimately kept itaway from me because it was a role assigned to women (Kobayashi, 2015). I continue with
Jina s story. ollowing the memory of my encounter with Jina, I retell her e perience of total
freedom” with English as a lingua franca (ELF), which happened in a rural Turkish town
where she visited as a volunteer teacher. This prompted me to recall my experience of using
ELF in Korea and learning/using Korean. For me, speaking Korean in an L2 environment
helped me to feel free from my native Japanese culture to some extent, but this was not thecase for Jina when she spoke Japanese in her first study abroad e perience at a large private
university in Tokyo. In the final part of this narrative account, I will e plore the meaningof learning English for Jina. Jina was trying to put on English armor in order to survive inthis society. Isn t that the ip side to why I kept away from learning English in high school
Understanding the common mission that Jina and I shared helped me to change my view ofwomen who invest in language learning, which had been di cult for me to understand forso long. Through this series of small stories, I want the reader to understand the insight oflearning/using English and other languages in the East Asian context. I hope I can convey ourtruth of being multilingual women.

My Story: Two Faces That English Has
First Encounters with English
It was the time when my family and I were living in a small danchi, the unattractive public
housing provided by the Japanese government. A number of same-si e buildings were standing
in a row on the top of the hill, and in the summer, pink owers of bamboo peach would bloom
for a long time. We moved to this danchi in Osaka from Yokohama, near Tokyo, because myfather quit his job and started his own business. Due to this, my mother quit her desirable
highly skilled government work to save their marriage. Despite this, she was enthusiastic about
her new missions: the education of her three daughters and the management of the household.
We, the three sisters, or at least me, were happy, even though we did not have much money.
I am the eldest and was about to start elementary school at the time. I was pleased that ourmother was at home now and I could spend time with my father when he came back early. I
will never forget the taste of the sweet coffee milk he bought for us on the way back from thepublic bath. We were poor but enjoyed a stable nuclear family life in the danchi.
One day, my mother bought a lu urious English self-study set for us. It included about
ten thick books written in English with a few pictures, finger puppets or plastic toy vehicles,
cassette tapes, and a set of picture story cards. The cards depicted a story with images, andthe cassette tapes read out the plot in English and Japanese. It was designed for children toplay and learn native English by themselves. At least it was supposed to be. My sister and I
started with the picture story cards. e ipped through them, listening to the audiotapes.
They told the story of a boy who visited a magic kingdom suffering from the pollution causedby the king of darkness. In the magic kingdom, everybody spoke English. A black parrot
bilingual in English and Japanese served as a translator and helped the boy. e imitatedand laughed at the native English pronunciation because it was so different from the way
we spoke Japanese. The parrot prompted the boy to say, I beg your pardon to the English
speaking trees, and ants were marching, saying left, right, left, right.
hat are you doing
何をしているのだ！[Nani o shite iru noda],” the king of darkness roared in English and Japanese.
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Reconciling with English: An Autobiography to Ruminate Over the Different Meanings That English Has for Us

We were very young, and we indulged ourselves in this interesting story. Even though
we did not have opportunities to use those English phrases in everyday life, we could still
memori e them easily. My mother looked happy and satisfied with her purchase as she
watched us giggling while listening and repeating the phrases. The pronunciation of ain black is between Japanese あ a and え e . Sometimes my father showed off his
knowledge on what we were studying. My mother said, My daughters pronunciation ismuch better than mine. I cannot pronounce it. It is absolutely necessary for them to startlearning a language when they are young.” However, the story cards were the only part ofthe set we used. e were supposed to use the books and other finger puppets to learn familynames and other basic words, but it was no fun at all with only English. My mother wasbusy taking care of my youngest sister and it was too time-consuming for her to read the
instructions and teach us how to play. Later in our lives, she financially invested a lot in our
education, and the English study set turned out to be a waste of money. The nice storage caseit came in occupied a large space in our small apartment.
It was unclear why my mother invested in such an e pensive English-studying set for us.
No foreigners lived in our area and otherwise she was very careful about our family s everyday
expenses. She sewed almost all of our clothes and we did not go away on any overnight trips.
In my memory, my mother and father sometimes were talking about an Englishman. My
mother s voice sounded pleasant when she was talking about him, and I could guess the timewith the foreigner was not bad for her. Later, when I was in middle school, I had a chance
to ask my mother who this Englishman was. According to her, he was my father s private
English teacher. These days, when I recall this vague memory of mine, I see her telling methat my father s company hired this teacher for him. My father once had been a brilliant
and promising businessman in an excellent company. Sometimes my father had invited theteacher to dinner with my mother. About my father, I asked my mother, “Why would he takeEnglish lessons
asn t it e pensive My mother replied, Your father was called a future
CEO in the company. Speaking good English would be a necessary skill for him as the CEO,I guess. I was ama ed by my father s unknown past and connected the word promisingwith English. After this conversation, I took the English studying set out from the closet andtried to listen to the tapes again that did not have any Japanese translation, but it was too
hard for me.

Mission to Be Independent“Look at the new news anchor in the show! She looks so intelligent, and it seems that she
is uent in English, my grandmother said e citedly at the dinner table one day. All of myfamily, except my father, sat around the low table at the center of the cluttered but cozytatami living room and had dinner prepared by my mother. My father usually came back lateand had dinner alone. When I was nine, we moved to Nara, where my mother had grown up
and started living with my grandmother. The house was attached to my grandmother s shop,
which she had started from scratch and made into the biggest one in the small town. She
was like a mother goddess. After she lost her husband at the age of 33, she quit her teaching
job and started her own shop. She worked day and night, bought a house, and sent all of her
kids to university. My mother was the oldest among her siblings, so she had a strong bondwith my grandmother. For a while her assistants lived with her but after all got married,
my grandmother was alone in the house. Somehow, my family ended up moving in andliving with her. My poor father agreed to live there but had to spend more than two hours
commuting every day, and so spent less time with us.

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After we moved to my grandmother s house, my life changed a lot. My mother, who madedecisions about our education, sent us to many different after-school activities including
piano lessons, calligraphy, painting, a ski camp in winter, and a swimming course insummer. In addition, she started monitoring our school grades. My grandmother believed
it was important to get an education and a strong will was necessary to survive in society,especially for girls. She kept repeating a family motto from my great-grandfather: Girls
need to get a skill to live by themselves.” When he was working in a factory, he saw young
female workers being forced to work under bad conditions and decided to educate hisdaughters. He did not want his daughters to end up like those factory girls. He pushed his
daughters, including my grandmother, to get a skill and she eventually became a teacher.
My great-grandfather s motto became part of my grandmother s history, and she passed
it on to us. In addition to all this, there was competition among families who lived nearby
over whose children were academically successful. Back then, even though my mother wasbusy campaigning for the local government to provide better educational facilities, she wasstill a full-time homemaker. She found the time to monitor our studies. I constantly felt thepressure from her for good grades, something I had never felt in the small danchi in Osaka.
My grandmother held power in our family in many ways, one of which was by controllingthe only television set in the house. She liked NHK Nippon Housou Kyoukai [Japan
Broadcasting Corporationand did not let us watch any other channel at dinner time. Herfavorite television personalities included women anchors on the o clock NHK news show.
Most of them were young, charming, graduates of famous universities in Japan, and they
were uent in English. I remember they were called kikoku-shijo [returnees], who had grown
up abroad because of their parents obs. I looked at their long black hair (mine was very
short) and admired them, but there was no way I could be like them.

Ambivalent Feeling Toward English
English came to mean something different to me it was not only a symbol of success, butalso an emblem of being female. Even if the young female anchor on the NHK news show
was talented, she always sat next to an older, unappealing man, nodding her head benignly
without expressing herself. I wanted to have “my” things to say, not to read something otherpeople wrote. I was a girl who had a desire to rise in the world as much as my competitivefriends in middle school. My mother, who still had a hard time giving up her attachment to
her previous job, used to tell me “Girls must be three times as excellent and useful as boys topass the job exam, at least it used to be like that.” I felt anger and fear facing that reality, andshe encouraged me to fight against the obstacles which stood in my way ust because I am awoman.
I studied very hard to enter the best high school in our area. After that I could relax
somewhat, freeing myself from the pressure to enter a good high school. I remember two
English teachers. The elder one had such a strong Japanese accent in English, it sounded
like a cat meowing. The younger one, who had studied in the U.S. for a year, taught us sometips on pronunciation and how to improve our listening. But overall I was not so interested
in English. At that time, I devoted a good deal of my energy to high school athletic club
activities. Often when I was in English class, I fell asleep. I also hated learning new words
and grammar that required repetition and took time. I thought everything worth reading wastranslated into Japanese, and I would be uent if I had a chance to stay in an English nativespeaker country for a year or so.
hy is it necessary to study English I was na ve anddid not know the reality of language learning.1 At the same time, like others from our young
1.

Research about studying abroad indicates it has positive outcomes for language learning, but the individual
differences are big (Kinginger, 2015). You can find a couple of unhappy cases in Block (200 ).

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Reconciling with English: An Autobiography to Ruminate Over the Different Meanings That English Has for Us

generation (Kobayashi, 2002 Takahashi, 2013 Yoshimoto, 200 ), I longed for the world
outside Japan. So, blind to my own English ability, I even begged my father to pay for me to
study in the United States for a year.
This was all happening in the 19 0s, a time when the world was ama ed at Japan economic
success and called it No. 1. This discourse affected me. I was very proud of Japanese culture
and loved the old artifacts of Nara, which was the first capital of the country. On the contrary,
I resented the dominant position of European culture. I perceived the people who worshiped
the products, fashion, and customs from Europe and America as frivolous and sometimes
even despised them, including one of my girl classmates. Today, I still wonder where thismalicious feeling came from, however I remember the classmate used to tell me she wanted
to go to Tokyo to major in European languages in university, because those languages were
just cool. I thought she was the type of person who volunteered to be a manager for thehigh school baseball team. They were never out front putting themselves on the line asplayers. Instead, they worked hard in the background for the male players. It seemed like myclassmate friend did not mind being positioned in that female realm. I wanted to live formyself in society, not for someone else. For me, English was not a vehicle that would take mein that direction.
For me, English was associated with social success and decent jobs. That is why myfather took private lessons and the T anchors were uent in English. But at the same time,speaking English or any foreign language well was also considered something that women
were good at and in the domain of women (Schmenk, 2004). On the one hand, I wanted to geta respected job and interact with people from all over the world, but on the other hand, I had
an aversion to being labeled as a woman.

Jina’s Story
The First Time I Met Her
Another way the hegemony of English has impacted me has been the declining Japaneselearning and teaching in South Korea as a result of it. I taught Japanese there in the 1990s justbefore the peak of Japanese language education in South Korea (The Japan Foundation, 2020).
At that time both university students and working adults, regardless of their specialties, werelearning Japanese to get a job or a promotion. Since being able to speak Japanese was also
a promise of employment, I did not question why so many Koreans studied the language,
and why I taught it in this former colony of Japan. When I started researching language
issues in Korea in the 2010s, I was stunned by the decline of Japanese language educationin the country. Many students and teachers told me that Japanese language skills were nolonger enough to get a job, so students were eager to study English, even if they had majoredin Japanese (Nakayama, 201 a). If language learning does not promise future wealth or
economic benefits as linguistic instrumentalism does (Kubota, 2011) then, what is its purpose
When I was facing the social economic realities surrounding Japanese teaching, I met Jina.
The first time I met Jina was at an orientation for international students. I remember she
was wearing somewhat showy clothes, and her Japanese was uent. She asked staff members
some uestions after the session. It was unusual to see that kind of active even slightly
aggressive city girl in D U. She was enthusiastic and looked thrilled to start her new life in
D U. Soon after the orientation, Jina oined an international students club that I sometimes
helped. She was older than her Japanese peers and took great initiative in the club activities.
She was a kind of scary, older sister. She was also involved in other activities, including

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working as an interpreter/translator for the local government. It seemed she was always busy
trying to achieve something like a tuna fish that would die if it stopped swimming.
I knew that Jina spoke excellent English. First, she did not take Japanese classes forinternational students. Instead, she took English classes with other Japanese students. She
also emceed in English at the parties for international students. She seemed confident in
her English. She told me she wanted to work in international business using her English
and Japanese skills. So, I was not surprised when I learnt that she was going to study at auniversity in a Baltic country that provided courses in English for a year. It was easy to guessthat she longed for the “big world” away from this small town where our university was.

Complete Freedom Provided by English as a Lingua Franca
When Jina returned from studying abroad, we met by chance in front of the main gate.
hat Are you home already How was your study abroad e perience I asked her. She
looked good and seemed not to have changed much, but I noticed she was wearing sneakers,
whereas earlier she always wore high heels. At that time, I was interviewing international
students for my research. I asked Jina for an interview about her experiences while she wasabroad for a year, and she immediately accepted. But I had to wait several months to haveinterview sessions with her. Before the first interview, I e plained to her the purpose of theresearch, the procedure of the data collection, and ethical matters. I managed to have threeinterview sessions, in October, ebruary, and March of Jina s senior year. I chose my o ce
for interviews so we could talk in a quiet atmosphere while having tea and snacks together.
We spoke in Japanese most of the time, except some Korean words here and there. Afterthe interviews, we went out for a late lunch or a walk around the campus. I jotted down
the conversations and how she looked in my field notebook. The recorded interviews weretranscribed, sorted by event, and rearranged to create Jina s story. I later sent Jina s story to
her after she graduated and returned to Korea, and asked her to check the contents. The storyof Jina used in this narrative account is constructed from those original interviews.
In the interviews, I asked her about her experiences using Japanese and English when she
was studying abroad. Her best experience using English, she told me, happened during her
summer vacation. It was a long one, so she looked for a part-time ob abroad and ended up
working as a volunteer, teaching English in a village in rural Turkey. She said she experienced“complete freedom” there. Her students welcomed her, and even invited her for dinner. Jina
felt their “love” in communication without words. Her peer volunteer teachers in the village
came from all over the world, including Taiwan, Spain, France, Serbia, and Francophone
Canada. They were from many age groups and had different occupations in their homecountries; some had just graduated from high school, and others were teachers in theircountries. She recounted her experiences to me.
Jina: Everyone was equal, and you could feel perfect equality. Everyone spoke a little
bit of English, which was the common language. That was the environment where webecame friends, so I did not have to be somebody different from my own self. It was
not necessary to pretend that I was somebody who could do something or that I wasa tough person. It was not necessary to feel pressure to achieve something. (I couldfeel) complete freedom. It did not really matter if you had money or not and it was
not necessary to pretend you had money or a good character. In such an environment,
personalities were different from person to person. Especially in Japan, there is sucha thing as a good personality. I think it is the same in Korea. A particular type ofcharacter is considered good.
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Reconciling with English: An Autobiography to Ruminate Over the Different Meanings That English Has for Us

Akiko: Good character
Jina: Yes, the e pression She s a good girl is an especially good e ample. It decides,
to some extent, a particular personality is a good one. But um… how can I explain thatwhen you use English, the bias or omoikomi / 思い込み [belief] got weaker. Especiallywhen non-native English speakers from different countries got together, there was noright answer for the character. … So, I did not need to be good. I could be the way I was.
That experience was precious to me because I could feel freedom, not worrying about
anything. I could not be freer ever at that time. ( rom the first interview)
hen I heard Jina s story, the first thought that struck me was the different positions
English and Japanese had in the world. The Japan Foundation announced there were morethan three million Japanese language learners outside Japan in 201 (The Japan oundation,2020). However, I cannot imagine a volunteer Japanese language class run in a Turkish village
by non-native Japanese-speaking teachers from all over the world. or Jina, English was
literally a tool to communicate with people from across the globe. By using it, she felt she
could escape cultural norms that had bound her. Why could only English, not Japanese, orKorean, provide her with the opportunity to escape the cultural norms and make her feel freeAs Kubota (2011) points out, speaking good English does not guarantee being an excellent
international businessperson. However, the assumption has increased the number ofserious English learners, and the more people learn it, the more firmly English becomesthe international language. This phenomenon covers many places in the world, and it gave
Jina a chance to escape the cultural norms of the person she thought she had to be in South
Korea and Japan her Japanese and Korean selves. She came to reali e how much Japaneseor Korean selves were not her own. I was amazed that, in this story, how people from allover the world the volunteers claimed ownership of English (Norton, 199 ) by teachingit as a foreign language. Based on the terms she was using, “not necessary to pretend that I
was somebody, Jina could be a resident in the land of nowhere, and its o cial language wasEnglish.
The second thought I had was a feeling of envy. I had married an American I met in Korea
when I was teaching Japanese there. hy could I not have such a feeling in English
hen
I visited my in-laws in the US, even though they all welcomed me, I sometimes felt odd
because most of the time I was the only one who was not white and not a native speaker ofEnglish. hen I was holding my first baby in their home, visitors occasionally thought I wasa babysitter. Once, at a restaurant where we all went for a meal, one of the waitresses looked
at me brie y as if she had found someone who did not fit there. I felt marginali ed in the US
outside of the family.
Is this the only reason I do not like speaking English Have I ever used English as a lingua
francaMy Story in Korea
Being an Ornament
After I got my master s degree in history, I ended up going to Korea to teach Japanese. I went
there because I failed to get into the Ph.D. program I wanted to join, and this happened justas I got my master s. Since I had not prepared what to do beyond studying at education,teaching Japanese was the only chance I had to get a job immediately after graduation. I felt
relieved to get such a position at a university, so I did not complain that the university was in
the countryside, and I would be the only Japanese in the entire town.

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In my first year in Korea, there was a sort of uno cial e clusive foreigner club. Most of thetime, the host was an old English teacher, and the other members were a Russian couple, aSpanish couple, a rench teacher, a Chinese teacher, and me. e seven were the only nonKorean workers at the university. I joined the party when I was invited even though I quietly
sat there without any clue about what they were saying. Also, Korean women who were thewives of wealthy families sometimes joined us. As far as I remember, they were students ofthe English teacher, and they would occasionally invite all of us to a picnic or for a meal inan e pensive restaurant.
hy do they want to invite foreigners I felt like I had become an
ornament (Levy, 2011) for rich Korean ladies, because I could not see the reason they wanted
to invite us, especially me. It seemed like being friends with us had symbolic value. At the
party without them, we talked about how strange Korean customs were. At the time, it was
not long after Korea s democrati ation, and it was uite different from the Korea of today. To
me, the relationship between the foreign teachers and the rich Korean ladies was strange. I
felt uncomfortable to be around it, even though my loneliness in Korea was alleviated to someextent by the parties.
Rethinking the reason I was uneasy at the club, I felt it was more than because my English
was not so good or that I was unfamiliar with European customs. Japan had occupied Korea
until the end of World War II. Most of the Japanese who settled in Korea in the colonial period
did not learn any Korean and despised their traditions. The first thing I decided to do in Korea
was learn Korean because I did not want to be the same kind of person as the Japanese before
the war. When I was speaking English in the club and being positioned as an ornament for
Korean ladies, I felt like I was a new version of a pre-war colonial settler. That was not theposition I wanted to take. After the English teacher retired, the foreigners club did not meetup so often and the university stopped treating us as precious guests anymore. Instead, theuniversity authorities started hiring more English teachers and treating foreign language
teachers like teaching labor.

The Freedom Provided by Korean
I could not feel free like Jina when I was using English in Korea, although I felt I was able tojump away from Japanese norms when I was using Korean in Korea.
My diligent work studying Korean was rewarded. I enjoyed speaking Korean with mystudents. First, we were almost the same age, and some of the boys were even older than me
because they had to do military service. They treated me half as a teacher and half as a friend,and supported and protected me in many ways, as I did not understand Korean customs.
Second, I found that they were good at making jokes. We laughed together, went out for
drinks and karaoke parties, and talked in coffee shops after class. I was so happy that I was
accepted by my students and other Korean people that I met. Then, I found I was to somedegree different from what I was in Japan. I was less timid about oking around in Korean
than I was in Japanese. I even used my female position to make jokes. Also, I was fearless
when it came to asking uestions of anyone which was very different from how I acted inJapan. To some extent, I was not the same “me” in Korea as in Japan. In other words, I wasable to create a new self outside of my Japanese one.
I have often wondered why I could be like that. One possible reason is that my attributes
and a liations as a native Japanese speaker and a young female university professor interms of cultural resources (Bourdieu, 1993 Norton, 2013) had different values in Korean andJapanese society. If I made a mistake due to my ignorance of Korean language or culture,
nobody would scold me. Every time I spoke Korean, they praised me as if I was totally uent.
I had access to the things that Koreans sought. Among the Korean housewives I met at the
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Reconciling with English: An Autobiography to Ruminate Over the Different Meanings That English Has for Us

Korean music class I took, Japanese products, including rice cookers or tea pots, were very
popular. Maybe because I was right in front of them, Japanese products became a topic
of conversation. I was treated differently in Korea than in Japan, and in response I acted
differently.
My generally happy e perience in Korea in uenced my teaching after I returned to Japan. I
have always wished for my students to be happy when they speak Japanese, especially outside
the classroom. But when I reconsidered my story and Jina s, another purpose of foreign
language learning emerged; to give learners a chance to break free from the norms of theirnative language and culture. Jina felt free while using English as a lingua franca, whereas
I felt free when I was surrounded by native speakers of Korean. We can see it is not theprerogative of English alone to give learners such a chance. By learning a foreign language,
learners can create a new self that is different from their native-language self (Pavlenko,
2004). What makes us free is not which language we learn, but with whom, when, and inwhat kind of community we use it. That relates to identity and personal history and how
learners perceive themselves.
However, Jina s e perience with using Japanese in Japan was uite different from myexperience of using Korean in Korea. Actually, Jina had a hard time when she came to Japanfor the first time as a student at a big private university in Tokyo. This e perience could
explain why Jina could be free in English but not in Japanese.

Jina’s Story in Japan
Jina in Tokyo
In our interviews, Jina shared a lot of her background with me. Before she joined DFU, she
attended a university in Tokyo for a year where she struggled to gain full acceptance from her
peers.
Jina: That university is quite big, and international students are not rare. (…) Unlessthey become almost Japanese, I mean, unless they make contact in the Japanese student
style, the students do not take their international counterparts seriously. Japanese
students do not want to change their style much for international students. They do
not have any sense of consideration for international students. So, to make Japanese
friends, I have to be like them. ( rom the first interview)
What Jina felt at her university in Tokyo was the pressure to speak and act like a Japanese
student. Jina felt that she would not be able to make friends with Japanese people if she did
not remove all traces of her being an international student. As a Japanese language teacher, I
was shocked that she felt constrained to “act and behave like a Japanese person,” especiallywhen compared to the “complete freedom” she felt when she was in Turkey and whencompared to the olly self that I had constructed in Korea. It is di cult to find out the realreason why Jina felt the barriers of Japanese youth culture in Tokyo. Is it because the youth inTokyo are not interested in getting to know people from different cultures and backgrounds
Or is it because people in Tokyo are too busy In contrast, I did not have to be 100 boundby Korean norms. Sometimes I wanted to be like the Koreans around me, but I never felt theneed to erase my Japanese identity, and that was just not possible anyway.
In Tokyo, Jina was trying to find the way to make her life fruitful, so she oined a student
association to promote the connection between students in different departments. ortunately,
she met a Japanese student who had lived in Brazil for a couple of years. He took her todifferent places for the association s work. His communication style was not typical Japaneseand was relatively easy for Jina. Other members of the association did not treat Jina coldly

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or rudely but they did not know how to interact with her. She felt that they treated her as
a “Gaijin” (foreigner) and kept their distance. Even now, she feels “inhibited” when using
Japanese.
Jina: So when you speak Japanese to a Japanese person, you need to be nicer, moreconsiderate, use polite language, and when you are talking with your teachers, youneed to use honorifics to be respectful. Maybe my Japanese ability is not uite goodenough yet, and I do not have the skills to be able to control everything, or maybethat s the problem. hen I am speaking Korean, I have to use honorifics, but I guess I
can handle it to the best of my ability. I do not have to worry about using language. I
can trust myself that I am polite enough to the teacher, but not in Japanese. (From thesecond interview)
Jina does not have complete confidence in her ability in English and Japanese. It is di cultfor her to change the way she speaks depending on the context of the situation. However,she believes basically, it s not necessary to worry about it, in English but it is necessary inJapanese. Jina assumed the reason she feels a strong constraint in Japanese is partly because ofher personality. I m pretty good at following some kind of rules to some e tent, she told me.

Jina’s English Learning History
Unfortunately, the Great East Japan earth uake occurred around the time Jina finished her
freshman year in Tokyo, and she was forced to immediately return to Korea. It took two years
for her to come back to Japan as a D U student due to the economic di culties her family
faced. I asked her what she did during the two years. Jina told me that for 10 days of a month,
she worked to make some money, but for the rest, she was studying English near her home inthe library. She also oined the English-studying club, which was run by a church. hy wasshe studying English
asn t she planning to return to Japan Didn t she have a hard timecommunicating with her peers at the university in Tokyo She e plained to me without any
hesitation:
Akiko:Englishhy did you study English

hat did you want to do after improving your

Jina: It is not to say what I wanted to do, but it is an essential skill.
Akiko: Essential

hat does that mean

Jina: Like getting a job after school, I think…I felt at that moment that English wasan essential skill to be a part of society shakai hito ni naru / 社会人になる[shakai hito ni
naru . ( rom the first interview)
Jina told me her story and her relationship with English. It had played a big role in her
younger days and was also related to Korean “English studying fever” (Park, 2009). When
she was young, her parents, especially her mother, gave her many home study programs. She
studied Chinese characters, math, and English. I was surprised when she said in the interview
that she used to be obedient to her parents. Because of her efforts when she was young, she
did not have any problems getting good grades especially in English and Japanese in middle
school. At the same time, she wanted to leave her parents, partly because their quarrels weresevere.

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Reconciling with English: An Autobiography to Ruminate Over the Different Meanings That English Has for Us

Jina: My parents fought a lot, and the house was not at peace until junior high school...
and I hated them anyway. In junior high school, I hated my parents and wanted toleave home, and that s all I could think about. ( rom the first interview)
When Jina heard that an elite foreign language high school had a boarding facility and she
had a chance to live there, she instantly decided to take the entrance exam and applied for the
test. She passed and moved out of her parents home.
Akiko:Did you go to a foreign language high school because they had a dormitory
Then, it was not like you were interested in a foreign country or anything until then.
Jina: Not at all.
Akiko: You didn t particularly like to study English
Jina: No, I didn t. ( rom the first interview)
Life in the foreign language high school, however, was rather tough for Jina. The students
were very good in English. For example, some of them had grown up in the US and lived there
for many years. Even though Jina kept studying from six in the morning to midnight, she still
could not catch up with the returnees. Her pride in her English ability fell apart, so she ended
up making no effort to study it. Even without studying, Jina s score in English on national
exams far surpassed that of the average Korean high school students.
After listening to her high school story, I realized that her investment in English was
related to the self she lost in her high school. She needed to study English to regain
confidence and control over her life. In this sense, Jina may have felt the same mission of
independence as I did when I was young. In her journey to be a grown up with no one toprotect her, perhaps Jina thought that English would give her a way to survive and have her
abilities recognized by society. In this way, English was a protective shield for her in society.

Jina After Studying Abroad
It was June in her senior year when she visited my o ce. She suddenly started confessingthat she did not know what she wanted to do after graduation. I was a bit confused because
she had been talking about getting involved with international business. I asked her about
that. She told me that she did not think about what she really wanted to do because sheused to worry about what other people thought of her. Trying to be involved in international
business was what other people thought cool. I do not remember how this conversation
ended. The ne t time she visited my o ce, she asked me to help her prepare for the entrance
e am for graduate school to be a Japanese-Korean translator. Until I finished writing her
story in this narrative account, I did not realize that her experience in Turkey might have hadsome impact on the change in her plans for the future. The experience of total freedom might
give her the chance to re ect on her life.
At her graduation ceremony, her mother and grandmother from Korea participated. Jina s
father could not come because he had some duty on his business. Jina showed me her picturewith a cute red han-bok [Korean traditional cloth], which was a gift from her grandmother.
She was smiling in the picture with her mother and grandmother.
Last time I met her, she told me she is teaching English and Japanese as a part time teacher
in Seoul, at the same time, she is working as an actress. I cannot tell you what place English,

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Japanese, possibly other languages will take in her life from now on. The journey of her life
continues.

Epilogue
My attempt to retell my story in order to understand Jina s story has had a number ofoutcomes which related to me as a woman and as a teacher. The first was that I was able toconnect my language learning history, especially English, with my mission to be independent.
This is a mission that has carried me from my childhood to now. My reluctance to study
English was strongly linked not only to my ability, but also to gendered linguistic ideologies.
After retelling our stories, I can realize now the mission is possibly shared by not only Jina
and me, but also other women, like the wealthy Korean women who were hovering aroundus or my high school friend who loved to learn Western languages. Thus, language learning,
even the rejection of it, is strongly connected to the question of how women live their lives.
Secondly, I was able to reconsider the purposes that people have in learning languages. The
personal language use experiences that Jina had with English as a lingua franca and that I
had with Korean encouraged us to construct our new selves. Just as I became more outgoingin Korea and Jina changed from high heels to sneakers, language learning could free learners
from the constraints of cultural norms to some extent. I have not yet come to a conclusion
on how to teach language as a language teacher, because learning a language always involves
learning grammatical pragmatic rules made by someone else (Bakhtin, 19 1 Barfield,
personal communication, April 21, 2021). However, I have been able to rea rm the value of
language learning through this narrative account, and that will guide me in my classes.

Acknowledgments
My thanks first goes to Jina. I also would like to thank Andy and Lorraine, and all the editorsof LDJ5, as well as the Peer Reviewers for their patience and support for my struggle to create
my “English writing self” (Canagarajah, 2002).

Author Bio
Akiko Nakayama Ph.D. is an associate professor in the Teaching Japanese as a Second
Language program at Hiroshima University, Japan. She is currently interested in learners
stories, L2 learner identities, and teacher development.
中山亜紀子（博士）。広島大学人間社会科学研究科日本語教育学プログラム准教授。学習者の物語，学習者のア
イデンティティ，教師教育などに関心がある。

Review ProcessThis paper was blind peer-reviewed by members of The Learner Development Journal Review
Network and Journal Steering Group. (Contributors have the option of open or blind review.)

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research. Jossey-Bass.
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Reconciling with English: An Autobiography to Ruminate Over the Different Meanings That English Has for Us

Canagarajah, S. (2002). Critical academic writing and multilingual students. Michigan University
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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://ldjournalsite.wordpress.com/

The Learner Development Journal Issue 5: Engaging with the Multilingual Turnfor Learner Development: Practices, Issues, Discourses, and Theorisations
Author: Oana Cusen
Title: Evolving Journeys of Multilingual Teachers of English in Japan
Date of publication online: 2021
Author contact: <oana@kwansei.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:
Cusen, O. (2021). Evolving journeys of multilingual teachers of English in Japan. 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. 40-56). 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, Kwansei Gakuin University, Japan <oana@kwansei.ac.jp >
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本稿は、英語を母国語としない教師（NNEST）のアイデンティティと多言語的アイデンティティを調和させ、多言語の英語教師としての新しいより解放的なアイデンティティへと化させていく私の旅を記する。日本在住の4人の外国人NNESTとの議論を通して、NNESTとして活動する私たちの立場が日本でどのような意味を持つのか、学習者の言語的・異文化的発達にどう貢献できるのか、そしてどのようにして多言語主義と多文化主義を教育現場に導入できるのかを探究した。これらの3つの考察は、学習者の発達を促すべく多言語的転回を教育実に取り入れるための第一であると考えている。一方、本稿のナラティブアカウントは、主に教師としてのに焦点をてているため、学習者自身の多言語アイデンティティを育む方法を見つけるためには、さらなる探求が必要
である。

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C: I think at that point it started to become like part of me.
O: So that’s when you feel you became multilingual?
C: Yeah, when it starts to affect a little your identity, I think that was the starting point for me.
(Excerpt from my interview with Clara)M
40

ultilingualism and multiculturalism are an integral part of my life, so when I became
involved with this issue of the Learner Development Journal, I was particularly
inspired by the main theme of the multilingual turn for learner development. This
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Oana Cusen

was because of its focus on “the dynamic, hybrid, and transnational linguistic repertoiresof multilingual (often migrant) speakers” (May, 2014, p. 1). This resonated very much withmy lived reality as a multilingual immigrant in Japan, although not quite so much withmy teaching practices. For a while now I have been struggling to reconcile my multilingual
identity with my identity as a non-native English speaking teacher (EST). On the one
hand, in my everyday personal life, I constantly switch between four languages. I use English,
Spanish, and to a lesser extent Japanese at home with my family; I use Japanese as I go aboutlife in Japanese society; and I speak Romanian with my family back in my home country of
Romania. In my professional life, on the other hand, I use English almost exclusively, but I
have often come up against what my NNEST status means both for how I am perceived byother professionals in the field, in particular native speaking English teachers ( ESTs), andalso for how I see myself.
As I started working on this narrative account, my personal multilingual identity andmy NNEST professional identity felt not only completely separate, but in many ways
irreconcilable. I have always felt that when I walk into a classroom, I must assume my
English teacher persona, and abide by ideologies of professionalism which may be rooted innative-speakerism ( olliday, 2006) and which often include English-only policies. Moreover,I have always thought that sharing my full multilingual usage with my students would beinconceivable.
In many ways, this narrative account has turned out to be an exploratory journey for me,a journey in uenced by the multilingual turn in language education and how it is shapedby social, pedagogical, and practical factors (Conteh & Meier, 2014). Another importantvoice in changing and shaping my self-perception as a language teacher was Raees Calafato
through his review on research conducted with NNESTs, which proposed a paradigm shift in
the way these teachers are viewed (Calafato, 2019). He suggests the perception should shift
from seeing
ESTs as non-native speakers of the language they teach (with all the implied
deficiencies as speakers and as teachers of that language) to recogni ing them as multilingual
teachers. This paradigm shift goes even further in that it provides a way to “move beyond thenative speaker / non-native speaker debate and instead focus on the potential abilities andskills of multilingual teachers” (Calafato, 2019, p. 3).
My journey was also guided by the journeys of four other foreign NNESTs living andteaching in Japan, with whom I conducted semi-structured interviews. Through theseinterviews, I hoped to co-construct narratives of multilingual
ESTs e periences by adding
my own re ections to theirs (Block, 2000). oreign
ESTs are not very common in Japanfor various reasons, including an ingrained belief in Japanese society that native speakers
make far superior role-models for language learners (Tsuneyoshi, 201 ), which mirrors asimilar belief held more widely in Asia (Braine, 2010). That is why I have used my personalconnections and relationships to approach the four participants: Maria, Clara, Nicolas, andMona. Apart from one, these are pseudonyms I will be using throughout this narrative
account based on the participants wishes, in order to protect their identity. I have also
refrained from mentioning their countries of origin for precisely the same reason: Given
the scarcity of foreign NNESTs in Japan, some of the participants felt they could be easily
identified by the mere mention of their home country. I will, however, discuss their linguistic
repertoires later in this narrative account, as the languages they speak are an integral part oftheir identities as multilingual teachers.
Language teacher identity is a concept that is notoriously hard to define (Barkhui en,
201 ). Throughout this narrative account, I would like to keep in mind two aspects that I findparticularly relevant. The first such aspect is the fact that language teacher identities areboth internal (within each individual teacher) and external (pertaining to the social context
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41

Evolving Journeys of Multilingual Teachers of English in Japanin which the teacher exists); the other is that language teacher identities are continuously
evolving, as “they are constructed discursively in social interaction” (Barkhuizen, 2017, p.
). Based on my own e periences and on the insights gained from interviewing the four
participants, in this narrative account I trace my journey of reconciling multilingual identities
with the NNEST identity, and thus developing new and more complex multilingual teacher
identities.
I begin by describing in detail my own multilingual background, as well as those of thefour participants, and then I focus on three main areas that emerged from the interviews:
our status and experiences as foreign NNESTs in Japan, what we feel we can contribute to
the development of our learners, and how we approach the multilingual turn for learnerdevelopment in our own classrooms.

Personal Narrative: Becoming Multilingual
I remember lying in bed just before drifting to sleep and feeling utterly mentally exhausted
after what had after all been just a normal day. I had attended a few Japanese language
lessons in the morning and then spent the afternoon and evening with my new friends
international students from around the world, all of us enrolled in a one-year intensive
Japanese program in Osaka, and living in dormitories on the university campus. At the time, I
had just arrived in Japan from my home country of Romania in order to attend university, andI was adjusting to my new multilingual reality. I used Japanese in my classes at university,
English was the lingua franca when communicating with other international students in myprogram, I still spoke Romanian with my Romanian classmates and my family, and I wasstarting to use Spanish to more easily communicate with my new Latin American friends.
Until recently, I considered that particular time in Osaka when I was using several
languages concurrently to be the beginning of my multilingual identity. However, as I
learned about the early 20th-century work of John Dewey on continuity, which he sees as“the notion that experiences grow out of other experiences, and experiences lead to further
experiences” (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000, p. 2), I realized that far from being a beginning,these experiences were merely a continuation of the multilingual environment of mychildhood and teenage years in Romania.
I was raised in a region in Romania where Hungarian and German communities are part of
the fabric of society and from my earliest infancy, close family friends would switch between
Romanian and Hungarian or German on a daily basis. My mother, a teacher of English andFrench, taught me English (and to a lesser extent French, which I also learned in school) fromearly childhood, and I was also e posed to significant amounts of English media on Romanian
TV. During my elementary school years, Romania transitioned from a communist regime to amore democratic one, which brought with it a greater degree of openness towards the west.
One way this openness manifested itself was the introduction of European TV channels into
Romanian households. Within about two years of this, my childhood friends and I were using
uent Italian, which we all ac uired e clusively from watching T , to communicate on theplayground.
Another language I had been interested in from early childhood was Japanese. When I
was in elementary school, I came across a collection of Japanese folk tales translated into
Romanian and it quickly became one of my favorite books. It also inspired a lifelong interestin the Japanese language and culture, so when an opportunity came up during my teenage
years to learn Japanese as an extracurricular activity, I jumped at the chance. I eventually
moved to Japan as a foreign student to complete my BA and later my MA at Japanese
universities. For over seven years, I was part of the community of foreign students in Japan,

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which could be described as super-diverse ( ertovec, 200 ), with many countries in theworld represented. My closest friends during this time were Latin American, South African,
Hungarian, Bulgarian, Welsh, and of course Japanese. English and Japanese were the mostcommon lingua francas used in this community, and all foreign students switched between
these and other linguistic varieties in their repertoires.
Even as my own multilayered identities as a multilingual speaker were evolving, theconcept of native-speakerism ( olliday, 2006) was a very strong in uence on how I saw
myself as an English speaker and later as an English teacher. Despite the fact that I was a
fully proficient speaker of English, I took every small error or mistake as proof that I wasin fact not a native speaker, which I saw as the ultimate goal of my lifelong e orts as alearner of English. Only in the last five to ten years have I become free, so to speak, fromthe pressure of my aspiration to become a native-like English speaker, which I had acutely
felt for basically my entire experience as an English learner in Romania. This freedom hascome about through being exposed to research on the evolution of the multilingual turn inlanguage education (see for example Conteh & Meier, 2014; May, 2014) and the questioning ofmonolingual bias and the native speaker norm in language teaching (Ortega, 2014).

Participants’ Journeys to Multilingual Identities
Before going into the main themes that emerged from our discussions, I would like to brie y
introduce the four multilingual teachers participating in this research project. All direct
uotes from the interviews are represented in italics, and I have decided to use di erent
colors for each of the four participants:
Maria - purple
Clara - blue
icolas - green
Mona - red
To understand their diverse multilingual backgrounds, I first asked how they ac uired
the languages in their repertoires. Then, I invited them to talk about their multilingual
awakening , that is the time they first started to think of themselves as multilinguals.
Finally, I explored with them their current linguistic environments and patterns of languageuse. A detailed account for each of the four teachers follows, as I believe their multilingual
backgrounds are a crucial aspect of their teacher identity and their attitudes in relation to themultilingual turn in the language classroom.

Maria
Maria is originally from a Latin American country, where she grew up speaking Spanish.
rom the age of five, she lived with her family in Belgium for a few years, and she ac uired
French there in a natural environment, without actually studying it as a second language. She
feels that:having learned a second language at such a young age helped me acquire other languages withrelative ease.
She goes on to mention that she also acquired English in a natural way by watching movies,
as well as listening to music and figuring out the lyrics as a teenager. This meant that when
she took an English proficiency test around the age of fifteen, her level was intermediate toadvanced. She had a brief stay in Japan at the age of seventeen, which was when she started
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Evolving Journeys of Multilingual Teachers of English in Japan

using English for communicative purposes and also studying Japanese, which she continued
once she returned to her home country. Later, she moved to Japan permanently and studied
Japanese during her graduate studies.
Maria spoke in detail about how she feels about her command of English and Japanese:
I feel that I can communicate in English but I do not feel entirely free when I use it. At this point,
after 16 years of living in Japan, I feel I have the same level of handicap both in Japanese and in
English. I can use both of them freely to a certain extent, but I cannot use either of them as I canuse my native language.
For Maria, multilingual usage is separated by people, as well as by situations. Her current
daily linguistic environment includes Spanish which she uses at home and also at work when
she teaches it, English for her job mostly, and Japanese at home with her family and in thewider Japanese society.
I would say it’s like 50% Japanese, 30% English, and 20% Spanish, and that changes according
to the subject that I am teaching. I use Spanish less than before at home.
hen I asked her how she feels about her multilingual day to day life, the first thing she
mentioned was missing Spanish, although she does not feel she has lost any ability to use
Spanish. About the other two languages in her repertoire, Maria commented:
With Japanese and English I feel the same level of ‘foreign-ness’. I feel pretty comfortable inboth of them but I don’t feel either of them is my natural environment.

