RESEARCH PAPER
Exploring Identity Conflict in Learners’
Linguistic Repertoires: Portraits, Stories,
Poems, and Issues
Andy Barfield, Chuo University
In this paper I share critical perspectives on identity conflicts that emerged in interviews with three undergraduate
students about how they understand their linguistic repertoires (Blommaert, 2008, 2010; Busch, 2014) and why
they frame their understandings in particular ways to do with identity conflict. The exploratory process includes
students’ reflections about the language portraits (Busch, 2012, 2018; Chik, 2014, 2017; Chik, Markose, & Alperstein,
2018; Wolf, 2014) that they drew of themselves as language users. It also makes use of various “I-poems” (Gilligan &Eddy, 2017) that are directly composed from what the students said in the interviews. Providing striking crystallisations of significant incidents and episodes in the students’ languaged experiences, the I-poems not only illuminate
their active agency in dealing with identity conflicts, but also point to wider issues of discrimination, inclusion, andpower that each experienced. I relate these issues to language ideologies that are commonly reproduced in society and that can be seen to have significant impacts on learners’ identities and their linguistic repertoires.
本稿は、言語レパートリー（Blommaert, 2008, 2010; Busch, 2014）
に対する３名の大学生の理解および その理解がアイデンティティの葛藤と関連付けられる理由を、インタビューから浮かび上がるアイデンティティの葛藤を批判的に考察することで明らかにする。この解明プ
ロセスには言語使用者としての自身の言語ポートレイト（Busch, 2012, 2018; Chik, 2014, 2017; Chik, Markose, & Alperstein, 2018;
Wolf, 2014）を用いた省察に加え、インタビューにおける学生の発言をもとに作られたさまざまな”I-poems”(Gilligan & Eddy, 2017)を用いた。I-Poemsは、アイデンティティコンフリクトにおける学生の主体性だけではなく、それぞれが経験した差別、多様性の受け入れ、権威など様々な問題を呈している。本稿では、これらの問題と、社会に広く蔓延り、学習者のアイデンティティや言語レパートリーに影響を及ぼしうる言語イデオロギーとの関連性について探る。

Keywords
linguistic repertoire, language portrait, I-poems, identity conflict, language ideologies

キーワード
言語レパートリー、言語ポートレイト、I-Poems、アイデンティティの葛藤、言語イデオロギー

when I’m a childwhen I’m a child
I just think I am different from others sowhen I go to the junior high schoolit’s not bullying but
it’s like “gaikokujin”1— Tomoko

I decided to stop talking in Tagalog at home
I entered high schoolin the first year of high school I thought that my accent is very different than Japanese
it was my complex
I decided to stop talking in Tagalog at home
I said to my mother that I will not use Tagalog any more
1

= foreigner
Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 3 • December 2019111

Exploring Identity Conflict in Learners’ Linguistic Repertoires: Portraits, Stories, Poems, and Issues
I didn’t use it for 5 years
even I know what she’s saying
I will ask her to repeat it in Japanese
I also shadowed the dramas— Haruka

I started to stop using dialect
when I came to Tokyo I had strong bias like the people from other areas can’t use their own languages dialects
I felt a little bit nervous to use that word
then when I came to not just Tokyo also like big cities
I started to stop using dialect
sometimes I use Nagano’s dialect without any special reason
that’s why I put this in my center
I didn’t know that’s dialect then I just speaking that way
そんなことしなんでいいよ しなんでいいよ2

it’s not correct
it’s not 標準語3
I don’t know why I feel negative feeling to use local language
just not cool
— Midori

Figure 1. Example I-poems extracted from student interviews.
Each of the above “I-poems” illuminates a particular experience with language in three
students’ lives that was significant for the individual at the time. Haruka grew up in thePhilippines using Tagalog and English. Coming to Japan in her teens to complete her secondary education, she felt that her way of speaking was different from her peers, so she took theradical decision to give up speaking Tagalog with her mother and become fluent in Japanese.
Midori’s poem reveals her sense of conflict about using her own local dialect after movingfrom Nagano to Tokyo for her university studies. Her local way of speaking felt out of placein relation to the standard Japanese that she now encountered in her new urban university
life. Tomoko’s poem concerns the time in junior high school that she was out-grouped by her
peers and ascribed an outsider identity as “gaikokujin” [= foreigner] although she grew up in
Fukushima prefecture bilingually, fluent in Japanese and Vietnamese.
These fragmentary sketches provide some initial insights into everyday situations of identity conflict that individuals face around the use of their linguistic repertoires. Specifically,
linguistic repertoires involve a range of linguistic, communicative, and semiotic resources,
including “concrete accents, language varieties, registers, genres, modalities such as writing”(Blommaert, 2010, p. 102) and “ways of using language in particular communicative settingsand spheres of life, including the ideas that people have about such ways of using, their language ideologies” Blommaert, 2010, p. 102). Linguistic repertoires are highly individualised,variable, dynamic, and mobile. They function as part of “the peculiar biographical trajectory of the speaker” (Blommaert, 2008, p. 16) and take us beyond “now” in looking at the
linguistic practices that learners deploy, so that we explore “… backwards to past language
experiences and forwards to expectations and desires linked to the future” (Busch, 2014, p.
35). Inquiring into learners’ linguistic repertoires enables us to explore identity issues intheir language experiences within and across languages. Thus, an individual learner’s sense of2
3“son’na koto shinande ī yo shinande ī yo” = I don’t like that really don’t“hyojungo” = standard language (standard Japanese)112

Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 3 • December 2019

Andy Barfield

dislocation about using their local dialect at university in Tokyo is as much part of a linguistic
repertoire view of identity conflict as is another student’s enforced separation of their use ofJapanese and Vietnamese in different spaces and at different times in their life.
Conflicts of identity are grounded in tensions between identities that an individual alreadyhas or imagines themselves as attaining—what a person wants to become or have for themselves (Darvin & Norton, 2015)—and their ingrained dispositions and practices, or “habitus”(Bourdieu, 1980/1990), as well as their capacity to exercise agency in relation to perceived andactual affordances and constraints impacting courses of action within particular social fields.
These include family, school, membership groups, university, and work contexts, among others (Lin, 2012). As an individual’s capacity to act is “socioculturally mediated” (Ahearn, 2001,
p. 112), an important dimension to identity conflict concerns how individuals are positioned
by others (and how they position others), and how (and why) such positioning aligns withor contradicts the individual’s present or imagined identities (Darvin & Norton, 2015; Lantolf& Thorne, 2006; Norton, 2000). Where there is alignment, an individual will in some way berecognised as a legitimate member of a particular field—as knowing how to participate inthat field (Lin, 2012). Conversely, without such recognition or legitimation in a given field, an
individual will experience a mismatch because they are not recognised as legitimate and/or do
not know how to take part in that field (Lin, 2012). What kind of identity conflicts arise, then,for learners in their “lived experience of language and the linguistic repertoire” (Busch, 2017,p. 53) across different social spaces and times in relation to others in their lives? How do theynavigate such conflicts? Why?
Significant moments in these autobiographical journeys need, according to Busch (2012),
to be interpreted in relation to the “the language ideologies and metalinguistic interpretations” (p. 510) that speakers make of their linguistic repertoires. Here I am taking a view of
linguistic repertoire that is somewhat different from that of mainstream language education
discourses—particularly the work of the Council of Europe on the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) in drawing a distinction between plurilingualism as
the speaker’s competence (Council of Europe, 2001) and multilingualism as “the co-existenceof different languages in a given society” (Council of Europe, 2001, p. 4) or “the presence ofseveral languages within a given area” (Council of Europe, 2018). The CEFR view of multilingualism prioritises individuals’ proficiency in separate languages rather than considering theinterplay of particular semiotic resources in individuals’ lives. The more situated, user-centred focus put forward in this paper is particularly relevant for constructing a critical learner development perspective on learners’ languaged lives. It privileges respect for a learner’s
own perspectives and reflections about their multilingual experiences, practices, and desires,without which we cannot arrive at better understanding of how an individual may see identity
conflicts around language that they have been through. It also invites us to consider human,material and ideological affordances and constraints that affect individual decision making,development and action within particular fields, thereby helping us to understand how widersocial conditions, norms, practices, and discourses impact conflicts of identity.
My growing interest in learners’ linguistic repertoires comes from visiting Myanmar in
the last several years to do teacher education workshops, as well as fieldwork with students
about social justice and development issues. Attending a conference workshop by Alice Chik(2015) on Visualizing language learning in which she shared free-form examples of students
drawing themselves as language learners, I was fascinated by the different images that learners had created and what these revealed about their language histories and practices. A few
months later in Myanmar, I tried a similar visualization activity during a week of teacher
education workshops with trainers working in non-state education for education and development NGOs and monastic schools. My workshop co-facilitator, Jenny Morgan, and I invited
Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 3 • December 2019113