Clara
Clara is originally from an Eastern European country and grew up speaking the language ofher home country as her first language. She started learning English with a private tutor fromsix years old through to the end of high school. As part of her formal education, she studied a
multitude of languages other than English: Russian from fifth grade to eighth grade, Spanish
and Japanese in high school, and German in university. However, Clara said:
I don’t remember actually using any of these languages.
She does talk about using some English during international summer tennis tournaments
in her childhood, but she was feeling shy about her English abilities. Her Japanese teacher
also created some chances for her to use her Japanese, for example by inviting other Japanese
speakers to class, but there were not many such opportunities.
hen Clara first came to Japan for one year, it was a turning point for her multilingual
development. She was in an advanced Japanese class, but struggled very much because she
had only learned textbook Japanese, very polite, very correct Japanese, which did not help her tomake Japanese friends. At the same time, she used English with the other foreign students in
her program because everyone was more confident in their English skills. After this one year,
she returned to her home country and she remembers:
I really wanted to use the English and the Japanese all the time. It was that something was
missing. I was actively looking for opportunities to use the languages. I think at that point it
started to become like part of me.
Clara added that she considers this to be the starting point of her multilingual identity.
Currently, Clara uses four languages on a daily basis: English with her husband and atwork, Japanese with the administrative sta at work and in Japanese society, and her native

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language with her children (but also Japanese with her elder son). The fourth language
is Spanish, which she understands because her husband uses it with their children. Thislinguistic environment is normal for her, and she feels that it is a natural progression of
the environment she experienced in graduate school in Japan, where she was surrounded byfriends from all over the world.
Being surrounded by such a multicultural environment, it becomes the norm. Maybe at the
beginning I was confused by the languages, but right now, no problem.

Nicolas
Nicolas is a native Spanish speaker and was born in a Latin American country. From the ageof two until he was si years old, his family lived in Canada, where he attended an Englishspeaking nursery. At the time, he was more proficient in English than in Spanish, and he talks
about learning the alphabet in English rather than Spanish, which in uences him to this day.
Back home, when I was in elementary school and I needed to look for something in the dictionary,
I would say the a, b, c in English.
In Canada he was also exposed to French in the wider community, but not to the same
extent as English.
Nicolas maintained his English after returning to his home country at the age of six, partly
through the e orts of his mother who made sure to provide books, as well as tutors andafter-school programs in English. During his teenage years, he was also in uenced by English
language movies and music, and especially computer role-playing games:
Believe it or not, I learned most of my grammar and most of my English through role-playing
games on PC. Back then, […] if you needed a character to eat, […] you needed to write “eat blah
blah blah”.
Later Nicolas moved to Japan to attend graduate school. In preparation for this, he studied
Japanese for three months before leaving his home country. Because he studied cultural
anthropology, he was fascinated by cultures far from his own, and he feels that both his
Japanese language ability and his cultural understanding of Japan developed most when hestarted teaching English in Japan.
When I came to Japan, I had no Japanese […] Teaching to Japanese [people] is what really allowed
me to understand Japanese culture. It made me understand more their mindset.
When I asked him about his multilingual identity, Nicolas explained he considered himself
to be multilingual when he returned from Canada in his childhood, and he believes that theenvironment he was in played an important role in his identity realization:
In a place where everyone was speaking Spanish, I saw myself as different.
But he also talked about his years in graduate school in similar terms, as a time of greatchange in his identity development:
Those two years formed me in a way. I saw the world in a different way.

Mona
Mona is originally from the Middle East and Farsi is her mother tongue. She started learning
English from the age of twelve in an English institution and continued throughout her
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Evolving Journeys of Multilingual Teachers of English in Japan

teenage years. After that, she also studied French and at the time could speak a little of thelanguage. However, in her early 20s she moved to Japan and started learning Japanese so shesays she forgot her French.
At the moment, Mona uses three languages as part of her daily linguistic environment:
Farsi, English and Japanese. She uses Farsi at home with her family, although she
occasionally mixes some Japanese words when speaking with her children who are attending
Japanese school. She uses English at work and Japanese for communication with Japanese
friends and her children s teachers.
I asked Mona how she feels about her daily linguistic environment and she talked about
how it is natural for her to switch languages now. However, she said it was confusing for her
at first, when she would use arsi words in her English medium language classes or words
from other languages in Japanese. She went on to say:
But this is happening very rarely these days. Most of the time it’s getting like switching between
things [languages] automatically.
She did mention that there is a di erence between using her native language and theother languages in her repertoire. It is quite tiring for her when she needs to use English or
Japanese all day, especially for academic work, but this does not happen with Farsi.
or Mona, moving to Japan was also an in ection point in her identity, and she sees it as
the moment she became multilingual:When we came here I needed to use English or Japanese for communication and then I think
little by little [I realized my life was multilingual].
Even though Maria, Clara, icolas, and Mona come from di erent parts of the world, there
are numerous parallels between their multilingual experiences. One fascinating insight that I
gained from all four teachers was the fact that the realization of their multilingualism cameat times of change, and only after it had already started becoming a lived reality for them.
This resonated with me as well because of my own experience of using several varieties in mylinguistic repertoire at the same time when I moved to Japan, which I believe brought about
my multilingual awakening .

Being Foreign NNESTs in Japan
Following these stories of multilingualism and evolution, I would like to move on to discuss
the three main themes that emerged from my interviews with Maria, Clara, Nicolas andMona, namely, how we see ourselves as NNESTs in Japan, what we believe we can bring to
our learners linguistic and cultural development, and how we grapple with reconciling ourmultilingual lives with our teaching approaches and beliefs for the classroom.
At this point, more information about how the interviews with the four participants wereconducted is in order. For each of the four interviews (which took place over Zoom andlasted between 40 and 60 minutes), I was guided by the idea of co-constructing narrativesof
EST e periences in Japan by adding my own e periences and re ections to theirs.
In this approach, I was in uenced by Block s (2000) conceptuali ation of interviews as
co-constructed, so that interview data are seen not as re ections of underlying memory
but as voices adopted by research participants in response to the researcher s prompts
and questions” (p. 759). I also wanted to explore my relationship as a researcher with theparticipants in my research through an approach based on Martin-Jones et al. (201 ), whoshowed that the identities of the researcher and participants can and should no longer beconsidered in fi ed, binary terms, especially in the case of multilingualism research.

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As a first step in bridging the gap between the multilingual reality of our private lives andthe as of yet inescapable categorization as NNESTs in the English teaching profession in
Japan, it is necessary to acknowledge and record the experiences that we have had throughout
our teaching careers.
Before I move on to describing these experiences, however, I would like to take a moment
to discuss why I believe it is important to provide a medium for the voices of foreign national
NNESTs in Japan to be heard. Despite the fact that NNESTs are believed to make up about
0 of all English teachers around the world (Braine, 2010), they have had very little
visibility in the field of TESOL until relatively recently (Kamhi-Stein, 2016). The in uenceof native-speakerism, defined by olliday (2006) as a pervasive ideology within ELT,
characteri ed by the belief that native-speaker teachers represent aestern culture
from which spring the ideals both of the English language and of English language teaching
methodology (p.
5), is still undeniable. The traces of linguistic imperialism (Phillipson,
1 2) in Asia and in Japan (Braine, 2010) are still clear in the field of second language
education. On the other hand, within the Japanese context in particular, there have been
attempts to redefine native-speakerism to also include the discrimination faced by ESTsin terms of employment conditions in Japan ( oughton & Rivers, 201 b). owever, di erent
contributions in the same volume edited by Houghton and Rivers (2013a) show that the ELTlabor market in Japan is dichotomi ed as Japanese/non-Japanese ( ayes, 201 , p. 1 2) andalso that “the vast majority of foreign English teachers in Japan can be assumed to be native
speakers (Geluso, 201 , p. 4). This means that non-Japanese, non-native English speakers
are virtually invisible as English language teachers in Japan.
Focusing on the stories of such teachers could not only create a more inclusive working
environment in the ELT field in Japan, but also constitute a first step towards moving beyond
the NEST/NNEST dichotomy and seeing most language teachers as multilingual teachers.
Unsurprisingly, the four teachers I interviewed had much to share with me, so I haveseparated this longer section into two subsections, the first dealing with our e periences as
ESTs in Japan, and the second with our self-perceptions as multilingual
ESTs.

Experiences as NNESTs in Japan
During my interviews with the four NNESTs one of the topics that we covered extensively was
the discrimination we experienced when applying for various English teaching positions inJapan. In my case for e ample, in my early career, I had to constantly justify my ualifications
as an English teacher in Japan. In one instance, I worked very hard to convince the ownerof a small English conversation school to hire me as a part-time English teacher. One of her
first uestions during my interview was why she should hire a Romanian for the position.
I felt it was my job to impress upon her that, as a non-native speaker who had ac uired
English in a similar fashion to the students in her school (i.e., in an EFL context), I was infact much better ualified for the position than the ESTs with no formal training she hadalready employed. There were other instances in my later career when, despite the fact that
I had earned an MA in sociolinguistics and language education, and had become a certified
TESOL instructor, various administrators and o ce sta at di erent Japanese universities
uestioned my ability to e ectively teach English based solely on my Romanian nationality
and my non-native speaker status.
During our conversations, Maria, Clara, and Mona talked about both systemic
discrimination against them as NNESTs and examples of students having discriminatory
attitudes. In terms of systemic discrimination, Mona reported a similar experience to mine. At
one university, following a successful job interview she was contacted by the administration
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Evolving Journeys of Multilingual Teachers of English in Japanby email with concerns about her non-native English speaker status. They asked for proofof her English proficiency, but the faculty member in charge of coordinating the programintervened on her behalf and the issue was resolved.
Clara talked about a di erent type of systemic discrimination, namely, how English
teaching jobs are advertised in Japan. She said about her current job:
It was advertised initially for native speakers so I thought: I’m not going to bother applying.
Maria, on the other hand, mentioned that she has noticed that recently there are fewer jobs
advertised exclusively for NESTs.
Maria had a very interesting take on this issue of systemic discrimination in the workplacebecause she also had the experience of working as an English teacher in her home country
before coming to Japan. She described the situation there as being very similar to Japanin that, in certain schools, not very ualified ESTs have much better working conditions
and pay than ualified local
ESTs. Maria feels that in Japan, ESTs with the same
ualifications as her have a better chance to get a teaching job.
I think it’s connected to a larger system of discrimination. Should it change? Absolutely! Should
there be a better understanding of how English is not owned by native speakers but it’s alreadya global tool that anyone has access to? Yes, sure!
Although she thinks that there should be systemic change in English language teaching inJapan, she does not feel that individual NNESTs can bring about change on their own.
Another topic that came up in our conversations was exactly how salient our status as
ESTs in Japan is for our careers. hen Maria and I talked about how we might be di erent
from NESTs in Japan, she said:
The difference is more important for us than it is for everybody else.
Clara talked about being the only foreign NNEST in the department at one university,
but also about how at a di erent university she was part of a very diverse group of English
teachers originating from India, Nepal, the Netherlands, or Uzbekistan.
Another point of discussion with the participants concerned how they feel their NNEST
status in uences their students. Maria mentioned that at the beginning of her teachingcareer, she did not feel as accepted by some of her Japanese students, especially those who
had lived abroad.
I remember that one of them asked me: where is your accent from? And I said: well, where do
you think it’s from? And she said: anywhere but not native. So that made also a distinction: you
can’t pass for a native speaker. […] I recognize there is less acceptance of the non-native English
speaker as an English teacher.
Mona, on the other hand, talked about a certain lack of awareness in her students :I think most of my students don’t really see me as a native or non-native. They are not reallypaying attention to this, my background, compared to faculty members and administrative staff
who are labeling teachers as native versus non-native.
Clara also mentioned how many of her students forget she is not a native speaker of English by
the end of the course, and she relayed an instance when a student was actually shocked to hearthat as a non-native speaker herself, Clara could understand his struggles with learning English.
Here, I believe it is worth observing that the teachers I interviewed thought more readily ofnegative experiences related to their status as NNESTs in Japan. This is something that struck48

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me when reading Canagarajah s (201 ) re ections on teacher identity, where he talks about
his students negative reactions to him as an
EST. To me, this shows a still prevalent belief
that native speakers make for superior teachers of languages, as well as the persistence, andperhaps ubi uity of discriminatory practices in the ELT field in Japan and elsewhere. This
may go some way towards e plaining the di culties of moving beyond the EST /ESTdichotomy and towards reconceptualizing language teachers as multilingual teachers.

Self-Perceptions
Closely reflecting enduring trends in the literature on language learning and teaching (see for
e ample Medgyes, 1 4 Moussu & Llurda, 200 Marr & English, 201 ), the very uestion ofwhat makes a native speaker of English or a non-native speaker of English turned out to be adifficult one in the conversations I had with the four participants. e discussed how we see
ourselves and in some instances how we came to terms with our non-native speaker ofEnglish status.
e all consider ourselves non-native speakers of English, but when we discussed what thismeans for us personally, Mona began by saying:
This is a very interesting and difficult at the same time question. This is really hard to talk about.
icolas had a more nuanced take on his non-native speaker of English status:
I’m not native but that’s debatable because my native language is Spanish, but my first language
was English.
On the other hand, Clara talked about a complex she always had:
I will always be a non-native speaker of English. It would be presumptuous of me to say otherwise.
[…] This was a complex that probably I had. I consider myself a non-native speaker. I’m very
aware that I sometimes make mistakes, I don’t find the right words or the context.
Maria had an interesting take on the same complex when we talked about our aspirations tobecome native-like in our use of English:
It is part of a colonial complex of never being as good as the colonizers.
Such issues related to the self-perceived inade uacy of
ESTs as English speakers havebeen extensively reported in the literature (see for example Braine, 2010; Marr & English,2019). Even though there is much advocacy for the abolition of the native speaker norm, that
does not make these issues any less real and present in the lives and professional careers of
NNESTs.
Nevertheless, the NNESTs I interviewed seemed to make attempts to reclaim the term
non-native speaker. A similar attempt is discussed by Kamhi-Stein (2016) who argues that
non-native speakers themselves have begun to stop seeing non-nativeness as a negative
attribute. Moreover, as far back as the 1990s, Kramsch (1997) questioned the very need for
non-native speakers to aspire to become native-like:hy should they disregard theirunique multilingual perspective on the foreign language and on its literature and culture toemulate the ideali ed monolingual speaker (p. 5 ). This particular uote from Kramsch(1) struck me as particularly important because, during the same time in the mid-1 0s,
I remember feeling great pressure (mostly self-imposed) to become indistinguishable froma native speaker of English. During our interview, Maria also talked a lot about how she was
focused on achieving perfect pronunciation in English when she was younger, but now that she
recognizes the diversity in accents, she has
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Evolving Journeys of Multilingual Teachers of English in Japan

become free from the struggle of having to have a perfect accent.
I described earlier how I also began to feel that I have finally become free from the pressureof aspiring to become a native speaker of English through my involvement with research on
the multilingual turn in learner development. Could this freedom be an initial step towards
a di erent awareness of our teacher identities, one that moves us forward on the journey
towards seeing ourselves as multilingual teachers

Influencing Our Learners’ Development
The debate over what NESTs and NNESTs can bring to the classroom and thus contributeto the development of their learners has been an enduring one in the literature. On the one
hand, NESTs have traditionally been seen as authorities on the language (Canagarajah, 1999),
the best models for students (Marr & English, 2019) and purveyors of culture (Medgyes,
1994). However, Braine (2010) and Kramsch (1997), among many others, have questioned
this perceived superiority of native speakers of English as English teachers. Indeed, Moussu
and Llurda (200 ) pointed out that many so-called Ss can be far less intelligible inglobal settings than well-educated proficient speakers of a second language (p. 1 ). Also,
Seidlhofer (1999) makes a further argument for the ability of NNESTs to bring something to
the language classroom that NESTs can not. She uses a beautiful journey metaphor to makeher point: “native speakers know the destination, but not the terrain that has been crossed to
get there they themselves have not travelled the same route (Seidlhofer, 1, p. 2 ).
Although this NEST versus NNEST debate continues in the academic literature, there are also
many attempts to move past it and focus instead on what multilingual language teachers cancontribute to the development of their learners (Calafato, 2019). The issue of what we can bringto our students language learning journeys is one that came up in my discussions with Maria,
Clara, Nicolas, and Mona as well. We discussed a shared sense of identity as English language
learners that we have with our students, our abilities to make ourselves more easily understoodin English, and the wealth of language learning strategies we can share with our learners.
I often see myself in my students; I can identify with their dread at being faced with a “wallof text” in English, and with their puzzling over what can seem like nonsensical English
grammar or spelling rules. Both Mona and Maria seemed to share these exact feelings. Mona
said about her students:
I have studied English as a second language like them, so I can understand. […] They areconnected with this feeling and they get encouraged, I think. […] Sometimes I see that my friends
who are from English speaking countries, they might not fully understand when students ask
them questions about grammar and vocabulary.
Maria said:
It was always easier for me to teach Japanese people, because I have also been a student. […] I
went through the process of not being able to speak English to actually being able to communicate
in English. So I guess that being a non-native English teacher helped me kind of understand, or
be close, or have some sort of identity with the students in that sense.
Nicolas goes even further in an attempt to describe what a language teacher should be:
To be a language teacher, you yourself must have gone through the process of learning acompletely foreign language. […] If you don’t have that experience, you can only teach yourstudents 25% of what it means to learn a language.

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In our conversations, comments from students about how easy it is to understandus speaking English when compared to NESTs often came up. In a course end survey I
administered to my own students, they commented about my use of English in the class:She is good at putting in other words, so I can understand difficult words. She often cares about
our reaction, and change expression depending on our level of understanding. Without her
additional explanation, I could not do my best for our assignment.
Clara also talked about her ability to make herself understood as an advantage in theclassroom.
I imagine that for a native speaker it’s a bit more difficult to adjust the language they speak, but
I usually do it; I’m very conscious about it. I try to speak slowly, use easier words; I don’t switch
immediately to Japanese, I always try to adjust my language first. I’ve had no complaints fromstudents. They are quite happy that I try to make myself understood. I don’t just go there, talkand leave.
Maria told me about comments she received from students that her English was easy tounderstand, but she had a very interesting and rather di erent reaction to those comments,
especially in her early career:
I remember many of my Japanese students at the time saying: wow, your English is very easy tounderstand, which I always took as not a real compliment. Not a back-handed compliment, but
it meant that my pronunciation was not exactly like native speakers’ pronunciation. It’s okay,
but I always felt that [sigh] it’s easy to understand because it’s not the real thing.
One of the more practical contributions we have all felt that we can make to our students
development as language learners is sharing our language learning strategies. We often
get questions from students about the best ways to learn English, and we can bring up our
personal language learning experiences to help them with that. Clara put it very succinctly:
Because you yourself are a second language learner, you have experience and you can tell them:‘this is what I used to do’.
Maria spoke in detail about some of the language learning strategies she shares with her
students:
I remember specifically once when I was teaching listening skills to one group and I told them
what I used to do when I used to take tests: I used to take notes in Spanish because it’s what comesout faster. So you listen and you take notes in Spanish and then you either write or speak basedon those notes. […] And I told my students to do that, just take notes in Japanese. I remember
one student said this is what she wanted to hear but her native teachers have always taught her
to take notes in English because you’re listening in English and you must write in English andshe said this [Maria’s advice] was a life saver. […] It was something I could say because I had theexperience of learning the language.
Nicolas went beyond individual strategies and explained that he incorporates teachingstrategic competence in his classes. He gave an example of a Japanese Youtuber whose videos
he uses in his classes to illustrate this concept for his students and show them that finding
a way to communicate is the most important thing when learning a language. In her videos,
this particular Japanese Youtuber explains movies in English, and Nicolas says that despite
her very broken English, she:has a very high strategic competence. It’s the ability of finding a way of overcoming yourdifficulties with vocabulary and grammar and still get through your message.
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Evolving Journeys of Multilingual Teachers of English in Japan

However, when Nicolas shared these videos with an NEST colleague, their reaction was:I couldn’t go through that video. I just couldn’t stand how she was destroying my language.
Nicolas describes this colleague as someone who speaks no Japanese and whose attitude of
expecting Japanese learners to perfectly speak their language is not only counterproductive, butalso the very opposite of what a multilingual teacher might bring to the classroom.
A concept that I believe summari es very well the in uences that we as multilingual
ESTs
can have on our learners development is that of language awareness, which Calafato (201 )describes as “explicit knowledge about and conscious perception of language, its structure andvocabulary, its teaching and learning, as well as its use in social and cultural contexts” (p. 4).
The enhanced language awareness that NNESTs have by virtue of their multilingualism is whatallows us to better guide our students on their own journeys towards multilingualism.

Engaging With the Multilingual Turn and Becoming Multilingual Teachers
For myself and for the other NNESTs I interviewed, living a multilingual life and constantly
switching between languages is a normal part of our day-to-day e periences. owever,reconciling our multilingual identities with our English language teaching practices has
been much more di cult. hen considering introducing a multilingual turn in the English
language classroom, one would think that multilingual teachers would be the ideal vehicles
for this turn, but this has not necessarily been our collective experience in Japan. During
our conversations on multilingualism in our classes, the participants and I first discussed
how we deal with the still common “English only” mandates. We also touched upon how
we use Japanese in our classrooms and how we raise our students awareness of the variety
of English accents, which I see as initial attempts at introducing the multilingual turn into
our classrooms. Another very interesting point brought up by the participants was the factthat often multiculturalism is even more important than multilingualism and that ourown multilingual and multicultural backgrounds make us uni uely ualified to e pose ourJapanese students to various aspects of multiculturalism.
One of the first issues that came up in our discussions of multilingualism in the classroom
was that of the mandatory English only policies still prevalent at many Japanese universities.
Despite the fact that these policies are a manifestation of native-speakerism (Auerbach, 1)and linguistic imperialism (Phillipson, 1992), all of us seem to have internalized this idea.
Mona, for example, talked about how, before she started teaching English in Japan, she wasconvinced that using only English in the English language classroom was the best approach
because this was how she learned English in her home country. Maria had an even stronger
internalized feeling about the English only mandate:
I use words in Japanese, […] but I know it’s kind of a taboo, like many people don’t want to dothat, many people think that you should never use words from another language in a sentence inanother language, but I don’t necessarily feel it’s a bad thing to do, so I do it all the time.
Notwithstanding the fact that we are expected to follow English only policies, all theteachers I interviewed not only reported using Japanese in their English classes, but in somecases, how their Japanese ability actually gives them an advantage over teachers who cannot
speak the L1 of Japanese students. Maria talked about using Japanese words that cannot
be translated into English like for example ganbaru (do one s best). Mona shared how she
switches to Japanese in low level classes when students do not understand directions, but
she made sure to emphasize that she does not translate for students but merely helps themunderstand and move on with the lesson. She describes her use of Japanese as:

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using some words that can make me feel more connected to the students.
Clara talked about using Japanese not only when lower level students need it, but also
for administrative purposes in the classroom, such as when she gives students deadlines or
explains important assignments. When I asked her how this use of Japanese changes herclass, she mentioned:
I had many students write in their final evaluations that they loved it that I used Japanese,
because it makes it easier to understand.
In my own case, I use Japanese in my classroom for all the purposes described above, and I
also use it for what I call “entertainment purposes.” I often use certain phrases in the more
colloquial Kansai dialect of Japanese (like nande ya nen / なんでやねん [how come] or sou nan ya/ そうなんや [is that so]) to break the tension or create some levity in the classroom. Moreover,I make more e tensive use of my students L1 by encouraging them to use it in the planningstages of projects. Almost invariably, this proves to be e tremely beneficial for students,
not only by improving the uality of their final projects, but also in terms of generatingtarget language. During a recent project I conducted, for example, a group of students werediscussing in Japanese how they might respond to other groups presentations, and they cameup with an impressive list of possibilities during a three-minute e change conducted mainly
in Japanese: “Great! Brilliant! Amazing! That’s an interesting answer. That makes sense. That’s agood idea. Wow, I want to try that too! I will challenge that some day!” Had they not been able touse Japanese, I do not believe they would have been as successful at generating quite as many
useful English expressions.
Another interesting aspect of incorporating multilingual use into our classrooms is raising
Japanese students awareness of orld Englishes (Kirkpatrick, 200 ) and the variety ofEnglish accents used by English speakers around the world. Mona described a content class
she taught in which one of the topics covered was the di erence between native and nonnative English, and she summari ed the students opinions about the topic:
They were really aware about different kinds of Englishes, not only accents or this kind of surface
level. […] Students are probably more ready to be more open in terms of communication withpeople from different backgrounds, different accents, different kinds of English as a lingua
franca, compared to what we are seeing from the other side, which is how teachers are being
recruited or what kind of teachers are being hired.
Maria talked about being asked to teach an English pronunciation class, but she explained:
I am very much against pronunciation classes because I think they are just encouraging thisidea that there is one correct pronunciation, when there is not even an agreement among native
speakers of what is a good pronunciation.
This is why she was very happy to be able to use that opportunity to introduce her students
to many di erent English accents (Indian, Australian, Bra ilian). er students first reaction
was that the speakers English was terrible, and that they were not native speakers, so thestudents were very surprised to learn about the existence of World Englishes. Nicolas also
talked about how he deals with what he terms his Japanese students obsession with perfectpronunciation. He explained that he gives his students the statistics on how many people
around the world speak English as a first language or as an additional language, and he alsoteaches them about the variety of English accents even among native speakers. Nicolas saysraising this awareness in his Japanese students is very important, not only because they gain
confidence when they learn they are in fact among the majority of people who speak English
as an additional language, but also because he wants to impress upon his students that:
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Evolving Journeys of Multilingual Teachers of English in Japan

There is no such thing as perfect English, even for native speakers. […] When they graduate, mostof the people they are going to speak with are not native speakers.
Finally, when asked about multilingualism in their classes, some of the participants
pointed out how, even if they do not necessarily use other languages frequently, the aspectsof multiculturalism that they bring to the classroom are often more important. Clara, forexample, talked about how her multilingual background and experiences play a bigger rolein her intercultural communication courses than in her English communication classes. In
these courses, she says she can give examples of her own cultural misunderstandings and she
can put more of an emphasis on multiculturalism. Nicolas in particular focuses on bringing
multiculturalism into his classes:
I do not think there is such a thing as multilingualism AND multiculturalism. They are both thesame thing. Language and culture are an indivisible unit. I can say that because I come froma multicultural background. […] Even if I were to teach only grammar, […] I am still teaching
culture.
In my conversations with the participants, I made sure to ask them how they introduce
themselves to students they meet for the first time, because I wanted to know how they feel
their very presence in the classroom in uences their students. In my own case, I often givemy students a set of statements about myself and ask them to guess which ones are true or
false. I always include a statement about me being from a non-English-speaking country
because I want students to begin questioning their assumptions about who their English
teachers should be. Maria mentioned that she used to not tell her students that she is from
Latin America, but she does not do that anymore:
The first time I taught, I remember trying to hide it, and I don’t do that anymore. […] Because I
wanted to be taken seriously, but I was very young and inexperienced and I thought that would
matter. […] But I feel I have the confidence now to say where I am from and to say that I am nota native speaker.
Mona explained that when she tells her students she is from the Middle East, not only dothey want to know more about that, but:Students are ready to accept the multilingual identity or background of their teachers.
icolas concluded our interview with these words, which are very similar to the selfrealizations of multilingual teachers reported by Calafato (2019).
This is what we, multicultural language teachers can bring to the table. It has nothing to dowith being native or not. […] It has to do with whether you yourself have had a multicultural
background that you can use as an asset in the classroom.
I see this re ection as the perfect encapsulation of our shifting identity towards embracing
our multilingualism and also the ways we can engage with the multilingual turn for learnerdevelopment to help our students become more accepting of language diversity and the use of
di erent languages in the classroom.

Final Thoughts and Future Directions
As I bring this narrative account to a close, I wish I could say that I have a clear destinationin mind for my journey of evolution from NNEST to multilingual teacher, but alas, I donot. I can, however, say that my multilingual identity and my professional identity as an
English teacher no longer seem quite so irreconcilable. Sharing my experiences as an NNEST

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with other
ESTs in Japan, as well as re ecting with them about what our presencein the classroom means for our students, and about ways to make multilingualism andmulticulturalism an integral part of our teaching and learning, has been transformative forme. Acknowledging who we are and how we got here as multilingual speakers and English
teachers, as well as accepting and maybe even letting go of ingrained assumptions, are allnecessary steps in the journey towards a fully edged multilingual teacher identity.
I am, however, left with more puzzles to ponder, but I feel they have become more
conscious for me as I work on thinking them through. As this narrative account has focusedon teacher identities and practices, one of the main remaining puzzles is what multilingual
teachers can do to encourage learners to work multilingually through classroom practices
around using languages in combination. Another puzzle relates to how multilingual teachers
can help learners develop their own multilingual identities within an interconnected,
multilingual, and multicultural world, by opening their eyes to the value of multilingual
practices. Resolving these puzzles might mean more than just encouraging students tomake free use of their L1 as part of their English language development, because it involves
bringing down ingrained norms, both institutional and ideological, about appropriate
language use, language ownership, and discourses of power.

Author Bio
Oana Cusen is an assistant professor in the Language Center at Kwansei Gakuin University inJapan, where she designs and implements language courses using a project-based learningand teaching (PBLT) approach. Among her current research interests are multilingualism
and multilingual language acquisition, as well as collaborative online international learning(COIL).
Oana Cusen este profesor asistent n Centrul de Limbi Str ine la Kwansei Gakuin niversity nJaponia. n cadrul centrului, ea creea cursuri de limb ba ate pe metodologia PBLT. Printre
interesele ei de cercetare se g sesc multilingvismul i achi i ionarea multilingv de limbi,
precum i COIL.

Review ProcessThis paper was open-reviewed by Jim Ronald, Chika
have the option of open or blind review.)

ayashi, and Tim Ashwell. (Contributors

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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://ldjournalsite.wordpress.com/

The Learner Development Journal Issue 5: Engaging with the Multilingual Turnfor Learner Development: Practices, Issues, Discourses, and Theorisations
Authors: Riitta Kelly & Jussi Jussila
Title: Reflections on Co-Teaching Multilingual University-Level Language andCommunication Courses
Date of publication online: 2021
Author contact: <riittaNkelly@jyu.fi> & <jussi.j.jussila@jyu.fi>

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:
Kelly, R., & Jussila, J. (2021). Reflections on co-teaching multilingual university-level
language and communication courses. 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. 57-73). Tokyo: The
Japan Association for Language Teaching (JALT) Learner Development Special Interest
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NARRATIVE ACCOUNT--, The Centre for Multilingual Academic Communication,
University of Jyväskylä, Finland <riitta.m.kelly@jyu.fi>, The Centre for Multilingual Academic Communication,
University of Jyväskylä, Finland <jussi.j.jussila@jyu.fi>
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2020
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このナラティブ・アカウントでは，フィンランドのユヴァスキュラ大学において高等教育レベルの多言語及びコミュニケーションコースを共同で教えたを振り返る。フィンラン語とスウェーデン語はどちらもフィンランドの公用語であり，また，多くの学生は学校教育の中で英語を学ぶ。現在，ユバスキュラ大学ではこれら3つの言語は一つの多言語コースで教えられている。このコースは，現象ベースの多言語コースにとして共同で計画され，アカデミックリテラシーや多言語インターアクション，リサーチコミュニケーションといった分野を含む。実際には「学生は一つのモデュールで，学術的な論文を英語でみ，要約をフィンランド語で書き，プレゼンテーションやグループディスカッションを
スウェーデン語で行うことがある」 (Jalkanen & Nikula, 2020, p. 119) 。本稿では，まずこれらのコースの導入に至った 緯を振り返り，コースの計画，共同授業そして多言語的なアカデミックコースの構築に携わった筆者らのを，話的なアプローチを通じてリフレクションを行う。
Tässä narratiivisessa kuvauksessa tarkastelemme kokemuksiamme yliopistotason monikielisten viestintä- ja kieliopintojen
opettamisesta useamman opettajan yhteisillä opintojaksoilla Jyväskylän yliopistossa. Suomen viralliset kielet ovat suomi ja
ruotsi, ja useimmat oppivat englantia ensimmäisenä vieraana kielenä koulussa. Jyväskylän yliopiston viestintä- ja
kieliopinnoissa nämä kolme kieltä sisältyvät samaan monikieliseen opintojaksoon. Opintojaksot suunnitellaan yhdessä
ilmiöpohjaisiksi monikielisiksi opintojaksoiksi, joita ovat esim. akateemisen lukutaidon, monikielisen vuorovaikutuksen ja
tutkimusviestinnän opintojaksot. Käytännössä “...opiskelijat saattavat lukea akateemisia tekstejä englanniksi, kirjoittaa niistä
tiivistelmän suomeksi ja pitää esitelmän tai keskustella ryhmissä ruotsiksi saman moduulin aikana” (Jalkanen & Nikula 2020, p.
119). Tarkastelemme näiden opintojaksojen aloittamisen taustaa ja pohdimme dialogisesti yhteistyötä monikielisten
akateemisten kurssien suunnittelussa, yhdessä opettamisessa ja kehittämisessä.

Keywords
co-teaching, university teaching, multilingual teaching, language repertoires, narrative account
共同授業，高等教育，多言語教育，言語レパートリー，ナラティブ・アカウント
yhteisopetus, yliopisto-opetus, monikielinen opetus, kielirepertuaarit, narratiivinen kertomus

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It is my first day co-teaching in a multilingual classroom. I feel a little nervous, since I am notsure I remember very well when it is my turn to speak or how the whole situation is going to workwith three teachers. The speech communication teacher starts the session in Finnish. I introduce
myself briefly in English, and the course continues again in Finnish. When it’s my turn, I use
English again to talk about academic literacies. The students do not even look surprised when thelanguage changes, and they present their views fluently in English. After we are done, the written
communication teacher continues in Finnish. We continue the same way through the wholesession. Other teachers pitch in if they have something helpful to add and I do the same for them.

This initial episode describes our feelings during our first class of teaching a restructured
communication and language course, and in this narrative account we, Riitta Kelly
and Jussi Jussila, ill continue the story by reflecting on our e periences of this ne
ay of planning and teaching university-level communication and language courses for
the Bachelor s level students in the University of Jyv skyl , inland. e both ork in theCentre for Multilingual Academic Communication (Movi), hich arranges discipline-specificcommunication and language courses for students of all faculties, as well as exchange
students language courses and support courses open to all students. Riitta has been orking
in Movi since 2002, teaching mainly discipline-specific English courses for students ofall faculties, e change students courses, and support courses. Jussi started as a Japaneseteacher in Movi in 201 , teaching basic courses in Japanese, and more recently he has also
been teaching English for students from various faculties. This new way of teaching, where
teachers of di erent languages cooperate to plan and teach the same course, occasionallyco-teaching in the same class, as both e citing and challenging for both of us.
In this narrative account e focus on our reflections on hat e have e perienced in taking
part in planning and teaching these courses, focusing on multilingualism and its role in theprocess. Our purpose in writing a narrative account is to gain a better understanding of theplanning and teaching of these courses. In our reflection, e ill share our pu les and draout questions raised by this novel way of arranging courses.

The Context and the New “UVK” System
Given that the new system of restructured communication and language courses, (in Finnish
uusiutuvat viestint - ja kieliopinnot, U K for short) di ers in many ays in comparison tothe old one, in order to make our narrative account easier to understand, we will begin witha short introduction to the institutional background and present some reasons as to why thechange was seen as necessary.
The University of Jyv skyl is located in Central inland and it has si faculties and some
1 ,000 students (University of Jyv skyl , n.d.). Each degree at the University of Jyv skyl
includes compulsory language studies following the requirements set by the faculty. Most of
the time these studies include courses in speech communication and written communicationin Finnish (a national language), studies in Swedish (a national language), and in one foreign
language at least, hich often is English. These degree-specific courses are taught by Movi.
Each faculty has its o n language re uirements: There are di erences both in the amountof courses and the languages re uired. or e ample, students from the Jyv skyl School ofBusiness and Economics (JSBE) study Finnish, Swedish, and two foreign languages, andstudents from the Faculty of Mathematics take Finnish, Swedish, and one foreign language(The Centre for Multilingual Academic Communication, 2021a; 2021b). English is the mostpopular first foreign language. Other options include German, rench, Spanish, Russian andJapanese, among others. Depending on the student s major, there are -20 language-related

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European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System (ECTS) credits included in the degree.
Currently there are t o di erent systems in force: the language-specific course system herelanguages are taught in separate courses, and the new system of restructured communicationand language courses. In the UVK system, one course can include several languages dependingon the focus of the course. Our new students follow the new system, whilst those students
ho are at the later stage of their studies finish their communication and language studies bytaking language-specific courses.
The di erences bet een the restructured communication and language courses (U K)
and language-specific courses are substantial. Even though e both had previous teachingexperience, it took us a while to get a coherent picture of how the new UVK courses should berun. So, let us continue by explaining the basic principles of the new system.
Teaching English as ell as other languages for academic purposes is a demanding task.
It is important to take into account the general level of English that the students are likely
to have (in Finland B2 in CEFR), and to consider the best ways to teach them the necessarycontent. Thinking about the current situation, Jalkanen and Nikula (2020) have observedthat instead of learning languages separately, the emphasis has moved “to approaching
language as a means of participation in disciplinary knowledge production and literacy
practices” (p. 114). Thus, language and communication teaching also needs to change toreflect the changing needs of university students. Taalas and Laakso (201 ) consider e pertisein the light of recent research, pointing out that “expertise is seen as relational referringto the capacity to work with other practitioners in transdisciplinary contexts that are often
multilingual, multicultural and multimodal. One feature common to all these contexts is thatthey are in constant transition.” In their view, developing the capabilities and competencesthat enable students to cope and work in changing contexts is of vital importance.
The guiding principle of the ne system is not to o er the students a course in a foreign
language but to help them to work within a “study module, in which communication andlanguage studies are integrated with major and minor subject studies, supporting them andenhancing students academic skills (The Centre for Multilingual Academic Communication,n.d.). The goal is thus to create courses, hich consist of phenomenon-based courses(academic literacy, multilingual interaction, research communication) where several
languages (Finnish, English, Swedish, etc.) are used based on the objectives of the degree”(The Centre for Multilingual Academic Communication, n.d.). Symeonidis and Schwarz(201 ) summari e phenomenon-based teaching as something that invites us to break theboundaries of traditional subject teaching and move toward interdisciplinary explorations ofphenomena” (p. 43). Jalkanen (2017) notes that dynamic multilingualism is a key elementin the process. In practice, an English teacher will teach some part of the content throughEnglish whilst a Swedish teacher would teach another part through Swedish, and the Finnish
teacher in Finnish. Occasionally the classes can be shared so that there may be for example
three teachers present, and then each of them would use the language they normally use forteaching. However, the teachers can also switch between languages themselves.
In an interview (personal communication, January 29, 2021) that Riitta carried out with
Peppi Taalas, the director of Movi, Taalas stated that the course renewal process was started
in 2013, hen it as noticed that the communication and language studies o ered to students
were not necessarily the best match in relation to their studies and future professions. Taalas
further e plained that it as di cult for students to get to the courses hen they needed
them, because the groups were full, and if they got into the course but missed classes, it
as hard to keep up. The courses lasted
eeks so it as di cult to see the students
progress. Also, it as also not clear to the teachers of di erent languages hat other teachers
were teaching, and thus some course contents overlapped.
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In our interview, Taalas summarized the goals of the UVK system as follows:
moving from isolated languages to multilingual repertoires
moving a ay from aeek module structure into a 3-year timeline

better alignment with subject studies
discipline-specific needs and literacies
development of 21st century skills, employability, global citizenship skills (collaboration,
creativity, digital literacy, multiculturalism, agency…) embedded in the modes ofworking and made visible in the learning outcomes and assessment.
To start to achieve these goals, all the compulsory discipline-specific Bachelor s levelcommunication and language courses were combined into a continuum where teachers of
di erent languages orked together to plan and carry out courses that ere targeted to meetthe students needs at the right time. Taalas and Laakso (201 ) summari e the neayof thinking in this process: The development ork aimed at bringing together di erent
languages, as well as combining content and language expertise in the curriculum design.”
Representatives of Movi (then Language Centre), subject departments, and faculties planned
the courses in close cooperation, and the development work was carried out in stages so that
all of the university s si faculties ere included in the ne system by 2020.
In the same interview Taalas (2021) observes that the pedagogical design is based on
iggins and McTighe s (2005) back ard design, here first the desired results are identified,then acceptable evidence is determined and finally learning e periences and instructions
are planned. She explains that the theoretical framework behind the new courses is basedon three core elements: language and literacy (e.g., Blackledge & Creese, 201 Piller, 201 ),expertise and learning (e.g., Edwards, 2011), and educational change (e.g., Fullan, 2001, 2011;
Hargreaves, 2003).
To be specific, planning as undertaken a year before a particular course as intended torun, to give participants enough time to consider the content carefully. The first stage in theplanning with each faculty involved members of the respective faculty, the Movi pedagogicalleadership, and senior Movi teachers. Taking into account the faculty s ishes, a team ofMovi teachers next planned the content of the course, including the allocation of hours per
language so as best to benefit the students of the major subject in uestion. The decisions
were based on how many credit units in total each faculty had reserved for language studies
and the relation of di erent languages in the previous model of language studies. Eventually,collaborative decisions were made after discussions on what were the best pedagogical choices
for each team.
In practice, the teachers of di erent languages looked at the course from a skills-based
perspective and considered together which language would be best to teach a particular topic.
This meant, for e ample, that in the first session of the course the students might meet an
English teacher and a Finnish speech communication teacher, but in the second session theymight meet a S edish teacher instead. During the first session all the teachers, as ell as
the overall course concept, were introduced to the students. Then, throughout the course,
di erent teachers ould teach their individual parts, sometimes co-teaching hen that
seemed a good choice.
The first pilot courses for the ne system ere started in 201 , and the last ere launchedin the autumn of 2020. Most faculties have three courses in three consecutive years: The
first-year course focuses on academic literacies, the second-year course on multilingualinteraction, and the third-year course concentrates on research communication.