Exploring Identity Conflict in Learners’ Linguistic Repertoires: Portraits, Stories, Poems, and Issues

the trainers to draw themselves as multilingual language users. Their drawings revealed anastonishing range of communicative resources that they used on a regular basis, as well as
pointed to important experiences in their development that were directly impacted by language (Barfield & Morgan, 2016). Fieldwork in Myanmar with students has further helped merealise how powerful ideologies about language (such as the policy of Burmanisation) haveprofound effects on groups, communities, and individuals, eventually leading me to explorewith the students in the project reported here how they see their languaged lives and to probewith them questions of identity conflict in relation to wider issues in Japanese society.
In January 2018 I started this research with four second-year undergraduate students (Haruka, Keiko, Midori, and Tomoko—all noms de plume) from a yearlong course that they had
been taking with me in 2017. I already knew the students well enough to know they had
different language profiles, but from the viewpoint of understanding how they saw their own
languaged lives, my understanding was quite limited. In two rounds of interviews with them
I inquired into these guideline questions:(1)

How do learners see their linguistic repertoires?

(2)

What kind of experiences and incidents to do with identity conflict do learners highlight in their linguistic repertoires?

(3)

What connections do learners make between wider ideological issues in society to dowith language and questions of identity conflict in their own linguistic repertoires?
Why?

In this paper I focus on reconstructing different identity conflicts that emerged from theinterviews with three4 of the 4 students about how they understand their linguistic repertoires, and about why they perceive their language experiences and frame their understandings in particular ways to do with identity conflict. This reconstructive process includes thelanguage portraits (Busch, 2012, 2015, 2018; Chik, 2014, 2015, 2017; Chik, Markose, & Alperstein, 2018; Wolf, 2014) that the students drew of themselves as language users, as well as
various “I-poems” (Gilligan & Eddy, 2017) that I assembled by using the students’ own words
from the interviews. These are key areas that I wish to focus on here. As a researcher, I findit tempting to reach towards grounded theorization of learners’ identity conflicts through theprism of capital, field, and habitus that their lives embody as Lin (2012) and Darvin & Norton(2015), for example, have argued for. Wary, though, of applying an overarching theoreticalframework that may distance us from appreciating in the first place the students’ own voiced
accounts, in a different identity as an exploratory practitioner, I will focus for the main partof this paper on trying to understand their stories in their words and sharing my long-puzzled reflections with you.
I continue by explaining the interview process and presenting starting conversations fromthe interviews about each student’s language portrait so that we can get a deeper sense of thestudents’ multilingual lives. After that, I will introduce the particular method that I used foranalysing the interviews—the Voice-Centred Relational Approach—and discuss the whys andwherefores in reconstructing “I-poems” from interview transcripts. I will then present andcomment on a selection of I-poems from the interviews with each student. This will point
us towards emergent themes to do with identity conflict and let us broach wider ideologicalissues to do with language that the students perceived as impacting their lives and identities.

4

For reasons of space I have limited the focus in this paper to three of the students.

114

Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 3 • December 2019

Andy Barfield

The Interview Process
Lasting 45 minutes to an hour, the interviews were done mostly in English, and in part inJapanese, according to how the students wished to express themselves at certain points. In
the first interview the students drew a “language portrait” (Busch, 2012, 2015, 2018; Chik,
2014, 2015, 2017; Chik, Markose, & Alperstein, 2018; Wolf, 2014) of themselves, which they
then talked about and used for recalling and reflecting different language experiences they
had each had. Following Busch (2012, 2015, 2018), I asked the students about their portraits,
encouraging them to share how they experience language in their daily lives: the ways they
use language, how language has been important for them at different stages of their lives,and how language might be important in the future for them. I also invited the students toshare about particular persons, places, situations, and critical moments they had experienced
in relation to language, and what those experiences now meant to them (and why). Later I
listened to these initial interviews, focusing on how they used “I” to talk about themselvesin the critical episodes that they had faced. I then transcribed the interviews, before reducing
each critical episode to a short “I-poem” consisting mostly of statements they made about
themselves in these small stories (Bamberg & Georgakopoulou, 2008) of identity conflict.
For the second round of interviews in July 2018, the students were asked to bring along 6-8
popular culture artefacts (explained as images, headlines, objects, texts, slogans, and so on)
about “language issues” in society so that we might move between individual and societal
perspectives in relation to their now storied linguistic repertoires. In the second interview wewent over episodes from the first interview and also talked about the artefacts that they eachbrought with them and considered meta-narratives of language (ideologies, assumptions, andbeliefs within education systems, the mass media, governmental policies, popular stories andmyths, and so on) circulating within society that they saw as affecting their lives.

Language Portraits
The students’ language portraits are shown in Figure 2 below. From left to right portraits are
by Haruka, Midori, and Tomoko. (The students could choose from two silhouette outlines ordraw free-form.) In Figure 2, the silhouette form on the left and right comes from an online community for researchers and practitioners interested in heteroglossia (heteroglossia.
net, n.d.). The body outline in the middle comes from a freely available collection of “person
outlines” (Clipart Library, n.d.). It is worth noting that more recent work with language portraits—e.g., Chik, Markose, & Alperstein (2018)—has used a different silhouette form.

Figure 2. The Students’ Language Portraits.
Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 3 • December 2019115

Exploring Identity Conflict in Learners’ Linguistic Repertoires: Portraits, Stories, Poems, and Issues

Let’s look at each portrait in turn. In her language portrait (see Figure 3 below), Haruka gives prominence to the three languages (Kamusta!/Filipino (Tagalog); こんにちは [= konnichiwa]/Japanese; Hello!/Philippine English) that she grew up with at different stages in her
childhood and teenage years. Interestingly Haruka sees herself expressing herself directly toothers in all three languages.

Figure 3. Haruka’s Language Portrait.
Haruka had spent her first years in the Philippines, brought up by her grandparents. She
learnt from early on to use Tagalog and English. With her Japanese father and Philippine
mother working in Japan, she decided at the age of 15 to come to Japan, without any Japanese at all, to live with her parents. She was highly driven and got through to university withher peers of the same age—and along the way gave up speaking Tagalog with her mother for
five years (“at first she talked to me in Tagalog but even I know that what she’s saying I will ask her
to repeat it in Japanese” (Haruka, Interview 1, January 2018). She felt that this would help her
mother become more proficient in Japanese and have better employment prospects in Japan.
Midori started off the first interview by commenting on the difficulty that she experiencesin expressing herself precisely in whatever language she is using. She continued by reflecting
on how her language portrait (see Figure 4 below) also represented important connections
that “local languages” held for her:

Figure 4. Midori’s Language Portrait.