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Table 1. Example Music and Arts Course ScheduleLearner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 5 • December 2021

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To give a concrete e ample of hat our U K teaching looks like, let us briefly introduce
a course schedule for the first-year students in music and arts. This includes the generalthemes discussed in di erent sessions, but not detailed task instructions or deadlines. Rather,it gives an understanding of the overall course progression. In the last column in Table 1, it ispossible to see which teachers are responsible for which sessions.
There are various ways of organizing a course schedule, and this particular course includes
t o 0-minute sessions per eek. On the left hand side you can see hich session is inquestion and next to it, the focus of the session. The main tasks in this course include aconcept analysis written in Finnish and a group presentation in English. The concept analysis
is based on several articles in English and one in Swedish. The group presentation is basedon one of the articles in English, and students are asked to summarize the main points of thetext and include their own critical points of view. On the right hand side of Table 1 you can
see the teachers and the languages present in the class.
Now that we have described how the new UVK system works, we will position ourselves asplanners and teachers of these courses in the context of narrative inquiry.

Teachers as Narrators in a Multilingual Context of Change
or both of us, co-teaching in a multilingual team as a ne e perience. Our first U K course
as Academic Literacies for students from the Jyv skyl School of Business and Economics(JSBE) in 201 /201 . In addition, Jussi has since taken part in planning and teaching theAcademic Literacies course for IT students, and Riitta has been teaching in Academic
Literacies and Multilingual Interaction for Psychology students, as well as planning andteaching Academic Literacies and Multilingual Interaction for Music and IT students. Our
narrative account is based on our experiences of working with these courses.
Co-teaching ith teachers of di erent languages o ers various points of vie to discuss.
hen searching for a research topic, Pitk nen- uhta (201 ) points out that team ork,cross-fertili ation (in the sense of ne ideas being born from une pected combinations), andself-reflection are useful angles to research a topic. Team ork and cross-fertili ation are an
integral part of teaching U K courses, hilst self-reflection is important hen considering
the teaching process and its outcome. Pitk nen- uhta (201 ) also emphasises that, in an
increasingly multilingual environment, classroom practices and multilingualism in relation tolearning materials should be considered. Given that teaching university-level communicationand language courses including multiple languages by teachers who are originally teachers of
di erent languages is a relatively ne concept, e anted to consider our first impressions of
this type of teaching and see ho our understanding and vie s have developed over the firstyears of teaching.
riting a narrative account o ers us opportunities for self-reflection and here e ant toconsider questions such as how do we work as a team, why are we using a certain language ina certain context, who gets to teach what, why, and in which language, how much individual
freedom each teacher has, and ho to motivate students to use di erent languages in class.
Our reflection includes only our perspectives as teachers although e ould have liked toinclude student voices, we do not have the permission to share student feedback here.
Narrative inquiry seemed like a suitable approach for considering our views on the new
way of teaching communication and language. According to Clandinin and Connelly (2000),
narrative inquiry focuses on experiences in the sense that it is trying to understand and makemeaning of e periences. They also mention that reflection is a central tool in maintaining
an educative sense of criti ue and gro th (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000, p. 7) about
one s e perience. As teachers, e ant to benefit from reflection in order to gain a clearer

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understanding of what we do and why we do it. However, Pavlenko (2007) warns us against
treating accounts as facts (p. 1 ), and thus e ould also like to point out that the topics
discussed describe our understanding and interpretation of the teaching situations. The points
e discuss reflect our vie s alone and cannot be used to generali e the issues further.
In our riting, e see connections to De ey s concepts of situation, continuity, andinteraction that Clandinin and Connelly (2000) highlight in their discussion of a threedimensional narrative inquiry space. For them, the term situation has to do with place;continuation includes past, present, and future; and interaction encompasses that which is
personal and social. As Clandinin and Connelly (2000) point out, any inquiry can be seen
through four dimensions: inward and outward, and backward and forward. Inward has to dowith feelings, hopes and moral disposition, whereas outward relates to the environment, andbackward and forward have to do with the temporal constructions of past, present and future.
These all play a role in our interpretation here.
Even though narratives can be ritten (e.g., Barcelos, 200 ), oral (e.g., Cotterall, 200 ),visual (e.g., Kalaja et al., 200 ), or geared to ards users of visual languages (Kelly, 200 ), forus writing is the form of communication that comes most naturally, and that is why we chose
to use writing as the medium of communication. In this text we write dialogically, taking
turns to reflect on the topics that e see as meaningful in relation to our U K teaching. Our
aim in riting a narrative account is to gain a better understanding through joint reflectionof how planning and teaching a multilingual course with a complicated structure works,
and see hat kind of pu les e come across hilst riting. ollo ing Barkhui en s (201 )categorization, our joint text can be seen as an autobiographical case study, but since there
are two of us, our text includes multiple narratives. Barkhuizen (2014) furthermore points outthat narrative inquiry has often brought into consideration the themes of identity, context,
and a ect. Given that our narratives only cover a relatively short period of time and are notintrospective in the sense of identity search, our focus is mainly on the teaching environmentand our ay of orking there on e perience and conte t.

Reflections on Our Initial Teaching Experiences: What is Going on Here?
e t, e continue ith a reflective dialogue about our initial e periences of teaching these
new multilingual courses.
Riitta: My first impressions of teaching students of Jyv skyl School of Business andEconomics (JSBE) were a little confused. I had no previous experience of teaching
multilingual courses ith teachers of four di erent subjects, and I as not uite surewhat was going on. It felt a little bit like jumping onto a moving train, and try as theymight, the other teachers did not have enough time to explain the whole concept toa newcomer. In the end this situation led to long conversations with various people
responsible for the project. It was challenging getting an understanding of the big
picture. The materials I was using had been prepared by another teacher, and thatmade the jump both easier and more di cult easier, because I did not have toprepare my o n materials but also more di cult, because I had to adjust my ay ofteaching to a di erent mindset. I had been used to having more time to get to kno
the students, play games, have free discussions about di erent topics and to be able
to do all this in English. Hence, I was also surprised how little English there wasincluded in the course I had got used to orking ith a certain amount of hours
in English only, and now the hours allotted to the course had to be shared between
teachers of other languages as well.
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Jussi:

ommunication ourses

Similarly, it took me a while to understand the idea of the new system, but once I
understood hat it as about I immediately thought that it seemed e cient anduseful from the student s perspective, having recently graduated from the university
myself. I felt that I personally ould have benefited more from this system, and I
was happy to be a part of this change. To give an example, when I was a student, I
postponed my compulsory S edish course until the very last moment, and finallycompleting it as di cult as I had not properly studied S edish in years. Also, hen
I started writing my thesis, I felt that I was still lacking in many important areas
related to the research process and especially academic writing. The courses that I was
no teaching in the U K system seemed to better support the students path throughtheir studies, as they o ered timely support in many areas at once, for e ample,
Swedish, English, and academic reading and writing skills.
rom a teacher s perspective, the courses and materials seemed thoroughly planned,
having been designed by a group of teachers from di erent language groups. I as
also happy to learn from my colleagues outside of my own language group, some ofwhom I had not even properly talked with before. On the other hand, having three ormore teachers teaching a relatively short course meant having fewer hours together
with the students for each teacher. The overall feeling for me in the beginning wasthus a bit fragmented, as I felt that I was only responsible for my own small part, andI had the feeling of not knowing my students as well as on the traditional courses.
However, this was partly due to my lack of experience at the time, as gaining moreexperience in planning and teaching the courses, and seeing the same students in notjust one, but two courses, has already helped to resolve the issue a little.

Multilingualism in Practice
We both have direct experiences of multilingualism in our lives and education. We continue
by e ploring our vie s on using di erent languages in the classroom and provide e amples ofour experiences.
Riitta: Multilingualism is something that has come naturally for me, since there haveal ays been several languages in use in my family. My parents shared language is
Finnish sign language, but they always used Finnish with us children. My husband
is English so our own family is multilingual as well. Given that I have got used toswitching languages all the time in my personal life, changing languages in theclassroom has not been a problem for me as such. The traditional courses havebeen monolingual in English, but no the situation has become more fle ible, so it
is accepted that students use Finnish or other languages in class. Trying to gain aholistic understanding of how the students view the multilingual teaching schemeand the quick change of languages in the class is not so simple, since we see them
only for a little hile and then it is the other teachers turn to teach them. Since mostof our students come from a monolingual innish-speaking background, it ould beinteresting to hear how this works in practice for them.
Jussi:

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I have also always seen multilingualism as a part of natural communication, possibly
because I come from a bilingual area in Finland, where I got used to hearing andseeing Swedish and Finnish mixed daily. In class, I have never seen a student visibly
surprised by teachers switching languages. The students quickly get the idea andnaturally s itch from innish to English and back hen needed. o ever, I don t
know if this happens as readily with Swedish, as I have not yet taught a class with
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teachers teaching in Swedish. It seems to me that this type of teaching and studying
resembles real-life situations more than forcing everyone to stick to one language ina ay that seemed unnatural in earlier English-only classes. In certain situations, thestudents are still required to use, for example, Swedish or English to pass their course
assignments, but situations like discussions, asking questions, and preparing for
assignments, often tend to become more multilingual.
Riitta: I think it is interesting that you highlight the naturalness of multilingual
communication, and that gives you a good starting point as a teacher to be a partof a multilingual classroom. Another point to consider is which languages we use
in the class ourselves. I lecture in English, but maybe because of my multilingual
background, I tend to reply to them in the same language they have used to ask me aquestion. If I am teaching something complicated like how to work the library system,
then I will always do that in Finnish because I think it is unreasonable to expect thestudents to use that kind of vocabulary in English whilst navigating a complicatedlibrary system at the same time. The point is in learning a skill and not getting
hampered by di culties ith the language.
When we have had more than one teacher in class, we have not actually decided on alanguage policy beforehand. The Finnish teachers have used Finnish and I have used
English in lecturing, but both of us have used Finnish when answering questions in
Finnish. When it comes to Finnish teachers I have worked with in these courses, there
has been quite a lot of variation as to whether they have wanted to use Finnish only orwhether they have ventured out to use other languages as well.
Jussi:

That is an interesting point to mention, as I am used to something else. In a class
where I act as an English teacher, I usually answer in English when I am asked aquestion in Finnish. I think that mostly the students are able to understand myanswer even when they are not able to ask the question in English. However, I too
have switched to Finnish when I have clearly felt that the individual student does notunderstand me, and it is in the situation more important to understand what I am
saying than to practice using English. Sometimes in situations where I want to discuss
an assignment with a student or a group in private, I have also used Finnish insteadof English, as I have felt that the students have been able to discuss in a more relaxedatmosphere, and so get a little deeper in their reflections.
To further comment on the language policies in class, a Finnish speechcommunication teacher once taught an entire lesson with me in English
spontaneously, only mixing Finnish in with some key words and phrases. This waswithout us agreeing on anything about the languages used in class. I thought that it
was a great way of demonstrating to the students the way languages can be used tocommunicate and encouraging the students to do the same.

Planning in Multilingual Teams
As we mentioned earlier, planning in multilingual teams is a major part of the process ofdeveloping each course. Planning together can get quite complicated in comparison to one
person planning and teaching a monolingual course. e t, e ill share our reflections about
this aspect of our work.

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Riitta: Being part of a planning team has helped me a lot in getting an understanding of
the big picture. It has also made it easier for me to see the common elements. Even
though I enjoy planning by myself, I have noticed that with others it is both more
fun and more challenging, especially if we do not all share the same vision about
the course. o ever, the teachers personal preferences may cause complications if,
for example, two teachers of the same language have the same session to teach todi erent groups but don t agree on hen the materials need to be ready.
Jussi:For me too, it has been a useful experience to develop ideas in a team of teachers fromdi erent fields. Immediate feedback is given and the ideas are developed and refined
further together. I believe that being a ne teacher had a positive e ect on my vieof the process, as I also got the opportunity to learn from many experienced teachers,
hich is something that I anted to do in the first place.

Riitta: It has been really fruitful to talk about things together ith teachers of di erent
languages. We have been able to look at what it is that a student needs to know andfigure out hich language is the best to use in teaching it: the focus should be on thestudents and their needs, not on what the teachers want to teach. Working together
with other teachers has sharpened this focus.
Also, some of our teams are genuinely multilingual so that there are other mothertongues at play besides Finnish and Swedish, and that has given us a chance to see
how we as teachers work in a multilingual meeting situation.
Jussi:

To continue thinking about the multilingual teacher teams, at some point we werealso tasked to consciously decide ho to use di erent languages in planning andworking within the teams. Even before this, I thought that the teams were naturallyable to use a combination of English and Finnish in the meetings to make surethat everyone was able to participate regardless of their language skills. Also, after
spending meeting after meeting in multilingual teams where most teachers switchfrom Finnish to English and back when needed, it seems only natural that we now
o er the same possibility to the students.
The natural conse uence, and at least at first, a do nside, of having several teachersplan and teach the courses is that much more time and e ort has to be spent on
meetings, planning and scheduling, when compared to traditional teaching. Still, after
seeing the benefits of having professionals from several language groups planning thecourses together, to me it feels like something that we should be doing. After using agreat amount of time on planning and improving the courses with other teachers andhearing their feedback and ideas, the idea of completely independent planning seems
more prone to problems for me.

Riitta: Yes, I agree that planning and scheduling has been time-consuming. If you have 3 or
4 teachers in the same course, having more groups means that you might have to add
another four teachers, and trying to get scheduling done with eight people who all
have their di erent teaching responsibilities can get uite complicated uite uickly.
Trying to follo the departments
ishes for scheduling hilst keeping the amount ofteachers in each teaching team reasonable can become a challenging balancing act.
The autumn of 2020 has been particularly complicated as CO ID-1 has meant thatmost of the planning has had to be carried out in Zoom, and that has brought extra
complications to the process. Even though a lot of time has been saved because wehave not needed to travel anywhere to meet, the amount of Zoom sessions per day inaddition to our teaching has made it quite tiring at times.

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The Next Steps
In our continuing dialogue we evaluate our experiences until now, as well as consider whatorks and hat needs to be developed further. e first look at the current situation, then theplanning, and finally discuss future scenarios.
Riitta: I have a better understanding of the current situation, but I am not sure this isgoing smoothly just yet. I no kno ho to run the course, but to have an in-depth
understanding of why certain things are taught in a particular way takes some thinking.
Teaching using another teacher s materials (such as slides) is challenging, both interms of the time that I can spend on a certain task and also in terms of explaining thebackground of the task for the students. However, teaching the same module for thesecond time has certainly helped me to get a better idea of how long things take and what
the students can get out of a particular task. We are meant to use the same core tasks
in each course, but making some small changes, for example in smaller tasks, has got
things to work out more smoothly. If I could start this type of teaching all over again,
hat I ould do di erently is to try to get a clear understanding of the big picture first.
Jussi:In my experience, the courses are useful for the students, but in fact they can seem
clearer for the students than for the teachers in the beginning. The students seemed
to catch the ideas faster than I did when I started teaching the courses. I supposethat this was because the students had been taught by many teachers on the course,
probably giving the students a clearer picture of the course as a whole. Having taught
and worked on these courses more now, I too have a better idea of not only what I
am doing, but also what other teachers are doing, both on the course and in generalat the university. Getting to know all three courses in the UVK curriculum has also
helped me in understanding the big picture of the system. To summarize, I think thatfor a new teacher the system might require some time to get used to, whereas for the
students this is not an issue at all.

Riitta: If I think about planning from the point of view of what works and what needs to be
developed, in my vie it has been a orded enough time so that e really can carry out
discussions on what we are teaching and why. This is of course something that we dowhen we plan new curricula, but our vision needs to be sharper when planning in a team,and we need to have solid reasons why we are doing something in a certain language.
Occasionally it is not quite clear whose responsibility certain tasks related toplanning are, and having several new UVK courses starting at the same time meansthat the sheer number of meetings is high. o the administration has clarified
roles for di erent members of the teams, so that some teachers take on more
responsibility for planning, pedagogical development, and administrative duties, andalso get compensated for it. We now have one or two teachers in each course whose
responsibility it is to help with the administration and keep an eye on the roles thatcolleagues play in di erent course teams, so the system is no
orking in a moreorganized manner.
Jussi:In addition to having resources for planning, having teachers from not only the
English team, but also speech communication, written communication, Swedish,Japanese, German, and so on, in the planning team has been helpful when coming
up ith and refining ideas and pedagogy. Being able to rely on several individuals
and personalities has been, in my experience, perhaps one of the most useful tools
in designing courses. I have had to question my own methods and ways of thinking
often, and have been o ered support and ideas that I had not thought of before.
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ommunication ourses

Riitta: If I think about moving to the future, and what works and what needs to be developedin the UVK system, then I think this is a question that should also be given to thestudents to answer. Despite shared learning outcomes, individually planned courses
can have uite a lot of di erent elements. Since in UK courses the idea is to use
common materials, that means that students in di erent groups of the same course
will receive the same information. For students who study the same major subject, thecourses are more standardised, but to the teachers who teach in many teams, but are
not part of a planning team, it is not necessarily clear where the language coverage
di erences bet een courses come from.
I miss getting to know the students better, but I have not found a solution to thatyet. Not being able to meet them constantly makes it harder to remember them
individually. Grading has become easier in the sense that now all the courses are pass/
fail instead of the old system, where we gave numbers on a scale of 1–5. Even thoughstudents sometimes miss numbered grades, I would keep the pass/fail system because
we are trying to teach them skills which can be further honed and do not need to bemastered perfectly yet.
Jussi:The UVK courses are constantly developed based on feedback from the teachers,
students, and faculties. The teams that I have been a part of have all held regularmeetings before and after the courses to develop them further, which I see as positive.
In my opinion, having several e perts plan and teach together can support students
learning processes by o ering them di erent perspectives on the course content. The
teachers will at times, whether intentionally or not, partly overlap with each other intheir teaching, hich I think can also benefit the students.
Nevertheless, for me, losing certain individual freedom as a teacher to make choices
has taken some time to get used to, as I have had to get used to following the samecontent, timetable, and using shared materials with other teachers. However, I thinkthat the issue for me as mostly in understanding hich parts of the course are fi ed
and which parts can still be done in an individual way.
Also, in my experience, having two to four teachers teach a course can result in someteachers feeling more distant from the students, as there is a limited amount of timeto spend with them, especially compared to a regular course with only one teacher.
Perhaps this issue is something that we will need to focus on more in the future.

To summarize, it has been interesting to notice during this process of discussing our
teaching that on the whole, after our initial experiences with the system, we both felt
similarly about how it works and what kind of things we believe could be developed further.
Despite the di erences in our age and teaching e perience, e both shared roughly the same
viewpoint when it comes to UVK teaching. We both see planning as an important part ofthe development work that should be given adequate time. Considering that there are fewer
hours per teacher in comparison to the traditional course system, we have also noticed that
we do not get to know the students as well as we have been used to. We noticed some slight
di erences, too. or e ample, for Jussi it took a little longer to get used to the idea of using
similar teaching materials. He was also more likely to navigate through them in his own
individual manner. When it came to planning, though, Riitta had been more used to planningon her own, whereas for Jussi planning as a part of a team was how he started teaching.

Revisiting our Story in Terms of Narrative Inquiry
As Clandinin and Connelly (2000) have pointed out, any inquiry can be seen through four
dimensions. These are inward and outward, and backward and forward: Inward has to do with

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Riitta Kelly & Jussi Jussila

feelings, hopes, and moral disposition, whereas outward relates to the environment, andbackward and forward have to do with the temporal constructions of past, present, and future.
Next, we will summarize our experiences based on these four perspectives.

InwardRiitta: Personally, I feel there is hope on the hori on. The first years have taught me a lot
about this way of teaching and helped me to see what works and what does not.
Jussi:The only way is forward, and I think that the change towards a more multilingual
approach to teaching and studying will take us a step forward and point us to new
directions. Change will often present new kinds of problems on the way, but I believe
it is a necessary part of the process.

OutwardRiitta: The environment for this type of working is supportive and inclusive, especially for
those who are part of the planning team. The structures of planning and teaching arestill developing, in response to changing circumstances. I like it that planning is an
ongoing process, and that we discuss and change things where needed, based on thestudent and teacher feedback.
Jussi:The environment is more challenging as one has to continuously negotiate with otherteachers about most content and pedagogy concerning the courses. On the other hand,the support from peers can also be reassuring and helpful, as there is no fear of being
left alone to deal with the challenges and decisions that each course involves.
Both planning and teaching the courses seem to be becoming more multilingual,as teachers of di erent languages are orking together more than before. To me
it seems that this has, and will, probably change the attitudes and ways of using
languages for both the teachers and the students to ards a more fle ible use of their
linguistic repertoires.

Backward
Riitta: We could learn a lot about the experiences of other teaching and planning teams. Even
though not everything that other teams have done can be repeated, becoming moreaware of their ways of working and what has worked well for them could provide foodfor thought for our teams as ell (and hopefully prevent us from re-inventing thewheel).
Jussi:

I also believe that generally improving methods of sharing experiences, ideas, andpractical matters such as assignment types between language groups and teachers
more e ciently and openly ill improve the uality of teaching overall in ourorganisation.

ForwardRiitta: Looking for ard, hat is helpful is that the structures are so fluid. There is room tothink and rethink the teaching situations in terms of the needs of the students. The
situation ith CO ID-1 has brought ne challenges, as teachers need to be preparedfor di erent ays of organi ing teaching, including making online options available
for students. This has also had an e ect on shared planning, as ell as on course
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content. Doing some things takes more time online, and may cause some elements tobe left out.

Jussi: The work done this far in the UVK is a great basis for improvement and further change
in the future, especially as more and more teachers are now joining the courses
and their planning teams. As constant development of the courses and pedagogy is
encouraged and embedded in the system, I am positive that the courses will support
students needs even better in the future.

Representing and Exploring Our Practices in This Narrative AccountWorking on this narrative account has helped us to discuss issues and understand both
ourselves and each other better as teachers. It has given us an opportunity to process di erent
puzzles in a dialogical manner, which would not have been so easy to do in a traditional
research article. Even though the teachers of the course have discussion sessions after thecourses have been run, they tend to be based on factual information and what needs to bedone ne t, and there is very little time for personal professional reflection. riting thisnarrative account has forced us to stop and consider di erent issues from our o n individual
points of view. Our writing process has proved to be multilingual, too, in that we havewritten everything in English since the beginning, but then discussed the points together
in Finnish. The four dimensions suggested by Clandinin and Connelly (2000) proved to be
helpful in assessing the situation, and the new ideas from considering those dimensions
could be taken into account when planning the courses further. We fully understand thatthese considerations reflect the vie s of t o teachers only. e also see it as important thatstudents voices could be represented in order to get a more comprehensive picture of ho
the U K courses ork. o ever, looking at our first e periences of co-teaching multilingual
communication and language courses, we could sum up our views as follows:
Riitta: On the whole, I would say that there are several opportunities included in the system,
but it s up to teachers to make sure they are reali ed. o ever, instead of claimingthat too many cooks spoil the broth, I would say that there is every opportunity forthe situation being uite the opposite instead of too many cooks spoiling the broth, I
would say the more, the merrier!
Jussi: The courses take place at the right time in the students undergraduate studies andthey aim to support their academic needs, tailored to each faculty. In my opinion
then, this change, ho ever potentially time-consuming and challenging at first forteachers, ill benefit both students and teachers.
The process of writing the narrative account has also provided us with new questions,issues, and puzzles to consider, some of which are:Should we discuss and have a joint language policy in the classroom for teachers forpedagogical reasonso could e find a good compromise hen it comes to arranging scheduling so thate take into account the departments
ishes but manage to keep the number ofteachers in each teaching team sensibleo most departments prefer very similar
teaching times, which causes overlap, and the need for new teachers grows.
e do not get to kno

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ell as in a language-specific course, because

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Riitta Kelly & Jussi Jussila

there are fe er sessions per teacher. In a language-specific course e might see thestudents once or twice a week, whereas in a UVK course we might have several weeks in
between seeing the students.
How could we better take into account those students who need extra support in classand ho could e better spot them Given that the students have less contact ith anindividual teacher, it is easy for the teacher to overlook those students who do not ask
for help by themselves.
Even though we may not yet have answers to the previous questions, we would like toconclude our narrative account ith the follo ing reflections:
Jussi:

riting the narrative account has given me a chance to stop and reflect on
multilingualism, and provided a theoretical framework within which to further
consider various issues related to it. Writing has helped me to see the value andpurpose of multilingual elements in our teaching that I have been doing for years,
but have never properly looked at from a theoretical perspective before. I have also
been able to describe and analyze certain issues in the current system and understandwhere in practice it is possible for me to improve. In the end, writing a narrative
account has been a comfortable way to explore the issues for me, as I have been able
to use my o n voice and dialogue to reflect on the issues.

Riitta:or me, too, the most di cult, but at the same time also the most useful part has
been that I have been forced to stop and think about what it is that I am doing andhy. Especially during this study year marked by CO ID-1 , the focus of various
meetings with other teachers has been on how to get things done. Writing thisnarrative account has given me a perspective to what we are doing as teachers, and it
has helped me to consider various points in teaching and planning. The analysis has
similarly provided me with a framework and a place to locate myself on the map. At
the same time it has highlighted to me ho much this type of teaching isand verymuch should be a ork in progress, developing over time.

Author Bios
Riitta Kelly teaches English at the Centre for Multilingual Academic Communication (Movi),and is a PhD candidate in Applied Linguistics at the University of Jyv skyl . er current
research interests include university students learner beliefs, Japanese e change students
linguistic repertoires, and topics in educational technology.
Riitta Kelly opettaa englantia Monikielisen akateemisen viestinn n keskuksessa (Movi)
Jyv skyl n yliopistossa, jossa h n on my s soveltavan kielitieteen jatko-opiskelija.
nentutkimusintresseihins kuuluvat yliopisto-opiskelijoiden oppimisk sitykset, japanilaisten
vaihto-opiskelijoiden kielirepertuaarit sek koulutusteknologiaan liittyv t aiheet.
Jussi Jussila teaches Japanese at the Centre for Multilingual Academic Communication (Movi)and English and Japanese at Centria University of Applied Sciences. His current researchinterests are internationality in higher education and digital teaching methods.
Jussi Jussila opettaa japania Monikielisen akateemisen viestinn n keskuksessa (Movi)
sek englantia ja japania Centria ammattikorkeakoulussa.
nen t m nhetkiset
tutkimusintressins ovat kansainv lisyys korkeakouluopinnoissa ja digitaaliset
opetusmetodit.

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ommunication ourses

Review ProcessThis paper as open-revie ed by Katherine Thornton, Simla Course, and Tim Ash ell.
(Contributors have the option of open or blind review.)

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35). Palgrave Macmillan.
Barkhuizen, G., Benson, P., & Chik, A. (2014). Narrative inquiry in language teaching and learning
research. Routledge.
Blackledge, A., & Creese, A. (Eds.). (2014). Heteroglossia as practice and pedagogy. Springer.
The Centre for Multilingual Academic Communication. (2021a, January 11). UVK (Uusiutuvat
viestint - ja kieliopinnot) tutkintovaatimukset 2020 2023 Degree regulations of therestructured communication and language studies in 2020–2023]. https://movi.jyu.fi/fi/
ohjeita/tutkintovaatimukset/jsbe/uvk
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viestint - ja kieliopinnot) tutkintovaatimukset 2020 2023 Degree regulations of therestructured communication and language studies in 2020–2023]. https://movi.jyu.fi/fi/
ohjeita/tutkintovaatimukset/matlu/uvk
The Centre for Multilingual Academic Communication. (n.d.). U K - Restructured
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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://ldjournalsite.wordpress.com/

The Learner Development Journal Issue 5: Engaging with the Multilingual Turnfor Learner Development: Practices, Issues, Discourses, and Theorisations
Authors: Isra Wongsarnpigoon & Yuri Imamura
Title: Exploring Understandings of Multilingualism in a Social Learning Space:
A Duoethnographic Account
Date of publication online: 2021
Author contact: <isravw@gmail.com> & <imamura.b152rq@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:
Wongsarnpigoon, I., & Imamura, Y. (2021). Exploring understandings of multilingualism
in a social learning space: A duoethnographic account. In A. Barfield, O. Cusen, Y.
Imamura, & R. Kelly (Eds.), The Learner Development Journal Issue 5: Engaging with theMultilingual Turn for Learner Development: Practices, Issues, Discourses, and Theorisations(pp. 74-91). 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

S

S

I

:

, Kanda University of International Studies, Japan<isravw@gmail.com>
I, Kanda University of International Studies, Japan<imamura.b152rq@gmail.com>
As learning environments, self-access centers can provide opportunities for multilingual learning practices beyond
the classroom. However, factors such as language policy or affective barriers can hinder efforts to foster suchdevelopment. In this narrative account, two learning advisors in a self-access center at a Japanese university reflect on
their endeavors to develop a space for multilingual learning. They employ duoethnography in order to juxtapose theirexperiences and their reflections on student interview data. Through this process, the authors reconsider the effects thatdefinitions of multilingualism have on perceptions of such environments, while also reflecting on what kind of culture isnecessary in multilingualism-supportive social learning spaces. The duoethnographic methodology facilitates the authors’
realizations of how their beliefs and perceptions of the multilingual space evolved. This inquiry has implications forpromoting multilingual learning, particularly in self-access settings, and illustrates the potential for duoethnography as ameans for collaborative reflective practice in promoting multilingual learner development.
学習環境としてセルフアクセスセンターは教室外の多言語での学習実践の機会を提供している。しかしながら，言語ポリシーや情意的な障壁等が学習の発展を妨げる要因になり得る。本稿では，日本の大学のセルフアクセスセンターに勤務する2人のラーニングアドバイ
ザーが，多言語学習空間の発展への自身らの奮励を省みる。学生からのインタビューのデータを取り入れながら，経験と内省を並列するためにデュオエスノグラフィーを用いる。この過程を通して，著者は多言語主義の定義が学習環境への認識に与える影響を再考するとともに，多言語を支援する社会的学習空間に必要な文化とは何か考察する。デュオエスノグラフィー手法によって，著者は自身らの多言語空間に関する信念や理解がどのように形作られてきたか，認識を深める。本稿では，とりわけセルフアクセスにおける多言語学習推進の実践的影響と，多言語学習者ディベロップメントを促す協同リフレクティブ・プラクティスの手段としてのデュオエスノグラフィーの可能性を論
じる。

N

N

-

Keywords
デュオエスノグラフィー，セルフアクセス，
トランスランゲージング・スペース，社会的学習，リフレクティブ・プラクティス

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Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 5 • December 2021

Isra Wongsarnpigoon & Yuri ImamuraWe, the authors, are interested in multilingualism in language learning due to ourbackgrounds: Isra as a lifelong multilingual, with parents who thrived speaking asecond language, and Yuri as someone born in Japan, exposed to Japanese English
education, and whose thoughts on multilingualism have been transforming since she started
to work as an educator. While we have maintained hope that education in Japan can follow
the global trend towards accepting multilingual education of languages besides English,
research has revealed some disheartening truths. These include Kubota s (201 ) noting of
the dominance of American or British English in textbooks used in Japan to the exclusion ofother varieties, and Yama aki s (201 ) findings that only 14 of Japanese secondary schools
teach foreign languages other than English. As learning advisors in a self-access center at
a Japanese university, we have felt that the self-access context might o er opportunities tosupport learners multilingual understandings and practices, but we have wondered how wemight provide such support while facing potential unseen barriers such as language policy
or membership in either formal or informal communities. This narrative account documents
our attempts to resolve these queries. Employing duoethnography as re ective practice, we
uxtapose our re ections on interview data and our experiences, with the aim of gaining newunderstandings. These discoveries can inform our subsequent practices and have implications
for multilingual support in language learning spaces.
We first introduce ourselves, as our backgrounds strongly a ect our narrative, and thendescribe our context and specific key concepts that in uenced our research. A description of
our inquiry process follows. We next present our ma or themes and the re ective dialogues
that comprise the core of our duoethnography, exploring di erent conceptuali ations ofmultilingualism (and their e ects) in our center, and questioning how we can establish amultilingual environment and culture. Finally, we conclude by summarizing our personal
discoveries from the dialogues and suggesting how our account might benefit othermultilingual learning environments or practitioners interested in duoethnography.

Introducing OurselvesIsra
In my career, my beliefs regarding language use have gradually evolved. Before joining the
Self-Access Learning Center (SALC), I had primarily taught in Japanese public schools as an
Assistant Language Teacher (ALT). There, I often encountered the presumably unassailable
principles that the L1 should be avoided in L2 learning and that native speakers were the ideal
model for learners. For instance, I was advised by Japanese colleagues to avoid using Japanesein front of students. These notions were easy to internalize; they sounded reasonable andprotected my position. Similarly, when I first learned about the SALC, the English-only
policy at that time seemed sensible and corresponded with some of the SLA theory I learned
about in graduate school in contrast, the SALC s later multilingual policy felt as though
it was potentially exempting students from having to use English. All along, however, I
frequently noted, in schools and in the SALC, the learning that occurred through multilingual
negotiation.
Additionally, as a Thai American (and learner of Japanese), I have instinctively usedtranslanguaging practices (García & Wei, 2014) my entire life: At home, I naturally replied
in English to my parents Thai, to my friends frequent amusement. Conversation withmy siblings or other Thai Americans commonly included Thai words scattered among theEnglish, when there was no equivalent word or out of convenience (e.g., “This shop is phaaeng[expensive]!”) Indeed, when I started reading about multilingualism and translanguaging,
Canagara ah s (2011a, 2011b) description of multilingual users drawing from all available
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Exploring Understandings of Multilingualism in a Social Learning Space: A Duoethnographic Accountlinguistic resources and jumping between languages was immediately familiar. These practices,along with growing up in a bilingual, multicultural environment, shaped my perspective on
the usage of multiple languages. Perceiving these languages as all contributing to my identity,rather than keeping them separate, is instinctive. ow, I question why we would limit learners
access to those resources and opportunities to define their identities. Contemplating these
aspects of my background sparked my enthusiasm for how this inquiry could help our students,
especially in using SALC facilities multilingually to serve their learning.

Yuri
As an undergraduate learner of English, I benefited from the English-only policy in the SALC.
The learning environment immersed me in English, which helped me develop my skills whileliving in Japan. Additionally, one of my English teachers in the first year introduced me toKachru s three circles model of World Englishes (19 5). It was an eye-opening experience
for me, because I had thought English was only for people who speak it as their native or
first language (the so-called inner circle). Understanding the diversity of Englishes had apositive impact on learning English together with my peers in the SALC. When I looked backon my experiences, the English-only policy in the center was a friendly reminder for me tocommunicate with anyone in the SALC without bias or prejudice.
In my career as an educator, I have encountered the dominance of native-speakerism inEnglish education in Japan. I had to compare myself to native English-speaking teachers
constantly while working in the same field. I had never had such feelings as a college student
learning English had been an exploration of myself to discover a new self. In contrast, I
often feel pressure to use English professionally to prove my worth at work. In the SALC,
my current workplace, I have seen many students with strong native-speakerist beliefs,
such as “My goal is to be able to communicate with native speakers of English.” They tend
to think communicating with native speakers is the only way to improve their speaking. I
often ask them in English, English is not my first language, but do you still want to talkto me in English In many cases, they seem confused and cannot respond to my question.
Conversations such as this have made me consider how I can support students language
learning, including challenging their beliefs, not only as a learning advisor, but also as a learnerwith a similar background as theirs. Moreover, in line with the recent multilingual turn forlearner development, I believe it is important for the SALC to provide sca olding for learners
multilingual learning. I hope this duoethnographic account, with our di erent backgrounds,
can lead us in a new direction in order to design a multilingual space in the SALC.

Context
The SALC at Kanda University of International Studies serves a student population of about
4,000, all studying a foreign language (students major in Chinese, English, Indonesian,
Korean, Portuguese, Spanish, Thai, or Vietnamese) or international communication. The SALC
opened in 2001 and currently occupies a purpose-built two-story facility.
Within the SALC there are several forms of support for learners English use. The morestructured forms of support are located on the all-English second oor and include theconversation desk, where students can book one-to-one sessions to practice speaking with an
English lecturer, and the Yellow Sofas, where students can practice conversation with lecturers
on duty and fellow students. These lecturers are usually, but not exclusively, native English
speakers from countries in Kachru s (19 5) inner circle. The first oor of the SALC has lessstructured support and is largely devoted to areas for students to work in groups. The SALC
also has a team of learning advisors, including the authors, whose work mainly focuses on

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nurturing students autonomous learning, rather than language support.
Upon moving to the current facility in 2017, the SALC shifted from an English-only stanceto a hybrid policy (see igure 1). The first oor of the building is multilingual, in that all
languages, including Japanese, may be used, while the second oor remains English-only. SALC
advisors and sta mainly use English on both oors. Some reasons behind the change included
emphasizing our support of learners of all languages, and making the facility more welcoming
for students of all ma ors. Another benefit was the freedom to use other languages in support oftarget-language learning. In practice, however, many users appear to interpret the multilingual
policy merely as permission to use Japanese while socializing. This tendency has made themultilingual area as much of a de facto student commons as it is a self-access center.

Figure 1. Language Policy in the SALC Brochure
It bears mentioning that the university has another self-access facility, the Multilingual
Communication Center (MULC), with separate areas for each of the university s seven
non-English language ma ors. Each area s design resembles traditional architecture in thelanguage s country of origin. Although the MULC does support multiple languages, theexplicit speciali ation and demarcation of the areas within mean it attracts a more specificuser population than the SALC and users tend to stay in their own departments respective
areas. We had also anecdotally heard that in certain areas, while Japanese was allowed,
English was discouraged. Even though the MULC was a multilingual center, we perceived the
SALC s potential for encouraging actual multilingual practices on campus between students
from all departments.
The situation in the SALC made us consider how SALC practitioners (i.e., learning advisors
and administrative sta ) could create a multilingual learning environment and support
users in becoming multilingual learners. We ourselves, as advisors, often use both Japaneseand English during advising sessions with individual learners. However, we hoped that we
could encourage such practices on a larger scale. In order to create a supportive, comfortableenvironment, we established a space within the multilingual area, the English Speaking
Practice Area (ESPA). In conceiving the space, we were inspired by Wei s (2011) concept oftranslanguaging spaces: social spaces where multilingual users may combine their histories,
beliefs, and abilities “into one coordinated and meaningful performance, and [make] it intoa lived experience” (p. 1223). Due to the multilingual policy, students can use Japanese or
any other language in the ESPA; we hoped, however, that any other language use would bein support of their English speaking (and not, for instance, chatting completely in anotherlanguage; for details, see Wongsarnpigoon & Imamura, 2020a).
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Exploring Understandings of Multilingualism in a Social Learning Space: A Duoethnographic AccountAfter creating the ESPA, we soon reali ed that learners needed additional sca olding to use
the space for L2 speaking practice. As such, we started holding weekly drop-in conversation
sessions, during which we, the authors, were present in the ESPA. Students could come andtalk about any topic, using any linguistic resources in their repertoire. Although we havenot explicitly discussed translanguaging during these sessions, we ourselves use and thus
implicitly endorse translanguaging practices (mainly in English and Japanese). We also
supported a small group of SALC Peer Advisors (PAs), student sta that advise fellow students,
in holding a regular collaborative learning event known as TACO (short for “Talking Activity
and Collaborate with Others”) Tuesday in the ESPA, where interested students could discuss
relevant issues with their peers, such as time management or job hunting. Other events orstudent displays in the space were encouraged as well.

Defining Terminology in Our Context
Translanguaging
Yuri first encountered and developed an interest in translanguaging when she read Ceno andGorter (2015). They indicated the importance of how speakers use their linguistic repertoires
in multilingual practices, including translanguaging, in research on multilingualism. García(2009) defined translanguaging as multiple discursive practices in which bilinguals engage
in order to make sense of their bilingual worlds” (p. 45), referring to how multilingual
individuals can use any available linguistic resources, including their first or otherknown languages, in communication. Ceno and Gorter s (2015) work and the idea oftranslanguaging inspired Yuri to start researching multilingual use in the SALC.
These ideas helped us realize that translanguaging is part of our daily practices within
the SALC; we use English, Japanese, and other languages to communicate with colleagues
and students. We also translanguage in advising sessions, mainly when learners struggle toexpress themselves in English. As learning advisors focus on supporting learners throughre ective dialogue, translanguaging often helps us build rapport and create a safe space forre ection. This mirrors the positive aspects of translanguaging practices noted by Adamson
and u imoto-Adamson (2012) in their SALC.
Translanguaging also occurs between learners, for example in learner-led communities in
the SALC, where learners naturally use translanguaging for communication (Thornton, 2020).
Yuri wanted to know more about this peer-to-peer translanguaging she and a community
leader conducted observations in order to investigate translanguaging in the community(Kanai & Imamura, 2019). They found that the participants e ectively used translanguaging
to ensure smooth communication. Additionally, although Adamson and u imoto-Adamson(2012) described learners feeling guilty about not using their L2 exclusively, Kanai and
Imamura s participants did not express similar feelings towards translanguaging (Imamura,2019). Expanding the research on multilingual spaces and learning in the SALC, we haverecently investigated learners attitudes towards the use of multiple languages in language
learning in the SALC s multilingual areas (Wongsarnpigoon & Imamura, 2020a, 2020b).