116

Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 3 • December 2019

Andy Barfield“I think I can’t explain what I’m really thinking with my language even if it’s Japanese or myown local language. I guess I can’t explain what I’m feeling exactly in a word, so this circle is
my feeling or thinking or something. Then I just separated the colour. This yellow green is my… it’s top or the center of my mind is local, local feeling or local languages. I think when I hear
local languages or just when I saw Nagano or Azumino, the word which is connected with myhometown, I feel… I feel happy if there is some posters or the letter in another areas, then “oh myhometown is outstanding.” (Midori, Interview 1, January 2018)
Midori had grown up in a small community in Azumino, Nagano, in the foothills of theJapanese Alps, using a local variety of Japanese at home, particularly with her grandmother.
She wondered why she needed to hide her local identity when she moved to Tokyo and started
her university studies—in fact, questioning why her local variety of Japanese had become/was
being stigmatised and why she was feeling “dis-located.” This led Midori to identify morewith the branding of her local area for tourism (“I feel happy if there is some posters or the letterin another areas, then “oh my hometown is outstanding”) than with using her local dialect in her
own life.
Like Midori, Tomoko had grown up in a rural part of Japan—in Fukushima prefecture. She
had been born to a Japanese-Vietnamese father and Vietnamese mother in Vietnam and had
moved with her parents to Fukushima at a very early age. Using Vietnamese within the home,
Tomoko learnt Japanese by going to the local elementary school (“I put the Japanese flag on thehead because since I was a children I went to the Japanese school so my thinking is mostly in Japanese”(Tomoko, Interview 1, January 2018). Her language portrait is shown in Figure 5 below.
Tomoko observed how Vietnamese covered her heart and family relationships, as well as let
her express her emotional self in particular ways:“I used the Vietnamese flag on my heart because I use Vietnamese with my families and I think
Vietnamese language is really emotional and some words relate to emotion is really special
there are so many so many words to express emotion” (Tomoko, Interview 1, January 2018).

Figure 5. Tomoko’s Language Portrait.
As she grew up, Tomoko had been required to act as mediator, quite reluctantly at times,
between her non-Japanese speaking parents and wider society. She had also made great efforts
to develop her English as she saw it as important for her future: “I chose England’s flag on my leg
because it will help me to go to a lot of countries by using English and making contact with a lot of people
Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 3 • December 2019117

Exploring Identity Conflict in Learners’ Linguistic Repertoires: Portraits, Stories, Poems, and Issues

by going there” (Tomoko, Interview 1, January 2018). Using Chinese was another important partof the future imagined identity that she was investing herself in, as shown in her feet in thelanguage portrait (“I also choose the Chinese language because I start to study Chinese recently and I
think it will help me to take contact with people too”—Tomoko, Interview 1, January 2018).
These starting conversations underline the rich diversity of identity issues in these three
students’ linguistic repertoires. Haruka foregoes speaking with her mother in their sharedlanguage, Tagalog, partly to help her mother find better employment, and partly to force
herself to use Japanese as much as possible and to become the same as her peers. Midori hasa sense of confusion about using her Nagano variety of Japanese in Tokyo and at university to
express herself; she feels, in effect, compelled to suppress her local identity, and this bothers her. Tomoko, on the other hand, navigates between the Vietnamese-using environmentof her home life and wider Japanese society to mediate social inclusion for herself and herfamily, and to find ways to express herself to others in positive terms. In the interviews, as
Busch (2017) predicts, the students used their language portraits to interpret their linguistic
repertoires multimodally, i.e., both visually and narratively, and to move between places andthe past, present, and future as they re-constructed their lived and imagined experiences oflanguage. For each of these young women important questions of identity and conflict cameup as they started seeing their multilingual selves both more holistically and more “contradictorily.”I-poem Analysis: Standing Alongside the Learner
To develop the research further, I listened to each interview a few times and made notes as
I listened, before transcribing the interviews. One question I had was how to work with theinterviews as speech rather than written text. Although I was intent on trying something different from the exhaustive thematic codification that a conventional Grounded Theory Analysis requires, I was not yet completely clear about what kind of creative process might enhance
critical analysis of learners’ voices in the interviews. My search led me to the Voice-Centred
Relational Approach/Method (Gilligan & Eddy, 2017), a qualitative approach that Gilligan
and her collaborators originated in the 1980s and which focuses on the voices and perspectives of individuals in the stories that they tell of their experiences. In their overview of the
Voice-Centred Relational Approach, Gilligan and Eddy (2017) refer to a Listening Guide that
includes “aspects of thematic and narrative analysis as well as elements of a grounded theory approach” (p. 76), but which distinctly specifies “a series of ‛listenings,’ including …
Listening for the ‛I’ (the first-person voice of the speaker) and Listening for Contrapuntal
Voices (the counterpoint of voices that speak to the researcher’s question).” (ibid.) In the first
listening, “Listening for the Plot”, the researcher focuses on plotting the narrative (who ispresent, who is not, particular themes, looking for “emotional hotspots”, and striking images
or metaphors that the interviewee uses in telling their story). Here the focus of the researcher is predominantly descriptive, whereas with the second listening, “Listening for the ‛I’”,
the researcher focuses on how the interviewee uses “I” in different phrases. S/he separates
each “I phrase” to create an “I-poem” around clusters of knowledge and experience that theinterviewee articulates “in an associative logic, rather than linear, rational, causal thoughtprocesses” (Gilligan & Eddy, 2017, p. 78). The third stage in the Listening Guide is called“Listening for Contrapuntal Voices” and pushes towards a deeper analysis. Here the researcher’s task is to listen for the interplay between voices, looking for harmonies and dissonances,trying to pick up “what is not being said or what may be silenced” (Gilligan & Eddy, 2017, p.
79).  Edwards and Weller (2012) point out that the Voice-Centred Relational Approach gives
attention to identifying “the different subjectivities from which the participant speaks” (p.
205) in “the stream of consciousness that is carried by the first person references” (p. 205).