Multilingual Turn in Self-AccessBeyond the practices within our SALC, the broader multilingual turn (May, 2014) has also
had e ects on self-access contexts. We felt that language policy was one way to promote
multilingual practices in such environments. Thornton (2020), however, in a study ofuser perceptions of language policy at two SALCs, found that while policy can provide
an environment for target-language use, it could also a ect students perceptions of78

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multilingual use. Learners at a center with an explicit “no Japanese” policy were more
opposed to L1 use there, and Thornton suggested that users of a center with a more exible
stance were more open to discussion of translanguaging. While Thornton (201 ) examined
SALC practitioners preferences regarding language policy, there is little research on theapplication of SALC practitioners insights towards a multilingual policy and/or self-accessspace. We hope our ongoing research, including this account, will contribute to the continuing
exploration of the multilingual turn in SALCs.

Data Collection and Analysis
When Yuri approached Isra about co-writing this narrative account, she had become
interested in duoethnography s potential for building a narrative after reading research suchas ooper and Ii ima (2019) on native-speakerism. Duoethnography is a qualitative researchmethod in which researchers of di erence uxtapose their life histories to provide multiple
understandings of the world” (Norris & Sawyer, 2012, p. 9). After further exploration, we
became intrigued by how duoethnography emphasizes the emergence of new understandings
through the co-examination of how our histories in uenced us and led us here. In previous
research (Wongsarnpigoon & Imamura, 2020b), we agreed that our presence might in uence
students, as well as spaces in the SALC. Therefore, we felt that duoethnography was ideal
for investigating, through dialogue, how our views (as SALC practitioners) towards ourmultilingual learning space have developed over time.
As learning advisors, we support learners re ections through dialogue, so the
duoethnographic approach was naturally appealing. We were interested in how, as re ective
practice, it allowed us to “tell [our] own stories together, building community and collective
voice as it emphasi e d the value of dialogue and di erence through inquiry (Sawyer,
2020, p. xv). urthermore, we were drawn to Lawrence and Lowe s (2020) descriptions of
duoethnography for re ection in English language teaching, particularly how the collaborative
aspect o ers new perspectives unavailable in solitary re ective practice. Thus, we feltthat duoethnography could be a means for us to tackle our questions by juxtaposing our
experiences.
Sawyer and Norris (2013) have suggested that duoethnographic dialogues can be spurredby artifacts (e.g., texts or images). We had already been conducting internal research on the
ESPA space in hopes of improving it and the SALC environment. We had planned to interview
students for that investigation but realized that the interview data was also a valuable
artifact. Our dialogues would be not only about our own experiences, but also our re ections
on the students perceptions.
In January 2020, we held semi-structured one-to-one interviews with four students that
had participated in events in the ESPA and three SALC PAs that had co-organi ed the TACO
Tuesday events. The interviews contained nine questions for the participants and 15 forthe organizers, and lasted approximately 1 hour each. Interviews were mainly conducted
in English, but both interviewers and interviewees used Japanese sometimes to clarify thequestions and answers.
After transcribing the interviews, we focused on two student participants, “Ken” and“Hinako” (pseudonyms), as they were both active, regular event participants. We also
used data from the three PAs (“Hiro,” “Kumi,” and “Akina”). We reread the transcripts
separately to find relevant themes which stood out. ollowing Sawyer and orris (201 ), we
used the interview data as artifacts to spark re ections. In several meetings held online via
Zoom, we discussed and compared what we noticed in the interviews. The transcripts fromthese meetings served, in subsequent meetings, as texts upon which to further re ect, in a
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Exploring Understandings of Multilingualism in a Social Learning Space: A Duoethnographic Accountrecursive fashion. Following the principles of duoethnography (Norris & Sawyer, 2012; Sawyer& Norris, 2013), this was done with the aim of uncovering new perspectives on our previous
re ection or discover themes hidden within. The meetings were recorded and transcribed,
and we both analyzed the transcriptions in order to discover major themes that arose in our
dialogues. This process provided a perspective that neither of us would have been able to findthrough individual analysis.
Through the re ective and analytical process, we hoped to gain insight into the following
questions. As is common in duoethnography (Sawyer & Norris, 2013), the questions emerged
during the dialogical process rather than starting out fully formed prior to our inquiry:
ow are multilingualism and the multilingual spaces perceived by the users
What would an e ective multilingual learning environment be like
What is our role in establishing such an environment

ParticipantsStudent Participants
Interviews with two regular participants of ESPA events provided a starting point for our
discussions.
Ken was ma oring in Chinese and had ust finished his first year of university at thetime of the interview. Ken had participated in TACO Tuesday events multiple times and had
regularly met with learning advisors (other than us) and peer advisors. His peer advisor, theco-organi er of TACO Tuesday, recommended that he attend the event.
The second participant,inako, was a third-year student in the Indonesian department
when Yuri interviewed her. She regularly joined the ESPA conversation gatherings we hosted.
She had been frequently using other SALC services, such as the conversation desk, for
improving her speaking skills.

Event Organizers
Three SALC PAs also participated in our interviews. PAs are students that are particularly
motivated, autonomous learners and that have undergone training to support peers in theirlanguage learning and college lives (Curry & Watkins, 201 ). Their primary roles are conducting
one-to-one advising sessions with fellow students and o ering social learning opportunities
in the SALC. They started organizing TACO Tuesday events in July 2019 in order to encourage
students to practice speaking English in the ESPA, and to promote the peer advising service.
iro, a third-year student in the English Department, often used the SALC to sociali ewith friends, participate in events, and organize (along with fellow PA Akina) one of thelearning communities, which are groups led by and comprised of learners who share theirinterests while using their target language(s) in the SALC (Mynard et al., 2020).
“Kumi” had already completed her B.A. in International Communication at the university
in 2014 and was attending additional classes in order to become an English teacher. As anundergraduate, she had actively utilized the previous SALC with her friends. Because she cameto the university only for attending classes, however, she did not use the SALC other than fororganizing TACO Tuesday events or for conducting advising sessions.
Akina was a third-year student in the English Department. She organi ed a learning
community with Hiro and enjoyed communicating with fellow students in the community.
Among the three PAs we interviewed, Akina expressed the least confidence in her speaking

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Isra Wongsarnpigoon & Yuri Imamuraskills. She also admitted being uncomfortable speaking during TACO Tuesday events, saying,
The topics are di cult for me
and I feel a little pressure to speak English.

Themes and Reflection
Several themes and topics emerged from the review of our transcripts. We retroactively
adopted these themes as the questions we would ponder in this narrative account: how
multilingualism and the multilingual spaces are perceived by students, what the nature of amore supportive multilingual environment might be, and what our role might be in creating
it. The following dialogues resulted from our addressing those questions and are organized
into themes: how students perceived multilingualism within our SALC, how we might counter
potential e ects of the language policies, and the creation of a multilingual environment.
or each theme, we first present a summary of relevant student interview data, followed byextracts from our dialogues, in which we re ected on both the students views and our own
experiences. ollowing Sawyer and orris s (201 ) principles of duoethnography, rather thanreporting our dialogues completely verbatim as they happened, the narratives presented here
have been edited and constructed from parts of various conversations.

Students’ Conceptualizations of Multilingualism
There was little consensus in the students views on multilingual environments or the
SALC s multilingual space. When asked what the multilingual space meant to him, Ken did
not directly emphasi e language use: We don t care like races, or genders, or age, and ofcourse, languages.… We can just talk [with] … and respect each other.” There was some
contradiction in Ken s beliefs. While he sought collaboration with his peers, he did notassociate with students who learned while sociali ing, such as users of the SALC s first oor
or of the MULC, which he disliked because it was noisy from other languages area s .
Additionally, he felt that even when Japanese could be used, English should be used as muchas possible. This belief may be connected to his dissatisfaction with his classmates in English
courses: They speak Japanese in classthat s made me disappointed, and bored.
Hinako viewed multilingual spaces as spaces where people could speak Japanese freely. Thatis, the SALC s first oor was a multilingual space except for the ESPA, which she considered an“English space.” Interestingly, the MULC was also a multilingual space to her “because mostpeople use Japanese. Apparently it was not the availability of di erent languages but rather
the freedom to use Japanese that a ected her concept of multilingual. When Yuri implicitly
broached the topic of translanguaging by asking her about using Japanese to support her useof other languages, inako related having done so, but stated, Actually, I don t want to use
Japanese. But sometimes
I can t come up with the vocabulary that I want to say. Like Ken,although she felt a multilingual environment allowed her to use Japanese, she preferred not to.
The PAs also exhibited varying views on multilingual spaces and even di erent levels ofawareness of the space and language policies. Kumi seemed unaware of the reasons for themultilingual space and preferred to view the entire SALC as an English space: “For me, theSALC is only English. I know that the first oor is not only English but also other languages,
buton the first oor and the second oor, I tried to use English only.
er belief could be
because she had only ever used the previous English-only SALC facility as an undergraduate
student. Akina, when asked what “multilingual space” meant to her, hesitantly describeda place for all languages without specifically referring to any spaces within the SALC:“A multilingual space is for practicing languages including English, Japanese, and otherlanguages like Thai
iro had a more nuanced view:
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Exploring Understandings of Multilingualism in a Social Learning Space: A Duoethnographic Account

The first floor [of the SALC] is a multilingual space can accept all the languages, like the MULC.…
So I think the first floor is a multilingual space like Japanese, English, whatever is fine.… Maybe
the SALC officially sets the rule, but … actually the reality is a monolingual space. Almost [all]Japanese, sometimes English.

iro had a clearer definition, although he, like other students, only mentioned Japanese andEnglish. e also pointedly identified the discrepancy between the ideal and the reality of the
SALC.

DialogueIsra

The students, even the PAs, didn t really have a concept of a multilingual space .
Maybe they haven t thought about it, or they don t really know the reason for having it.

Yuri Especially Kumi, she didn t know much about the new SALC. Maybe she wasn t awareof the multilingual language policy.
Isra

Akina ust said, The multilingual space is for all languages, but that s ust kind of
the literal meaning of multilingual, right They don t really have an image of what thatmeans. It s ust mojidōri / 文字通り [the literal meaning].

Yuri Tagengo ne. Ippai gengo. / 多言語ね。いっぱい言語。 Multiple languages, right Many
languages.] [laughs But Kumi s answer is quite interesting: reading aloud] “People canenjoy language study, any language, and hearing their culture.”Isra

So she did make the connection with language and culture.

The idea of this language–culture connection surfaced again later and became a key part ofour further dialogues below. We next discussed Ken s opinions on language use in the space,which perhaps re ected a biased understanding of multilingualism. e had said, If we areallowed to speak Japanese, of course, we are Japanese, so we tend to depend on speaking
Japanese…. So as for multilingual spaces, we have to try not to use our mother language.”Isra

We saw this idea in the students understanding of multilingualism: how Ken believes
we can use Japanese on the first oor of the SALC , but we should speak English as
much as possible. He was really against using Japanese at all.

Yuri That might come from his high school experience: He said his teacher only used
English, and he thought it was pretty good, right So, maybe he thinks when you speak
English, or in English classes, you should use English only.
Isra

Right. Ken said about his teacher, “He speaks English well, like [a] native speaker....
e s so cool, I want to become like him. We see that in schools and how they position
those kinds of teachers, right When I worked in secondary schools, sometimes theidea was, “Daredare so-and-so Sensei is a good teacher because their class is all in
English, or because their English is so good.”
I used to think like that when I started teaching. If any teachers taught classes entirely
in English, it was impressive, and I d think, Maybe they re really innovative English
teachers. That s not the reason that they were good teachers. Often they were, but it
wasn t because of that.

Yuri Yeah. Also that s not multilingual.
Isra

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I think Ken s understanding of multilingualism is kind of like how the university or
the PR department positions the first oor, and that a ects what students believe
multilingualism means. In promotional materials or on-campus tours, it s not,Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 5 • December 2021

Isra Wongsarnpigoon & Yuri Imamura

Practice using any language here, it s a reassurance: Don t worry, Japanese is okay
here.” [To them] multilingualism means “you can use Japanese,” so when you compare
it Ah, so that s it If you think of multilingualism as you can use Japanese, and you
believe “English only” is the best, then multilingualism becomes a step down fromEnglish only, right It s like you re using Japanese as a crutch. It really should be like,
English only is fine, but multilingualism is another option. It s not that one is better
than the other. But that s how students have been taught to look at it.
Yuri Maybe. That s how the university attracts students. Unlike other students, open campus
events at KUIS had a big impact on me. When I set foot in the SALC for the first time, it
made me feel like it was a perfect place to acquire English.
Isra

That kind of presentation has an impact. Even we do it sometimes. When I show firstyear classes around the SALC, I ll say, Okay, ready We re going to the second oor,so now it s English only. We ve made that separation explicit. But it s not that one isbetter, right

Yuri Right. In open campus events for high school students, I normally introduce myself bysaying, I m Japanese, so of course I can use Japanese, but on the second oor, let s
challenge ourselves.” So all of this made me think that we need to show our students a
basic definition of multilingualism. But at the same time, maybe we need to create ourown new definition in our center: What multilingualism means in our context.
Isra

That s a good point. Maybe that s one reason why the first oor is ust kind of
undefined, because we don t have a clear definition. If the policy is chuutohanpa / 中途半
端 half-baked , people will ust think, Okay, it means we can speak Japanese.

Yuri Yeah Suddenly, I ust came up with one idea: Maybe we can show a brief definition ofmultilingualism in the ESPA. De [then], we can say “Tagengo area to wa [a multilingualarea means the space where you can do so-and-so
so let s experience it in the
ESPA.”
It s kind of like fureai hiroba / ふれあい広場 at the zoo, where you can actually interact withsome small animals. So, the ESPA would be kind of a fureai hiroba, where students cantry a multilingual setting.
Isra

I understand what you mean. But we don t want people to feel like, I m an animal on
display.” [laughs But we can think about what that definition is, and why they would
want to experience that multilingual environment. Maybe we could raise awareness oftranslanguaging. Maybe they re not aware how much they already use it in real life, orthey need to see examples of a true multilingual environment.

Yuri Do you think we can say translanguaging practice is a communicative strategy Baker(200 ) says that, righte and others argue that the use of L1 is e ective in language
learning.
Isra

Right. When we talk about translanguaging, it s related to the culture and identityof multilinguals (Garc a & Wei, 2014) people who grew up using multiple languages
or use them in their everyday lives. That might be hard for students to internalize. But
if we introduce it as a communicative strategy, maybe they ll identify with it more.
Maybe for some, multilingualism is so far removed that they haven t thought about it.
Ken used Hawaii as an example of a foreign language environment [where his teacher
immersed himself]. But actually, Hawaii is really multilingual. So maybe showing
examples of real multilingual people or environments.

Yuri Right. We need to raise awareness of multilingual settings. I think we can try two
di erent approaches to introduce a multilingual policy: deductive and inductive. One
is deciding the definition of the multilingual policy and providing some examples or
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Exploring Understandings of Multilingualism in a Social Learning Space: A Duoethnographic Accountactivities. The other might be providing some activities first, then elicit in learners anawareness of the multilingual policy. Maybe we can try the second one.
Isra

iro mentioned these kind of things, like awareness-raising events and advertisingwhat the ESPA is. I think it s a good idea because it goes well with these ideas, like thequestion of how we make the environment.

Through our dialogue, we had found that some of the di culties in promoting multilingual
use in the SALC were connected to users understanding of the multilingual area. We reali ed
our participants understandings, in turn, were tied to how the dual language policies were
presented, as well as by larger-scale beliefs supporting a monolingual, all-English ideal.

Countering Potential Biases
In this second theme, we moved on to other inadvertent e ects of the language policies on
our participants perception of SALC spaces and how we might counter such biases.
The PA Hiro realized the potential pressure that a language policy could cause in the ESPA:
Students may feel pressure , so we have to emphasi e that ESPA is not an Englishonly space, [but an] English and Japanese bilingual space.” These risks of causing anxiety
or violating students autonomy are ideas we have struggled with in our SALC (e.g., indetermining our non-directive stance on enforcing the language policy).
Akina was less concerned with the languages used by other students than with the kind ofenvironment she sought for using English:
Akina Atmosphere is very important
if the area is more strict, I couldn t get something in
English.… Friendly is important.

Yuri

ow about the language use You don t mind if they use Japanese or their first
language

Akina Yeah, it doesn t matter.
This belief may clarify Akina s unfavorable perceptions about the atmosphere in TACO
Tuesday events: The topic was a little di cult for me because I have to think more deeply.
Serious discussion topics may have hampered her from feeling that the atmosphere wasfriendly.

Dialogue
While discussing what environment might make students want to use English more, Yuri
mentioned Akina s preferences for a welcoming environment, which prompted us to consider
how attempts to support all users could a ect perceptions of the area. iro had suggested
that one possible way to attract users was to “set a Yellow Sofa at ESPA.… [English lecturers]
can be in ESPA. We reacted to this idea by sharing our experiences of how native-speakerism
can sometimes be manifested inconspicuously:
Yuri One of iro s ideas was to move one of the Yellow Sofas to the ESPA. But that s what
we re concerned about: Students might think, Oh, this is a beginner space, and if you
get some confidence, then you can go upstairs. It might send out that kind of message.
Isra

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We don t want there to be a hierarchy, right
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Isra Wongsarnpigoon & Yuri Imamura

Yuri No, because that creates the idea that “only English” is better than translanguaging.
It s not like that. They are two di erent things. That kind of English-only ideology
or belief creates, to an extent, a mindset like, “I can acquire English when I go abroad.
If I m fully in the English environment, I ll be able to speak perfectly.
Isra

But that s kind of the message that the university gives: If you re in all-English classes
and in this environment, you re going to learn English better.
In my first year here, I was talking with a colleague who was really disappointed that
the English lecturers were almost all American or British. I didn t totally agree then,because my views were influenced by a former professor of mine. The professor didn t
explicitly say teachers should be native speakers, but it was more like, “If the goal is forstudents to speak and communicate accurately, you want them to learn accurate
English. And if the teacher doesn t speak comprehensibly, thenI think you can fillin the blank. I had also ust left my ALT ob, where there was definitely that kind ofnative-speakerist bias, and I was still working through how I felt. But now I think [thecolleague] had the right idea.

Yuri I totally agree with you. As a learner of English, I think the all-English environment is
not a bad thing. But students, stakeholders, or even teachers, we need to accept morediversity. The all-English environment does not mean you can only communicate withnative speakers of English, and we shouldn t make a power balance between native andnon-native speakers. When I was a student, sometimes my friends envied me because
I often hung out with American friends. For me, if I can practice talking in English,
anyone is fine, but some people have a strong preference for who they want to talk to.
So, when they learn a language, they want to learn from a native speaker of their target
language. I think many people believe in the notion of “one people, one language, one
nation” (Kaplan & Baldauf, 1997, p. 201). People also judge whether they themselves are
multilingual speakers or not based on how many languages they feel confident using.
Reali ing the extent to which English-only beliefs could a ect their perception of SALC
spaces, we wanted to avoid inadvertently representing the multilingual space as a location for
those who were not good enough for the English-only space. Thus, we again considered
how to make the ESPA a supportive space without it feeling like a remedial space. We
continue contemplating that environment in the following section.

A Multilingual Environment
The above ideas, improving the space and the features of a multilingual space or Englishencouraging environment, brought us to our next theme, the multilingual environment.
We re ected on what such an environment might actually look like, what its culture mightbe, and what our roles might be in its establishment. Some elements from the interviews,
included below, identified some features of the environment and inspired our dialogues on thetheme.
Ken appreciated the ESPA as a venue for collaboration with others and pursuing thecamaraderie that he perceived among students from other departments: “I want [to] study
with the people who are high [abilities] like English department … they are making groups
regardless of gender, so I m so envious ( is allusion to gender may refer to the low
number of male students in his department). Ken saw events such as TACO Tuesday asopportunities to interact, as “trying … to participate in the group, more with fun…. Of course

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Exploring Understandings of Multilingualism in a Social Learning Space: A Duoethnographic Accountwe have to speak English, but
for me it s more like practice for attend the group. The
SALC was a place where Ken could not only use English, but also hone skills that he valued.
Hinako appreciated that the ESPA allowed her to interact with faculty. Although she actively
communicated with peers in our ESPA conversation sessions, she asserted that a major reason
for her attendance was to communicate with us. Compared to the 15-minute sessions at theconversation desk, she said, In the ESPA, I can use English a lot. And it is not limited. It svery … kichou na jikan /貴重な時間 [a precious time].” The presence of people (us) with whom
she wanted to talk was apparently predominant in her image of the ESPA environment.

In contrast with Ken and inako s desire to interact in English, in Akina s case, theatmosphere was crucial when using English. She preferred to continue using the ESPAfor events “because [it] is a quite relaxing space,” and she had highly valued “friendly
environment[s].”The students had described various features which they appreciated in the ESPA
environment, and these ideas inspired our discussions. In particular, we considered theirimplications for the multilingual space and our role in creating and maintaining it.

Dialogueul ili gual ul u eEntering this excerpt, we had been pondering the culture of the MULC, the university s othermultilingual center. This led Yuri to re ect on her initial concept behind the ESPA.
Yuri In the interview data, the image of ESPA came up. In Ken s interview, he talked about
his image of multilingual cultures, including things like gender or age. I didn t reallythink about that when I created the ESPA. All I thought of then was only the language,
but of course, languages have their own culture. That means a multilingual space also
needs to have a multilingual culture.
Isra

So when you first thought of the ESPA, you were trying to create a space ust for
facilitating language production

Yuri Yeah, because all the data I got (Imamura, 201 ) was about language use, and also
anxiety. It was more about psychological factors that prevented students from using
English on the first oor. So my focus was more on language use.
But Ken mentioned gender and races. You ve told me before about the Thai space in the
MULC] and how the relationship between [the Thai professor] and her students is likefamily. So I thought maybe the Thai space creates that kind of environment, and it helps
the students to feel safe, relaxed, or welcomed. So maybe, for the ESPA, we can also lookat the kind of culture we create. That s also connected to what Akina mentioned: or her,
whether or not a space is friendly is more important than the language used there. And
that s a part of the space s culture, right But I don t know how that kind of welcoming
environment relates to the multilingual space.
Isra

It does relate to anxiety, and therefore to language, right When you say your originalidea was making the ESPA for production, it reminds me of what you ve told me before:
When you were a student, basically it was the atmosphere of the old SALC which
motivated you to use it

Yuri Yeah. When I was a student, the SALC was a kind of space to challenge myself as alanguage learner. For some students, the environment was not really comfortable, but

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I liked it. So thinking about the culture in the multilingual space, that made me think:
What kind of culture is there in the English-only space
Isra

Because we can establish the ESPA s culture by contrasting with it, right Do we havethat kind of environment that represents a challenge for students now The Yellow
Sofas might.

Yuri It depends. Some students appreciate that challenging environment.
IsraIs that the kind of multilingual environment we want One that s not challenging, butmore like a welcoming space

Yuri Yeah. Also, as you mentioned, in contrast with the English-only environment, maybe
the multilingual space can accept more diversity
Isra

That would be ideal.
I like that you were thinking about the original concept behind the ESPA, because I was
also wondering: ave our thoughts about it changed since we started
or me, when
ESPA started, my idea was similar to yours, not necessarily a multilingual space, but anenvironment where students can go if they want to use English but they re not ready to
go to the second floor. But as we ve continued talking about this, I think it can be morethan just a speaking area. ow we re thinking about how it can affect their thinking
about language or multilingualism, or even native-speakerism, rightThis excerpt represented a significant reali ation for both of us. By considering the culture we
preferred, we began actively discussing the potential for the ESPA beyond providing a spacefor speaking practice.

Dialogue: Making a Multilingual Environment
Yuri So my question is, how can we make a multilingual environment in the ESPAIsra

It could be something visual to set it apart, like signs or posters, without being
superficial. But look at the MULC. It might seem superficial at first, but Wright(2019) wrote about this idea: The visual atmosphere of the Thai area sets the initialenvironment. It gets people in, but really what keeps them there is the community andthe person-to-person interaction.

Yuri I thought about how one of the self-access centers we ve visited displayed lots ofstudent voices on the wall. Maybe we can get some student voices or messages about
using di erent languages or the space itself, and we can display their messages in the
ESPA, maybe in di erent languages. That might create the ESPA s culture or identity.
Isra

Right. That s one thing we both noticed about other centers , is that you can see
students voices and personalities.
Previously, you mentioned that when you were a student, the look of the SALC
represented a challenge for you.

Yuri A challenge in a good way. Not only people, but also the space itself motivated me.
The furniture was kind of Western-style, not like a typical classroom in Japan, andalso many resources were imported from other countries. That kind of environment
motivated me to use English, as well. Also, I could meet di erent people, like teachers,
learning advisors, and my friends whenever I went there. I used the SALC to interact
with people in English, and that was my motivation to continue learning English andusing the SALC.
Isra

So actually, it was people, also! People were important.
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Exploring Understandings of Multilingualism in a Social Learning Space: A Duoethnographic Account

These dialogues, along with Yuri s re ection, helped us reali e that addressing physicalfeatures was not the only measure we had to consider. Our re ections on both the interview
data and Yuri s experiences showed that people were also a necessary factor in establishing
the environment we sought.

Discussion and Conclusion
In this narrative, we have examined these issues: how our students saw multilingualism andthe multilingual spaces, what kind of multilingual learning environment was desirable, andour roles in establishing this environment. Evincing the benefits of duoethnography, thedialogic process of co-constructing this narrative revealed several themes, which provided
each of us new understandings about the issues we had pondered. We first each present
especially revelations, before moving on to general discussion of our themes and next steps.

Isra
Something particularly compelling to me was our realization that within our SALC and also
the university, there is no one clear definition of multilingualism. SALC practitioners,
students, administration, and stakeholders draw from di erent definitions or lack one atall. In turn, although our hybrid policy was intended to be more inclusive, this vaguenessmay have contributed to an inadvertent hierarchy between the spaces in the SALC andactually discouraged multilingual use among students. Also meaningful was how throughcontrasting my experiences with Yuri s, I noticed the change in my perceptions of the ESPA.
Before this inquiry, my beliefs mirrored the way in which our language policy had reinforcedmonolingual biases: Using the all-English space was something students should strive for,and if they could not, the first oor was a preliminary step. ow, though, I see the potentialof the ESPA as its own unique space, not just as an elementary version of other ones.

Yuri
Throughout this duoethnographic account, I noticed my thoughts towards multilingualism
in the SALC have evolved greatly. My original purpose for creating the ESPA was tosupport students who lacked the confidence to use the English-only area. owever, I
started questioning the unexpected and complex power balance between English-only
and multilingual spaces and believing that the multilingual space should be free fromsuch hierarchy between languages. Besides, the Japanese term 多言語主義 / tagengoshugi[multilingualism] might convey the message that the knowledge of multiple languages issuperior because of the meaning of -shugi -ism in Japanese. It might encourage anothertype of monolingualism in multiple languages. Perhaps we should stop using the terms“multilingualism” and “tangegoshugi to avoid confusion and find other ways to encourage
multilingual practices in our SALC.

Realizations and Implications
In writing this account, we each came to personally meaningful realizations and noticed
individual changes in ourselves. Other shared discoveries, however, also arose. Through thisduoethnography, we discovered an identity for the ESPA, beyond being a place for students
lacking the confidence to use the English-only area. It can be a venue for actual multilingual
use and collaboration between the space s users among students, but also between
students and faculty. Similarly, in our discussions and attempts to improve the ESPA as amultilingual space, we initially focused on physical aspects such as furniture layout, decor, or

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conversation-starting tools. We reali ed, however, that what mattered more was a welcoming
culture spread through human support. Our participants valued various factors in a learning
environment: language (Hinako), collaboration (Ken), and friendliness (Akina). Such factors are
all key in creating the kind of culture we are seeking. As we each reali ed, our definitions (andthose used in our center) of “multilingualism” and a multilingual culture should account for
more than just named languages as sociopolitical or linguistic constructs. This evolution in our
understandings will help us as we continue improving the ESPA and the SALC environment.
The coronavirus pandemic disrupted face-to-face interactions in the SALC during the
2020–21 academic year, but the ESPA events continued online, through Zoom. While we only
address the physical SALC space in this account, we continued our re ective discussions inorder to compare our experiences and perceptions of the online environment. Although welack the space to present these later dialogues, they allowed us to contrast our perspectives
with those on the physical SALC and in doing so, provided valuable deeper insight. We hope tocontinue developing our duoethnography, covering both the virtual and physical spaces.
Our themes here are merely the understandings which we took away from our dialogues
and are not meant to be prescriptive conclusions. Norris and Sawyer (2012) stress that
duoethnographies readers are future partner s in inquiry, not recipients of newfoundwisdom (p. 22). While our re ections stem from our specific context, we hope that readers
have gained their own insights, which are just as meaningful as ours.
Still, we o er some recommendations for practice in similar contexts. irst, as we
reali ed, any language policy and its presentation should include clear definitions andrationale, in order to ensure that all parties understand the situation. We also hope that
we have demonstrated the benefits of examining the e ects of language policy on learning
environments or user perceptions. Next, those interested in supporting multilingual
development in learners can also benefit from re ection on the culture necessary for suchdevelopment in a particular context. Finally, as duoethnography is still developing as ameans of inquiry, we did not know of many other similar inquiries using the methodology inthis way. We hope that readers are inspired by duoethnography s potential for engaging inre ective practice while incorporating qualitative data.
Although much remains uncertain as we return after the pandemic, we will continue
investigating the issues discussed here. We may have unresolved questions, but the gradualreopening of facilities can provide opportunities to open our discussions to others and consider
meaningful measures we can take. While there are lingering issues about the recognition of themultilingual turn in our context, our inquiry helped us envision the potential position of the
SALC and ESPA in a ecting learners multilingual practice and consequently the part we canplay. We conclude with this attempt to encapsulate our roles in the multilingual space:
Yuri Do you think we can call ourselves curators
Isra

Are we curators of the multilingual space Or are we managing it

Yuri For me, “managing” implies a power relationship.
Isra

So it s not what you want. If you think of curating a museum or exhibit, then wewould be picking and choosing what goes in there, right Is it like being a gardener[laughing Like we re cultivating a multilingual environment Like we re watering

Yuri I like the word “gardener.” Niwashi-tte koto desho / 庭師ってことでしょ？
A gardener, rightIsra

I like it

And the multilingual users are like our

Yuri We never know what kind ofowers. Until they bloom

owers that we re raising.

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Exploring Understandings of Multilingualism in a Social Learning Space: A Duoethnographic AccountAuthor Bios
Isra Wongsarnpigoon is a learning advisor and resource coordinator in the Self-Access
Learning Center at Kanda University of International Studies. He holds an M.S.Ed from
Temple University, Japan Campus. His research interests include language learning spaces,
multilingualism in language learning and learner identities, and learner autonomy.
ウォンサーンピグーン・イスラ。神田外語大学セルフアクセスラーニングセンター（SALC）
ラーニングアドバイザー兼リソースコーディネーター。米国テンプル大学大学院ジャパンキャンパスにて修士号（MSEd in TESOL）取得。主な研究分野は言語学習空間，言語学習や学習者アイデンティティにおけるマルチリンガリズム，学習者オートノミー。

Yuri Imamura is a learning advisor at the Self-Access Learning Center (SALC) at Kanda
University of International Studies, Japan. She completed her M.A. in TEFL/TESL at the
University of Birmingham, UK. Her research interests include learner autonomy, learnermotivation, translanguaging in the Japanese context, and language learning spaces.
今村有里。神田外語大学セルフアクセスラーニングセンター (SALC) ラーニングアドバイザー。英国バーミンガ
ム大学大学院修士課程修了（MA TEFL/TESL）。研究分野は学習者オートノミー，学習者の動機付け，日本におけるトランスランゲージング，言語学習空間。

Review ProcessThis paper was open-reviewed by Donna u imoto, Tanya McCarthy, and Stacey ye.
(Contributors have the option of open or blind review.)

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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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Narrative Inquiry: Learning to Walk on Shifting Sands

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 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.)

References
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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://ldjournalsite.wordpress.com/

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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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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Re-interpreting University Students’ Multilingual Lives: Connections, Questions, and Wider Issues in Society

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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PRACTICE-RELATED REVIEWBook Review and Critical Dialogue about The
Making of Monolingual Japan: Language Ideology
and Japanese Modernity (Heinrich, 2012)
The Making of Monolingual Japan: Language Ideology and Japanese Modernity.. Patrick Heinrich.
Multilingual Matters, 2012. viii + 204 pp. ISBN 978-1-84769-656-4

Reviewed by
Ellen Head, Miyazaki International College, Japan <ehead@sky.miyazakimic.ac.jp>
Chie Tsurii, Momoyama Gakuin (St. Andrew’s) University, Japan <tsurii@
andrew.ac.jp>
Head and Tsurii take Heinrich’s book, The Making of Monolingual Japan, as a starting point for a critical dialogue in which they
make connections between language ideology, native speakerism, and learner autonomy. Heinrich focuses on the historicaldevelopment of the modern Japanese language after the Meiji Restoration in the late 19th century. He highlights the link
between modernist language ideology of “one nation, one language,” which originated in 18th-century Germany, and the Meiji
era drive to create a unified Japanese language. Although not explicitly referring to an alternative multilingual ideology,
Heinrich suggests that inequalities in modern Japan result from the monolingual language policy and that “powerbased ideologies should be replaced with ideologies based on cultural liberty and solidarity” (p. 4). In their dialogue, Tsurii
and Head discuss connections between monolingual ideology and native-speakerism. Finally they explore how this awareness
impacts their practices as teachers who would like to foster learner autonomy.
The Making of Monolingual Japan (Heinrich, 2012) に基づき，言語イデオロギー，ネイティブスピーカー信仰，学習者の自律性を関連付けて，批判的対話を行った。Heinrichは，19世紀後半の明治維新後の近代日本語の歴史的発展に焦点をあて，18世紀のドイツを起源とする「一国家に一言語」という現代主義的な言語イデオロギーと，明治時代の日本語統一への動きとの関連性を議論している。代替となる多言語イデオロギーに関しては明確に述べていないが，Heinrichは現代日本の不平等は単一言語政策によるものであり，「権力に基づいたイデオロギーは文化的自由と結束に基づくイデオロギーに置き換えられるべきである」（p.4）と提唱している。本稿では，単一言語（による指導）イデオロギーとネイティブスピーカー信仰の関係を議論する。そしてこの認識が，学習者の自律性の育成を目標とする教師としての実践にどのように影響するのかを探る。
)FBE⽰5TVSJJ♔)FJOSJDI氳վ仼儗⶝陪氳䎬䡗տ┉░╙颯憠鲽车▽䤉⮮䓪氳㵒陚㏇㵒陚╈☽♜㵨陪銨䙬陃䎬䒳头陪縖╚╬⽰㰣▊縖舅╚䓪纭硍颯全ն宿㍕ꄅ䄹⪩嫱氳佭䇗伺媪簟亍⺵朆♏仼陪氳ⷧ⺒⹠㷤ն☽䍠隀▽颯嶏◇┪篕䐼㎁氳┉╄㎁㳄┉熨陪銨氳朆♏╚╬陪銨䙬陃䎬䒳┚伺媪休♏⮡鵲┉熨簊┉氳仼陪氳ⲁⱱ╯ꠑ氳纭硍ն豓抆媆僗伺漶䬠⮽⺁┉熨㛢陪銨䙬陃䎬䒳⛙宿㍕
ꄅ䄹䬠⭴朆♏仼儗氳┘䇖璡佭榺⶝┉陪銨䷓瓀鵲䡗氳㓹◇儹ⱱ氳䙬陃䎬䒳䈒院逈㓹◇乄⴬舅榺⽰㍙篾氳䙬陃䎬䒳䢦⹧♏瑭
건ն㏇☽♜氳㵒陚╈5TVSJJ⽰)FBE阥阷▽⶝陪䙬陃䎬䒳⽰头陪╚╬╯ꠑ氳纭硍ն僄⺵☽♜䫓阥▽鲹熨䙬陃㞝⛰䏆⿏☽♜⛼╙䄹僷➢鲽㰣▊縖舅╚䓪氳䷸䄳氳㲓饨ն

Keywords

monolingual, native language, native speaker, language ideology, learner autonomy, native speakerism
単一言語，母語，母語話者，言語イデオロギー，学習者の自律性，ネイティブスピーカー信仰⶝陪氳 头陪 头陪縖 䙬陃䎬䒳 㰣▊縖氳舅╚䓪 头陪縖╚╬Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 5 • December 2021

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Book Review and Critical Dialogue about The Making of Monolingual Japan: Language Ideology and Japanese ModernityIn this review, we take The Making of Monolingual Japan as a starting point for a critical
dialogue in which we make connections between language ideology, native speakerism,
and learner autonomy. At the start, we would like to note that, throughout this review, theterms “native (speaker)” and “non-native (speaker)” will be written with inverted commas,
following Holliday’s (2013) assertion that the categories are “constructed by ideologies
and discourses ... and they are always ‘so-called’” (pp. 19–20). We met while teaching at
Momoyama Gakuin University in 2002–5 and, since 2019, we have corresponded occasionallyabout teaching-related matters. In 2019, Chie Tsurii was on sabbatical in England, pursuingresearch into the cultural impact of native-speakerism. Ellen Head (still in Japan) noticed
a social media post by Chie, referring to a book called Setsu Ei no susume [A Recommendation
for Using Less English] (Kimura, 2016) and we started to chat about native-speakerism. When
The Learner Development Journal called for reviewers of The Making of Monolingual Japan, we
decided to work on a joint review. After reading the book, Ellen sent some questions to Chie.
Chie replied, we exchanged drafts, and discussed our ideas on Zoom. We also presented atthe 2021 JALT PanSIG conference together. This review is the trace of a wide-ranging, multidimensional, ongoing discussion over the last 18 months. We hope readers will be stimulated
to read Heinrich’s book and think about his ideas. The table of contents is given below,
followed by a summary of the book. We then proceed to our critical dialogue.

The Making of Monolingual Japan: Overview
This book is organized into the following nine chapters:
Chapter 1: Language Ideology as a Field of Enquiry
Chapter 2: The Call of Mori Arinori to Replace Japanese with English
Chapter 3: The Creation of a Modern Voice
Chapter 4: The Unification of Japanese
Chapter 5: The Linguistic Assimilation of the Ryukyuans and Ainu
Chapter 6: The Most Beautiful Language in the World
Chapter 7: Language Ideology as Self-fulfilling Prophecy
Chapter 8: Current Challenges to Modernist Language Ideology
Chapter 9: Language Ideology in 21st-century Japan.
The Making of Monolingual Japan is both a narrative of the history of the Japanese language
since the Meiji era, and a discussion of language ideology. The first chapter and the final
three chapters develop the thesis that monolingual, nationalist ideology is deleterious toequality, culture and education. Drawing on documents in Japanese by nineteenth and earlytwentieth century language reformers like Ueda Kazutoshi and many others, Heinrich
describes how a unified national language came to be seen as necessary for modernization.
The analytical framework is provided by a discussion of language ideology, which is a strong
theme of the book. Heinrich holds that “power-based ideologies should be replaced with
ideologies based on cultural liberty and solidarity” (p. 4).
In Chapter 1, after reviewing the study of language ideology, Heinrich aligns himself
with Bourdieu (1991), by stating his intention to focus on “the difference between ‘ideology
brokers’ and ‘the linguistic margin’” (p. 18). He traces the development of monolingual
ideology back to the writing of Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803), among others, who
first claimed that the character and identity of a nation are formed by its language. These
ideas were brought back to Japan by Ueda, after four years’ study of comparative linguistics
in Germany. Ueda was highly influential through publications such as “National Language

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Ellen Head & Chie Tsurii

and the State” (p. 66) and the creation of the National Language Research Council. However
the national language issue was hotly debated throughout the Meiji era (1868–1912).
Chapters 2 to 4 tell the story of the Japanese language, starting in 1872 with the proposal by
Mori Arinori to replace Japanese with a simplified form of English (Chapter 2). The proposal
was rejected, but it highlighted the need for linguistic standardization. One of the problems
was that spoken and written Japanese were substantially different, with written Japaneserelying on Chinese characters and there were many different genres of written Japanese.
Chapter 3 details how the Genbun itchi undo1 called for a “plain and unified” written Japanese
to be based on spoken language. Chapter 4 deals with Ueda Kazutoshi, and the work of the
National Research Council. The government appointed young Ueda in 1895. Fresh fromstudies in Germany, Ueda led a team of academics in cataloguing existing forms and making
decisions about which forms to select and codify as the standard. A Grammar of the Spoken
Language and Supplement to the Grammar of the Spoken Language were not published by the
research council until 1917. In the process of creating a national language, the speechof the Tokyo elite became the base of standardization for both the spoken and written
forms prescribed for school use. Regional diversity became non-standard, leading to themarginalization of all the non-Tokyo forms.
Chapters 5 and 6 describe how the distinctive languages of the Ryukyuan people of Okinawa
and the Ainu people of Hokkaido were actively suppressed in the period that followed. The
newly standardized “kokugo” (national language) became the language of schooling, andchildren were punished for using other varieties.
In Chapters 7 to 9, the picture is brought up to the present, with details of the linguistic
and cultural losses in relation to Ryukyu and Ainu languages (Chapter 7) and the lack oflanguage support for the various allochthonous minorities of Japan such as bilingual secondgeneration Korean-Japanese (Chapter 8). Heinrich suggests that the current lived experienceof ethnic minorities results in a challenge to the official “common sense” ideology of amonolingual nation. In other words, as “native”-like fluency is no longer the prerogative of
the genetically pure, monolingual ideology is stretched. At the institutional level, Heinrichpoints out that Japan has not been quick to respond to the challenge of providing multilingual
schooling and equal cultural opportunities for the children of minorities such as those from
Korea, China and Brazil. The last chapter of the book (Chapter 9) re-visits the theme oflanguage ideology as it relates to applied linguistics and ends with an appeal for a fresh
approach grounded in freedom of choice and support for diversity at the academic andpolitical levels.