118

Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 3 • December 2019

Andy Barfield

This enables the researcher to “stand alongside” the interviewee as they make an interpretation of the interviewee’s different voiced experiences and social reality.
At a more general level adaptations of the Voice-Centred Relational Approach (e.g., Bright,
Kayes, Worrall, & McPherson, 2017; Paliadelis & Cruickshank, 2008) tend to emphasise reading rather than listening to interview transcripts in successive stages. Bright et al. (2017)
propose, for example, four stages of reading, with a substantially more elaborate and explicit set of guideline questions for each stage (see Appendix A for the complete set of guideline
questions). For the present research I used both successive listenings and readings. While
voice-centred listening helped to sensitise me to the perspectives of the students on theirexperiences and to potential counterpoints central to my research interests, reading was
useful for extracting the I-phrases, questioning what non-I-phrase details to include, creating I-poems, and thinking further through some of the ideological aspects of each student’s
experiences.
The actual application of I-poem analysis made me question how to stand alongside an interviewee and represent their voice(s) in a trustworthy way in the I-poems that I created. The
three learners often provided further details about an element of an “I-phrase” without using“I” when they did. Should such details be included or not in an I-poem? Under what conditions? An example episode from the first interview with Haruka (see Appendix B for a verbatim transcript of this segment) serves to illustrate some of the questions about voice thatcame up. In this episode Haruka recalled searching for a different language school in Tokyo
after being initially placed in a community school class with much older adults. She wanted
to find a class with people closer in age to herself, adding the detail that it was a class taught
by volunteers: “I also looked for different language school which is taught by university students there
is a voluntary circle” (Haruka, Interview 1, January 2018). In a following detail, she commented
that she had indeed found such a volunteer-taught class, but the other children were muchyounger than her: “yes but almost all of them are elementary school (laughter) there is no students
that are the same age as me” (Haruka, Interview 1, January 2018). Both details provide contextual elaboration of “place” and “participants” in this narrative episode, but do not have any
explicit or implicit reference to “I”. Similarly, the final detail in this segment—“… and they
think that Japanese is kind of weird” (Haruka, Interview 1, January 2018)—is a “non-I” detail.
What is different is that it points to how Haruka experienced being negatively positioned byher classmates in high school for the way that she spoke Japanese. This “non-I” detail functions as a complication and connects to further actions that Haruka took in trying to change
her accent and align herself with her peers so that she would not be judged as different. This
led me to include it in the I-poem. I also decided to put at the end of this I-poem the phrase“it was my complex” even though it is not an I-phrase, either. Haruka uses “it was my complex” as a coda for the whole narrative episode that the I-poem addresses, so it shows theevaluative stance that she took about the incident. The phrase creates, as it were, a signature(Clandinin & Connelly, 2000) for her voice here, as if to signal: This is Haruka. This is Haruka
making sense of her languaged life. This is Haruka voicing how an identity conflict has impacted her development.
Figure 6 below shows the process of creating this particular I-poem. The text of the resultant I-poem is written in italic style with the deleted details struck through in plain style.

I couldn’t speak I think the modern Japanese
I also looked for different language school which is taught by university students there is a voluntary circle andI go there for 5 months and enter junior high school
but almost all of them are elementary school (laughter) there is no students that are the same age as me
Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 3 • December 2019119Exploring Identity Conflict in Learners’ Linguistic Repertoires: Portraits, Stories, Poems, and Issues
when I enter the junior high school
I couldn’t speak I think the modern Japanese
I can speak the formal Japanese
they think that Japanese is kind of weird
so from them I studied the modern Japanese by watching TVs or dramas
I entered high schoolin the first year of high school I thought that my accent isn’t so is very different than Japanese
it was my complex

Figure 6. Curating and creating I-poems: an example.
The selection and deletion of non-I-phrase details in Figure 6 goes some way to de-constructing the process of standing alongside each interviewee and of re-constructing their
voice(s) through I-poems. I-poems help crystallise moments of identity conflict by zeroingin on what Clandinin and Connelly (2000) term “the participant signature” (p. 148) of therespective individual. Is this I-poem trustworthy? Does this I-poem (and its interpretation)“give a tone and a feel” (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000, p. 148) for the identity conflict that theindividual experienced? With these questions in mind, I would like to look next at a selectionof I-poems from each student and explore different issues of identity conflict that they highlight.

I-poems: Haruka
With her parents working in Japan, Haruka grew up in her early childhood under the care ofher grandmother in the Philippines. They used Tagalog at home, and from a young age Haruka started learning and using English in a neighbourhood nursery school. Fluent in both
Tagalog and English when she moved to Japan at the age of 14, Haruka at first went to a community school in Tokyo. Because of her lack of Japanese ability, she couldn’t start high schoolwith children the same age as her. Instead, she dropped back a year to go to the community
school (which, further below, she calls a “volunteer class”) and studied with a group of mucholder classmates. As Okano and Tsuneyoshi (2011, pp. 14-18) indicate, it is quite possible thatthey had not completed their basic education and had been forced to leave school early forreasons of poverty or bullying. In this period of intense assimilation Haruka applied herself
to learning Japanese formally at the community school as well as at a language school thatwas taught by volunteer university students; she also worked on becoming fluent in everyday standard Japanese (which she refers to as “modern Japanese”) by watching TV shows anddramas:

I couldn’t speak I think the modern Japanese
I also looked for different language school
I go there for 5 months and enter junior high school
when I enter the junior high school
I couldn’t speak I think the modern Japanese
I can speak the formal Japanese
they think that Japanese is kind of weird
I studied the modern Japanese by watching TVs or dramas
I entered high schoolin the first year of high school I thought that my accent isn’t so is very different than Japanese
it was my complex

120

Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 3 • December 2019

Andy Barfield

Constantly corrected by her classmates and teachers, Haruka developed a complex aboutsounding different in Japanese. It was at this time that she decided to stop speaking Tagalog
and took on what she believed to be a monolingual Japanese-using identity. She gave up using Tagalog with her mother, as well as with her younger brother, and her cousins in Kyushu,
and entered junior high school less than half a year later. Haruka started talking exclusively
in Japanese, even with one of her oldest Filipino friends in Japan:

we talk in Japanese now
before there was a friend that is a Filipino
I used to talk with her in Tagalog
when I attended the volunteer classwhen I decided to not talk Tagalog
she also decided not to talk in Tagalog
we talk in Japanese now

This group of I-poems represents the voice of “assimilating Haruka.” Haruka wanted to
become and sound the same as her junior high school classmates. Any conflicts of identity
were buried deep within the desired normalcy of the monolingual world that she inhabited inher relationships with her peers at school. To attain this new identity, she started speaking
English with a heavy katakana accent—just as those around her did—so that she could put
distance between herself and any semblance of proficiency in that language. This also let her
avoid being put in the position of translating English into Japanese for her classmates:

I want to be normalwhen they listened to my Japanese
they knew that I came from other countries
I don’t like that
I entered Japanese school
I want to be normal
if they know that I can do English
they will ask me everything to translate in Japanesethe English that I know and they know is quite different
the English I know is not translating English
the Japanese people’s English is something about translating English to Japanese
I don’t want that situation

The above I-poem reveals Haruka recognising the language norms of her peers, including
their resistance to using English communicatively. She decided to perform a monolingual
identity and follow their language practices in order to belong with them. Yet, much as she
wanted to show herself as monolingually performative in standard Japanese, Haruka had—from extensive exposure to TV shows and dramas—unconsciously picked up different varieties of Japanese:

I didn’t know anything about dialect in Japan
I didn’t know anything about dialect in Japan
I input a lot of dialects
my cousins lived in Kyushu
Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 3 • December 2019121

Exploring Identity Conflict in Learners’ Linguistic Repertoires: Portraits, Stories, Poems, and Issues
I talked to them there is Kyushu dialect
I don’t realise I’m talking in that
I thought all of them are Japanese
I input everything that I heard
now when I talk to my friends
sometimes they will ask me if I know Kansai dialect
I am supposed to use only the modern JapaneseThus, for others, Haruka sometimes passed for someone who had lived in Kyushu or Kansai. She was never quite as monolingual as she proclaimed herself to be to others, or as others
wished to position her.
In a different act of subversion to the monolingualism that she espoused in public, Haruka
secretly continued to use Tagalog on Facebook with her friends in the Philippines. Despite her
claims to the contrary with her parents and family, she continued to read, write, and talk thelanguage she had once used with her mother and other members of her family. For several
years she could not show that side of herself to others in Japan. Invisibilising (Grant-Thomas, 2018) a significant identity of hers, Haruka kept her membership of this home community hidden and suppressed her otherness. Yet while she made efforts to hide both her secretuse of Tagalog and her abilities in English, she unwittingly acquired traces of other identities
through speaking different, truncated varieties (see Blommaert, 2010, pp. 103-106) of Japanese. The second set of I-poems points to a “masking and passing” voice of Haruka.
At university Haruka uses Tagalog on social media for keeping up with her friends in thePhilippines and maintaining her fluency. She combines this with doing research for different
courses:I don’t want to lose it
I use it in my research
I’m reading articles in Tagalog
I’m chatting with my friends
if I’m researching about something
I don’t want to use Japanese
I use Tagalog when I research about the Philippines situation
I think it has more information than English and Japanese
I read it
I sometimes write about it in Tagalog
I don’t want to lose it
I’m practising
I think if I lose it
I couldn’t talk with my friends as normal as before

Still sensitive about how she may be accepted by her peers, Haruka often affects a heavy katakana accent when she first talks in English with other Japanese students at university. Thatway, her experience tells her, they will not feel scared or intimidated by how fluently she speaks.