Critical Dialogue
The Language Ideology of Monolingualism
Ellen

Heinrich frames the book with a detailed discussion of ideology. Why do you think
he does this, rather than starting from the contemporary socio-cultural reality or thehistorical narrative?

Chie

Heinrich writes, “The ideological nature of what are seen as common sense facts is
hidden, and so it becomes unnecessary to draw explicit attention to the authorityof the dominant ideology” (p.74). I think he wants to emphasize that ideology isimportant, even though we do not think about it every day. This is very true, I think;the more naturalized beliefs become, the more difficult it becomes to realize theassumption underlying them.

1= Movement to unify the spoken and written language
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Ellen

I agree. It is often said that Japan is more homogeneous than other countries. Whileliving in Osaka, I met people from the Korean and Brazilian communities. They wereborn in Japan, bilingual, but did not feel fully accepted as Japanese. It was much moredifficult for them to enter university. Heinrich points out that the education system
has devoted insufficient resources to the support of these communities. Althoughlanguage support might be available for them to learn Japanese, I don’t know if you
could find the study of Portuguese or Korean as formal options in the public school
system. The perception at the official level is that resources need to be devoted toJapanese language learning and English learning.

Chie

This reminded me of the fallacies pointed out by Phillipson (1992) in his book
Linguistic Imperialism. Fallacies discussed in Phillipson include, for example, “English
is best taught monolingually,” and “if other languages are used much, standardsof English will drop.” Such ideas are often mentioned in debates regarding English
education. I feel they engender an uncritical, distorted perception of English language(teaching/learning) in Japan and often lead to unsatisfactory achievement in learning.
I thought the monolingual nationalist ideology explored by Heinrich might reflect why
such distorted views on English (learning/teaching) are so widespread.

Ellen

According to Heinrich, “Ideologies give rise to a binary opposition, whereby the self
and the familiar are assigned a positive value, while the other and the new are seen as
negative” (p. 174). I can see how that could be negative for foreign language learning!
Can you say more about the current situation as you see it?

Chie

I also think that almost all the problems related to English language education stem
directly or indirectly from native-speakerism, defined as “a pervasive ideology within
ELT, characterized by the belief that ‘native-speaker’ teachers represent a ‘Westernculture’ from which spring the ideals both of the English language and of English
language teaching methodology” (Holliday, 2006, p. 385). I have also researched
how terms indicating neitibu ネイティブ [native] are used on social media. I feel the useof “native” / “non-native” can facilitate the binary division between they/we, andtherefore superior/inferior.

Ellen

It is interesting that these terms are widely used by the Japanese when talking about
foreign language learning. Heinrich speculates that there might be a connection
between Japan’s monolingual ideology and ambivalence about learning foreign
languages. He writes “A state and its inhabitants not valuing the linguistic andcultural plurality within…its borders cannot convincingly claim to be doing just that[valuing plurality] with regard to international languages” (p. 177).

Chie

I find there is something in common between native-speakerism andmonolingualism. In Heinrich, the process of Japan’s creating itself as monolingual,“which required suppression of linguistic diversity” (p. 6) is described and discussed
thoroughly. Although English language education in Japan itself is not dealt withdirectly in the book, the discussion on the making of monolingual Japan in this bookis highly suggestive for deconstructing common perceptions of English and English
education. I hope we can discuss this when we talk about relating the book to ourpractices as teachers.

The Historical Perspective
EllenLet’s focus on the historical part of the book now. The opening of Chapter 2 is worth
quoting because it highlights the dramatic changes of the period:

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Ellen Head & Chie Tsurii… in the early 1870s … all Japanese were required to take family names;
women were prohibited to blacken their teeth; the first post offices were
established; the practice of issuing licenses for domestic travel was ended;
restrictions on marriages between feudal ranks were abolished; feudal domains
were re-organized into prefectures; commoners were permitted to ride horses;
the first daily newspapers appeared; school education was established; and thewestern calendar was adopted. (p. 21)
I was absolutely astonished that Mori Arinori had suggested English becoming thenational language of Japan in 1872.
Chie

Regarding the process of the unification of Japanese, the Genbun itchi undo, thelinguistic assimilation of Ryukyuans and Ainu was surprising. As for the debates onwhether the Japanese language should be replaced by another language, I was not
surprised at all. I know this kind of debate often emerges recurrently, as we will
discuss later. After reading Heinrich’s book, I could understand why some of thelinguistic ideologies about the English language observable nowadays in Japan havebeen created and where they have come from. Shall we start with the first aspectdiscussed in this book, the Genbun itchi undo?

Ellen

Were you taught about this movement at college?

Chie

At college? No. Regarding the history of Japanese language reform in the Meiji era, tobe honest, I did not know (or was not taught) in detail. In state school education, I
mean, at elementary school and junior high school, we were taught just that “There
was a movement called ‘Genbun itchi undo’.” That’s it. No explanation of the process,the background, or the discussions held in that period was given. Of course, this varies
from school to school, the curriculum of each school, and the teacher. But generally
speaking, I feel many people have not been taught about his movement in detail.

Ellen

Heinrich describes the different phases and groups involved: reformers, literarypeople, and linguists, each with differing priorities. With hindsight we know that
the Japanese language as it was developed became more than adequate to the task of
economic development! It’s hard to take on the mindset of those nineteenth century
reformers who were really facing the idea that their country might be taken overby Europeans or Americans because the Japanese language was insufficient to serve
the task of economic progress. It seems the idea of adopting English as a national
language may have come from an American physicist, Joseph Henry, who Mori
Arinori corresponded with while he was in the USA. But other foreign experts suchas Whitney, advised Mori to standardize Japanese instead of adopting English. There
was an outcry against Mori and he was assassinated in 1889 although it was notdirectly related to the language issue. The process of standardization took over 40
years! I sometimes wonder why the reformers didn’t just adopt hiragana syllabary foreverything.

Chie

The government attitude was ambivalent because linguistic simplification became
associated with the Jiyu minken undo [Movement for Freedom and People’s Rights].
So Heinrich says the Genbun itchi undo was actually repressed by the government fora while. Ueda Kazutoshi emerged as an important figure in establishing a National
Language Research Council and its research priorities. He was a brilliant young man.
He studied linguistics in Germany, where he was exposed to the ideology of linguistic
nationalism. Ueda was a key figure in creating a national language policy.

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From Kokugo to “Native-speakerized Nation”?
Ellen

Ueda’s work led to the creation of kokugo as a school subject in 1903. Heinrich says
the aim was “the establishment of a spoken and written language variety that
could be mastered by all” (p. 67). This involved promoting Japanese-derived words
over Chinese ones, simplifying and standardizing kanji. Since spoken Japanese wasincluded, the creation of kokugo [a national language] impacted the status of regionalvarieties in a negative way.

Chie

As described by Heinrich, a deliberate and concerted effort was made for several
decades both in the Ryukyu Islands and in Ainu Mosir, which means “a quiet groundof the human beings” (Akanko Ainu Kotan, n.d.), to create a national language
ideology. In the book, regarding the assimilation of Ryukyuans, a variety of measures
were taken to spread Japanese language throughout the Ryukyu islands during the1880s. The reason was that the Japanese governors could not communicate withthe local population. In addition to the measures taken to spread the use of theJapanese language, such as the establishment of a Conversation Training Centre withthe responsibility of compiling a Japanese language textbook, the use of Ryukyuan
languages was deliberately and manipulatively repressed, by, for instance, punishing
Ryukyuan children for using their own languages in school by fixing a punishment tag[hogen fuda] to their wrist.

Ellen

Heinrich’s account of the assimilation of Ryukyuan languages is disturbing. He
states that “linguistic data was made to fit the ideological framework” (p. 86), sothat the Ryukyuan languages were made to appear to come from mainland Japanese,
whereas they form a separate branch of Japonic languages. The account of “TheGreat Dialect Debate” in 1940 shows that there were several educationalists such as
Yanagi Muneyoshi who argued strongly to defend the use of the Ryukyuan languages
alongside “standard” Japanese, but the Department of Education of the time ignored
their advice for political reasons.

Chie

Heinrich also raises awareness of the problems in the process of the assimilation ofpeople in Ainu Mosir. The use of Japanese in Hokkaido became mandatory with thestart of compulsory school education in 1898. Assimilation took place more quickly
because the schools taught that Ainu culture was inferior and the number of speakersof Ainu was small. These ideologies are now so naturalized that many people inJapan normally tend to think that Japan is a monolingual country. This naturalized
uncritical ideology about language may create another one-nation-one-language
ideology, which can often be seen in discourses about foreign (or, in most cases,
English) language learning/education in Japan.

Ellen

You used the phrase “native-speakerized nation” to encapsulate this idea when we
discussed it before, didn’t you? The idea of “one language, one nation” appears tohave predominated in discourses about education since the time of those linguistic
reforms. Yet, as Heinrich points out: “There are already many Japanese of mixed
ethnic, cultural and linguistic heritage, and their numbers are growing year onyear” (p. 169). He holds that “the newcomer immigrants present a new challenge tomodernist ideology” (p. 170) because they provide living proof that genetic heritageand linguistic heritage are not the same. Heinrich identifies a source of alternative
ideologies within these communities: “Counter-ideologies that value linguistic
diversity in Japan and seek to support it, may be found too” (p. 171). For example, theidea that alternative languages should be cherished for their aesthetic value, which hecalls “aesthetic multiculturalism” (p. 179) seems to be growing.

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How Does This Impact Our Practices as Educators?
Ellen

I see a connection between learner autonomy and a way of teaching which isorientated towards noticing and valuing diversity. On the other hand, a monolingual
ideal will always tend to promote control by a central authority. If there is only one
right way, then students have to listen to the teacher. Of course you can get trappedin a paradox where students say “I want you to teach me the one right way.” So I
suppose the question is, how do we talk to students who have been raised with theseassumptions that Japan is monolingual, and perhaps with accompanying insecurities
about the possibility of learning English?

Chie

When introducing or talking about myself, I always explain myself, like “I am aJapanese user as my mother tongue, or the first language…,” trying to make students
aware that in Japan, and in the classroom, we do not assume that the Japanese
language is the first language of all members in the society. By saying this, I expect
all the students, including those who are using different languages with their family
and in their community, feel comfortable.

Ellen

I agree, it’s important to be respectful and value the languages of all the members of
the class. But it’s occasionally necessary to challenge them as well, isn’t it?

Chie

I remember a student, when I was teaching at senior high school, more than 25
years ago, who told me, “I’m not going to America. That’s why I don’t need to learn
English.” I said, “You aren’t going to America. That’s exactly why you need to learn
English to open your eyes.”

Ellen

That was a powerful intervention. As an expert speaker of both Japanese and English,
you are a strong role-model for students and you are also able to make specificcomparisons between languages. In the future I think pedagogy will embrace thatkind of bilingual methodology again. Since becoming acquainted with the concept ofmediation as a target in the new CEFR criteria (Council of Europe, 2018), I feel more
comfortable than I used to with allowing Japanese in the classroom so long as it ispurposeful and on-task.

Chie

I often encounter students who seem to be made to believe that, for example, “whenyou are learning English, you should think in English, you do not have to rely on
the Japanese translation” or “when speaking in English, we should change the wayof thinking, not in the Japanese way, but the English way”, then I tell them I thinktheir English is good enough. As a user of both Japanese and English, we do not haveto change our way of thinking. Thinking in their first language is sometimes very
helpful. If we change our mindset, it is easy to learn and use English.

Ellen

Interesting! Issues around language choice and the use of power in the classroom
relate directly to autonomous learning. I want students to be able to make their own
choices about when to use L1 as a resource but make them in a sensible way.

Chie

Yes, while I was reading the book, I was thinking in the same way. I also feel someconcern about university students’ narrow value judgments about language. However,university students have been exposed to the common beliefs in society, and they
are very susceptible to them. Their value judgments are a reflection of society. I
have seen some posts on SNSs by Japanese lecturers and professors, lamenting that
university students criticise their teacher’s accent in Japanese in a harsh way incourse evaluations. I mean, some Japanese university students object to the variety ofJapanese spoken. I, myself, have heard/seen students saying/writing which variety ofEnglish is good or bad. For example, I often hear students say, “Because in Canada,
they speak beautiful English, I want to go to Canada,” or “His/Her English is not
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good, because s/he has a strong accent.” It seems many university students judge
which English (variety) is good/bad, beautiful/not beautiful, or clear/unclear. They
also believe that they should learn a normative, standard international English andthat there is a right form of and correct pronunciation of English which they haveto learn and follow. These beliefs lead to “native speakerism” in that students
uncritically focus on normative standard English and believe that having an Englishonly classroom with neitibu (“native-speaker”) teachers is the best way to be fluent inEnglish.
Ellen

I think such views show how teenagers reproduce the ideology they have learned. The
teacher’s role is to stimulate their reflection on their assumptions. At least they havenoticed that there are varieties. We can build on that. For example, sometimes I teacha poem in Scots called “This is The Six O’Clock News” by Thom Leonard (2012). It
challenges them linguistically and ideologically but it’s also fun.

Chie

This sounds like a good activity. I personally doubt that students, especially the
first-year students at university, realise the fact that there are varieties in English.
So I do not think students select one variety as their preference based on theirknowledge on English varieties used in the world. As an example, when I ask students
to read an article on varieties of English, summarise and write their reflection, many
students write that they have never thought of Englishes used in other places except
the so-called English-speaking countries. Many people talk about the difference inaccents of speakers, in most cases with value-laden expressions. It is likely that theysense the difference based on what they have been exposed to, which they believe isright or beautiful.

Ellen

As teachers, we have a responsibility to make sure students are exposed to materials
in a variety of Englishes. Thanks to the influence of the CEFR, examining boards suchas Cambridge Exams and Educational Testing Service (ETS) are beginning to makemore of an effort to offer more diverse listening material. Changes are also happening
in the curriculum in Japan, as the study of World Englishes becomes more accepted.
In my college, “English as a Global language” is actually a subject of study in thesecond-year compulsory English modules and they discuss whether English has
impacted other languages negatively.

Alternatives to Monolingual Ideology
Ellen

So far we have discussed the things that we love about the book. However there
were one or two areas which I wanted to raise questions about. I feel Heinrich does
not acknowledge the extent to which the establishment has been influenced by analternative multilingual ideology. Most people in Western academia nowadays would
accept that intelligibility is more important than “native”-like pronunciation andcriteria of the CEFR have been updated to reflect that.
…the aim of language education is profoundly modified. It is no longer seen as
simply to achieve ‘mastery’ of one or two, or even three languages, each taken in
isolation, with the ‘ideal native speaker’ as the ultimate model. Instead, the aim
is to develop a linguistic repertory, in which all linguistic abilities have a place.
(Council of Europe, 2001, p. 5)
Heinrich does not really deal with the existence of an alternative multilingual ideology
clearly although he does hint at it in the final chapter. But maybe this is not relevant
to Japan.

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Chie

I agree with the idea that developing a plurilingual competence and the idea of alinguistic repertory is necessary. However, as I wrote in the very beginning, thedistorted views of English and English language learning, that is, fallacies pointed out
by Phillipson (1992), are so strong and deeply entrenched in Japanese society that it isextremely difficult to gear English education for the plurilingualism ideology.

Ellen

Positive influences from outside can be seen in the way Japan finally acknowledged
the Ainu language and culture in the Diet in 2008, after signing the UN Declarationon the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (United Nations Declaration on the Rights
of Indigenous Peoples, 2007). Although the promotion of Ainu may be too late tomaintain it as a living language, on a global scale there is support for other kinds ofideology, such as the developments in the CEFR mentioned above, or the indigenous
language reclamation projects underway in Australia (e.g., First Languages Australia,n.d.; Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, n.d.). But
Heinrich does not outline alternative, plurilingual ideologies in any detail, despite
discussing theoretical aspects of ideology.

Chie

It’s not fair to expect him to include all the debates on ideology. The working
definition which he takes of ideology suggests that he is primarily focusing on
situations in which ideology is damaging to different minorities. “The study oflanguage ideology investigates the origin and effect of beliefs about language structure
and use, as well as ways in which those beliefs are promoted and spread beyond thesocial groups whose interests they serve.” (p. 18)

Ellen

You are right. I must say it wasn’t an easy read! Here’s an example of a sentence
which I had to read several times: “Successfully transforming modernist language
ideology will require all to depart from the view that Japan is multicultural andmultilingual” (p. 80). To my mind, “depart from” means “go away from this view,”
but he means “start from this view.” He uses “depart from” in this way earlier inthe book too, but it is quite an unusual usage for me. I read the book twice and someparts more than twice, almost as if they were Zen koans (riddles or puzzles in Zen
Buddhism).

Chie

Zen koans… very good analogy. I think both social science research and Zen koans
have something in common. I mean, both of them have something to do with how weperceive the world or our knowledge.

Ellen

The other area I would like to see more of, is analysis of micro contexts in which
the drama of language choice/power/suppression is played out. For example,
Ohara and Mizukura (2020) connect a critique of ideology to a detailed account oftranslanguaging in a self-access centre and show how multilingual interactions
were empowering for Japanese students who volunteered in the centre. Actually
I wished the book were longer, and the discussions of ideology were grounded bymore examples. Heinrich points out that our choice of what to research is a choice
to reinforce or challenge prevailing ideologies. Holliday’s idea of “small culture”(Holliday, 2021), Lowe’s notions of “framing” (Lowe, 2021) seem to offer alternative
ways of doing linguistic research which might serve the kind of “cultural liberty”
which Heinrich writes about in the closing pages.

Chie

Yes, I also prefer discussions and arguments made with examples in real life contexts.
As Heinrich has been involved in promoting the study of the Ryukyuan languages, his
investigation on the creation of linguistic uniformity in the process of modernizationof Japan is convincing to me.

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EllenIt’s an extraordinary achievement in terms of making a coherent argument out ofmaterial, mostly sources in Japanese, spanning the arc of over a century and a variety
of disciplines. I think The Making of Monolingual Japan will stimulate future scholars,
and I hope someone translates it into Japanese. It deserves to be widely read.

Chie

Let’s hope it is influential! It’s not only relevant to the Japanese language but to othercontexts as well. His investigation of language ideologies can help us think about
language education and policy at a global level.

Concluding Thoughts
Reading The Making of Monolingual Japan has given us new insights into the history of theJapanese language itself and deep-seated social attitudes in relation to both the Japanese
language and foreign languages. The very idea that Japan was not originally monolingual was
not something we had thought about deeply before. We would like to see students learning
about this historical heritage, including the standardization of Japanese and the existence/erasure of linguistic diversity in Japan, in social studies or CLIL classes. The suppression of
the Ryukyuan languages and the Ainu language made us very sad. The major issue which
Heinrich raises at the end of the book is, how will the actual increasing linguistic diversity be
accommodated at the official level, as we move towards a more multilingual Japan? We findthat in Japanese academic circles, the presence of other languages in the community is still
frequently framed in terms of the “problems” that the non-Japanese might be having due
to their poor understanding of Japanese. Especially among the older generation of academics
we can find the monolingual mindset which was characterized in Heinrich. In our dialogue
we have developed the idea that monolingualism at a national level can go hand-in-handwith native-speakerism in the foreign language classroom. However, we have found it ispossible in our own classrooms or teaching practices, to help students to gain confidence
and self-acceptance by discussing native-speakerism and investigating various varieties ofEnglish. We try to show our aesthetic and cultural enjoyment of various forms of language,and, in certain contexts, embrace the mixing of languages in the classroom. This dialogue
has been challenging and stimulating for us. We note that Japan often follows trends fromabroad in applied linguistics, as in other matters. As the idea of the multilingual turn becomesincorporated into the linguistic repertoire globally, we are hopeful that it will find its place asa legitimate part of the Japanese linguistic landscape too.

Author Bios
Ellen Head: After graduating with an MA in English and Latin from St Andrews University,
Scotland, Ellen Head worked in EFL in Greece, England, Japan and China. She has been alecturer at Miyazaki International College since 2017. Her current research interests are
related to learner autonomy and willingness to communicate in compulsory college English
courses.
ヘッド·エレン。スコットランドのセント·アンドルーズ大学で英語·ラテン語の修士号を取得後，ギリシャ，イギリ
ス，日本，中国で（外国語としての）英語教育に従事。2017年より宮崎国際大学教員。大学の英語必修英語科目
における学習者の自律性とコミュニケーション意欲に関する研究を行っている。
Chie Tsurii: Associate Professor of Applied Linguistics at Momoyama Gakuin (St. Andrew’s)
University, Japan. She holds a Master of Research in Educational and Social Research, an MA
in TEFL/TESL, and a Master in English and American Language and Literature. Her researchinterests include ideologies of (learning/teaching) English in Japan, social media discourse

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Ellen Head & Chie Tsurii

analysis, and qualitative research methods in applied linguistics.
釣井千恵。桃山学院大学准教授（応用言語学）。教育社会科学研究法修士号，TEFL/TESL修士号，英語英米文学修士号を取得。研究テーマは，日本における英語（学習・教育）に関するイデオロギー，ソーシャルメディアの談話分析，応用言語学での質的調査法など。

Review ProcessThis paper was blind peer-reviewed by members of The Learner Development Journal Review
Network and Journal Steering Group. (Contributors have the option of open or blind review.)

References

Akanko Ainu Kotan (n.d.). https://www.akanainu.jp/en/culture-people
Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS) (n.d.). https://
aiatsis.gov.au
Council of Europe (2001). Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning,teaching, assessment: Companion volume with new descriptors (CEFR). Cambridge University
Press. https://rm.coe.int/1680459f97
First Languages Australia (n.d.). https://www.firstlanguages.org.au
Heinrich, P. (2012). The making of monolingual Japan: Language ideology and Japanese modernity.
Multilingual Matters.
Holliday, A. (2006). Native-speakerism. ELT Journal, 60(4), 385–387.
Holliday, A. (2013). Native speaker teachers and cultural belief. In S. A. Houghton & D. J.
Rivers (Eds.), Native-speakerism in Japan: Intergroup dynamics in foreign language education(pp. 17–26). Multilingual Matters.
Holliday, A. (2021, January 15). Putting aside essentialist grand narratives to find decentredintercultural threads [Open lecture]. Open lectures from the Global Education Center, Tokyo
Kasei University, Tokyo, Japan (online).
Kimura, C. G. (2016). Setsu ei no susume [A recommendation for using less English]. Yorozu
Shobo.
Leonard, T. (2012, November 2). The six o’clock news [Poem]. thescribe. https://s2mskirkwood.wordpress.com/tag/poetry/
Lowe, R. (2021, January 23). The ‘native speaker’ frame in English language teaching[Conference presentation video]. Kyoto JALT Issues of Race and Native Speakerism
in ELT Online Conference, Kyoto, Japan. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vEKo7Su4o&feature=emb_logo
Ohara, T., & Mizukura, R. (2020). The role of a self-access learning center in Japan:
Accommodation of translingual practice amidst international educational reform. JASAL
Journal, 1(1), 5–36. https://jasalorg.files.wordpress.com/2020/06/1.-ohara_mizukura-2.pdf
Phillipson, R. (1992). Linguistic imperialism. Oxford University Press.
United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, September 13, 2007, https://www.un.org/development/desa/indigenouspeoples/declaration-on-the-rights-ofindigenous-peoples.html

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

ISSN: 2433-5401
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The Learner Development Journal Issue 5: Engaging with the Multilingual Turnfor Learner Development: Practices, Issues, Discourses, and Theorisations
Author: Huw Davies
Title: Imagining Fair Language Policies: A Practice-Related Review of Piller’s Linguistic
Diversity and Social JusticeDate of publication online: 2021
Author contact: <davies-h@kanda.kuis.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:Davies, H. (2021). Imagining fair language policies: A practice-related review of Piller’s
Linguistic Diversity and Social Justice. 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. 136-146). Tokyo:
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Interest Group.

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License (CC BY), of which CC BY 4.0 is the most recent version. Under this agreement, authors grant users
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PRACTICE-RELATED REVIEW

I

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20
Linguistic
Diversity and Social JusticeLinguistic Diversity and Social Justice: An Introduction to Applied Sociolinguistics. Ingrid Piller.
Oxford University Press, 2016. 283 pp. ISBN 978-0-19-993726-4

Reviewed by, Kanda University of International Studies, Japan<davies-h@kanda.kuis.ac.jp>
Linguistic disadvantage is a global phenomenon produced by policies which connect languages to nation states. Japan iscommonly (and erroneously) seen as a monolingual country, and native-speaker models are endorsed there for learning
other languages. In this practice-related review, I contend that a shift to a multilingual perspective can create more
harmonious learning spaces, and better achieve the Japanese government’s aims and objectives for education. Using
Linguistic Diversity and Social Justice to provide a global perspective on language issues, I explore themes such as language
discrimination faced by migrants, and how schools tend to promote monolingual attitudes despite stated commitments tomultilingualism. I then refocus these themes and apply them to my situation as a university educator and as a parent. I
visualise what ideal multilingual education policies might look like. I argue that a greater focus on fostering participation by
all students regardless of proficiency, and greater incorporation of minority cultures and languages into the syllabus would
be beneficial. Future scholarly inquiry should examine the objectives of education systems in order to push for language
policies that are inclusive.
言語的不利益は，言語と国家を結びつける政策によって生み出される世界的な現象である。日本は一般的に（誤りではあるのだ
が）単一言語国家だとみなされ，ネイティブスピーカーモデルが様々な言語を学ぶ上で支持されている。この実践的な書評では，多言語の視点に移行することで，より調和のとれた学習空間を創造し，日本政府の教育の目的や目標をよりよく達成することができると主張する。言語問題に対するグローバルな視点を提供するために，Linguistic Diversity and Social Justice を用いて，移民が直面する言語差別や，多言語主義へのコミットメントを表明しているにもかかわらず，学校が単一言語の態度を促進する傾向にあることなどのテーマを探る。そして，これらのテーマを再訪し，大学の教育者として，また親としての自身の状況に当てはめてみる。また，理想的な多言語教育政策とは何かを視覚化する。言語運用能力にかかわらず全ての学生への参加を促すことに一層の焦点を合わせること，そして少数派の文化や言語をより一層シラバスに組み込むことが有益であると主張する。今後の研究では，包括的な言語政策を推進するべく教育システムの目的を検討する必要がある。
Ko te ngoikoretanga reo he āhuatanga ā-ao i hua mai i ngā kaupapahere e tūhono ana i ngā reo ki ngā iwi whenua. Ko tekitenga whānui (me te hē hoki) o Hapani hei iwi reo tōtahi, ā, e whakamanatia ana ngā tauira kaikōrero-tangata whenua ireira mō te ako i ētahi atu reo. I roto i tēnei arotake whai pānga ki te mahi, e tohe ana au mā te hūnuku ki tētahi tirohanga
reo maha ka hangaia pea ngā mokowā ako reretau ake, me te whakatutuki pai ake i ngā whāinga o te kāwanatanga Hapanihi
mō te mātauranga. Mā te whakamahi i te Reo Kanorau me te Tika Pāpori hei whakarato i te tirohanga ā-ao ki ngā take reo, katūhura ahau i ngā kaupapa pēnei i te whakatoiharatanga reo e tūtakitia ana e ngā manene, me te tikanga i roto i ngā kura ote whakatairanga i ngā waiaro reo tōtahi ahakoa ngā pūmautanga whaikī ki te reo mahatanga. Kātahi au ka arotahi anō iēnei kaupapa, ā, ka whakahāngai ki taku āhuatanga hei pouako mātauranga, ā, hei mātua hoki o ngā tamariki reorua. E
whakakite ana ahau i te āhua o ngā kaupapahere mātauranga reo maha e wawatatia ana. E tohe ana ahau ka whai hua te
aro nui ake ki te akiaki i te whakaurunga o ngā ākonga katoa ahakoa te matatau, me te whakauru kaha ake i ngā ahurea mengā reo o ngā tokoiti ki roto i te marautanga. Me āta tirotiro ngā pakirehua mātauranga anamata i ngā whāinga o ngāpūnaha mātauranga, e whakahau ai mō ngā kaupapahere reo e noho whakauruuru ana.

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Keywords
多言語教育，言語的正義，言語政策と計画，学校におけるコミュニティ・エンゲージメント，日本の英語教育
IT

here is a scholarly debate about language policies and pedagogical practices in language
education which would benefit from being looked at in a di erent way. Policy makers
and practitioners remain fi ed in the mindset that connects a language to a nation
state, thus prioritising native-speaker models as the (unattainable) embodiment of thelanguage. As a result, activities in language classrooms are required to be performed only inthe target language, and the use of other languages and dialects is viewed with disfavour.
The multilingual turn is a movement towards understanding that languages are uid andthe purpose of using language is to negotiate social functions, and away from the nationstate mindset which fosters an inferiority complex in language learners and devalues their
existing linguistic repertoires (May, 2014; Kaplan & Baldauf, 1997). In Linguistic Diversity andSocial Justice, Ingrid Piller deconstructs the nation-state mindset and pushes for a greater
understanding and acceptance of the multilingual turn and translanguaging practices in all
aspects of social life, arguing that linguistic equality is a social justice issue.
Framing linguistic injustice as a big issue that a ects everyone is timely. As Piller
maintains throughout her narrative, there are problems with language policies at all levels:
global, national, local and institutional. These policies and the attitudes attached to them
are having a detrimental impact on people on a daily basis. The consequences of linguistic
discrimination can be devastating, as e emplified by the suicide note left under Piller’s doorby her student who was expecting to fail a class. In this book, Piller shows that diversity isa social reality that exists already, and it needs to be accepted, understood, and promoted.
In one part, Piller illustrates that the way people speak in Sydney in Australia, with code
switching and using languages di erently in di erent situations, means that the labels or
names we have for languages are redundant and each person utilises their linguistic resourcesin unique ways. While it is widely seen as a homogeneous country, the same linguistic
diversity as Sydney can be observed in Japan (Pennycook & Otsuji, 2015). Furthermore, it has
been observed that the cultural heterogeneity of Japanese society is beyond the categories
created to describe it (Tsuneyoshi, 2011). As I am a part of the linguistic and cultural diversity
in Japan, Piller’s interpretation of multilingual practices and their e ects are of personal
interest.
In this review, I respond to Piller’s book in two ways. In the first section, I utilise a
traditional book review format, giving the background to the book and its author before
scrutinising the contents chapter by chapter and evaluating their relevance for the readershipof this journal. In the second section, I share my personal response to the issues raised in
the book. I re ect on my early career as a teacher and relate the issues raised by Piller topractices and policies in my work context, a language learning space in a university setting inJapan. I then draw on my positionality as a parent to consider English education in Japaneseelementary schools. I ruminate on two puzzles: What appropriate policies for language
learning spaces are, and how language activities in primary education in Japan could be more
inclusive. In doing so, I attempt not to find definitive answers but to identify areas for further
exploration and discussion.

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An Overview of the Book
Linguistic Diversity and Social Justice is an absorbing selection of stories and voices from aroundthe world, woven into an anthology that highlights the social consequences of a range of
linguistic injustices. The fundamental argument presented is that linguistic disadvantage
is systemic and a universal social issue. During her career, the author, Ingrid Piller,
has researched bilingual education, multilingualism, language policy, and interculturalcommunication. Piller was born in Germany, and is currently professor of applied linguistics
at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. She is the editor of the journal Multilingua,
and, since 2009, has managed the Language on the Move portal which she co-founded with
Kimie Takahashi. Language on the Move hosts a blog where researchers can disseminate theirfindings on topics related to multilingualism in short posts (Language on the ove, n.d.).
uch of this book originates from Piller’s blog posts.
Chapter 1, Introduction, details the notions of linguistic diversity and social justice, andChapters 2 and 3 explore how multilingualism is conceptualised in society. In Chapter 2,
Linguistic Diversity and Stratification, Piller explores hierarchies of languages and multilingualcompetence in di erent communities. She criti ues the concept of contemporary
superdiversity and looks at how national language policies help societies to allow themselves
to be viewed as monolingual and monocultural. In Chapter 3, The Subordination of Linguistic
Diversity, the theory behind Piller’s understanding of social justice is e plained, and thereader is encouraged to think beyond languages belonging to a territory or nation state; howlanguage is used to make judgements against people, and segregation by language are also
pertinent topics discussed here. This chapter o ers useful insights for those whose jobs
involve assessing people’s language ability.
After the early chapters develop the concepts behind the issues, the middle chapters lookat the barriers to and potential for linguistic diversity in various areas of life: Chapter 4
focuses on the workplace, Chapter education, and Chapter 6 general participation in social
life. Chapter 4, Linguistic Diversity at Work, largely addresses migration to estern, Englishspeaking countries, but it does uestion some widely-held beliefs about migrants in theworkplace. Examples are given to show that statements such as, “migrants who cannot speak
the language well are e ploited, or work is the best way to develop language proficiency(Piller, 2016, p. 64), are overly simplistic and that the reality is far more nuanced. Piller
suggests that it is not low language proficiency that diminishes access to jobs, but the ability
to play language games to sell yourself in the right way, for example, by using humour.
Chapter 5, Linguistic Diversity in Education, is apposite for language educators in Japan: It
describes issues surrounding immersion programmes, diagnosing language proficiency, andtesting. The most compelling argument in Chapter 5 is that while schools often claim tovalue multilingualism, their true agenda is monolingual, “to maintain and perpetuate thesocioeconomic order (Piller, 2016, p.
). The e amples given of this hidden curriculum
should be mandatory reading in training for language educators; they would help teachers to
re ect on the di culties that linguistically diverse students often face with teaching methods
and materials.
Chapter 6, Linguistic Diversity and Participation, covers micro-aggressions towards study
abroad sojourners, gender issues surrounding language, and discrimination across di erent
ares of community life, and linguistic and cultural alientaion for e ample that more Asian
Americans reported experiencing prejudice based on their language choice rather than theirrace and that Polish mothers in London were able to join local parental networks but notaccess the professional opportunities they aspired to, finding themselves members of alower socioeconomic group than they had been in their home country. The chapter could be

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improved by extending the focus beyond participation through the dominant language inthe target community. However, it provides detailed scrutiny of the lack of support for andisolation of women with low language proficiency, which is a global problem. Additionally,
Piller uestions whether the inclination for migrants to seek out home-country media isbecause they feel excluded, rather than nostalgic.
The closing chapters focus on the universal dimensions of multilingualism and social
justice. Piller’s understanding of social justice is that it transcends nation states, yet she isforced to deal with e amples in Chapters 4 to 6 where justice is viewed by policy makers as aterritorial entity. In Chapter 7, Linguistic Diversity and Global Justice, the focus moves to global
justice, in which English as a global language is discussed in detail. Chapter , Linguistic
Justice, then brie y e plores linguistic privilege, e amples of linguistically just communities
in action, and the connection between globalisation and nationalism.
A strength of this book is that by having such a rich, varied and global scope, it addresses
a broad range of issues surrounding linguistic justice across history that a book detailing a
research project could not cover. It adds to existing literature on the multilingual turn bymaking connections across settings, communities, and cultures. As readers, we are enrichedby engaging with the stories shared in Linguistic Diversity and Social Justice and comparing themto our own experiences.
However, in one section the narrative moves away from being empirical evidence-based
scholarship. Although this book’s stated aim is to look at linguistic diversity and injusticethrough comparison and e ploring alternative situations, in the final chapter the notion of“perfect justice” is discussed. Studies that call for activism in the name of social justice havebeen criticised for being dangerously dogmatic rather than rigorously scientific (Pluckrose &Lindsay, 2020). However, struggles and fights are the means Piller suggests are necessary forachieving justice and promoting linguistic diversity. In spite of this, the examples of linguistic
utopias given, Isfahan in early 1 th-century Persia and the contemporary public libraries
of Vienna, were created by authorities within existing systems. This call for revolution is aweakness in the argument, and the book would benefit from a more thorough and nuanced
discussion on how linguistic diversity can be celebrated and promoted within existing social
systems.

A Personal Response
I came across Linguistic Diversity and Social Justice while undertaking a research project into
the language policy in the university self-access centre where I currently work. I had alreadybeen reading about ancy Fraser’s (200 ) three-dimensional concept of justice, and Piller’s
use of it to frame an argument about multilingualism emboldened me to do the same. Fraser
conceptualises social justice as requiring economic redistribution, cultural recognition andpolitical representation. In education, this could mean to “strengthen schooling as a goodin its own right, as well as in positional terms (redistribution), work with and value cultural
di erence (recognition) and accord students a voice (representation) (Lingard & Keddie,
2013, p. 42 ). The multilingual shift has allowed language educators to better recognise
linguistic injustices in their classrooms, but what Fraser first alluded to, and Piller builds
on in this book, is the need to go beyond merely recognising di erences. There needs tobe a concerted and methodical approach by educators to empower students and reimagine
pedagogy so that it suits all students’ needs.
I am interested in the connection between language loss and culture (see Piller, 2016, p.
2 ), an interest stemming from a language change in my family around a century ago, anddeepened by my experiences as an educator working with migrants and with English learners
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Imagining Fair Language Policies: A Practice-related Review of Piller’s (2016) Linguistic Diversity and Social Justicein Japan struggling to develop an English-speaking identity. As a result, my teaching is
informed with a desire to maintain and respect other languages. Existing knowledge is key tobuilding knowledge in the target language. As a result, I was surprised by the prevalence ofEnglish-only policies, spaces, and activities in English education when I first came to workin Japan. I had anticipated that a shared first language would be utilised to learn English
e ectively. y previous teaching e perience had been in ew ealand where I had believed
communication in English was the only option because it was the one language that everyone
shared. However, on reading Piller’s book, I re ected on my early career and came to realisethat the most successful interactions between students happened when they were able todraw on their knowledge and experiences using languages other than English. This realisation
leads into the first of two pu les on policies and practices in language learning based on
issues in Linguistic Diversity and Social Justice that I explore in this section.

Puzzle 1: What is a Just Policy in a Language Learning Space?
y first teaching e perience was working as an ESOL tutor for Te
nanga o Aotearoa(TWoA) in Auckland, New Zealand. This was formative for my principles as an educator andresearcher as it led me into e ploring and valuing e uity in education. T oA is aori-ledorganisation which aims to shareori knowledge and values (see Tenanga o Aotearoa,n.d.). Therefore, as well as teaching English, part of my duty was to shareori stories,
culture and language with students, and advocate honour and respect to all. The students
I taught were long-term migrants to ew ealand who had already ac uired permanent
residency or passports, and the rationale of the course was to support migrants and provide
them with the communication skills to lead a fruitful life and take a fuller part in their local
community.
In order to take a fuller part in community life, students need to take full part in classroom
activities. In the classroom, dialogue must be encouraged among students as equals, andvalue be given to the knowledge and opinions each person brings. This can be done byincorporating the idea of participatory parity. Participatory parity means a situation where
all are given e ual power, and everyone can act as peers (Fraser, 200 ), which is far more
e ective in eradicating hierarchy than giving sympathy and other platitudes to marginalised
people (Fraser & Honneth, 2003). In a typical class of mine at TWoA, over half of the classwere Chinese and a third were Korean, meaning that the other members might be the only
person from their country, or the only European, the only Muslim, or a Taiwanese person who
did not identify as being Chinese. Creating mutual respect and understanding at TWoA wascomple , and this comple ity was amplified by me, the teacher, being the youngest personin the group, a substantial proportion of whom may have held Confucian values and beliefs,
where age begets status.
One memorable success with this class at TWoA was when we focused on food and eating
habits. This topic helped to create an environment where participatory parity and kotahitangagroup unity could ourish (see Tenanga o Aotearoa, n.d.) and respect be inspired among
students who had not previously found a way to connect. We explained how to make simple
dishes from our home countries and for weeks after students were thanking each other for
sharing recipes that their families had enjoyed. On re ection, I now realise that as well as
successfully communicating in the target language, students had also communicated to theirpeers some of their own culture in both English and their own languages. For example, as
well as sharing the English and Chinese word for spring onion, one student asked how to say
it in Korean, Bulgarian and Japanese, building her relationship with classmates from di erent
backgrounds in the process. Hence the classroom, at its most successful, was a productive,

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vibrant and just space because di erent languages were used and accepted to develop
community.
Learning spaces in Japan have tended to have English-only policies based on the belief
that students have little opportunity to use the language elsewhere in their everyday lives(van der Walt, 2013). Perhaps this suggests that the way language learning in Japan has been
understood does not incorporate community building or sharing one’s own knowledge andculture, and therefore is a situation that requires some criticism because it is at odds withthe aims and objectives of education in Japan, set down by the government. A stated aim ofgovernment policy is to cultivate individuals who participate in society, and one objective
includes fostering “the value of respect for other countries and the desire to contribute toworld peace and the development of the international community” (Basic Act on Education,2006). English-only policies run counter to the fundamental principles of education in Japanbecause they suppress respect for countries and peoples deemed not to be English-speaking.
I work at a university in Japan, in an informal language learning space that recently changed
from having an English-only policy to a multilingual approach. Research suggests thatstudents there prefer to have an English-only area (Davies, 201 ), yet their observed behaviour
demonstrates that they inhabit a multilingual space (Imamura, 201
ongsarnpigoon &Imamura, 2020). I contend that students report a preference for a monolingual learning
environment because they believe using English only will make them more proficient in that
language; in other words, they feel that speaking only in English is what they ought to be doing.
Another e planation for why university English learners self-report a preference for amonolingual learning environment is that they are unaware both of their own multilingual
practices and of the benefits of translanguaging. In my workplace, I often see people
doing Spanish homework while sending a message to a friend using Japanese and having
a conversation in English; when asked they usually say that they are just doing Spanish
homework, which suggests a lack of awareness of their multilingual habitus. It is importantthat language educators raise awareness about translanguaging and encourage learners toembrace their multilingualism.
Based on the message in Linguistic Diversity and Social Justice, a just language policy in alanguage learning space would accept that all users of the space are diverse, and discouragethoughts that groups of users and the languages they use are homogeneous. The ethos of an
ideal space would be to find, celebrate, and respect di erences in those who visit and theirlanguage choices. In addition, a just policy would ensure that participation within the space isopen to all, regardless of language proficiency, acknowledg ing that everyone has the rightto be heard and to be listened to (Piller, 2016, p. 162). One criticism of English education in
Japan is that the myth of native-speaker competence remains, e emplified by the e clusive
use of Californian accents in school te tbooks (Kubota, 201 ), which perpetuates an inferiority
complex in many students because they are led to believe that there is one correct way to
speak English.

Puzzle 2: What is the Purpose of English in Primary Education in Japan?
Recently there has been a policy shift concerning foreign language instruction in Japanese
primary schools. English instruction has been brought forward two years so that it is part ofthe curriculum from age eight and a formal assessed subject for students in their final two
years of primary school (see emoto, 201 ). As a parent of two young children, this is of greatinterest to me. Here I will describe the change in policy, then consider its justness basedon my own observations and connect it to descriptions of policy in Piller’s book, and finally
imagine how a linguistically diverse language activities curriculum could be realised.
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The previous curriculum’s objective was to develop the understanding of languages andcultures through various experiences, [and foster] a positive attitude toward communication”(Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, 2009). There was nodirective that this experience of language and culture should be English so there were
opportunities built in to explore any language or culture, and to embrace the multilingual
turn. The new curriculum is for English rather than “language activities,” the rationale beingthat English is a required skill in the globalised world and a greater focus on English in theearly years can help develop this (The Mainichi, 2017). However, I argue that the previous
curriculum had more potential to prepare children for a globalised world than children
learning English as a formal assessed subject two years earlier because there is more of ascope to generate and follow interests, rather than be forced into exploring English in a
Californian accent (Kubota, 201 ). If English were the right language choice, it might be more
appropriate to look at English as a tool for communication in Asia and accept varieties ofEnglish using voices from the region.
I contend that compulsory foreign language education in Japan needs to look beyond English. It
is important that prominent minority languages in Japan, such as Korean, Portuguese, Chinese,and Vietnamese, are promoted in the wider community rather than being viewed negatively(Kubota & cKay, 200 ), and a presence in primary schools would be an e ective way to achievethis. Languages and cultures could be brought into the primary classroom through engagementwith the community, for example inviting members of minority groups to showcase arts orcustoms and share stories from their own lives. Additionally, a focus on culture rather thanlanguage proficiency can reduce the pressure on teachers and young learners.
There is a danger that focusing purely on English in foreign language activities in primaryschool will devalue minority languages and cultures. There is a precedent for this inJapan, where “invisible” Korean residents have been pressured to assimilate (Okano, 2011;
Tsuneyoshi, 2011). There are similar cases of languages and cultures being marginalised in
China, and I will explore this using the voice of a current student of mine, Saran (pseudonym)
who comes from Inner Mongolia (see Baioud, 2020 for an overview of the situation there), in
tandem with a case study from Piller’s book of a person from a Russian-speaking minority.
Saran is an ethnic ongolian who, because she went to a andarin-speaking school, has notbeen able to develop full literacy in her own language. She states:
hen my father was young, he su ered a lot, lost many chances because he can not
speak Chinese very uently. So he hoped that if he sent me to the Han school, I could
speak uent Chinese and I would have many chances. And as my father hoped, now I
can speak Chinese better than most Mongolian people. But on the other side, I lost mylanguage. (Saran, personal communication, 25 September 2020).
She talks of a pressure for Chinese citi ens to be able to speak uent andarin, and foundthat the only opportunity she had to use ongolian was at home. ei Ru’s story appears in
Chapter 7, Linguistic Diversity and Global Justice. She grew up in a Russian-in uenced area ofChina and had a high proficiency in Russian and Chinese. However, during her high schooldays the curriculum in China was changed to recognise only English proficiency for entry to
mainstream higher education, the social capital of her Russian skill became worthless, andshe was denied entry to a mainstream university and had to enroll in a minzu university, ora university for ethnic minorities. Due to language policy in China, Saran has lost access toher own culture, and Wei Ru has been denied access to participate in mainstream society.
Similarly, school students in Japan should not be forced to assimilate in a way that alienates
them from their heritage, nor should their otherness prevent them from the capacity to be
successful within the Japanese system.

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Piller issues two stark warnings about school language policies that could be applied to theprimary curriculum in Japan: the “hidden” purpose of schooling is to maintain the status quo,and the promotion of English benefits only the urban elite. English functions as a gatekeeper
in education (Price, 2014, as cited in Piller, 2016). Language should be used to promote
communication and understanding, not neoliberal values. As parents and as educators, weneed to see past the rhetoric of global skills in order to push for a curriculum that works topromote linguistic diversity and multilingualism, and is accessible to all.
One approach to create a multilingual curriculum e ible enough to suit the local needsof a particular location, classroom or student, while being stringent enough to become anational policy, would be a portfolio (Benson & Lamb, 2021). Students would be able toexplore community or home languages and cultures of their choice and be assessed on their
responses to this (done in the school language or visually if appropriate), rather than on
acquiring set phrases in English. A portfolio would give students the right to, and ownershipof, their language learning (Melo, 2021). It would have the potential of developing in students
self-learning skills, independence, and an interest in their diverse community. In a primaryschool, there may be a need for the teacher to make some of the learning choices for the
students. However, in my experience of developing and running a university class where
all students were learning di erent things, but at the same time keeping re ective journals
and talking with peers in a structured way (Stevenson & Davies, 201 Edlin, 201 ), having
learners make di erent choices does not create e tra work for students or teachers. This
pedagogic approach is not novel in compulsory education in Japan: School students havepreviously been encouraged to keep personal records of their own learning (Nishioka, 2017),
and seikatsu tsuzurikata / 生活綴方 [daily life writing] has been long employed to encourage
students to re ect on their lives and communities, then share their perspectives with peers(Kawaji, 2017). A multilingual portfolio is a natural successor to previous teaching andlearning styles in Japan, and it fits the government’s objective of developing individuals’
abilities, cultivating creativity, and fostering a spirit of autonomy and independence” (Basic
Act on Education, 2006). For minority and non-minority children alike, having a multilingual
approach to language education that involves the local community has many benefits thatexceed those given by learning stock phrases in English that are not directly connected to thelives of the individual learner or their community.

Concluding Thoughts
In this practice-related review, I first gave an overview of the themes in Piller (2016), andrelated them to learner development issues. I then examined two puzzles I developed basedon the book and my experiences as an educator and a parent. From this examination, I
propose that further exploration and discussion is required in the following areas:
how language learning and practices in schools can be accepting of, and connect to, thethe lives of all of the student body and diverse communities in the local area;
how to produce appropriate local responses to local language issues, that fit in with theethos of the school and education system; andhow inclusive pedagogical practices which respect and promote multilingual knowledge
can be further developed.
Through re ection and scrutiny on these three overarching themes of this review,educational practitioners can consider how to minimise linguistic disadvantage in their
setting.

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For those specifically interested in learner development issues in language education,
I recommend reading Chapters 3, The Subordination of Linguistic Diversity, and Chapter 5,
Linguistic Diversity in Education, of this book as essential reading. In these chapters examples
are presented that show the danger of connecting language to territory and the problems thatarise in education from a monolingual mindset. Chapter 7, Linguistic Diversity and Global Justice,develops these ideas further, focusing particularly on the English language, and will help
English educators re ect on their own practices and policies. I contend that in Japan there
needs to be an adjustment in the way language learning is talked about both by professionals
and laypeople, in order that English learning becomes easily accessible for beginners, basedon more realistic models and attainment goals.
Linguistic Diversity and Social Justice has encouraged me to think more deeply about languagelearning policies in my work context, and the importance of raising awareness about being
multilingual and its benefits to students. Issues raised have encouraged deeper re ection
on the e ects of language policies in tertiary and compulsory education in Japan. Future
discussions, practitioner research, and scholarship should appraise the objectives of educationin order to actively and appropriately shape and re ect society, and to e amine how valuing
minority languages and communities can be a part of a just curriculum.

Author Bio
Huw Davies is a learning advisor at Kanda University of International Studies. He holds an
MEd from the Open University, and is a PhD candidate at Lancaster University. His working
day is centred around learner development. He has published papers on language learning
strategies, learner autonomy, and advisor professional development.
Huw Davies é conselheiro na aprendizagem de línguas na Kanda University of International
Studies. Possui Mestrado em Educação pela Open University e atualmente é doutorando
pela Lancaster niversity. Seu trabalho centra-se no desenvolvimento do aprendi , tendo
publicado artigos sobre estratégias de aprendizagem de línguas, autonomia do aprendiz, edesenvolvimento profissional do conselheiro.

Review ProcessThis paper was blind peer-reviewed by members of The Learner Development Journal Review
Network and Journal Steering Group. (Contributors have the option of open or blind review.)

References
Baioud, G. (2020). ill education reform wipe out ongolian language and culture Languageon the Move. https://www.languageonthemove.com/will-education-reform-wipe-outmongolian-language-and-culture/
Basic Act on Education of 2006, Act o. 120. (2006, December 22). https://www.mext.go.jp/
en/policy/education/lawandplan/title01/detail01/13 3.htm
Benson, P., & Lamb, T. (2021). Autonomy in the age of multilingualism. In M. Jiménez Raya
& F. Vieira (Eds.), Autonomy in language education: Theory, research and practice (pp. 4).
Routledge.
Davies, H. (201 , February 10-11). Responding to non-participation with a language policy [Paper
presentation . CamTESOL- ECA Regional ELT Research Symposium 201 , Phnom Penh,
Cambodia.
Edlin, C. (201 ). A nested OOC elective course: OOCs for learner development, and learnerdevelopment for MOOCs. Relay Journal, 1(1), 133–141. https://doi.org/10.37237/relay/010113

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Fraser, . (200 ). Scales of justice. Columbia University Press.
Fraser, N., & Honneth, A. (2003). Redistribution or recognition? A political-philosophical exchange.
Verso.
Imamura, Y. (201 ). Adopting and adapting to new language policies in a self-access centre in
Japan. Relay Journal, 1(1), 1
20 . https://doi.org/10.37237/relay/010120
Kaplan, R. B., & Baldauf, R. B., Jr. (1997). Language planning: From practice to theory.
Multilingual Matters.
Kawaji, A. (2017). Daily life writing in school: Creating alternative textbooks and culture. In Y.
Yamasaki & H. Kuno (Eds.), Educational progressivism, cultural encounters and reform in Japan(pp. 109–124). Routledge.
Kubota, R. (201 ). Eigo kyōiku gensō [Misconceptions of English language teaching andlearning]. Chikuma Shinsho.
Kubota, R., & McKay, S. (2009). Globalization and language learning in rural Japan: The roleof English in the local linguistic ecology. TESOL Quarterly, 43(4),3 61 . https://doi.
org/10.1002/j.1 4 - 24 .200 .tb001 .
Language on the Move. (n.d.). Language on the move. https://www.languageonthemove.com/
language-on-the-move/
Lingard, B., & Keddie, A. (2013). Redistribution, recognition and representation: working
against pedagogies of indi erence. Pedagogy, Culture & Society, 21(3), 427–447. https://doi.
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The ainichi (201 , February 1 ). ew curriculum guidelines must not rigidly control schools’
education [Editorial]. https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20170215/p2a/00m/0na/017000c
May, S. (2014). Introducing the “multilingual turn”. In S. May (Ed.), The multilingual turn (pp.
1 6). Routledge.
Melo, M. (2021). Pedagogical violence and language dominance. In C. Friend (Ed.), Hybrid
teaching: Pedagogy, people, politics (pp.
61). Hybrid Pedagogy.
Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology. (2009). Foreign
language activities. MEXT. https://www.mext.go.jp/component/english/__icsFiles/
afieldfile/2011/03/1 /1303
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emoto, A. K. (201 ). Getting ready for 2020: Changes and challenges for English education in
public primary schools in Japan. The Language Teacher, 42(4), 33–35.
ishioka, K. (201 ). Hama Omura’s unit learning practice for Japanese class. In Y. Yamasaki& H. Kuno (Eds.), Educational progressivism, cultural encounters and reform in Japan (pp.
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Okano, K. H. (2011). Ethnic Koreans in Japanese schools: Shifting boundaries and collaboration
with other groups. In R. Tsuneyoshi, K. H. Okano, & S. S. Boocock (Eds.), Minorities andeducation in multicultural Japan: An interactive perspective (pp. 100–125). Routledge.
Pennycook, A., & Otsuji, E. (2015). Metrolingualism: Language in the city. Routledge.
Piller, I. (2016). Linguistic diversity and social justice: An introduction to applied sociolinguistics.
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Imagining Fair Language Policies: A Practice-related Review of Piller’s (2016) Linguistic Diversity and Social JusticeTenanga o Aotearoa. (n.d.) Ngā uara [Our mission, vision, and values]. https://www.twoa.
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multilingual self-access space. JASAL Journal, 1(1), 139–147. https://jasalorg.com/journaljune20-wongsarnpigoon-imamura/146

Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 5 • December 2021

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://ldjournalsite.wordpress.com/

The Learner Development Journal Issue 5: Engaging with the Multilingual Turnfor Learner Development: Practices, Issues, Discourses, and Theorisations
Author: Melike Bulut Albaba
Title: Visually Tapping into the Lives of Learners: Review of Kalaja & Melo-Pfeifer’s (2019)
Visualising Multilingual Lives: More Than Words
Date of publication online: 2021
Author contact: <melikebulut@trakya.edu.tr>

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:
Bulut Albaba, M. (2021). Visually tapping into the lives of learners: Review of Kalaja &Melo-Pfeifer’s (2019) Visualising Multilingual Lives: More Than Words. 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. 147-152). 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.

PRACTICE-RELATED REVIEW

-

20

:

Visualising Multilingual Lives: More Than Words
Visualising Multilingual Lives: More Than Words. Paula Kalaja & Silvia Melo-Pfeifer (Eds.).
Multilingual Matters, 2019.
2
pp. ISB 97 -1-7 92-259-

Reviewed by, Trakya University, Turkey & University of Leeds, UK<melikebulut@trakya.edu.tr>-

Visualising Multilingual Lives: More Than Words,
II-

and a parent to an emerging
multilingual.
この実践的書評は，ビジュアル·ナラティブを用いて多言語生活を探求した実証的な研究論文から成る編集本Visualising
Multilingual Lives: More Than Words の論評を目的とする。言語教育研究者，言語教師，教師教育者，多言語，そして新たに生まれた多言語の子を持つ親として，この本から得た学びと，多言語主義との個人的な出会いをまとめ，自身の実践に基づいた見地から述べる。
:

Keywords
多言語主義，多言語生活，ビジュアル・ナラティブ，ビジュアル・データ，ビジュアル調査法

I

was very keen to get my hands on this book as soon as it was published. I was particularlyinterested in knowing more on how the editors and the authors imagined “multilingual
lives” and how they employed “visual narratives” to navigate and understand multilingual
lives. Multilingualism is often conceptualised as a linguistic, social or political entity insteadof being contextualised as a lived experience, and visual methods are not commonly adopted
in exploring multilingualism. Hence, the title of the book promised an innovative anthology
and this proved to be so as I read it through.
The editors, Paula Kalaja and Silvia Melo-Pfeifer, describe the book as aimed at MA
students, pre-service and in-service teachers, teacher educators, and researchers. I engage
with multilingualism at professional, social and personal levels in my life as a language
education researcher, language teacher, teacher educator, multilingual, and a parent to an
emerging multilingual. Hence my reading of the book was informed by all my encounters
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Visually Tapping into the Lives of Learners: Review of Kalaja & Melo-Pfeifer’s (2019) Visualising Multilingual Lives: More Than Words

with multilingualism and also my experiences as both a producer and consumer of empiricalresearch, and the book o ered so much to learn. I would like to, therefore, organise myreview in such a way as to re ect on what I learnt from this anthology. irst, I will brie ypresent a rather clinical overview of the overall structure of the book. Then I will move on to amore detailed discussion of my learning gains, and finalise with my concluding comments.
The book consists of 15 chapters, thirteen of which are reports of original empirical researchusing visual narratives as research tools to explore multilingualism as experienced by individuals.
The chapters are grouped into three main parts based on the conte ts in which participants’experiences of multilingualism are tapped into. These are, respectively, the multilingual self,
the multilingual learner, and the multilingual teacher education, each of which consists of four
to five chapters. Part One, The Multilingual Self, is a collection of research studies investigating
individuals’ e perience of being multilingual in formal and informal conte ts at di erent stagesof life and it consists of four chapters. The five chapters in Part Two, The Multilingual Learner,
e plore the e periences of foreign language learners in di erent conte ts with a particular focus
on the interaction of this undertaking with their identity construction. Part Three, The Multilingual
Teacher Education, focuses on the identity construction of student teachers as multilinguals in
professional teacher training contexts and consists of four chapters. The editors conclude thebook with an analytical summary chapter which not only provides a comprehensive review of
the research studies presented in the collection, but also o ers insightful suggestions for taking
research of this kind forward with a clear research agenda.
My key takeaways from the anthology can be grouped in three major themes: the potentialof conceptualizing multilingualism within multilingual lives, the notion of visual narratives,and methodological strengths and weaknesses of visual narratives as reported by the authorsand editors. I will now expand on these themes respectively.

Conceptualizing Multilingualism Within Multilingual Lives
The editors set out the anthology subscribing to the multilingual turn which they define
as a counter paradigm to the traditional understanding of multilingualism where native
speakerism is taken as the norm of language competence. They argue that multilinguals havea di erent set of language skills, such as translanguaging, which make them fundamentally
di erent to monolinguals in the way they use languages. This makes any comparison between
the two groups invalid. Their interest is, thus, not on multilinguals’ language competenceor development, but on how they operate as multilinguals in life, because multilinguals canac uire these language skills regardless of their proficiencies in their individual languages.
This separation they make between language development and operating as multilinguals
made perfect sense to me based on my own language learning background. I learnt English
as a foreign language at school from an early age in Turkey and became an English language
teacher with first class honours, but it was only when I moved to England for a postgraduate
degree that I realised how unprepared I was to use English in daily life. While I was doing
very well in my academic studies, I was struggling with tasks such as ordering food on
the phone and negotiating a bill with power suppliers. I was surprised at how this slipped
through all the internationally recognised standardised proficiency tests that I had passedwith high grades. This was my personal multilingual turn, as I only started to recognise
myself as a multilingual when I started developing skills to use English in daily life. Since
then, English has become my primary language both at work and at home and I have become
more confident using English than my mother tongue on many occasions. I realised thatterms such as language development and language proficiency fall short in e plaining theseshifts I went through in my language experience. This anthology addresses that gap.

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Moreover, the editors and the authors focus on multilingualism as subjectively experienced
by individuals. In the Introduction, the editors show particular interest in individuals’ positive
and negative emotions, attitudes, beliefs, visions and identities (Kalaja & Melo-Pfeifer, 2019,p. 1) regarding multilingualism. For me, such a shift in conceptualizing multilingualism has
direct implications for teaching, learning, and assessing languages. Individuals’ e perienceswith languages, as portrayed in the book, demonstrate that there are so many implicit
aspects of people’s connections with languages to which language education literature has
been oblivious to. For instance, in Chapter 7, Looking at Language through a Camera Lens, Liss
Kerstin Sylv n compares and contrasts two language learners’ beliefs about English andSwedish. There are two student participants: One is a student who comes from a multilingual
family background learning English through content and language integrated programme
and the other one comes from a monolingual background and learns English as a foreign
language. The researcher asks the students to take a number of photos every day during one
week illustrating their first (Swedish) and second (English) languages. Through the thematic
analysis of the photos and the interviews with the students Sylv n finds that while the former
student perceives language as something to be used, the latter perceives it as something tobe learnt. The findings suggest that the learners’ repertoires of language e periences have an
impact on their beliefs about languages. Such information is certainly of great importance to
any language teacher who aims to collect data on their learners’ language histories and needs
prior to organising pedagogical objectives. In this particular research project, the researcher
asked the students to take photos illustrating these two languages followed by a one to one
discussion of those with the teacher. This could be easily adopted as a classroom activity byinterested teacher-researchers. Indeed, the vast majority of visual data collection tools usedin the anthology could easily be adopted in classroom research. I will go in further detail on
the visual methods in the next section.

The Notion of Visual Narratives
As well as exploring multilingual lives, another common aspect of the research reports
presented in the anthology is that they all adopt some kind of visual method(s) for gathering
data. The editors choose the term visual narratives to describe the specific methodology
they adopted. They define visual narratives as visual materials produced by individuals(Kalaja & Melo-Pfeifer, 2019, p. 27 ) and argue that visual methods enable capturing thecomplex nature of psychological aspects of language experience through multisemioticity
when words alone fall short. They also suggest that this methodology is a good fit for theirintentions to capture the subjectivity experienced by individuals through the stories told via
these visual narratives.
Visual data has not been very popular in the field of language education until recently
and the most common visual data have been drawings produced by participants. Althoughdrawings are still the most common data across the chapters in the anthology, there aresome other innovative visual tools adopted by some researchers. For instance, Sylvén (2019)
in Chapter 7, as mentioned above, and Umino and Benson (2019) in Chapter 10, Study Abroadin Pictures: Photographs as Data in Life-story Research, asked their participants to take photos
representing their connections with their languages. Ibrahim (2019) in Chapter 3, Children’s
Multimodal Visual Narratives as Possible Sites of Identity Performance, asked her young multilingual
participants to bring objects (either a physical object, or drawings/descriptions of an object)representing their di erent languages to the interview. She treated those symbolic artefacts
as an additional tool to uestionnaires, children’s writings and drawings. I found the visual
narrative chosen by Paiva and Gomes Junior (2019) in Chapter 9, Multimodal Language Learning
Histories: Images Telling Stories, quite innovative: They asked their participants to produce
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Visually Tapping into the Lives of Learners: Review of Kalaja & Melo-Pfeifer’s (2019) Visualising Multilingual Lives: More Than Words

multimodal language learning histories including sounds and images using a selectionof digital tools. On the other hand, P re -Peit et al. (2019) in Chapter 1 , Awareness of
Plurilingual Competence in Teacher Education, allowed more e ibility to their participants andasked them to produce visual narratives through either drawing or collage or photos.
Throughout the chapters, it becomes obvious that some visual data generation tools
are more demanding than the others on the participants in terms of the time, means
and skills they require; and some tools could be more appropriate for certain ages,
language proficiencies, digital literacy levels and skills. owever, they all seem to o er
more interesting types of involvement in research for the participants in comparison
to conventional methods such as interviews and surveys. These tools also seem to o er
opportunities to capture and re ect on the dynamic process of interactions among
multilinguals’ multiple languages in daily life and in language classrooms. ence, themajority of these tools could also be adopted as classroom tasks or projects by teachers toco-investigate their learners’ e periences with languages.
Connecting to my practices, I used visuals and artefacts for di erent purposes in myteaching experience. I remember that it worked particularly well when I asked my adult ESOL
students to bring visuals and artefacts to introduce their home language and culture. Thistask o ered so many opportunities for communication and bonding in the classroom. As a
researcher I have not yet used visual tools as data but going through the examples of thevisual narratives throughout the anthology helped me realise their potential and inspired me
to learn more about visual methodologies. I found Rose (201 ) to be a good follow-up. The
more I read about this emerging field, the more I am convinced that visual narratives will
open up new horizons not only for my own research but also for the postgraduate research
being conducted under my supervision.

Methodological Strengths and Weaknesses of Visual Narratives
Across the chapters in this anthology of work, visual narratives come across as a versatilemethodology to e plore individuals’ personal e periences with, and feelings about languages.
They can be adapted to di erent ages, skills and backgrounds of participants and di erent
research contexts. They also seem to have an empowering impact on the participants
even when they are in a linguistically, socially or politically disadvantaged position toexpress themselves verbally such as young individuals or people who are not competent in
the language used by the researcher(s). The participants take a proactive role in shaping
their own stories instead of passively answering (or reacting to) the questions directedby researchers. The most striking example of this is displayed in Chapter 4, Integration as
Portrayed in Visual Narratives by Young Refugees in Germany, by Melo-Pfeifer and Schmidt (2019)
in which they investigate the integration of 12 young refugees in Germany. The participants’proficiency was uite low in the researchers’ language thus, they were asked to produce
two drawings to illustrate their current self and future self in a year’s time. The researchersthen conducted a combination of content and visual semiotic analysis to interpret the young
refugees’ drawings. The researchers claim that they brought down the language barrier andavoided the mediation of translation in this way. However, it is important to note that making
meanings solely based on the drawings might well result in misinterpretation of thesedrawings. The majority of researchers in the anthology complement visual narratives withverbal narratives and strictly recommend doing that for future research since interpretation ofvisual data could turn out to be biased. The notion of visual narratives strives for subjectivity,
but it is the subjectivity of the participant in telling their own story, not necessarily the
subjectivity of the researcher in interpreting their participants’ stories. It is perhaps thiscomplexity of the analysis that holds visual data back from being used more widely by

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Melike Bulut Albaba

researchers. The key take-away for me here is that visual narratives would benefit from data
triangulation.
There is not an established route for analysing visual narratives and it is entirely up to theresearcher how to handle such data. ualitative content analysis is the most popular option
for the researchers in the anthology, but the descriptions of actual procedures of data analysis
were often thin or completely missing. This may well make it di cult for other researchers
who are interested in replicating their studies in other settings.

Concluding Thoughts
Overall, the anthology o ers a rich collection of studies tapping into multilingual lives
through visual narratives. Conceptualizing and exploring multilingualism as multilingual
lives has great potential in providing a new perspective in understanding the personal andemotional viewpoint of language users. Likewise, visual narratives seem to work fairly well asa methodology for this research agenda. The editors’ proposed framework could be adopted
in diverse research contexts, and would be particularly useful for exploratory practice inlanguage classrooms.
On a personal note, this book has not only introduced me to the possibilities and potentialof visual narratives in research into multilingualism, but also made me stop and think about
my languages, their impact on my identity and life experience several times. For instance,
when Italian-Australian Sophia in Chapter 2, Becoming and Being Multilingual in Australia,
by Alice Chik, mentioned that she felt a sense of burden, shame, and guilt when she used
Italian in Australia, I was reminded of my experiences of feeling uncomfortable using Turkish
or Arabic in certain settings abroad. In the same chapter, Korean sojourner Jessica’s voice
resonated with me when she expressed her concerns about her children forgetting Korean.
Visual narratives tap into a new wild world of often unspoken and unexplored emotions,visions and identities relating to languages and this makes the anthology intriguing andthought-provoking throughout.

Author Bio
My name is Melike Bulut Albaba and I am a lecturer in TESOL. I teach pre-service andin-service English language teachers and supervise postgraduate research. My main areasof expertise and research interests include language teacher cognition, teacher research, andeducating multilinguals.
Ben Melike Bulut Albaba. i met ncesi ve hi met i i ngili ce
retmenlerine dersveriyorum ve lisans st ara t rmalar y netiyorum. Ana u manl k alanlar m ve ara t rma
ilgi alanlar m aras nda dilretmeni bili i,
retmen ara t rmas ve ok dillileri e itmek yer
almaktad r.

Review ProcessThis paper was blind peer-reviewed by members of The Learner Development Journal Review
Network and Journal Steering Group. (Contributors have the option of open or blind review.)

References
Chik, A. (2019). Becoming and being multilingual in Australia. In P. Kalaja & S. Melo-Pfeifer(Eds.), Visualising multilingual lives: More than words (pp. 33–52). Multilingual Matters.
Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 5 • December 2021

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Visually Tapping into the Lives of Learners: Review of Kalaja & Melo-Pfeifer’s (2019) Visualising Multilingual Lives: More Than Words

Ibrahim, . (2019). Children’s multimodal visual narratives as possible sites of identity
performance. In P. Kalaja & S. Melo-Pfeifer (Eds.), Visualising multilingual lives: More thanwords (pp. 33–52). Multilingual Matters.
Kalaja, P., & Melo-Pfeifer, S. (Eds.). (2019). Visualising multilingual lives: More than words.
Multilingual Matters.
Melo-Pfeifer, S., & Schmidt, A. . (2019). Integration as portrayed in visual narratives byyoung refugees in Germany. In P. Kalaja & S. Melo-Pfeifer (Eds.), Visualising multilingual
lives: More than words (pp. 53–72). Multilingual Matters.
Paiva, V. L. M. O., & Gomes Junior, R. C. (2019). Multimodal language learning histories:
Images telling stories. In P. Kalaja & S. Melo-Pfeifer (Eds.), Visualising multilingual lives:
More than words (pp. 151–172). Multilingual Matters.
P re -Peit , M., Lope , I. C., & Sangra, J. P. (2019). Awareness of plurilingual competence inteacher education. In P. Kalaja & S. Melo-Pfeifer (Eds.), Visualising multilingual lives: Morethan words (pp. 232–253). Multilingual Matters.
Rose, G. (201 ). Visual methodologies: An introduction to researching with visual materials (4th ed).
Sage.
Sylv n, L. K. (2019). Looking at language through a camera lens. In P. Kalaja & S. MeloPfeifer (Eds.), Visualising multilingual lives: More than words (pp. 115–133). Multilingual
Matters.
mino, T., & Benson, P. (2019). Study abroad in pictures: Photographs as data in life-story
research. In P. Kalaja & S. Melo-Pfeifer (Eds.), Visualising multilingual lives: More than words(pp. 173–193). Multilingual Matters.

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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://ldjournalsite.wordpress.com/

The Learner Development Journal Issue 5: Engaging with the Multilingual Turnfor Learner Development: Practices, Issues, Discourses, and Theorisations
Author: Brennan Conaway
Title: A Learner’s Review of Horner & Weber’s (2018) Introducing Multilingualism: A Social
Approach
Date of publication online: 2021
Author contact: <brennanconaway81@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:Conaway, B. (2021). A learner’s review of Horner & Weber’s (2018) Introducing
Multilingualism: A Social Approach. 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. 153-158). 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.

PRACTICE-RELATED REVIEW

20Introducing Multilingualism: A Social Approach
Introducing Multilingualism: A Social Approach. Kristine Horner & Jean-Jac ues Weber (2nd ed.).
Routledge, 2018. v 308 pp. ISB
8-1-138-2-8

Reviewed by, Tokai University, Japan<brennanconaway81@gmail.com>
This review of Introducing Multilingualism: A Social Approach (Horner & Weber, 2018) looks at interconnections andinteractions between language ideologies, dominant discourses, and language use in specific cases across a wide
range of contexts. Among many different issues, the book covers the global spread of languages (including
English), societal multilingualism, mother tongue education, discourses on migration, and multilingualism in new
media. Horner and Weber present a stimulating introduction to multilingual issues in society in this global age. I
wrote this review as an adult learner reading the book while completing a TESOL master’s program, and I sharerevelations and discoveries made during the process of reading Horner and Weber and studying multilingualism.
I conclude the review with my response to the book and some personal thoughts about my previously held
beliefs and assumptions about certain language ideologies.
本稿は，幅広いコンテクストの具体的なケースにおける言語イデオロギー，支配的言説，言語使用の間の相互関連と相互作用に注目した書籍，Introducing multilingualism: A social approach (Horner & Weber, 2018) の書評である。様々な問題の中でも，本書は言語（英語を含む）の世界的な広がり，社会的な多言語主義，母語教育，移民に関する言説，そして新しいメディアにおける多言語主義を取り上げている。Horner & Weber は，このグローバル時代の社会における多言語問題について関心をかき立てる紹介をしている。この書評は，筆者がTESOL修士課程でこの本を読み一成人学習者の目線から書いたものである。Horner & Weberを読み，多言語主義を研究する過程で得た発見や気づきを共有する。最後に，この本に対する学習者個人としての反応と，特定の言語イデオロギーに関して以前から抱いていた信念や仮定についての個人的な考えを述べ，この書評を締めくくる。
Esta es una revisión de Introducing multilingualism: A social approach (Horner & Weber, 2018) que analiza lasinterconexiones e interacciones entre las ideologías lingüísticas, los discursos dominantes y el uso del lenguaje
en casos específicos en una amplia gama de contextos. Entre muchos temas diferentes, el libro cubre la difusión
mundial de idiomas (incluido el inglés), el multilingüismo social, la educación en la lengua materna, los discursos
sobre la migración y el multilingüismo en los nuevos medios. Horner y Weber presentan una estimulante
introducción a los problemas multilingües en la sociedad en esta era global. Escribí la reseña como estudiante
adulto leyendo el libro mientras completaba un programa de maestría de TESOL. Aquí comparto revelaciones ydescubrimientos hechos durante el proceso de lectura de Horner y Weber y el estudio del multilingüismo.
Concluyo la reseña con mi respuesta al libro y algunos pensamientos personales sobre mis creencias ysuposiciones previamente sostenidas sobre ciertas ideologías lingüísticas.

Keywords
多言語主義，成人学習者，社会的アプローチ，アイデンティティ，言語イデオロギーIn a time that now feels like a di erent era, when zoom was a word used in comic books andnot for online classes, I entered the TESOL master’s program at Temple niversity Japan. I
was pursuing a graduate degree for purely practical reasons: I wanted to learn how to teachEnglish and then find a ob somewhere in the Tokyo megalopolis. But as I progressed throughLearner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 5 • December 2021

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A Learner’s Review of Horner & Weber’s (2018) Introducing Multilingualism: A Social Approach

the program and was introduced to di erent theories about language ac uisition and alternate
definitions of language itself, I went through a de- and re-construction of my conceptions
about the English language. I realized that I had been unaware of my own preconceptions
about language, the “ideas and feelings, norms and values, which inform the way people
think about languages (p. 20). That process was helped along by Kristine Horner and JeanJac ues Weber’s Introducing Multilingualism - A Social Approach, which I read as a graduate
student, and as a learner new to many of the issues that the authors cover.

Summary of the Book
Introducing Multilingualism is a si -part te tbook which includes class activities, discussions,and chapter quizzes. It leads the reader to question assumptions about language, investigates
the history and prejudices of named languages, and looks to a future where multilingualism
is recognized as the norm, not the exception. (Although this questioning and investigation
was reinforced by some of the readings in my master’s program, Introducing Multilingualism
was not one of my textbooks at Temple University. I was therefore glad to have the chance
to read it for this review.) Language, peoples, and identity are all interconnected in the social
approach that Horner and & Weber take in their introduction to multilingualism.
With this social approach, Horner & Weber o er a di erent view of multilingualism,
together with many personal, educational and institutional responses to multilingualism.
The social approach defines language and multilingual socially rather than linguistically or
cognitively, by looking at how languages are used in society and the real world, rather thanbounded within dictionaries and academic subjects. To introduce the social approach andguide the reader towards its use in the study of multilingualism, Horner & Weber divide
Introducing Multilingualism into six parts, which I summarize below.
Part 1 (Theoretical and Methodological Considerations) introduces Horner & Weber’s social
approach to the study of multilingualism, and how they “question deeply held assumptions
about language and multilingualism
our language ideologies’ (p. 5). They encourage
readers to do the same. Those language ideologies are enumerated as the hierarchy oflanguages, the standard language ideology, one nation-one language ideology, mother tongue
ideology, and the ideology of purism. In my reading of this textbook, as a learner and a newstudent in the field of multilingualism, I did e actly as Horner & Weber encouraged me to do:
I questioned my own assumptions.
Part 2 (Multilingualism Within and Across Languages) looks at so-called standard English,
which is one of the language ideologies from Part 1, and “the fuzzy boundaries of named
languages (p. 3 ). This linguistic fu iness suggests an intra- and inter-language
continuum where dialect and language are ust di erent words for the same sociolinguistic
practice and, although there are conventionally named languages, there are no separate,bounded and distinct languages. Horner & Weber note: “What we learn in childhood islanguage,’ and separately, as it were, we discover that the linguistic features we are learning
are conventionally associated with a particular named language” (p. 37). This suggests that
we each learn a personali ed language first, and then learn to conform that language to a
standardized named language later. That named language is just a theoretical construct, as
nobody speaks the o cial language correctly at all times because language is social action
and practice” (p. 45). Living languages are wild and dynamic, impossible to contain, despite
attempts to standardize them. Part 2 continues this exploration of sociolinguistic practicewith discussions of African-American English, Caribbean ation Language’, SingaporeanSinglish, and French youth languages. This part of the textbook also covers the global spreadof English, the endangerment of so-called minority languages, and the attempts, both154

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Brennan Conaway

successful and unsuccessful, at revitalization of those languages through national policies.
Part 3 (Societal and Individual Multilingualism) examines multilingualism on the societal, or
national scale, in Ukraine, Switzerland, Singapore, Hong Kong, South Africa, and Nigeria,
noting that the distinction between o cially monolingual and multilingual states is not afi ed binary opposition but a dynamic and shifting continuum (p. 8 ). This continuum at thesocietal level is similar to the linguistic continua at the individual level, when a supposedly
monolingual person is proficient with a range of social registers, idiomatic e pressions or
foreign loan words. In their examination of language and identity, Horner & Weber explain
the essentialist concept of identity versus a social constructivist concept of identity by using
the analogy of a peach versus an onion: You believe in a true’, deep’ or real’ self which,just like the stone in the middle of the peach, constitutes your core identity” (p. 107). In
contrast, if “you see identity as more like an onion, then you believe in the possibility of
having multiple and changing selvesand none of them forms an essential and fi ed
core (p. 10 ). Some people see themselves as many-layered and ever-changing, and their
linguistic identity includes translanguaging, code-switching and language crossing. Horner& Weber conclude that most speakers in the world are multilingual to di erent degrees,and many of these multilingual speakers tend to mix their languages … multilingualism andtranslanguaging are the norm” (p. 117). The normalization of multilingualism, rather thanmonolingualism as the default norm, is a recurrent theme in Introducing Multilingualism.
Part 4 (Multilingualism in Education and Other Institutional Sites) discusses national or regional
educational policies for multilingual school students, with case studies in Luxembourg,
Catalonia and Bas ue Country demonstrating the advantage of a e ible approach over a fi ed
approach towards multilingual schooling. Horner & Weber comment: Only e ible, local
solutions can potentially meet all the children’s linguistic needs in the best possible way (p.
1 8). Concerning policies and approaches towards mother tongue education, Horner & Weberalso look at South Africa as a case study and highlight three problems: Too many mothertongues represented in the classroom, policy-makers’ arrogance in deciding that so-called
minority languages should be kept, and the presumption that a student’s mother tongue isthe standard version of that language. To counter these problems, Horner & Weber propose
literacy bridges (p. 1 ) based on common links between students’ linguistic repertoires.
In policies for heritage language education, Horner & Weber find a continuation of standard
language ideology and purist ideology, as presented in Part 1 and discussed in more detail in
the next section about critical analysis of discourses. There is a call to action for “teachers to
break through the standard language ideology and to valori e all the di erent linguistic andcultural resources of all the children, including not only standard indiegnous or.immigrantlanguages, but also non-standard or ot fully standardi ed varieties (p. 18 ). Horner & Weberpromote a similarly e ible and non-ideological approach for multilingualism in other stateand private institutions.
Part 5 (Critical Analysis of Discourses) looks at national discussions about immigration,
language, integration policies, as well as concerns about social cohesion and “a deeper andmore irrational fear of societal multilingualism and heterogeneity” (p. 207). This is a fear thatin turn leads to language-testing for citi enship. Here Horner & Weber look at case studies
in Luxembourg, Britain, and the United States, critiquing presentations of multilingualism inthe media, where “monolingualism is the norm and multilingualism is exceptional, deviant,abnormal either all good or all bad (p. 22 ). Retrograde English-only advocates findmultilingualism all bad, but Horner & Weber find online attitudes and linguistic practices
to be multilingual and accepting of di erences in language proficiencies. The internet has
limited multilingualism, with English being the dominant language, but, according to theauthors, people online tend to use all their linguistic resources, borrowing, adapting and
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A Learner’s Review of Horner & Weber’s (2018) Introducing Multilingualism: A Social Approachtransforming their language in response to contact with other languages. Beyond the internet,in brick-and-mortar urban streetscapes, the linguistic landscape is also often multilingualand multimodal, and Horner & Weber present methods of discourse analysis for linguists
studying the languages used on street signs and shop billboards.
Part (Further Directions in the Study of Multilingualism) puts the case for research into
multilingualism as it relates to sign language, assessment practices, and gender. Introducing
Multilingualism ends with a call for the normali ation of multilingualism (p. 283) throughan understanding that the world is linguistically diverse, multilingualism is ubiquitous, andpeople have complex repertoires of languages, dialects, and registers at their disposal.