I-poems: Midori
As shown in Midori’s I-poem at the start of this paper, using her local variety of Japanese
made her feel deeply connected to her local area. A key anchor for Midori is her grandmother122

Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 3 • December 2019

Andy Barfield

who lives with her parents in the same house in Azumino, Nagano prefecture (Midori tends to
deploy a less localised variety of Japanese with her parents):

I feel strong connection with her
my way of using Japanese is biased from Nagano
I don’t think it’s proper way of Japanese
my parents don’t have that strong dialect
when I talk with her in strong dialect
I feel strong connection with herthen I often use dialect
but when I talking with my parents
I don’t really

Midori also professed a sense of conflict about using her local variety in Tokyo or other major cities: “Just not cool,” she commented at first, as if using her Nagano dialect would amountto an incongruent act of identity (Le Page & Tabouret-Keller, 1985) in her new student life.
Other see-saw tensions tended to de-centre Midori too. She had taken an extra year toprepare for university entrance exams. One year behind her peers of the same age, she now
struggled with using “keigo” (= a polite and respectful register used according to age andstatus) with older students as opposed to using “plain” Japanese (or “straight Japanese” asshe calls it). She recalled that she had first learnt to use “keigo” in her junior high school
sports club where younger members were bullied if they did not show due respect to theirseniors by employing “keigo”. At university Midori felt compelled to deploy “keigo” but confessed to having no sense of showing respect by doing so; it was simply something that sheneeded to do:

I just get used to this way of using keigo
I often feel I should use
I have to use keigo to sempai
sometimes I can use keigo to teacher
but for sempai I can’t
I think it’s strongly connected with my experience in my junior high school age
I joined volleyball club and these sports club have strong hierarchy system
if younger people didn’t use keigo to senior people
senior people just angry for not using keigo
I think it’s stupid
I just get used to this way of using keigo
because I have gap age
when I entered this university I was worried
I was worried for using keigo to third years student because they’re same age to me
I just want to use keigo
I think it’s from my experiencethat’s why I can’t use the straight Japanese
I just use keigo
but it’s not the sign of respect
I didn’t show respect to him
but I just use keigo

Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 3 • December 2019123

Exploring Identity Conflict in Learners’ Linguistic Repertoires: Portraits, Stories, Poems, and Issues

In addition to feeling social pressures around her use of her local variety of Japanese and“keigo,” Midori was at first lost about using English at university. Yet, she soon started identifying in a positive way about speaking English. Part of this change involved idealising people who use English communicatively rather than just studying it:

it’s a shame I didn’t have the courage to use English
when in the first class they started to use English in self-introduction
it was my first time to use English in the classroom in 10 years
I couldn’t say anything
I didn’t like English
I didn’t think anything
maybe speaking in English is significant
the people who use English is adorable I thought
it’s very 恥ずかしい とても恥ずかしい5

Overcoming the embarrassment that she initially felt in speaking English at university,
Midori starting to restructure part of her identity around becoming a proficient English user.
Now in Tokyo, she could hear many different languages around her, particularly English, andthis let her connect—albeit indirectly at first—her own increasing use of English with adopting a globalised identity for herself:

I felt “Oh Tokyo is now global city”
when I walking through the town
I often hear many languages especially in Shinjuku or Shibuya
I can hear English
then I recognize it’s English
but if I want to understand what they’re saying
I need to listen carefully
I thought it’s very interesting“Oh that’s Tokyo”
when I’m in Nagano we never hear other languages
sometimes Chinese but not English
I felt “Oh Tokyo is now global city”

Aware that this would be good for her future, Midori started to invest herself heavily inusing English and in making friends with international students on campus. She also madeplans to study abroad in her third year in Sweden and was later awarded a scholarship for
this, thus developing other forms of capital along the way.
Midori’s I-poems reveal significant identity shifts and conflicts. There is the enduring
emotional impact that using her local dialect has on her, as well as the tension between using
her local dialect or standard Japanese outside of her home area as she starts to encounter anddesire “the global” in her university life. She finds hierarchical relationship norms bothersome to accept, yet is also compelled to use “keigo” without ever feeling that she is showing
others the respect that is expected. The alluring branding of her local area as a tourist destination helps her keep a sense of her Azumino identity, while at the same time the salienceof English around her in Tokyo pulls her towards “the global” and to cultivating friendships
5“hazukashi totemo hazukashi” = embarrassing very embarrassing

124

Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 3 • December 2019

Andy Barfieldwith students from different countries and preparing to study abroad for a year in Stockholm.
All this seems to have distanced her from the bothersome norms of formality that she experiences in using Japanese. Midori knew how to navigate those social rules, but they were empty for her. Wishing to relate to others as equals, she also became more and more focused on
moving from university in one global city in Japan to another in Sweden. All in all, a composite voice emerges in the ensemble of Midori’s I-poems—a “mobile glocal-egalitarian” voice,so to speak, of someone who embraces her local roots, yet wishes to develop and convert English into a global resource for making friends with international students outside of hierarchical relationships and becoming an international student herself by studying in Europe for ayear.

I-poems: Tomoko
Growing up in Fukushima, Tomoko longed to be seen as the same as other children in theway she used Japanese. She wasn’t, and this led to an enduring sense of misalignment for her
in her everyday life, first at elementary school and later at junior high:“Oh she’s Vietnamese”
I live in the countryside of Fukushima
the international people like me is really not really much there
if they talk me “Oh she’s Vietnamese”
some people see me in the different ways
actually I use Japanese like Japanese people
so after that they don’t mind that
I have many other points that they can mention
the first thing that they say to Tomoko will be in the class “She’s Vietnamese”
sometimes I think it’s a bias
I want to use Japanese like every other Japanese children

The othering (Grant-Thomas, 2018) as “foreign” that she experienced when younger did
not however lead Tomoko towards a clearer sense of her own Vietnamese identity. Rather, it
simply left her feeling different from others, and she became unwilling to assert at school theVietnamese identity that her peers assigned her:

I just think I am different from others
now I grow up
I can speak Vietnameseit’s a strong point of me
when I’m a child
I just think I am different from others
when I go to the junior high schoolit’s not bullying
but it’s like “gaikokujin”6then I couldn’t think that I have a Vietnamese identity
it’s not a really good thing
it makes me different from other students

In the interview Tomoko was careful not to characterise her experiences as bullying. She
Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 3 • December 2019125

Exploring Identity Conflict in Learners’ Linguistic Repertoires: Portraits, Stories, Poems, and Issues

had many friends, but being positioned as different made her long to be “fully” Japanese (“Ijust want to be one hundred per cent Japanese” is how she put it), a desire that she kept secretfrom her family. In this first set of I-poems Tomoko repeatedly articulates her sense of beingsocially and emotionally displaced by others—a voice, so to speak, of “marginalised positionand desire” around her heritage language and contested otherness (Doerr, 2010).
In her mediating role, Tomoko could fluently communicate in both Vietnamese and Japanese to create greater inclusion (and acceptance) for her younger brother and parents. Yet,rather than experiencing this role as a benefit, she felt that it disadvantaged her. Questioning why she was asked to do this, she was not able, on an emotional level, to find common
ground with her family about the extra responsibility placed on her:

I had to handle something that other children didn’t have to do
my parents couldn’t speak Japanese fluently
it is disadvantage for mesometimes I had to handle something that other children didn’t have to doin the school regularly they have a meeting with the parents
I have to sit there to hear what teachers saywhen I grow up
I can’t sympathise with my family
when I was a childI thought why I should do that
why I should do a lot of work
then I didn’t have to

Tomoko’s sense of belonging was further complicated by different expectations and practices within the family. Her parents made the home a Vietnamese-using environment for her.
She would listen to songs and watch films in Vietnamese, her parents insisting that she not
use Japanese at home. They were worried that she might otherwise lose her proficiency in
Vietnamese, as outside the home her environment was mostly in Japanese. At the same time,her (younger) brother grew up with limited proficiency in Vietnamese. He developed greater expertise in Japanese, so at home Tomoko and her parents would use Vietnamese, and herbrother Japanese, but, outside, the two siblings communicated in Japanese with each other.
Through her life Tomoko has been expected to respond on her brother’s behalf when needed.
His teachers would call Tomoko to come to the school and help interpret what they wanted toteach her brother. Many different demands were made of Tomoko by her family and by theschool to mediate and bridge gaps of understanding and communication. This second set of
I-poems seems then to embody the “constrained mediating” voice of Tomoko.
Over time she began to resolve some of these disconsonant tensions by affirming that she
had Vietnamese heritage and that she could speak different languages—not just Vietnameseand Japanese, but also English (and later Chinese). Once at senior high school, she started toassert her different roots as a strong point:

I don’t hide that I have a Vietnamese identity
when I go to the high school it changed
I don’t hide that I have a Vietnamese identity
I don’t want to show thatin the high school I start to show that I can speak Vietnamese
when I introduce myself

126

Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 3 • December 2019

Andy Barfield
I use
I talk like it’s my strong point
I changed my thinking
I show it like the positive not negative
my name is Tomoko and I’m from …
watashi no chosho vietnam-go hanasareru koto desu7

Her experiences of growing up bilingually and being required to use language helped
Tomoko find her own active way of learning English through films and music rather thanstudy. She was also driven to excel in using English fluently and, by dint of hard work, outshone her peers. They in turn ascribed her English prowess to the fact that she was Vietnamese, once more out-grouping and subordinating (Grant-Thomas, 2018) Tomoko, this time byre-establishing an implied monolingual norm for themselves as non-communicative users ofEnglish:it’s natural that she can she could speak English
when I was in junior high schoolin the English lectures I do better than other students
I worked really hard that I have to remaember the vocabularies or grammars
other students said “Oh she’s Vietnamese”“So it’s natural that she can she could speak English”“She can write English better than us”
I did same thing as they did
I have to attend the lectures or do the homework did the homework as they did

After a school trip and homestay in Yorkshire, England, Tomoko took up reading shortstories aloud to improve her pronunciation and take her English further. This was part of alonger, complicated process of addressing some of the identity conflicts that she had been
experiencing. Finding different part-time jobs where she could use a range of languages, shegained further skills and benefits. In one job Tomoko worked for an employment agency forinternational students, most of whom were Vietnamese. She would interview them in Vietnamese and check their Japanese skills for initial placement; her work also involved visiting
different employers and resolving any problems of communication in the workplace. She
would help Vietnamese students find employment and reduce misunderstanding and discrimination against them. In another job, Tomoko could use Vietnamese, Japanese and English,
as well as some Chinese, in researching intellectual property issues in Southeast Asia. All thisactivity helped her create a sense of greater alignment for herself. She could now re-negotiate
what had previously been subordinate positions and re-position herself according to how she
wished to belong (Brocket, 2018). This final set of I-poems points, then, to how, over time,
Tomoko came to adopt what I have come to see as an “agentive bridging voice” in finding
ways through language to perform different identities by her own choice, intention, and desire (Lantolf & Thorne, 2006), as well as mediate conflicts for herself and others.
Interestingly Tomoko mentioned that she wanted to let people learn about the lives of multilingual people like herself. Somewhat surprisingly, until being interviewed about her own
linguistic repertoire, Tomoko had never had the opportunity to make sense of the twists andturns in her languaged journey through life, and of how she had worked through different
identity conflicts that had previously entangled her—just as Haruka and Midori had similarly
7= “My strong point is that I can speak Vietnamese.”

Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 3 • December 2019127

Exploring Identity Conflict in Learners’ Linguistic Repertoires: Portraits, Stories, Poems, and Issues

exercised their agency to negotiate issues of discrimination, inclusion, and power in their own
strikingly individual ways.

Discussion
The research has let us recognise how these three learners’ languaged lives are rich and complex. Situated in the external and internal social worlds that they inhabit, the three students’
identity conflicts are deeply embedded in different sites, norms, practices, and discourses that
extend far beyond the here-and-now. To navigate their way, they adeptly draw on their linguistic repertoires and re-negotiate different positions for themselves in the identity conflicts
that they face. Applying what Burgess (2011) observes in relation to previous research about“newcomer” young learners in Japan, we see that the three students in this research “… are
not passive ‘victims’ moulded by their environment but active agents negotiating multiple
discourses… as they constantly construct and re-construct their identities” (p. 195). A casein point is how Midori’s life trajectory includes entrenched identity issues that she has faced
over several years in using a non-standard variety of Japanese and in deploying “keigo” inher relationships with her peers from junior high school through to university.
As active agents, the three students struggle and adapt, learning to act in a given social field
through “… exercis(ing) agency in the interstices of power” (Parker & Dales, 2014, p. 165). In
their micro-practices the students find ways to take part in a particular field on their terms
as far as they can. Tomoko’s decisions about her use of Japanese, Vietnamese, English, andChinese have taken her, for example, through challenging contradictions across her whole
life, within her family, her home community, at school with her peers, as well as in parent-teacher meetings, and in different work contexts. She has constantly re-negotiated withherself and with others to get by and resolve different identity conflicts that she has faced.
As with Haruka and Midori, Tomoko develops her agency not only in relation to others,
but also in response to dominant ideologies (Horner & Weber, 2018, pp. 20-28) that order
the world around her/them and regulate her life/their lives by creating different “modes ofinclusion and exclusion” (Darvin & Norton, 2015, p. 43). Thus, for a certain period, Tomoko
experiences the exclusionary effects of “the one-nation-one-language” ideology when she
is othered as Vietnamese and marginalised by her peers (Norton, 2000, pp. 127-8). Midori is
wrong-footed by the “standard language” ideology when she moves to Tokyo to go to university and is thrown into confusion about using her local variety of Japanese in her new socialworld. Intensely focused on gaining acceptance by her peers, Haruka responds to the all-pervasive “ideology of monolingualism” by going to extraordinary lengths to perform in public amonolingual identity so that she may be seen to be the same as her peers. In these cases, thethree students are each positioned outside dominant ideological norms to do with language
which those around them reproduce (whether intentionally or not) in their everyday micro-practices. The students get caught in the gaps—and it is in these gaps, these intersticesof power, that they experience a sense of “in-betweenness” (Brocket, 2018) arising from theirdiffering experiences of inclusion and exclusion by others in their lives.
Each student is resourceful in how they deal with the in-betweenness that they face. Lantolf and Pavlenko (2001, as cited in Lantolf & Thorne, 2006, p. 239) argue that agency is“never a ‘property’ of a particular individual; rather, it is a relationship that is constantly
co-constructed and renegotiated with those around the individual and with society at large”(p. 148). We see this relational co-construction of agency in action as Haruka, Midori, andTomoko respond to how their peers position them. Yet, it does not follow that they are instantly “empowered” to realign themselves or resolve the conflicts that they experience.
Rather, there are long periods of confusion, resistance, and struggle, as with Tomoko’s dis-128

Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 3 • December 2019

Andy Barfieldappointed questioning of her family’s demands of her, Midori’s dis-located use of Azumino
Japanese, and Haruka’s decision to act monolingually. They struggle over time to get by andre-negotiate their “positioned belongings” (Brocket, 2018). At the same time, as much as thestudents work to re-align and re-position themselves, it seems that they also wish simply to
get by and survive the forceful effects of othering, subordination, invisibilization, and alienation (Grant-Thomas, 2018) that they experience to differing degrees in the identity conflicts
that they go through.
In working in the interstices of power, the students make use of their agency as the “capacity to negotiate with power in whatever form” (Parker & Dales, 2014, p. 165). And they dothis even when their actions may make them complicit or leave them compromised, as with
Haruka in the decisions and actions that she took to fit in, but which also entangled her in
reproducing the monolingual norms that prevailed around her. The students’ agency is thus
situated “as complicity, compromise, deviance, resistance” (Parker & Dales, 2014, p. 165) asis their motivation—“whether it be intentional or unintentional, voluntary or involuntary,
self-expression, self-interest or group interest …” (Parker & Dales, 2014, p. 165). In so muchas this holds, the three students’ exercise of agency helps us understand their creative andcritical resourcefulness in dealing with the complexity of power, inclusion/exclusion, and discrimination in the “peculiar biographical trajectories” (to use Blommaert’s 2008 phrase) thatthey each take in their linguistic repertoires.
Looking back at this research project now that it is finally written, my sense is that it is the
combination of seeing the students’ language portraits, hearing their stories, and puzzlingover their individual voices in the I-poem analysis that has let us develop a deepening awareness of how they addressed the identity conflicts that they faced. Why that might be? While
the three I-poems at the start of this paper presented us with a fragmentary sketch of each
person’s life, the language portraits within silhouette outlines let us see each person holistically (yet still impressionistically). We were then able to embellish our formative holistic
impressions through short interview extracts and small stories. Be that as it may, at the sametime any sense of unitary coherence that you or I started to gain about the students’ identities was repeatedly dislodged by the associative logic and counterpointing impacts of the
I-poems. With each student, we were confronted, in short succession, with particular identity conflicts that an individual had experienced in different places, at different times, and indifferent personal and social interactions—the three fundamental dimensions of the narrativeinquiry space that Clandinin & Connelly (2000, pp. 48-62) propose. In that case, was it thenthe combination of language portraits, interviews, and the compressed, contrapuntal narratives of the I-poems that helped us crystallize our own perspectives on (how the studentssee) the identity conflicts that they experienced? For my part, I’m still not sure. Perhaps, on
further reflection, it is not so much the different modes of inquiry in themselves, but rather
the process of inquiring with our learners creatively and repeatedly, while recognising their
distinctive situated participant signatures, that takes us towards new, critical perspectives onlearner development?

References
Ahearn, L. (2001). Language and agency. Annual Review of Anthropology, 30, 109–37.
Bamberg, M., & Georgakopoulou, A. (2008). Small stories as a new perspective innarrative
and identity analysis. Text & Talk, 28(3), 377-96.
Barfield. A., & Morgan, J. (2016). Learning together with an extraordinary community ofeducators in non-state education in Burma/Myanmar. Learning Learning, 25(2), 9-17.
Retrieved from http://ld-sig.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/Article-2-Barfield.pdf
Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 3 • December 2019129

Exploring Identity Conflict in Learners’ Linguistic Repertoires: Portraits, Stories, Poems, and Issues

Blommaert, J. (2010). The sociolinguistics of globalization. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University
Press.
Blommaert, J. (2008). Language, asylum, and the national order. Working Papers in Urban
Language & Literacies, 50, 1-21. Retrieved from https://www.kcl.ac.uk/ecs/research/
research-centres/ldc/publications/workingpapers/the-papers/50.pdf
Bourdieu, P. (1980/1990). The logic of practice (Polity Press, Cambridge in association withBlackwell, Oxford, Trans.). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Bright, F. A. S., Kayes, N. M., Worrall, L. M., & McPherson, K. M. (2017). Exploring relational
engagement practices in stroke rehabilitation using the Voice Centred Relational Approach.
International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 21(1), 35-48.
Brocket, T. (2018). From “in-betweenness” to “positioned belongings”: second-generation
Palestinian-Americans negotiate the tensions of assimilation and transnationalism. Ethnic
and Racial Studies. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2018.1544651
Burgess, C. (2011). (Mis)managing diversity in non-metropolitan public schools. In
R. Tsuneyoshi, K. H. Okano, & S. Spence Boocock (Eds.), Minorities and education in
multicultural Japan (pp. 191-212). London, UK: Routledge.
Busch, B. (2018). The language portrait in multilingualism research: Theoretical andmethodological considerations. Working Papers in Urban Language & Literacies, 236, 1-13.
Busch, B. (2017). Biographical approaches to research in multilingual settings: Exploring
linguistic repertoires. In M. Martin-Jones & D. Martin (Eds.), Researching multilingualism:
Critical and ethnographic perspectives (pp. 46-59). Abingdon, UK: Routledge.
Busch, B. (2015). Expanding the notion of the linguistic repertoire: On the concept ofSpracherleben—the lived experience of language. Applied Linguistics, 38(3), 340–58.
Busch, B. (2014). Building on heteroglossia and heterogeneity: The experience of amultilingual classroom. In A. Blackledge & A. Creese (Eds.), Heteroglossia as practice andpedagogy (pp. 21-40). Heidelberg, Germany: Springer.
Busch, B. (2012). The linguistic repertoire revisited. Applied Linguistics, 33(5), 503–23.
Chik, A. (2017). Do you see what I see? Some thoughts on visualizing learner development.
The Learner Development Journal, 1(1), 114-18.
Chik, A. (2015, November). Visualizing language learning. Workshop conducted at the 2015
Japan Association for Language Teaching International Conference, Shizuoka, Shizuoka
Prefecture, Japan.
Chik, A. (2014). Constructing German learner identities in online and offline environments.
In D. Abendroth-Timmerr & E-M. Hennig (Eds.), Plurilingualism and multiliteracies:
International research on identity construction in language education (pp. 159-73). Frankfurt am
Main, Germany: Peter Lang.
Chik, A., Markose, S., & Alperstein, D. (2018). Languages of Sydney: The people and thepassion. Hong Kong: Candlin & Mynard ePublishing. Retrieved from https://www.
candlinandmynard.com/sydney.html
Clandinin, D. J., & Connelly, F. M. (2000). Narrative inquiry: Experience and story in qualitative
research. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Clipart Library (no date). Collection of person outline coloring page (82). Retrieved fromhttp://clipart-library.com/person-outline-coloring-page.html
Council of Europe (2018). Project LIAM (Linguistic Integration of Adult Migrants). Key terms.
Language repertoire. Retrieved from https://www.coe.int/en/web/lang-migrants/repertoirelanguageCouncil of Europe (2001). Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning,teaching, assessment (CEFR). Council of Europe Modern Languages Division, Strasbourg/
Cambridge University Press. Retrieved from https://rm.coe.int/1680459f97