Response to the Book, as a Learner
As mentioned in the introduction of this review, Introducing Multilingualism helped me toidentify and e amine language ideologies which have strongly in uenced me. Horner &Weber focus on five ideologies in particular, which tend to reduce people’s thoughts about
languages to basic stereotypes. These ideologies are widespread, complicating our discussions
about language. Below is my response, as an adult learner in the master’s program at Temple
niversity, to those five ideologies, including some of the lessons I learned by e amining thestereotypes I had before reading this book and doing the master’s program.

Hierarchy of Languages
An ideology about a Hierarchy of Languages puts language above dialect, and some named
languages above others. I was unaware that “it is not possible to distinguish between
language and dialect in purely linguistic terms” (p. 21). Horner & Weber dismantle thecommon argument that named languages aren’t mutually intelligible, while dialects are,revealing that named languages may be seen as socio-political constructs (p. 21). This
revelation about the false dichotomy between language and dialect, as well as the boundaries
around named languages, allowed me to see all languages as interrelated, borrowing andlending from each other.

Standard Language
The Standard Language ideology is “the belief that languages are internally homogenous,
bounded entities (p. 21). I was dissuaded from this way of thinking early in the firstsemester in the master’s program at Temple niversity, but this ideology is persuasive,
because it is reinforced everywhere through what Horner & Weber call the codification ritualsof dictionaries and textbooks and the pedagogical rituals in schools. There is some pushback
to this ideology, but I feel that almost everyone believes there’s a correct way to speakor write, even, or especially, among those people who are not correct. I understand thisideology deeply, because it was an une amined assumption of mine, before the master’s
program. Learning to move beyond acceptance of World Englishes and non-standard
dialects, and to celebrate all forms of this living language, was an important lesson fromthe TESOL program. The social approach taken by Horner & Weber shows language as adynamic process, constructed and used by real people in the real world. Throughout myeducation, from kindergarten to graduate school, I was required to use standardized language
for written assignments and subtly encouraged to do so in classroom discussions as well.
I now reali e that knowing and using so-called standard English allowed me to have thesocial privileges which many of us take for granted, as the seemingly natural benefits ofbeing well educated. That education itself, and access to it, is one of those social privileges.

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Brennan Conaway

After thinking about the Standard Language ideology, I had a renewed thankfulness for theopportunity to study at Temple, as well as a newfound humility that my acceptance to the
TESOL program was more contingent on my command of a standardized English than I had
previously realized.

One Nation-One Language
The One ation-One Language ideology is ust what it sounds like, but when it is dissected byHorner & Weber as the belief that “language can be equated with territory” (p. 22), it shows
itself to be absurd. It can also be dangerous, perhaps precisely because it is absurd. Horner &Weber observe: “Because it is so important to many people, they frequently develop ... a moregeneral fear of linguistic and cultural heterogeneity, which is perceived as a threat not only
to the national language but also to the national identity” (p. 23). Threats and general fear
are often e ploited by nationalist politicians, of course, but it is the origin of the so-called
national language as a construct of the nation-state that allows this fear to be generated
and exploited. The national language is designed to be a source of identity. As I was reading
Introducing Multilingualism, I was enrolled in a course on Intercultural Communication. A
Zoom discussion with my classmates who were teaching in Japanese high schools revealed
a powerful state-level linking of language and identity that I was previously unaware of. I
had assumed that students were going to nihongo/日本語 [Japanese language] class to study
Japanese, but that’s not the term that’s used. Instead, students are going to kokugo/国語
national language class, where they study so-called standard Japanese, classic Japanese
literature and also classic Chinese literature. The contents of these classes explore themultilingual and multinational history of the Japanese language, but naming them in thisway reinforces the One ation-One Language ideology.

Mother Tongue
This One ation-One Language ideology is closely related to the Mother Tongue ideology,
the belief that speakers have one and only one mother tongue’ (p. 23). As the father ofa child who speaks both better Japanese and better contemporary English than I do, thisideological prejudice never occurred to me, but I certainly did have the attitude that underlies
this ideology: that monolingualism is the norm. It is not. And with Horner & Weber’s
expansion of the concept of multilingualism to include dialects, registers, borrowed andpartial language, multilingualism is not only the norm, it is all there is. Monolingualism has
become, and maybe always was, a theoretical concept that does not exist in the real world.

PurismThe ideology of Purism is similar to the Standard Language ideology, but it seems more
focused on pronunciation and accent, as “the belief that only some speakers of the language
have an accent (in particular lower-class people or learners of the language as a foreign
language” (p. 25). Horner & Weber point out that a Purism ideology has “a powerfulevaluative component” (p. 25) which may involve fears of a language dying out or becoming
endangered. Racism, classism, cultural supremacism, and other ugly-isms all lurk beneaththe surface of language purist ideology. It was a good reminder for me that we all haveaccents, not ust in our second or third languages, but also in our first.
The cumulative e ect of my re ections on these five ideologies was humbling. I reali ed
that, previous to the master’s program and reading Introducing Multilingualism, my unvoiced
and unexamined assumptions were both arrogant and slightly ridiculous. American English
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A Learner’s Review of Horner & Weber’s (2018) Introducing Multilingualism: A Social Approachis not better than other varieties, standardized language is not more “correct,” nations are
not monolingual, children do not have a single mother tongue, and accent does not equal
mispronunciation. All these observations might seem obvious now, but as a learner reading
Horner & Weber’s te tbook, they led me to fresh revelations about my own beliefs andassumptions to do with certain language ideologies.

Conclusion
As a learner in the TESOL program, I used this book in a way that is probably di erent than
the way a teacher would use it for an introductory class on multilingualism, but I believe
the outcomes are roughly similar. When I finished reading, the easy assumptions and folk
beliefs about language that I had held at the beginning were gone, not replaced with pat
answers, but with more questions. The biggest of which was “How can I use this knowledge
in the classroom As I move from the role of learner into the role of teacher, I am inspiredby Horner & Weber’s discussion of the polynomic approach, which they see as a positive
response to linguistic variation” (p. 77). They continue: “There is no single linguistic normthat is considered to be the only correct’ one (p. ). The authors call polynomy an ideology,
but it is far di erent than the five ideologies that I discussed earlier. As I begin my practice, I
want to be the kind of teacher who fosters tolerance, celebrates language diversity, empowers
students and makes the classroom e perience di erent. The e amination of my language
ideologies, as a learner, was a big step towards making me better as a teacher.

Author Bio
Brennan Conaway: While writing this book review, Brennan Conaway completed the TESOL
master’s program at Temple niversity Japan and worked as a part-time instructor at Tokai
University and Tokyo University of the Arts, where he researched the uses for the visual artsin E L instruction. Currently, he continues at Tokai niversity’s Shonan Campus and also
continues to e plore art and E L. When he’s not in the classroom, Brennan is either in theocean, trying to surf, or in the studio, attempting to make some art.
コナウェイ・ブレナン。本書評を執筆する中，Temple University JapanでTESOL修士プログラムを修了し，東海大学と東京藝術大学で非常勤講師を務め，EFL指導における視覚芸術の活用を研究してきた。現在，東海大学湘南キャンパスで勤務し，芸術とEFLを探求し続ける。私生活では，海でサーフィンをするか，スタジオでアート作品を作成する。

Review ProcessThis paper was open-reviewed by Akiko Takagi and Tanya McCarthy. (Contributors have theoption of open or blind review.)

Reference
Horner, K., & Weber, J. (2018) Introducing multilingualism: A social approach (2nd ed.). Routledge.

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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://ldjournalsite.wordpress.com/

The Learner Development Journal Issue 5: Engaging with the Multilingual Turnfor Learner Development: Practices, Issues, Discourses, and Theorisations
Author: Alison Stewart
Title: Exploratory and Critical Reading About the Multilingual Turn with Japanese Students:
Review of Conteh & Meier (2014) and May (2014)
Date of publication online: 2021
Author contact: <stewart1411@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:
Stewart, A. (2021). Exploratory and critical reading about the multilingual turn withJapanese students: Review of Conteh & Meier (2014) and May (2014). 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. 159-169). 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.

PRACTICE-RELATED REVIEW

20 4

S

:
20 4

The Multilingual Turn in Languages Education: Opportunities and Challenges. Jean Conteh & Gabriela
Meier (Eds.). Multilingual Matters, 2014. xvi
12 pp. ISB 9 -109-222-2
The Multilingual Turn: Implications for SLA, TESOL and Bilingual Education. Stephen May (Ed.).
Routledge, 2014. x 2 0 pp. ISB 9 -0-415-5 4 2-1

Reviewed byS
2014, Gakushuin University, Japan <stewart1411@gmail.com>
2014

-

I

I

本稿は，多言語的転回に関する2冊の書籍の書評である。1冊は著名な応用言語学者らによる論文のアンソロジー（May,2014），もう1冊は異なる地理的・教育的コンテクストにおける多言語主義を探求する最近の研究を集めたものである（Conteh & Meier, 2014）。これ
らは日本の大学のセミナーコースで教科書として使用され，その点で本稿は実践に即しており，学生たちが書籍の中で出会ったアイデアについての考察を含んでいる。ムードルに毎週投稿された内容に基づき，2学期の間に学生たちの考えがどのように発展していったのかをナ
ラテ ィブとして描写する。最後に，日本の学術界や言語教育の現場における現在の理解に相反する言語と社会に関する概念を推進する
ことの難しさについて，私自身の考えを述べる。

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KeywordsS
多言語的転回, 学習者のٖ省, 言語イデオロギー, 第二言語習得㛢陪銨鯸⺸㰣榟⹛何陪銨䙬陃䎬䒳瑭◅陪銨▊䐂During the 2020 academic year, my Language and Education seminar students in the
Department of English Language and Cultures and I read two books with similar
titles, The Multilingual Turn: Implications for SLA, TESOL, and Bilingual Education, editedby Stephen May (2014c), and The Multilingual Turn in Languages Education: Opportunities andChallenges, edited by Jean Conteh and Gabriela Meier (2014). Multilingualism has been
relatively slow to catch on in Japan, where I work, and it is not something with which the
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Exploratory and Critical Reading About the Multilingual Turn with Japanese Students

undergraduate and graduate students at my university are generally familiar, or regard as
relevant in Japanese education. But insofar as Japan has changed and is changing to becomea more diverse society, I believe that there is much to be gained from discussing the latest
thinking, practices and research on multilingualism with my students, some of whom will
be future English teachers in this country. As Joseph Lo Bianco observes in the foreword toConteh and Meier s anthology:
We have often lived in social realities well before we can talk about them. Only slowly
do we start to identify and name aspects of the setting we have inhabited, but as we dothey take on the sharp edge of recognition that allows them to enter our consciousness (LoBianco, 2014, p. xv).
Over the past decade or so, I have followed the multilingual turn in my own reading andresearch (e.g., Block, 200 Kramsch, 2010 Li, 201 Makoni & Pennycook, 2012) and have
tried to introduce the critical perspective it implies to my students in the hope that it willin uence how they think about language and language education. In this practice-related
review, I provide an overview of the two anthologies and describe how my students and I usedthem in our class. I then go on to discuss how our thinking about multilingualism evolved
over the course of the year, especially in the context of language education, and to raise someof the questions and puzzles that emerged in the process. This discussion is illustrated byextracts from re ections that the students and I posted to a class Moodle each week.

Overview of the Books
Published in the same year (2014), the two books re ect and encapsulate a growing emphasis
by applied linguists on diversity in language and language users. Both volumes emerged
from discussions at international conferences (AAAL 2010 in the case of May, and BAAL
2011 in the case of Conteh and Meier). Whilst the two books share common perspectives on
multilingualism, May s book is made up of chapters by well-established theorists in the field,
whereas Conteh and Meier s anthology features research by newer researcher-practitioner
voices in the field as well. A further contrast between the two is that the May volume isa collection of articles that present an explicit critique of mainstream research in Second
Language Acquisition (SLA), while the Conteh and Meier chapters focus more sharply on
multilingualism and multilingual approaches in languages education.
hen I first read through the books, in preparation for the seminar, I noticed that thecontributors to the book edited by May (namely, in the order in which they appear in theanthology, Stephen May, Lourdes Ortega, David Block, Suresh Canagarajah, Bonny Norton,
Constant Leung, Ofelia Garcia and Nelson Flores, Wei Li, and Adrian Blackledge, Angela
Creese, and Jaspreet Kaur Takhi), as key thinkers in the field of applied linguistics, weresetting out their current positions on the nature of language in society. Whilst it wasinteresting to me to see how those positions, though broadly convergent, re ected di erent
emphases, I was also attracted by the opportunity it gave me to consider the authors
themselves and trace the development of their thinking over the past 20 years. There are, ofcourse, other proponents of multilingualism, but I wanted the students to get a sense of who
the key thinkers are in the field, and where their thinking regarding multilingualism hascome from.
The volume edited by Conteh and Meier is a more diverse collection consisting of threeparts: (a) societal perspectives on the multilingual turn in language(s) education, (b)perspectives on the multilingual turn in education, and (c) visions of the multilingual turnin pedagogy and practice. Consisting of new research, these articles, many of which areco-authored by new and established researchers, show multilingual practices in a variety of160

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Alison Stewart

contexts in education and around the world, in countries ranging from New Zealand to China
to the Alsace region of France. What appealed to me in this volume was precisely this variety,and I hoped that the students would be interested in the di erent contexts too, as well as in
the research methods and findings that are described.

Seminar Practice
The class for which I set the two volumes as required reading is an elective weekly seminarthat is open to both graduate and undergraduate students in their third or fourth year.
Although the course is listed in the university curriculum as a “seminar,” it is quite unlike
the zemi/ゼミナール seminar , the two-year course that includes individual supervision towarda graduation thesis, which is typical in Japanese universities, including Gakushuin University,where I teach. The seminar described here is usually taken by graduate students who may
be studying literature or linguistics under the supervision of my colleagues, and who havelittle or no knowledge of applied linguistics. Both undergraduate and graduate students
are re uired to take courses across the four areas of study that we o er: English-language
Cultures, Contemporary Studies, English Linguistics, and English Education. Graduate
students and zemi students of English Linguistics, as well as students of English Education
who have taken lectures in Second Language Acquisition, tend to be strongly invested in a
traditional view of language and society that is challenged by proponents of the multilingual
turn. This raises or rather, reveals ideological di erences within the department that pose
potential di culties for the students and for my own relationship with my colleagues, as I
shall go on to discuss.
In the first semester (though not the second), the four graduate students (Yuichi, Maki,
Shota, and Michihisa) and three undergraduates (Akemi, Hirota, and Miho), who belong to the
Department of English Language and Cultures in the Faculty of Letters, were joined by twooutside students, one from the Faculty of International Social Studies (Ryutaro), the other aChinese undergraduate student (Rin) who was auditing the course as an external student, and
who was planning to take the university s entrance examination the following spring. The
students names have all been anonymised for this article. Of the nine students in the firstsemester, Ryutaro and Rin were the most “multilingual” in terms of their life experience,since Ryutaro was a returnee student who had spent several years in the United States, andRin was aiming to pursue a degree in Japanese, her third language. None of the other students
had spent more than a few months in another country.
Because of the CO ID-19 pandemic, the class was conducted entirely on oom throughout
the year. The language of presentation was English, although the students were free to speakin Japanese, if they wished, in small group discussions. Each week, the students read one
chapter, or half a chapter, of the May volume as preparation for the class. In the class, I used
PowerPoint to talk through the main points and to pose questions about the concepts and how
they might relate to the students lives, to language learning, and to the Japanese context,
which the students discussed in Zoom breakout rooms and as a whole class.
In addition, in each semester three classes were led by the students themselves. Working
in groups of three or pairs, they presented a chapter from the Conteh and Meier book,which they selected from the table of contents. In the first semester, the students presented
Guangwei u and Sandra Lee McKay s Multilingualism as Portrayed in a Chinese English Textbook,
Ken Cruickshank s Exploring the -lingual Between Bi and Mono: Young People and Their Languages
in an Australian Context, and Andrea Young s Looking Through the Language Lens: Monolingual
Taint or Plurilingual Tint, on language policy in the Alsace region of France. The chapterspresented by the students in the second semester were Ofelia Garcia and aomi Kano s
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Exploratory and Critical Reading About the Multilingual Turn with Japanese Students

Translanguaging as Process and Pedagogy: Developing the English Writing of Japanese students in
the US, Jean Conteh, Shila Begum, and Sai a Riasat s Multilingual Pedagogy in Primary Settings:
From the Margins to the Mainstream, and Enrica Piccardo and Jo lle Aden s Plurilingualism
and Empathy: Beyond Instrumental Language Learning. For clarity, the schedule of the class is
displayed in Appendix A. The students used PowerPoint to present their chapters, and wereencouraged to follow my model of identifying issues or questions for discussion, which they
did in breakout rooms. An example of a student PowerPoint is provided here.
After the class, the students and I continued discussion on Moodle in posts of up to 200
words, summarizing what was interesting to them in the discussions and sometimes raising
new uestions. These Moodle posts accounted for 0 of their grade (with 20 allotted forthe group chapter presentation and the remaining 50 for an individual research proposal,
class syllabus, or lesson activity that aimed to explore or apply a multilingual approach). In the
narrative account that follows, I describe what I see as an important change in the re ections ofsome of the students, and a shift in my own thinking about reading these texts with them.

Interrogating the Monolingual Bias
We began quite slowly, taking three weeks to read the introduction (May, 2014b) and thefirst chapter by May (2014a). In this chapter, May sets out the basic premise behind themultilingual turn: That mainstream SLA and TESOL are underpinned by a awed conceptionof speaker identity (i.e., native or nonnative speakers) and a monolingual bias. As a firstuestion, I asked the students to consider multilingual in uences on the Japanese language,
both in terms of the plethora of loan words and its complex writing system, which highlights
foreign words with katakana. If languages, such as English and Japanese, are formed andchanged by contact between di erent peoples, how about language speakers
For only one of the students, the line of thinking taken by May in his chapter and by myquestions was already familiar. Shota had been reading literature on World Englishes and had
accepted the view that, since English is a global language, anyone who uses it in their life canbe thought of as a legitimate speaker:
When we Japanese think about the speakers of English, we tend to imagine the English speakers
in the countries, like the US and Britain. However, in other countries, like India, Kenya, Singapore,and Papua New Guinea, many people there also use English to communicate with someone, towatch the television, or to read books. (Shota)
Similarly, where May introduces Bourdieu s concepts of habitus, field, and practice,and Bernstein s classification and framing to explain why SLA has continued to resist themultilingual turn, Shota was uick to see how classification could be used in a similar
way to explain why Japanese education might also resist this kind of thinking. Standard
English is an ideological construct, Shota argued, but “…many Japanese people believe theexistence of it because the entrance examination plays a vital role in ‘evaluating rules’.” Despitee orts over the years to focus more on communicative competence, school English
continues to be oriented towards university entrance exams, which in turn continue toprioritise accuracy (or luck) over uency.
Yuichi and Ryutaro also were uick to grasp May s criti ue of SLA, and could see how
a multilingual approach might have the potential to shape a more open, international,
and engaged form of language education in Japan. Other students in the class were more
ambivalent, however, re ecting some negative social attitudes toward multilingualism
in education and society. Maki, for example, felt that a multilingual approach meant that
schools should expose children to di erent English accents, but she had reservations about

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promoting language education at an early age. Hirota, for his part, noted an antipathy toward
multilingualism in Japan:
Some Japanese have considered multilingualism to be improper. Yuriko Koike who is the Governorof Tokyo, for example, has used a lot of “katakana” words, which was accused by members of theTokyo Metropolitan Assembly. (Hirota)
Moreover, another student, Michihisa, appeared to find it di cult to accept criticism
of SLA, a subject he had recently entered the university to study after completing an
undergraduate degree at a di erent university, and this is re ected in his continued
attachment to SLA concepts:
I’m interested to language identity and language acquisition. How do we study to get closer tonative speakers? But this question is a difficult task. Second Language Acquisition is affectedby Krashen’s theory. And, there are some problems in English education. English learners haveinterlanguage and fossilization. I need to adopt effective methods to teach. (Michihisa)
I wondered how Michihisa s thinking, in particular, would be a ected by reading the next
chapter by Lourdes Ortega. Of all the contributors to this volume, Ortega is the one who has
maintained her a liation to the field of SLA. She admits the legitimacy of the charges laidagainst SLA of monolingual bias with its unrealistic and inequitable ideal of “native speaker”
as the benchmark of linguistic achievement. Seeking to move beyond the impasse created bysuch key concepts, she advocates an approach that is informed by sage-Based Linguistics,
which prioritizes the role of experience in knowledge acquisition.
e spent two weeks reading and discussing Ortega s chapter. Michihisa s first Moodle poston this topic reveals that he was confused:
I don’t have ideas instead of SLA class in this situation. Should they study other language or othersubject? I don’t know how to do. When I’ll be teacher, I would find the answers. Experiences are
so important. (Michihisa)
Michihisa was not willing to reject staple SLA concepts, such as native speaker, interlanguage
and fossilization, that he had studied as an undergraduate and around which he had
articulated research uestions that he wanted to pursue in his master s degree. This was an
uncomfortable dilemma for me too. Do I have the right to impose views on him that might
con ict with those he has invested in and that might be supported by his own supervisor
As time went by, I noticed that the students were gradually taking on board the concepts
and the vocabulary of the two books in their Moodle posts. They were also becoming more
confident in their own stances and arguments. At the end of the first semester, we readDavid Block s chapter which argues for an expanded perspective on language. More than ust
a repertoire of all the linguistic resources we have accrued through our life experience, we
communicate and understand meaning multimodally (through image, gaze, posture and soon). Language is not just a cognitive capacity, it is also “embodied,” a phenomenon that isparticularly fascinating in the case of multilinguals. The discussion of multimodality in theclass was the liveliest yet. Yuichi contended that English speakers (he didn t specify whichones) gesture more with their hands than Japanese do. I disagreed, as it struck me as astereotype, but maybe he has a point. This could be a topic for future exploration.

Multilingualism in Different Contexts
As I have mentioned, in addition to reading and discussing the chapters in May, the students
worked in groups of three or in pairs on chapters they selected from Conteh and Meier.
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Exploratory and Critical Reading About the Multilingual Turn with Japanese Students

The first group (Maki, Rin, and irota) presented u and McKay s analysis of a Chineseelementary school textbook. For Rin, who up until that point had been rather reticent andan infrequent contributor to the Moodle, this was an opportunity to come out of her shell.
The textbook was one that she had used in her home city of Chongqing and she was able toshow the class her own annotated copy. Maki, too, was able to connect with this chapter, as
she had written her undergraduate thesis on junior high school textbooks in Japan. The main
findings of the chapter, based on uantitative and ualitative analysis of the textbook, werethat pedagogical practices, such as pair and group work, and cultural content tended to be
Anglo-American. The students commented in their discussion that Japanese textbooks re ect
comparatively more diversity. Shota remembers of his junior high school textbook,[…] it was composed of a lot of topics with full of diversity in the cultural differences around theworld. But I don’t think it’s either good or bad, since I think English education on early stage as
junior-high, should be simplified enough for the students to understand. (Shota)
I wonder what to make of this comment: Does it imply a criticism of the promotionof multilingualism at the early stages of English education Does Shota believe that thesimplification of language re uired at this level means that cultural topics cannot be dealt
with in any depth or accuracy Given his critical outlook on Japan s adherence to the outdated“native speaker” ideal in English education in previous posts, I was surprised that he hadcome to the defence of Japanese textbooks in this way.
Cruickshank s chapter (Exploring the -Lingual Between Bi and Mono: Young People and Their
Languages in an Australian Context) on the languages of young people in Australia presents
case studies of Arabic, Cook Island, and Chinese community language schools. The findings
support a critical view of language policy in New South Wales, since terms such as “heritage”
and “background” do not account for the complex and dynamic identities of the students who
attend these schools. Miho, who was one of the presenters of this chapter, found it hard toenvisage the context that was described in the chapter:I have never been to Australia, therefore I am not sure what difficulties peoples have and how
they communicate and deal with those problems or troubles caused by some differences. But,
through the research I did this time, people in each race use English with taking care of their first
tongues. Japan is not the country like Australia, so I think visiting Australia is the most effective
way to understand how they live together. (Miho)
I feel that Cruickshank s main point that the heritage schools are far more diverse thanmight be assumed is missed by Miho, since she had been unaware that such schools existed
in the first place. In our class discussion, I asked the students if they knew of any community
schools in Tokyo, but they had no idea whether there were any or not. In retrospect, I could
have asked them to find this out a missed opportunity for mutual learning.
The final presentation in the first semester was of the chapter by Andrea Young (Looking
Through the Language Lens: Monolingual taint or plurilingual tint?) on language education in
the Alsace region of France, an area that used to belong to Germany and where many of the
inhabitants are German speakers. Interviews with 46 head teachers shed light on their beliefs
about bilingualism and raise concerns and questions over language education and citizenshipin France. For the students in my class, this chapter provided an opportunity to consider
monolingual ideology in Japan, something that half the members of the class appeared to takefor granted and accept as natural.

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Critiquing Multilingualism
In the second semester, Ryutaro and Rin did not rejoin the class, and I initially wondered
whether their absence would have an adverse e ect on the class, narrowing the range ofexperience and perspective in the group. I needn t have worried. Certainly, the group dynamicchanged, but the class discussion and Moodle posts revealed that the remaining students were
becoming more confident in making claims and arguing for their positions.
e started the semester with Canagara ah s chapter (Theorizing a Competence forTranslingual Practice at the Contact Zone) which re-examines the notion of competence inthe translingual contact one. In their first post this semester, I asked the students tocomment on a table of conceptual “binaries” drawn up by Canagarajah, one of which was thedichotomy in SLA of target language/interlanguage. I was particularly interested in Michihisa s
post. He starts by acknowledging that “students should notice multilingual aspects of English,
which in contrast to SLA,” since “most of English speakers use it as second language or foreign
language now.” But at the same time, the notion of “interlanguage” still has a role to play:
It is a unique language that only individual learners have. I think it is important. In my case I
have it. (Michihisa)
It could be argued that Michihisa fails to grasp the shared premise in the two books
that language is communication, something that people do, rather than a static body ofknowledge, something that people have. But this is Michihisa s felt reality. A similar
insistence on the value of the concept of interlanguage is apparent also in Miho s post:
I would like to claim interlanguage should be seen more seriously in the world which co-existenceis getting important. (Miho)or Miho, co-existence re uires tolerance and respect towards people who may be at
di erent stages of language development. Yuichi s post is still more insistent on the merit of“interlanguage”:
Interlanguage is a really good word. We can allow students to make some mistakes and correct
properly. (Yuichi)
Contrary to the aims of the multilingual theorists we were reading, none of these students
saw interlanguage in a negative light in fact, uite the opposite. Michihisa viewed it interms of his personal identity, Miho in terms of harmony in diverse societies, and Yuichi asa pedagogical concept. Thus, in di erent ways, they argued for the retention of a conceptthat the multilingual theorists in the two books we have used would like us to reject. For mypart, I have gone along with the polemical stance taken by the authors of the two books, notonly in accepting a multilingual turn, but also in rejecting SLA. The students, however, haveresisted this either/or type of thinking. Judging from their posts, a multilingual turn need notentail throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
As the second semester progressed, I found that the students were responding to thechapters in ways that were critical of the Japanese education system, and pessimistic about
its capacity to change. or example, responding to Bonny orton s chapter, Identity, Literacy,
and the Multilingual Classroom, which features four studies of multilingual literacy developmentof students in South Africa, Canada, Pakistan and Canada, Hirota points out that the goal of
digital literacy in Japanese schools is not “to join the world” but rather to protect children fromcybercrime.
Maki, too, was pessimistic about the potential for learning through digital practices:“In Japanese junior high schools and high school, time is limited so it may be difficult to introduce
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Exploratory and Critical Reading About the Multilingual Turn with Japanese Students

technology.” I wonder why she sees technology as something separate from other activities inschool, rather than something that is integral to learning and development
ow a graduate
student, Maki had taken the teaching licence course as an undergraduate and intends to work
as a schoolteacher when she completes her master s degree. I hope that she takes inspirationfrom orton s examples, but I suspect she may find herself constrained by the lack oftechnology and in-service training that she noticed when she was at school, and later as ateacher trainee during her practicum.

Looking BackAt the end of the academic year, as I look back over the Moodle posts and re ect on thediscussions that we had in the class, I see that there was a qualitative shift in the nature of
the posts between the first and second semesters. rom some confusion and uncertainty, thestudents, particularly Michihisa, Miho, and Yuichi, became more assured not only in talking about
multilingual concepts, but also in arguing for SLA concepts, which they saw as still relevant toJapanese society and education. I wonder how much the make-up of the class contributed to thisshift. The participation in the first semester of Ryutaro and Rin, neither of whom had any priorexperience of Applied Linguistics or English Education, helped to bring more diverse perspectives
and opinions into the mix. But did their absence in the second semester make it easier for theremaining students to share and support their beliefs about SLA
I can t answer that uestion. I can say that all the students commented in their final
posts that they found it interesting to find out about the multilingual turn and relished theopportunity to talk about language and language learning in Japan s changing society. Only
one of the students, Shota, came to the class with prior knowledge of critical linguistics
and his understanding of language ideologies was enormously helpful in creating a shareddiscourse or repertoire for talking about multilingualism and SLA. I am especially grateful
to him for his contribution. But I appreciate the persistence and openness to new ideas of
all the students. In the final week, Yuichi and Shota presented Piccardo and Aden s chapter,
Plurilingualism and Empathy: Beyond Instrumental Language Learning. The authors write:
One cannot simply be plural and find a way between cultures and languages without
any support or sca olding. Translanguaging and moving back and forth between cultures is
a process acquired through the acceptance of others, the capacity to see oneself as another,and it requires the ability to change points of view about situation, the others and oneself.
Changing a point of view leads to empathy, as we must put ourselves in someone else s place.
(Piccardo & Aden, 2014, pp. 246 24 )In reading the volumes by May and by Conteh and Meier with my students, I have tried to
put myself in their place, to understand their struggles with the concept of multilingualism,
and to accept that there are considerable pressures on them to preserve the basic assumptions
that underpin traditional SLA and linguistics. These are ideological pressures thecommonsense assumption that Japan is a homogeneous society, for example, but thestudents also face institutional and personal pressures from my colleagues who specialisein linguistics, or from the schools where many of them will go to work as teachers after
graduation.
The e ect of ideologies is to erase certain identities so that we don t think about certain
people or groups, or perhaps don t even see them at all (Block, 200 ). I hope that, throughthe experience of reading and reviewing the two books on multilingualism together, thestudents have started to look at Japan s society in a di erent way, and that they have started
to appreciate that the ideas and examples we have examined are not solely “out there,” butare relevant here in Japan too.

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Author Bio
Alison Stewart is professor at Gakushuin University in Tokyo, where she leads seminars on
language education and multilingualism for undergraduate and graduate students. Her main
research interests are learner autonomy and learner and teacher identity, particularly as they
pertain to social justice issues in the increasingly diverse society of Japan.
スチュワート・アリソン。学習院大学（東京）の教授として，学部生や大学院生を対象に言語教育と多言語主義に関するセミナーを担当。主な研究テーマは，学習者オートノミー，学習者と教師のアイデンティティ，特に多様化する日本社会における社会的正義の問題との関連性を取り上げている。

Review ProcessThis paper was open-reviewed by Eli abeth Bekes, Colin Rundle, and Dominic Edsall.
(Contributors have the option of open or blind review.)

References
Blackledge, A., Creese, A., & Takhi, J. K. (2013) Beyond multilingualism: Heteroglossia inpractice. In S. May (Ed.), The multilingual turn: Implications for SLA, TESOL and bilingual
education (pp. 191–215). Routledge.
Block, D. (2015). Social class in applied linguistics. Routledge.
Block, D. (2014). Moving beyond “lingualism”: Multilingual embodiment and multimodality
in SLA. In S. May (Ed.), The multilingual turn: Implications for SLA, TESOL and bilingual
education (pp. 54–77). Routledge.
Block, D. (200 ). Multilingual identities in a global city: London stories. Palgrave Macmillan.
Canagarajah, S. (2013). Theorizing a competence for translingual practice at the contact zone.
In S. May (Ed.), The multilingual turn: Implications for SLA, TESOL and bilingual education (pp.
-102). Routledge.
Conteh, J., Begum, S., & Riasat, S. (2014). Multilingual pedagogy in primary settings: Fromthemargins to the mainstream. In J. Conteh & G. Meier (Eds.), The multilingual turn inlanguages education: Opportunities and challenges (pp. 211–33). Multilingual Matters.
Cruickshank, K. (2014). Exploring the -lingual between bi and mono: Young people and theirlanguages in an Australian context. In J. Conteh & G. Meier (Eds.), The multilingual turnin languages education: Opportunities and challenges (pp. 41 6 ). Multilingual Matters.
García, O., & Flores, N. (2013). Multilingualism and common core state standards in the
United States. In S. May (Ed.), The multilingual turn: Implications for SLA, TESOL and bilingual
education (pp. 14 66). Routledge.
García, O., & Kano, N. (2014). Translanguaging as process and pedagogy: Developing
the English writing of Japanese students in the US. In J. Conteh & G. Meier (Eds.),
The multilingual turn in languages education: Opportunities and challenges (pp. 25).
Multilingual Matters.
Hu, G., & McKay, S. (2014). Multilingualism as portrayed in a Chinese English textbook. In
J. Conteh & G. Meier (Eds.),The multilingual turn in languages education: Opportunities andchallenges (pp. 64). Multilingual Matters.
Kramsch, C. (2010). The multilingual subject. Oxford University Press.
Leung, C. (2014). Communication and participatory involvement in linguistically diverse
classrooms. In S. May (Ed.), The multilingual turn: Implications for SLA, TESOL and bilingual
education (pp. 12 146). Routledge.
Li, . (201 ). Translanguaging as a practical theory of language. Applied Linguistics, 39(1),9–30.
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Exploratory and Critical Reading About the Multilingual Turn with Japanese StudentsLi,. (201 ). ho s teaching whom Co-learning in multilingual classrooms. In S. May(Ed.), The multilingual turn: Implications for SLA, TESOL and bilingual education (pp. 16 190).
Routledge.
Lo Bianco, J. (2014). Foreword. In J. Conteh & G. Meier (Eds.), The multilingual turn in languages
education: Opportunities and challenges (pp. xv–xvi). Multilingual Matters.
Makoni, S., & Pennycook, A. (Eds.). (2007). Disinventing and (re)constituting languages.
Multilingual Matters.
May, S. (2014a). Disciplinary divides, knowledge construction, and the multilingual turn. In S.
May (Ed.), The multilingual turn: Implications for SLA, TESOL and bilingual education (pp. 7–31).
Routledge.
May, S. (2014b). Introducing the “multilingual turn.” In S. May (Ed.), The multilingual turn:Implications for SLA, TESOL and bilingual education (pp. 1 6). Routledge.
May, S. (Ed.) (2014c). The multilingual turn: Implications for SLA, TESOL and Bilingual education.
Routledge.
Norton, B. (2013). Identity, literacy and the multilingual classroom. In S. May (Ed.), The
multilingual turn: Implications for SLA, TESOL and bilingual education (pp. 103–122). Routledge.
Ortega, L. (2014). Ways forward for a bi/multilingual turn in SLA. In S. May (Ed.), The
multilingual turn: Implications for SLA, TESOL, and bilingual education (pp. 32–53). Routledge.
Piccardo, E., & Aden, J. (2014). Plurilingualism and empathy: Beyond instrumental Language
learning. In J. Conteh & G. Meier (Eds.), The multilingual turn in languages education:
Opportunities and challenges (pp. 234–257). Multilingual Matters.
Young, A. (2014). Looking through the language lens: Monolingual taint or plurilingual tint
In J. Conteh & G. Meier (Eds.), The multilingual turn in languages education: Opportunities andchallenges (pp. 9 109). Multilingual Matters.

Appendix A
Language & Education Course Schedule
SpringSemesterClass content

Class leader(s)5/12Introduction: Introducing the Multilingual Turn (May)

Alison

5/19

hat s new about Multilingualism (May)

Alison

5/26

Disciplinary Fields (May)

Alison6/2

LEAP: A multilingual resource in NZ (May)

Alison

6/9

Multilingualism in a Chinese Textbook (Hu & McKay)

Maki, Hirota, Rin

6/16

Limitations of SLA (Ortega)

Alison6/2

sage-Based Linguistics (Ortega)

Alison6/ 0

Between bi- and mono-linguals: Australian context(Cruickshank)

Michihisa, Miho,
Akemi

7/7

Moving beyond “lingualism”: embodiment in SLA (Block)

Alison

7/14

Moving beyond “lingualism”: multimodality in SLA (Block)

Alison

7/21

Looking through the language lens in Alsace (Young)

Ryutaro, Yuichi,
Shota

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Fall
SemesterClass content

Class leader(s)9/15Theorising a competence for translingual practice in thecontact zone (Canagarajah)

Alison9/22

Performative competence (Canagarajah)

Alison9/29

Identity, Literacy, and the Multilingual Classroom (Norton)

Alison

10/6

Multilingual education in Primary Settings (Conteh et al)

Hirota, Maki

10/13

(Leung) Communication and participatory involvement inlinguistically diverse classrooms (Leung)

Alison

10/20

Communicative competence and participatory involvement(Leung)

Alison

11/10

Translanguaging pedagogy in the US (Garcia & Kono)

Miho, Akemi

11/17

Multilingualism and common core standards in the UK(Garcia & Flores)

Alison11/24

ho s teaching whom Co-Learning in Multilingual
Classrooms (Wei Li)

Alison

12/1

Co-Learning in Multilingual Classrooms ( ei Li)

Alison12/

Beyond multilingualism: Heteroglossia (Blackledge, Creese& Takhi)

Alison

12/15

Pluralism and empathy (Piccardo & Aden)

Yuichi, Shota

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

ISSN: 2433-5401
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The Learner Development Journal Issue 5: Engaging with the Multilingual Turnfor Learner Development: Practices, Issues, Discourses, and Theorisations
Authors: Andy Barfield, Oana Cusen, Yuri Imamura, & Riitta Kelly
Title: A Practitioners’ Collaborative Review of Researching Multilingualism: Critical and Ethnographic Perspectives (Martin-Jones & Martin, 2017)
Date of publication online: 2021
Author contact: <abarfield001f@g.chuo-u.ac.jp>, <oana@kwansei.ac.jp>,<imamura.b152rq@gmail.com>, <riitta.m.kelly@jyu.fi>

Published by the Japan Association for Language Teaching
Learner Development Special Interest Group, Tokyo
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The APA citation reference for this paper is:
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review of Researching Multilingualism: Critical and Ethnographic Perspectives (Martin-Jones& Martin, 2017). 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. 170-180). Tokyo: The Japan Association
for Language Teaching (JALT) Learner Development Special Interest Group.

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Martin (Eds.). Routledge, 2017. iv 28 pp. ISB
780 157 8 21

Reviewed by, Chuo University, Japan <abarfield001f@g.chuo-u.ac.jp>, Kwansei Gakuin University, Japan <oana@kwansei.ac.jp>
I, Kanda University of International Studies, Japan<imamura.b152rq@gmail.com>, University of Jyväskylä, The Centre for Multilingual Academic
Communication, Finland <riitta.m.kelly@jyu.fi>
I-

Lastly, we take up the benefits of team ethnography for teacher-researchers in investigating multilingual issues together. We
conclude by briefly considering the relevance of this research anthology to the multilingual turn for learner development.
この共同執筆による書評では，本書全体を概観した後，多言語，言語教師，実践研究者としての私たちの生きた経験から，特に興味深い4つの章に焦点を当てる。はじめに，トランスナショナルな人々が多言語・多文化の中で生活する上で直面する苦悩を理解する方法として，ナラティブ分析の価値を探る。次に，個人の言語レパートリーや生きた言語体験を探るために，ライフヒスト
リー調査と併用させたビジュアル∕マルチモーダルなアプローチに注目する。続いて，言語イデオロギー間の相互関係と，異なる制度上の言語景観における言語の使用方法を調査するためのアイデアを検討する。最後に，教師兼研究者が共に多言語問題を調査する際のチームエスノグラフィーの利点を取り上げる。結論として，この研究アンソロジーと学習者ディベロップメントにおける多言語的転回との関連性を考察する。

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Keywords
生きた多言語経験，
トランスナショナルな生活，言語レパートリー，制度的な言語的景観，チームエスノグラフィーReviewing this particular volume on multilingualism research, with its focus on“addressing contemporary diversities, the globalized communicative order and theparticular social and cultural conditions of our times” (p. i), has proved to beparticularly illuminating for us not only as social participants and practitioner-researchers,
but also as editors of Issue 5 of The Learner Development Journal. In this review, in addition
to an overview of the whole book, each of the four authors focuses on one particular chapterthat they find of personal and professional interest to their lived e periences as multilinguals,
teachers, or researchers. Ahead of our reviews of those four chapters, we give a brief synopsis
of the whole book. e conclude by brie y considering the relevance of this anthology to themultilingual turn in learner development.

Overview of the Book
In their introductory chapter to Researching Multilingualism: Critical and Ethnographic Perspectives,
Marilyn Martin-Jones and Deirdre Martin trace the development of research in this field.
They first focus on the foundational work of ymes and Gumper into language in social
life from the 1 0s, and then summarise new work in the 1 80s and later that was driven
by poststructuralist and critical theory perspectives. The editors also highlight the impact
on multilingualism of far-reaching changes in the global political economy, particularly thedevelopment of new technologies and the increase in transnational population ows acrossthe world from the 1990s onwards. These have created new diversities in social life andcommunication, around which Martin-Jones and Martin present the themes in this volume in
the final part of the introduction:
Researching trajectories, multilingual repertoires and identities (Chapters 2–5)
Researching discourses, policies and practices on di erent scales (Chapters

8)

Researching multilingual communication and multisemioticity online (Chapters 9–11)
Multilingualism in research practice: voices, identities and research re e ivity (Chapters
12–15)
Ethnographic monitoring and critical collaborative analysis for social change (Chapters
1 17).
e continue with a brief descriptive synopsis of the whole book apart from the four specificchapters (Chapters 2, , 8, and 1 ) that we have chosen to e plore in greater detail later in thisreview.
The theme of Part 1 is “Researching Trajectories, Multilingual Repertoires and Identities.”
In Chapter 4, The Risks and Gains of a Single Case Study, Kamran Khan looks at research design
questions around working with a single individual over 11 months in this case, , from
Yemen as he applied for citi enship in the K. In Chapter 5, Researching Student Mobility in
Multilingual Switzerland, Martina immermann discusses the benefits of using a multi-sited
approach in understanding students’ changing language practices and ideologies as they
move from one linguistic region to another in Switzerland to pursue their higher education.
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Part 2 centres on Researching Discourses, Policies and Practices on Di erent Scales.
In Chapter , Nexus Analysis as Scalar Ethnography for Educational Linguistics, Francis Hultexamines how researchers can explore the intersections between local practices andactions and “ideas circulating in society on wider scales” (p. 97). He argues that nexus
analysis can enable researchers to map discourses and examine how they are reproduced
and layered in single moments of social action across di erent scales (for e ample, micro,
meso, macro). In Chapter 7, Critical Ethnography of Language Policy: A Semi-confessional Tale,David Cassel Johnson presents a re e ive account of the development of language planning,
policy, and participation in two local school districts in the USA. To overcome discoursesof marginalisation, Johnson advocates collaboration between multiple actors (teachers,
administrators, students, parents, and university researchers) through “Educational Language
Policy Engagement and Action Research” (ELPEAR).
Part 3 focuses on “Researching Multilingual Communication and Multisemioticity Online.”
In Chapter 9, Methodologies for Researching Multilingual Online Texts and Practices, David Barton
and Carmen Lee discuss mixed research methods in three multilingualism online studies.
These studies looked at young ong Kongers’ instant messaging practices and te ts, themultilingual writing of active lickr users, and the online and o ine linguistic practicesof university students in ong Kong (including their techno-linguistic biographies ),respectively. In Chapter 10, Investigating Multilingualism and Multisemioticity as Communicative
Resources in Social Media, Sirpa Lepp nen and Samu Kytol identify resemioti ation and“entextualisation” as key processes for understanding how discourse is multiplied andrecirculated in digital social media “across boundaries of nations, ethnicities, languages,
genres, and formats (p. 158). They focus on two projects: the multilingual joking on Twitterof three professional Finnish footballers in one study, and, in the other, the multimodal
literacy practices of online fans who re-work (shred ) the lyrics and subtitles of famousrock and pop music videos, then share their parody videos in translocal fan communities. In
Chapter 11, Virtual Ethnographic Approaches to Researching Multilingualism Online, Aoife Lenthan
and Helen Kelly Holmes explore ways of observing over time multilingual features in thewebsites of transnational corporations. They also report on research into the development ofa mobile translation app for Irish on Facebook, where online participation and observation,
handwritten fieldwork diary entries, and screenshots all formed part of the virtualethnography.
Multilingualism in Research Practice: oices, Identities and Research Re e ivity is
the theme of Part 4. In Chapter 12, Reflexive Ethnographic Research Practice in Multilingual
Contexts, Marilyn Martin-Jones, Jane Andrews, and Deirdre Martin focus on re e ive
quality in research practices. Among other issues, they cover working with interpreters,developing re e ive practices, building linguistic and cultural diversity in research teams,
and creating collaborative field narratives. In Chapter 1 , Researching Children’s Literacy
Practices and Identities in Faith Settings: Multimodal Text-making and Talk About Text as Resources
for Knowledge-building, Vally Lytra, Eve Gregory, and Arani Ilankuberan discuss a multilingualand multicultural team’s research into how children become literate through faith activities
in di erent religious communities in London. inally, in Chapter 15, Multilingual Dynamics inthe Research Process: Transcribing and Interpreting International Data), Sabina Vakser discusses
the complexities of deciding what and how to transcribe from multilingual interviews witha couple in Australia who, through their complex transmigratory histories, have Russian,English, German, and Yiddish in their languaged lives.
The two chapters in Part 5 address “Ethnographic Monitoring and Critical Collaborative
Analysis for Social Change. In Chapter 1 , Countering Unequal Multilingualism throughEthnographic Monitoring, Haley De Korne and Nancy Hornberger take up the issue of172

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Andy Barfield, Oana Cusen, Yuri Imamura, & Riitta Kelly“ethnographic monitoring” (originally proposed by Dell Hymes) as a paradigm for linking
multilingualism research with working for social justice. From their work with indigenous
communities in Mexico, Scandinavia, South Africa, and the Philippines, De Korne andHornberger share examples of researchers forming alliances with local stakeholders
to address linguistic inequalities. In the final chapter of the whole volume, Chapter 17,
Ethnographic Monitoring and the Study of Complexity, Jef Van der Aa and Jan Blommaert argue
that the ongoing diversification of diversity (p. 25 ) across society presents fundamental
challenges for researchers in understanding society’s rapid and permanent change, its
instability, unpredictability and comple ity (p. 2 0). They put forward the case for socialaction oriented ethnographic research between academic researchers and social actors on along-term qualitative basis. Illustrating their argument with a project at a family care centre
in Antwerp, Belgium, Van der Aa and Blommaert emphasise that this kind of research entails
positioning social actor participants as “organic intellectuals” who, in alliance with academic
researchers, can produce new theoretical understandings, or “counterhegemonic knowledges
aimed at achieving lasting social change (p. 2 8). In other words, linguistic ethnography
has an emancipatory responsibility: This, they conclude, is central to social-action oriented
multilingualism research.

Personal Insights with Chapters 2, 3, 8, and 13
As mentioned earlier, certain chapters spoke directly to different areas of our lives. Oana
Cusen reviews Chapter 2, Narrative Analysis in Migrant and Transnational Contexts, by Mike
Baynham and Anna de Fina, as she found it to resonate with her own experiences as atransnational living in a multilingual environment in Japan. Riitta Kelly looks at Chapter 3,
Biographical Approaches to Research in Multilingual Settings: Exploring Linguistic Repertoires, by
Brigitta Busch, and makes connections to her own language portrait research with Japaneseexchange students and with university students in Finland who use Finnish Sign Languageas their first language. e t, Andy Barfield relates Chapter 8, Investigating Visual Practices
in Educational Settings: Schoolscapes, Language Ideologies and Organizational Cultures, by Petteri
Laihonen and Tamas Peter S abo, to fieldwork with students into multilingual scapes inTokyo during the CO ID-1 pandemic. In the final review, Yuri Imamura highlights how
Chapter 13, Reflexivity in Team Ethnography: Using Researcher Vignettes, by Angela Creese, Jaspreet
Kaur Takhi, and Adrian Blackledge can help researchers and educators e plore different
stories in their lives and better support their students in the multilingual turn for learnerdevelopment.

Oana Cusen - Chapter 2 Narrative Analysis in Migrant and Transnational Contexts
Chapter 2 in this volume by Mike Baynham and Anna de Fina, tracks the evolution of
narrative analysis as a field of research. The authors point out that it started as a means
to evaluate migrants’ linguistic abilities through their narrative production and evolved
into a more practice-oriented and ethnographic approach focused on storytelling as ameaning-making practice (p. 2). The authors begin by showing how a narrative turnin social sciences has paved the way for different types of narratives (including, but notlimited to, biographical ones) to be the focus of narrative analysis in transnational andmigratory contexts. The main part of this chapter focuses on two research areas: naturally
occurring narratives in different institutional and other everyday conte ts, and narratives
as produced during research interviews. The authors draw on a wealth of studies involving
multilingual, as well as transnational individuals and communities, to exemplify instances ofco-constructed narratives as part of research interviews, narratives as identity work, andnarratives as the site for power struggles.
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Aside from the thought-provoking issues brought up in Chapter 2 of Researching
Multilingualism in terms of research approaches to narrative analysis, this chapter also strucka deeply personal cord with me. I very much identified with the narratives of transnationals
that Baynham and de Fina use throughout the chapter to illustrate the shift in narrative
analysis, as I am an immigrant myself. I was born and I grew up in Romania, but I moved
to Japan at the age of 19, to complete graduate studies at Japanese universities, and I have
lived in Japan ever since. During this time, the transnational experience has shaped myidentity in numerous ways, all of them intertwined with the evolution of my multilingual
repertoire. This is the case with some of the transnationals reported on in Chapter 2, such as
the Moroccan immigrants in the K in Baynham’s (200 ) study, or the immigrants from El
Salvador to the S in Carran a’s (1 8) study.
Chapter 2 also gives examples of narratives as the places for identity work done bytransnationals. One such e ample is that of Ryoko, a ight attendant who refused to bepositioned as a representative of Japan by a rude customer (Piller & Takahashi, 2013). In my
own case, among the first instances of identity work happening after I relocated to Japan,
was the realization that I was in fact a multilingual, something that I had never thought
about myself when I lived in Romania, even though I used Romanian and English on a daily
basis, was studying and using Japanese and to a somewhat lesser extent French, and had alsoacquired Italian and some Spanish from watching TV. However, once I arrived in Japan andbecame part of the community of international students, my identity shifted alongside witha shift in my L1 from Romanian to English (Kirkpatrick, 2007), which became the language
I used (and continue to use) most often on a daily basis. I was also using Japanese much
more often as I adapted to life in Japanese society, and around the same time, I started using
Spanish with my Colombian boyfriend (now husband).
The issues of power struggles that transnationals have to face as they are seen as
representatives of one culture living in another also resonated with me personally. I still
vividly remember how, as my Japanese ability improved during my undergraduate years
in a Japanese university, I started to be perceived as a proficient speaker by the university
administrative sta and my professors. Thus, I moved beyond the stage e perienced by many
foreigners in Japan the nihongo wa jouzu desu ne your Japanese is so good stage when
Japanese people compliment the Japanese spoken by foreigners based on the ability to form
just a few rudimentary sentences. owever, as my Japanese ability significantly improved,
Japanese people I was interacting with began expecting my Japanese social pragmatics
abilities to be on a par, even though these abilities require more time to develop. Thus I was
considered too blunt and even rude during certain interactions in Japanese. One such example
would be using the form … shite kudasai please do when asking o ce sta to help me withsomething. However, this form, although polite, it is more often used for requests fromsuperiors, and so I should have used a form more appropriate to my status as a student, like …
shite itadakemasuka, which is the approximate equivalent of [Would you be so kind as to do …
for me .
A phrase in Chapter 2 of Researching Multilingualism that made a strong impression onme was: narratives as an essential site for the articulation of subordinate subjects’ own
voices (p. 2). I firmly believe in the need to bring transnational migrants’ own voices tothe forefront, not only for the wealth of information and knowledge this could bring, but also
as a means of making those migrants feel seen and validated. This is particularly importantin Japan, where, despite some e orts to integrate immigrants (such as Korean, Chinese, orBrazilian communities) into society, much remains to be done, as the general public has
almost no knowledge about the day to day struggles faced by such communities in Japan.

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Riitta Kelly - Chapter 3 Biographical Approaches to Research in Multilingual
Settings: Exploring Linguistic Repertoires
In Chapter 3, Brigitta Busch focuses on the exploration of linguistic repertoires, looking at
the issue from various methodological points of view. In her view, “Biographical approaches
based on the notions of lived experience of language and the linguistic repertoire seemparticularly productive for multilingualism research” (p. 53). Busch highlights the use ofmultimodal methods which provide a creative way of gathering biographical information.
Language portraits have become quite a popular way of gathering data and have beenused for example in the form of participants either drawing themselves or mapping theirlanguages and ways of speaking using a silhouette of a body to draw this information in.
Busch emphasises the importance of the picture in relation to what participants say about
their linguistic repertoires. Elements of the picture directly “structure the interpretation andreconstruction of the narrative in a way that di ers from responses to interview questionsorganised around a participant’s language biography (p. 5 ). She also draws attention to
the di erences in the creation of the meaning: arrations are linear structures, but the visualmode can move one’s vision toward the whole and towards the connections between theparts” (p. 55).
I got interested in language portraits whilst teaching English to Finnish university students,
who use innish Sign Language ( inSL) as their first language (Kelly, 200 ). Our university
is the only one in inland to o er innish Sign Language as a major subject. As their English
teacher, I was hoping to learn more about how they see themselves as learners of English,
and also hoped that using language portraits as a research method would be relevant to themas users of a visual language. I asked them to draw language portraits, which helped me a
lot in understanding how they saw themselves as learners of English, and visualizing theirpractices seemed to come easily for them. I also gained insights into how they felt when
thinking about learning English, and it was interesting to see how di erent elements such as
motivation, the importance of informal learning, challenges, and teaching were emphasizedin their drawings.
Whilst the language silhouettes have the potential to become powerful images, when thesilhouettes are considered in connection with FinSL signers, they might also occasionallyseem limiting (Kelly, 2021). When I asked two signers to work with a language silhouetteinstead of coming up with a free drawing, both of them had problems with the pre-drawn
hands, which in the silhouette that I used were on the sides of the silhouette pointing down.
One of the signers would have wanted to move the hands of the silhouette up to a position
more natural for signers, whilst the other drew several additional hands to the silhouette toenable communication using various signed languages.
In addition to working with FinSL students, I continued to wonder whether this method
would be useful also for users of other languages who might be more visually oriented thanthose using western scripts. As I also teach exchange students in our university, I have met
many Japanese students and felt that I would like to understand their position as language
learners and their linguistic repertoires better. Together with a colleague, Jussi Jussila, in our
ongoing research we wanted to see if visual methods could be applied in finding out whatkind of learner beliefs Japanese exchange students have. We asked them to draw two pictures,
one using language silhouettes describing the languages in their lives, and the other a freedrawing on how they see themselves as language learners. In addition, interviews in Japanese
were carried out on, for example, what kind of challenges they have in learning English
and what motivates them as learners. Combining these methods has o ered us interesting
insights in the views of Japanese exchange students as language learners. For example, thesi e and location of languages in the brain in one student’s drawing shows the student’s
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first language, Japanese, literally coming first with a marking of number 1 and the innish
language occupying only a small space in the brain. In another drawing, there are multiple
languages located in the silhouette’s head but only one has been located in the mouth, namely
Japanese. Busch’s work has provided an inspiring framework for us, and although these two
e tracts of Japanese e change students’ drawings are just e amples of what can be seen in
the drawings, we think that visual methods have a great deal of potential in helping us tounderstand better our students’ biographies, as well as their learner beliefs.

Andy Barfield - Chapter 8 Investigating Visual Practices in Educational Settings:
Schoolscapes, Language Ideologies and Organizational Cultures
In early 2020, with the Olympics in Tokyo on the summer horizon, my attention was drawn
towards Petteri Laihonen and Tamas Peter S abo’s chapter. I started brainstorming ideas withmy student assistant for doing some joint research into di erent scapes in Tokyo. I wanted
to try di erent ways of doing research so that I could better support students in di erent
classes and seminars in carrying out their own research into language issues in society. My
student assistant was keen to help with such research too.
Chapter 8 was particularly useful for developing ideas. The authors look at investigating
schoolscapes, or the linguistic landscapes in schools, their corridors, and classrooms,
and di erent interactions within these places, through which language ideologies andorganisational cultures are realised. They highlight particular innovative practices andapproaches that others have tried. They report, for e ample, on fieldwork by S abo into theschoolscapes in two state schools and two private schools in Budapest, Hungary, which explores
how nation-state discourses are reproduced in te ts, displays, and portraits within di erent
classrooms and spaces. Szabo used the “walking tour methodology” whereby he took photos ofthe signs in one of the schools during an interview with a senior teacher as the teacher guided
Szabo through the school and commented on “the choice of language, texts and other symbols
on display (pp. 12 -127). Laihonen did similar fieldwork in a ungarian minority school in
Romania, and two other schools in Ukraine and in rural southern Slovakia, where Hungarian isthe dominant language of instruction. In each case they adapted their fieldwork and research
practices to the local site and kept a strong visual dimension to their investigations. The result
is a thought-provoking re ective chapter which enables the reader to (re-)imagine how theymight investigate particular “scapes” (educational, institutional, public, for example) in theirown local contexts.
or doing fieldwork in 2020 in Tokyo our initial idea was to investigate from March
onwards the linguistic landscapes of particular local areas and explore the multilingual
provisions of di erent public institutions (e.g., city o ces, schools, libraries, and so on). e
hoped to try “language walking tours,” perhaps using video to record what we noticed, as
well as to conduct interviews with di erent public actors to develop a finer sense of changing
o cial policies and stances towards multilingualism. Then CO ID-1 happened, and thefirst lockdown in Tokyo. Our plans shifted to researching online and looking at particular
digital scapes in the Tokyo area. To take one e ample, with a population of just over 2 8,000,
Toshima-ku is one of the eight central administrative areas of Tokyo. Through its city
website (Toshima City O ce, 2021) we learn that the biggest groups of foreign-born residents
are from China (12, 1 ), ietnam (2, 88), epal (2, 88), Korea (2,), Myanmar (1,7 5), andTaiwan (1,114). Then comes the Philippines (549), the USA (412), France (253), and Thailand(25 ). Toshima-ku’s foreign population totaled 25, 51 in April 2021, or just underof theward’s residents. It is striking that the city website provides information in English, Chinese,
Korean, as well as Burmese, Nepali, and Vietnamese, and in plain Japanese, with furigana

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characters added above Japanese script on pages to make reading easier for both Japaneseand non-Japanese residents. urthermore CO ID-1 guidance and information are provided
multilingually in Japanese, English, Chinese, Vietnamese, Burmese, and Nepali.
Although such digital municipal-scapes are certainly di erent from the schoolscapes that
Laihonen & Szabo investigate in their chapter, exploring them helps us to begin to question
what language ideologies regulate the digital use and display of languages by local government
actors in Tokyo. Policies vary considerably within the city, and local authorities are left todecide their own multilingual provisions themselves despite some recent initiatives announced
by the central government (Menju, 2019; Shoji, 2019). We are now beginning to explore these
digital scapes in more detail, and in the near future, after pandemic restrictions ease, we hope
to visit various city o ces to understand better the language policies for these municipalscapes, as well as the language ideologies behind them. Petteri Laihonen & Tamas Peter S abo’s
chapter, a starting point, was completely absorbing. I thoroughly recommend their work to you.

Yuri Imamura - Chapter 13 Reflexivity in Team Ethnography: Using Researcher
Vignettes
One of the important aspects of researching multilingualism is to understand di erent
individuals who have various language repertoires and multicultural backgrounds. In Chapter
13, Creese et al. (2017) demonstrate team ethnography as a crucial research method whichallows researchers to interpret di erent points of views and accept multivoicedness. In teamethnography, re e ivity is a key dimension to negotiate varying points of view as well as
acknowledge the positions each team member embodies. Through the re e ive approach,researchers can enhance their self-re ection and collaboration with other researchers.
In this chapter, Creese et al. used team ethnography to reveal how teacher-researchers position
themselves, as well as their participants, in their research field. They view researcher vignettes,
a part of ethnography, as a means of re ective practice to clarify how individuals engaged in
the presentation of self’ in the research process, and to understand interactional positioning
within the team (p. 20 ). In their research, they collected written vignettes from teacherresearchers investigating community-run language schools in the K, Denmark, inland, and theetherlands. Two teacher-researchers (Takhi and Creese) visited a Panjabi school in Birmingham,
England. They observed classes, kept field-notes, and collected audio-recordings during bothclass time and beyond the classroom. They also kept vignettes “to address teacher positionality,
and to make visible field and team relationships (p. 20 ). In the case study, it was shown thatthe two research vignettes from Takhi and Creese were shaped remarkably by social, political, andhistorical forces. For instance, Takhi mentioned her own experiences at primary school, where
she learned Panjabi and felt the classroom was not our space’ (p. 208) because both teachersand students did not have the freedom to use the school building as they wished. These personale periences, due to their relatable nature, were beneficial to form a good relationship with theparticipants (particularly children). On the other hand, the team needed to position themselves
as both insiders and outsiders uidly, which often led to their frustration at not being able toachieve same-level rapport with the participants at the Panjabi school.
This book chapter made me rethink how social forces, particularly educational and familial,
have a large impact on my agency as an English user. In 2002 while I was in secondary
school, the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology formulated astrategic plan to cultivate “Japanese with English Abilities” (「英語が使える日本人」の育成のための戦略構想 [“Eigo ga tsukaeru nihonjin” no ikusei notameno senryakukousou]), which emphasised
English communication in schools. In order to achieve this, Japanese teachers were asked too er communication activities in English in class, and assistant language teachers (ALTs)
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from overseas often collaborated with them. In addition to this, the number of English
conversation schools increased exponentially around the same time. Thus, it was natural forme to think of English as an important skill to acquire. The thought was also in uenced by
my mother too. She highly anticipated the era of English would come in the near future, andthat I should be equipped to make my mark in this era of English. I would say without any
doubts that I was e posed to an English-focused education from various layers of society.
After finishing my MA in the K, I started working as an English teacher in the primarysector and later as a language learning advisor and lecturer in higher education. I am one of
the Japanese people who benefited from being able to use English. On the other hand, as an
educator, I would like younger generations to see languages with broader consideration rather
than focusing too much on just English, especially under the current multilingual turn. This
complex feeling needs more discussion among educators who have similar backgrounds tomine for the future of foreign language education in Japan.
In this issue of the Learner Development Journal, my colleague and I (Wongsarnpigoon& Imamura, 2021) used duoethnography as a means of re ective practice related to a
multilingual language space in a self-access centre. It was a meaningful e perience for me
because I had never re ected on my life trajectory with someone from a di erent cultural
background as part of a research project. Creese et al.’s research was a large project inEurope, a conte t vastly di erent to my own. I believe that a multilingual team approach toresearching multilingual education in East Asian contexts should be developed to discoverpotential areas of inquiry that teacher-researchers may face. Team ethnography can be ane ective research method to re e ively consider our di erent stories and investigate someof the puzzles that we as researchers and educators face while supporting our students (thefuture generation) in understanding and participating fully in the multilingual turn.

Learner Development Perspectives
Researching Multilingualism: Critical and Ethnographic Perspectives provides a wide-ranging
panorama of recent groundbreaking research into multilingual issues, and as such the bookwill be of primary interest to researchers and graduate students in the field of multilingualstudies. In this practice-related review, we have attempted to draw parallels between
particular cases of research presented in the book and our own histories, work, and identities
as multilinguals, language teachers, and practitioner-researchers. e have found thisthoroughly fascinating to discuss as we have developed this review.
So, what is the relevance of this research anthology to exploring the multilingual turn forlearner development Among the perspectives that Researching Multilingualism brings to thelearner development table, so to speak, the following stand out for us: questions of agency,
ethnography, identity, multimodality, narrative, online communication, power, researcher
positionality, space, visual communication, and voice. These themes run through di erent
contributions to this issue of The Learner Development Journal. They are, then, already being
taken up in understanding the multilingual turn for learner development. From anothervantage point, that of practitioner-researchers as social actors, reviewing Researching
Multilingualism: Critical and Ethnographic Perspectives has helped us start to grasp new, more
complex ways of exploring the changing multilingual social worlds that we and our learners
are part of. We have also become more informed about doing multilingualism research in asocially engaged way. Here, new collaborations have started taking shape for future projects.
We would like to express our appreciation to the editors and contributors of Researching
Multilingualism: Critical and Ethnographic Perspectives for their stimulating work. We warmly
recommend this volume to readers of The Learner Development Journal.

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Andy Barfield, Oana Cusen, Yuri Imamura, & Riitta Kelly

Author Bios
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.
Andi Barfild predaje na Pravnom fakultetu niver iteta uo u Tokiju, gde poma e
koordinaciju opse nog nastavnog plana i programa engleskog je ika u kojem studenti samirade na projektima istra ivanja dru tvenih, politi kih, pravnih i globalnih problema. Andijevi
istra iva ki interesi uklju uju vi eje i ne probleme u dru tvu, kriti ku pismenost i rad na
terenu.
Oana Cusen is an assistant professor in the Language Center at Kwansei Gakuin University inJapan, where she designs and implements language courses using a project-based learningand teaching (PBLT) approach. Among her current research interests are multilingualism
and multilingual language acquisition, as well as collaborative online international learning(COIL).
Oana Cusen este profesor asistent n Centrul de Limbi Str ine la Kwansei Gakuin niversity
n Japonia. n cadrul centrului, ea creea cursuri de limb ba ate pe metodologia PBLT.
Printre interesele ei de cercetare se g sesc multilingvismul i achi i ionarea multilingv delimbi, precum i COIL.
Yuri Imamura is a learning advisor at the Self-Access Learning Center (SALC) at Kanda
University of International Studies, Japan. She completed her M.A. in TEFL/TESL at the
University of Birmingham, UK. Her research interests include learner autonomy, learnermotivation, translanguaging in the Japanese context, and language learning spaces.
Yuri Imamura on opintoneuvoja Kanda niversity of International Studies Self-Access
Learning Centeriss (SALC) Japanissa.
n suoritti maisterintutkinnon TE L/TESLohjelmassa Birminghamin yliopistossa Englannissa.
nen tutkimusintresseihins kuuluvat
oppijan autonomia, oppijan motivaatio, limitt iskieleily japanilaisessa kontekstissa ja
kielenoppimisen tilat.
Riitta Kelly teaches English at the Centre for Multilingual Academic Communication (Movi)
and is a PhD candidate in Applied Linguistics at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland. Her
current research interests include Finnish and Japanese university students’ learner beliefs
and topics in educational technology.
Riitta Kelly opettaa englantia Monikielisen akateemisen viestinnän keskuksessa (Movi)
Jyväskylän yliopistossa, jossa hän on myös soveltavan kielitieteen jatko-opiskelija. Hänen
tutkimusintresseihinsä kuuluvat suomalaisten ja japanilaisten yliopisto-opiskelijoiden
oppimiskäsitykset ja koulutusteknologiaan liittyvät aiheet.

Review ProcessThis paper was open-reviewed by ugh icoll, Shu(Contributors have the option of open or blind review.)

ua Kao, and Tanya McCarthy.

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A Practitioners’ Collaborative Review of Researching Multilingualism: Critical and Ethnographic Perspectives

References
Baynham, M. (2003). “Just one day like today”: The notion of scale and the analysis of spacetime orientation in narratives of displacement. In J. Collins, M. Baynham, & S. Slembrouck(Eds.), Globalization and language in contact: Scale, migration, and communicative practices (pp.
130–142). Continuum.
Carran a, I. (1 8). Low narrativity narratives and argumentation. Narrative Inquiry, 8(2),287 17.
Kelly, R. (200 ). Seeing English through signing eyes: innish sign language users’ views
on Learning English. In J. Kalliokoski, T. ikko, S. Pyh niemi & S. Shore (Eds.), Puheen ja
kirjoituksen moninaisuus Variationsrikedom i tal och skriftThe diversity of speech and writing (pp.
81). A inLAn vuosikirja 200 . Suomen soveltavan kielitieteen yhdistyksen julkaisuja
n:o 7 A inLA Yearbook 200 . Applied innish Linguistics Association Publications o.
7 . Jyv skyl . https://journal.fi/afinlavk/article/view/ 0008
Kelly, R. (2021, August 1 -18). More than meets the eye multilingual Finnish Sign Language
signers’ learner beliefs and views on languages Conference session . Typology of Small-scaleMultilingualism Conference 2, Helsinki, Finland.
Kirkpatrick, A. (2007). World Englishes: Implications for international communication and English
language teaching. Cambridge University Press.
Menju, T. (201 , December 10). A crying need for Japanese-language instruction among
immigrants. Nippon.com. https://www.nippon.com/en/in-depth/d00520/a-crying-needfor-japanese-language-instruction-among-immigrants.html
Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology (2002). “Eigo ga tsukaeru
nihonjin” no ikusei no tameno senryakukousou [A strategic plan to cultivate “Japanesewith English abilities”]. https://www.mext.go.jp/b_menu/shingi/chousa/shotou/020/
sesaku/020702.htm#plan
Piller, I., & Takahashi, K. (201 ). Language work aboard the low-cost airline. In A. Duch ne,
M. Moyer, & C. Roberts (Eds.), Language, migration, and social inequalities: A criticalsociolinguistics perspective on institutions and work (pp. 95–117). Multilingual Matters.
Shoji, O. (2019). Japan as a multilingual society. In P. Heinrich & Y. Ohara (Eds.), Routledge
handbook of Japanese sociolinguistics (pp. 18 1 ). Routledge.
Toshima City O ce (2021, January 1). 1–7 Kokuseki betsu gaikokujin juuminsuu (Reiwa sannen
ichigatsu tsuitachi genzai)[1–7 Number of foreign residents by nationality (as of January
1, 3rd year of Reiwa)]. Retrieved 11 September 2021 from https://www.city.toshima.
lg.jp/070/210 15085 .html
Wongsarnpigoon, I., & Imamura, Y. (2021). Exploring understandings of multilingualism in asocial learning space: A duoethnographic account. The Learner Development Journal, 5, 7 - 1.

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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://ldjournalsite.wordpress.com/

The Learner Development Journal Issue 5: Engaging with the Multilingual Turnfor Learner Development: Practices, Issues, Discourses, and Theorisations
Author: Maria Ruohotie-Lyhty
Title: Openness, Creativity, Collaboration and Narrativity Paving Our Road Towards Critical
Multilingual Practices in the Classroom
Date of publication online: 2021
Author contact: <maria.ruohotie-lyhty@jyu.fi>

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:
Ruohotie-Lyhty, M. (2021). Openness, creativity, collaboration and narrativity paving
our road towards critical multilingual practices in the classroom. In A. Barfield, O. Cusen,
Y. Imamura, & R. Kelly (Eds.), The Learner Development Journal Issue 5: Engaging with theMultilingual Turn for Learner Development: Practices, Issues, Discourses, and Theorisations(pp. 181-184). 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.

COMMENTARY
Openness, Creativity, Collaboration andNarrativity Paving Our Road Towards Critical
Multilingual Practices in the Classroom
Maria Ruohotie-Lyhty, Department of Language and Communication
Studies, University of Jyväskylä, Finland <maria.ruohotie-lyhty@jyu.fi>W

hen asked to provide this commentary for Learner Development Journal (LDJ)
Issue 5, Engaging with the Multilingual Turn for Learner Development: Practices, Issues,
Discourses, and Theorisations, I felt privileged and intrigued. The call focusing
on narrative accounts and practice-related reviews matched with my interest and needs
as a university language teacher educator and researcher in applied linguistics. To me,in promoting multilingual teacher education and multilingual languages education, we
need ideas and support from other members of the teacher community. This is important
especially since tackling new paradigms necessitates challenging our habitual agency that
often conveniently matches with our experiences and our students’ expectations (Conteh &Meier, 2014; Dewey, 1983; Moate & Ruohotie-Lyhty, 2014).
In her review, Gabriella Meier (2017) defines the multilingual turn as part of a criticalmovement in education, and calls for students and teachers to reflect together to tackle thechallenges of translating it into mainstream practice. This issue of the LDJ on multilingualism
provides exactly this: reflective narrative accounts and practice-related reflective reviewsof seminal work in multilingualism research, which all have the potential to help us asteachers and researchers to better address this complex phenomenon. Therefore, in mycommentary, instead of referring to the content of the individual contributions separately, I
aim at a reflective analysis of the contributors’ conceptualizations of multilingual practices
in the classrooms. In what follows, I will raise four important issues that, to me, seemto pave the way towards more multilingual and critical language education, and are also
valid for multilingualism research. These are collaboration, openness, ethical considerationand creativity. At the end of my commentary, I will also reflect on the role of narratives indeveloping multilingual practices around the world.

Critical Multilingual Practices Are Collaborative
The importance of community support and collaboration is the first issue I want to raise. The
articles of this collection demonstrate this from many different perspectives. The narrative
account from Vasumathi Badrinathan shows the reverse side of collaboration, that of teacher
isolation, where teachers have little opportunities for questioning their practices and learningfrom others. It also demonstrates how difficult it is for an individual to bridge the gap
between theory and practice without support from a similar minded community. On the other
hand, positive examples of the power of collaboration are also abundantly available. These
collaborative practices take various forms. In their narrative accounts, Isra Wongsarnpigoon &Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 5 • December 2021

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Openness, Creativity, Collaboration and Narrativity Paving Our Road Towards Critical Multilingual Practices in the Classroom

Yuri Imamura reflect together on their experiences in developing multilingualism-supportive
social learning spaces in their university, Oana Cusen recounts her discussions withcolleagues about the contribution they can make as non-native English speaking teachers(NNESTs) in Japan, and Lorraine de Beaufort describes her experience of reconstructing
a piece of her data again with some colleagues for LDJ5 to gain new perspectives to theexperiences of her research participant. These narrative accounts demonstrate the powerof teachers thinking together and the possibilities for change that this collaboration offers
for individuals and communities. Also the practice-related reviews by Andy Barfield, Oana
Cusen, Riitta Kelly, & Yuri Imamura and by Ellen Head & Chie Tsurii demonstrate how texts
can be discussed and elaborated together with colleagues for deeper understanding. Even
more powerful is the possibility to observe each other in action and get ideas for one’s
own practices like in the narrative account from Jussi Jussila & Riitta Kelly. In addition,
collaboration is not only possible among peers, but developing multilingual practices should
also benefit from collaboration with our students, who, as multilingual individuals, have a lot
to share, and without whom we cannot really succeed as Andy Barfield’s narrative accountdemonstrates. Researchers also need to build a genuine collaboration with their research
participants to be able to understand individual experiences.

Critical Multilingual Practices Are Based on Openness
The articles that are part of this collection demonstrate the role of openness in challenging
and renegotiating critical multilingual practices. Openness is important in sharing our
experiences and giving the space for all participants to express their sometimes conflicting
perspectives. Many of the authors in this issue are open in sharing their own personal
experiences in relation to multilingualism. For example, Brennan Conaway in his practicerelated review, and Oana, Vasumathi and Akiko in their narrative accounts share a lot of theirpersonal experiences that can help others to identify with their reflections.
Critical multilingual education cannot be about indoctrination, but about critical perspectives
and practices that can be negotiated through open and democratic participation. The principleof democratic participation is particularly well demonstrated in the practice-related review
by Alison Stewart where she recounts her experience of reading and discussing research on
multilingualism with her students. Her review not only shows examples of good practices ofdealing with these issues in a language classroom or teacher education, but her practices arealso a good example of openness to student thinking, even when the teacher does not always
share the students’ views. Alison’s practices, and the fact that her students feel free to express
their differing opinions, show a genuine search for openness and trust in students’ ability tothink for themselves. Sometimes this might feel disappointing, since freedom always leads to
unpredictable outcomes; However, I see it as the only possible way to go forward. Freedom ofthought is also strongly visible in Isra’s & Yuri’s narrative account where student thinking istaken seriously and given a great value in enriching and challenging teachers’ own thinking.
In addition, we see the power of openness between colleagues in the narrative account by Riitta& Jussi, who share their sometimes difficult experiences of collaborative and multilingual
teaching. In their case, open discussion about their doubts, and the ways to share work andcollaborate with other teachers is a key to successful multilingual practices.

Critical Multilingual Practices Are Based on Careful Ethical Consideration andCreativity
The contributors also show the ways in which developing critical multilingual practices
necessitates ethical consideration and sensitivity. At the heart of multilingualism is the need

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Maria Ruohotie-Lyhty

for understanding each other’s stories, and including multiple perspectives from research
participants, students, or teachers (see the pieces by Akiko, Alison, Andy, Lorraine, andVasumathi). In these texts, there are rich examples of how deeply multi(lingual) practices
affect their identities and beliefs, and how deeply they are intertwined with other personaland social identities, as well as issues of power and injustice. Recognizing the importance of
these experiences is the first step. In addition to this, we need a “concerted and methodical
approach by educators to empower students and reimagine pedagogy,” as Huw Davies points
out in his practice-related review. In the search of new pedagogies, we need creativity.
The various contributors to this issue also show examples of such creativity in relation
to at least one of the important puzzles of being a member of a multilingual working
community and educational institute, namely the status and balance of multiple languages
in multilingual institutional communication and teaching. The power positions visible in the“one-language-only” policy that Chie & Ellen, Andy, and Huw describe in relation to Japan aswell ideologies of the right kind of language use can seriously hamper multilingual practicesof educational communities. The narrative account by Isra & Yuri shows how teachers
can experiment together and find ways to tackle this issue through creating a place formultilingualism-supportive social learning spaces in their university. Similarly, Riitta & Jussi
provide a deeply practical and fair solution to this question by describing the development ofmultilingual practices in their work community. As they show, teaching languages together
without a distinction between concepts such as foreign language, or native language, provides
an example of the power of ethical consideration and creativity that is practical, doable, andresource wise. To me, these pieces of writing really show a way to go forward.

Narrativity Paves the Way Towards Critical Multilingual Practices
Finally, I want to raise an issue that might easily be considered as self-evident in relation
to the genres of writing in LDJ5, but I still want to highlight the power of narratives indeveloping the theory and practice of multilingualism. I perceive narratives, narrative
research, and the process of narration as important resources in developing criticalmultilingual practices. The contributions in this journal are all based on narrative approaches
and provide rich, human resources for other teachers and researchers who are seeking ways
to address these questions in their teaching. These narratives bind the societal to the personaland have the possibility not only to inform us, but also to move us and thus bring about
deep developmental processes (see Kalaja & Ruohotie-Lyhty, 2019). As a personal example,
the narrative account by Akiko about how multilingualism has, in her life and her research
participant’s, been connected to forming an identity as a woman touched me personally. In
my own mind, although I am from a different cultural sphere, her account resonated strongly
with my personal experience as a Finnish woman, raised by a mother who always highlighted
the importance for a woman to experience the world and a father who considered a university
degree and a steady government or municipal career the secure and desirable option for
his three daughters. I realized Akiko’s emotions were similar to mine when reading of her
experiences as an exchange student in South Korea and comparing them to my exchange
year in France. This insightful account helped me to discover my identity again in a more
multifaceted way and understand my past from new perspectives. These kinds of learning
experiences are also documented in many of the contributions to this issue, such as Melike
Bulut Albaba’s practice-related review of the book Visualising Multilingual Lives: More Than
Words. I think this is what narratives can mean to us. When we listen to each other and share
our stories, we create possibilities for emotionally and cognitively meaningful learning.

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Conclusions
Meier writes in her 2017 paper that “the multilingual turn faces important challenges that
hamper its translation into mainstream practice, namely popularly accepted monolingual
norms and a lack of guidance for teachers” (Meier, 2017, p. 131). This is a basic dilemma thatfaces many of us trying to develop more sound educational practices for schools and teacher
education. Engaging with the Multilingual Turn for Learner Development: Practices, Issues, Discourses,
and Theorisations, however, is one significant step forward. It has the power to make us think
about these issues and help us to bridge our own experiences with skilfully crafted narrativesof multilingual human experience.

Author Bio
Maria Ruohotie-Lyhty is Senior Lecturer of Applied Linguistics at the University of Jyväskylä,
Finland. She is responsible for the foreign language teacher education master’s programmein the Department of Language and Communication Studies. Her research interests focus on
identity, agency and emotions in language learning and teaching and in developing better
language teacher education. She is a co-author of the book Beliefs, Agency and Identity in Foreign
Language Learning and Teaching (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016) and has published widely ininternational applied linguistics and educational journals.
Maria Ruohotie-Lyhty on soveltavan kielitieteen yliopistonlehtori Jyväskylän yliopistossa ja
toimii kielten aineenopettajakoulutusohjelman vastuuhenkilönä Kieli- ja viestintätieteiden
laitoksella. Ruohotie-Lyhdyn tutkimuksen kohteena on identiteetin, toimijuuden ja tunteiden
merkitys kielen oppimisessa, opettamisessa ja kielten opettajien koulutuksen kehittämisessä.
Hän on yksi teoksen Beliefs, Agency and Identity in Foreign Language Learning and Teaching(Palgrave, 2016) kirjoittajista ja on julkaissut tutkimustaan laajasti soveltavan kielitieteen ja
kasvatustieteen kansainvälisissä lehdissä.

References
Conteh, J., & Meier, G. (Eds.). (2014). Introduction. In The multilingual turn in languages
education: Opportunities and challenges (pp. 1–14). Multilingual Matters.
Dewey, J. (1983). Human nature and conduct. In J. A. Boydston (Ed.), The middle works of John
Dewey, Volume 14, 1899–1924: Human nature and conduct, 1922. Southern Illinois University
Press. (Original work published in 1922)
Kalaja, P., & Ruohotie-Lyhty, M. (2019). Narratives in L2 learner identity development. The
Learner Development Journal, 3, 79–95.
Meier, G. S. (2017). The multilingual turn as a critical movement in education: Assumptions,challenges and a need for reflection. Applied Linguistics Review, 8(1), 131–161.
Moate, J., & Ruohotie-Lyhty, M. (2014). Identity, agency and community: reconsidering thepedagogic responsibilities of teacher education. British Journal of Educational Studies, 62(3),249–264.

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