130

Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 3 • December 2019

Andy Barfield

Darvin, R., & Norton, B. (2015). Identity and a model of investment in applied linguistics.
Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 35, 36–56.
Doerr, N. (2010). Introduction: Heritage, nationhood, and language. Critical Asian Studies, 42,
53-62.
Edwards, R., & Weller, S. (2012). Shifting analytic ontology: Using I-poems in qualitative
longitudinal research. Qualitative Research, 12(2), 202-217. Retrieved from http://eprints.
ncrm.ac.uk/2956/1/Edwards&Weller_QR_I-poems_2012.pdf
Gilligan, C., & Eddy, J. (2017). Listening as a path to psychological discovery: An introduction
to the Listening Guide. Perspectives on Medical Education, 6(2), 76–81. Retrieved fromhttps://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40037-017-0335-3
Grant-Thomas, A. (2018). Object to subject: Three scholars on race, othering, and bearing
witness. Othering and Belonging Journal, 3, 16-29.
heteroglossia.net (no date). Research, projects and information on multilingualism. Retrieved
from http://heteroglossia.net/Home.2.0.html.
Horner, K., & Weber, J-J (2018). Introducing multilingualism: A social approach (2nd ed.). London,
UK: Routledge
Lantolf, J. P., & Thorne, S. L. (2006). Sociocultural theory and the genesis of second language
development. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Lantolf, J. P. , & Pavlenko, A. (2001). (S)econd (L)anguage (A)ctivity theory: Understanding
second language learners as people. In M. Breen (Ed.), Learner contributions to language
learning. New directions in research (pp. 141-58). London, UK: Longman.
Le Page, R. B., & Tabouret-Keller, A. (1985). Acts of identity: Creole-based approaches to language
and ethnicity. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Lin, J-H (2012). Coming to belong: A narrative analysis of international students’ experiences inan Australian university (Doctoral dissertation). Centre of Learning Innovation Faculty of
Education, Queensland University of Technology, Australia. Retrieved from https://eprints.
qut.edu.au/54680/1/Jung-Hsiu_Lin_Thesis.pdf
Norton, B. (2000). Identity and language learning: Gender, ethnicity and educational change.
Harlow, UK: Pearson Education.
Okano, K. H., & Tsuneyoshi, R. (2011). Introduction. An interactive perspective forunderstanding minorities and education in Japan. In R. Tsuneyoshi, K. H. Okano, & S.
Spence Boocock (Eds.), Minorities and education in multicultural Japan (pp. 1-26). London, UK:
Routledge.
Paliadelis, P., & Cruickshank, M. (2008). Using a voice-centered relational method of data
analysis in a feminist study exploring the working world of nursing unit managers.
Qualitative Health Research, 18(10), 1444-53.
Parker, L., & Dales, L. (2014). Introduction: The everyday agency of women in Asia.
Asian Studies Review, 38(2),164-67.
Wolf, G. (2014). Discovering pupils’ linguistic repertoires. On the way towards a heteroglossic
language teaching. (J. Irons, Trans.). Sprogforum, 59, 87-94. (Original published in
Danish). Retrieved from https://unipress.dk/media/3583817/sprogforum_59_wolf.pdf

Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 3 • December 2019131

Exploring Identity Conflict in Learners’ Linguistic Repertoires: Portraits, Stories, Poems, and Issues

Acknowledgments
My thanks go to Ami Ishizuka and Ryo Moriya, as well as Masuko Miyahara, for exchanging
comments and stimulating questions on our original proposals, and to Ami and Ryo, as wellas Jim Ronald and Hugh Nicoll, for their constructive feedback on the first draft of this paper.
I’d also like to say thank you to Tim Ashwell, Sabine Little, Yoshi Nakai, and Alison Stewart
for their insightful feedback on further drafts of the paper, as well as to Chika Hayashi fortranslating the abstract and key words into English. In doing this research and writing thispaper, I’ve given both formal and informal presentations at conferences and get-togethers
about exploring my students’ linguistic repertoires, and those many different conversations
and discussions with students and teachers have been invaluable too: Thank you to everyone
who shared their experiences and ideas. My final thanks go to Tin Tin Htun for her insightfulcomments and feedback, and to my four students for sharing with me their language portraits
and the rich complexity of their languaged lives.

Review ProcessThis paper was open-reviewed by Tim Ashwell, Sabine Little, Yoshio Nakai, and Alison Stewart. (Contributors have the option of open or blind review.)

Author Bio
Andy Barfield teaches in the Faculty of Law at Chuo University, Tokyo, where he helps to coordinate a large-scale taught-in-English curriculum in which students do self-directed research projects into social, political, legal, and global issues. Andy’s current research interests
include multilingual issues in society, critical literacy, and fieldwork.

Appendix A
Questions guiding the Listening Guide analysis (Bright, Kayes, Worrall, & McPherson, 2017, p. 40)
Reading

Questions

Reading One: •The story•
and response

What are the events, sub-plots, characters, metaphors, and recurrent
phrases?

•

What is my emotional and intellectual response to the participant?

•Who is speaking and with what voice?

•

How does the participant experience, feel, present and speak of themselves?

•

How does the participant believe others see them?

Reading Two: •Participant•
voices•132

What is going on here?

What emotions, reflections, opinions, actions, intentions are evident?
What pronouns does the person use when speaking of themselves?
What are people saying and doing (acting)? How do they expect to act?
How do they do things and how did they develop that knowledge?

•

What roles are the participants playing?

•

How do they perceive situations, words and actions (symbols)? How does
this impact on action?

Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 3 • December 2019

Andy Barfield••
Reading•
Three: Others•
and relationships•

Who is spoken about, the relationships, emotions, statements and stories
associated with each?
Who is related to who in what way?
How are people positioned within the relationships and interactions?
What are people saying and doing (acting)? How do they expect to act?
How do they do things and how did they develop their knowledge?
What roles are the participants playing?

•

How do they perceive situations, words and actions (symbols)? How does
this impact on action?

•

What are the broader social, political, cultural, professional and structural contexts surrounding the participants’ story, experiences, actions andinterpretations?

•

What is spoken and unspoken, overt and taken-for-granted?

•
Reading
Four: Context •Whose voices are heard informing the situation?

•

Why do people act in some ways and not others?

•

What is institutionalized? What is the ‘right’ way to do things? Where did
this come from? How have different roles come about?

•

What is privileged in talk and/or action?

What social values surround the interaction?

Appendix B
Interview segment for the I-poem “I couldn’t speak I think the modern Japanese” (Haruka,
Interview 1, January 2018(…)
AB: so you were you were quick to learn yeah yeah
Haruka: yeah and then I also looked for different language school which is taught by university students there is a voluntary circle and I go there for 5 months and enter junior highschool
AB: and that was for children they were teaching Japanese to immigrant children so did you
have other classmates
Haruka: yeah
AB: in the university school
Haruka: yes but almost all of them are elementary schoolthat are the same age as me(laughter) there is no students

AB: right right
Haruka: so when I enter the junior high school I couldn’t speak I think the modern Japanese
AB: yes yes yeah
Haruka: so I can speak the formal Japanese
AB: yes yes
Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 3 • December 2019133

Exploring Identity Conflict in Learners’ Linguistic Repertoires: Portraits, Stories, Poems, and Issues

Haruka: and they think that Japanese is kind of weird so from them I studied the modern
Japanese by watching TVs or dramas
AB: yeah
Haruka: and yeah I entered high school and in the first year of high school I thought that myaccent isn’t so is very different than Japanese so it was my complex
(…)

134

Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 3 • December 2019