RESEARCH PAPER
Transitional Self in Study Abroad: An Analysis
of a Japanese Female Student’s Positioning in
Narratives
Kie Yamamoto, Kanda University of International Studies
Study abroad is generally acknowledged as an optimal way of improving foreign language skills and gaining a setof competences required for the global market. While the outcome of study abroad is often discussed based on
acquisition of those skills, recent studies highlight the complexity of identity construction from sociocultural perspectives. In this study, I explore a series of narratives shared by a Japanese female college student in order to
unfold her challenges and changes over a one year period in an American community college. This study draws oncommunity of practice (Lave and Wenger, 1991; Wenger, 1998) and investment (Darvin and Norton, 2015) as theoretical perspectives in order to capture the complexity of learner identity construction through (non) participation
and belonging in multiple social groups. Adapting narrative positioning analysis (Bamberg, 1997) as an analyticalframework, the study reveals how she negotiated and developed her identities throughout participation in theculturally as well as linguistically distinctive communities. In particular, her investment in becoming a legitimate
member of the English academic discourse community was found to be a significant experience that impacted onher sense of self. The study concludes with consideration of the significance of narrative inquiry for investigating
language learner identity, particularly highlighting the researcher positionality that plays a crucial role in co-constructing and re-telling a learner’s narrative.
留学は一般的に、外国語スキルの向上や、グローバル化が進む社会において必要とされる能力を身につける有効的な手段と認識されている。それ故、留学の効果自体がスキル習得を中心とし議論されることが多いが、近年その影響として、学習者のアイデンティティ構築に注目した研究も見られるようになってきている。本研究は、日本人女子大学生よって語られた1年間のアメリカ留学経験に基づくナラティブから、彼女に起きた「困難」と「変化」を読み解くものである。様々な社会的グループへの(不)参加を通しなされるアイデンティティ形成を捉える上で、実践コミュニティ (Lave and Wenger, 1991; Wenger, 1998)及びインベストメント(Darvin and Norton, 2015) の概念を理論的視座とした。また、分析手法としてナラティブ・ポジショニング・アナリシス(Bamberg, 1997)を用い、彼女が文化的かつ言語的に全く異なるコミュ
ニティにおいて、どのように自身を理解し、アイデンティティ構築を行ったか、他者との関わり合いに焦点を当てた。分析の結果、英語のアカデミック・ディスコースにおいて、有能なコミュニティの一員として認められることへの「投資」が彼女の自己意識に大きな変化を与えた要因となったことが明らかになった。また、本稿の結びとして、ナラティブ構築における相互性や語り直しのプロセスといった側面について言及
し、研究者が「聞き手」として果たす役割について、本研究を振り返りながら、言語学習者のアイデンティティ研究におけるナラティブ・インク
ワイアリーの重要性を論じる。

Keywords
language learner identity, narrative inquiry, study abroad, community of practice, researcher reflexivity

キーワード
言語学習者アイデンティティ、ナラティブインクワイアリー、留学、実践コミュニティ、研究者の再帰性

T

he usual benefits attributed to study abroad are linguistic improvement, cultural experiences and personal growth for global society (Kubota, 2016). Therefore, it has beenpromoted in international higher education as a means of gaining those skills. Following the trend of student mobility for global market, in the field of second language acquisition(SLA), study abroad is often simply considered as a particular type of context where language
acquisition occurs. Immersion within a target language is regarded as an important way ofenabling language learners to obtain high proficiency. Hence, research on study abroad, especially with a focus on L2 acquisition, often has simply dealt with language skill development
or communicative competence including strategic and discourse abilities (Kinginger, 2013).

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Kie Yamamoto

However, recent studies (e.g., Benson, Barkhuizen, Bodycott & Brown, 2013; Block, 2007;
Piller & Takahashi, 2006; Morita, 2002, 2004, 2009) have shed light on learners’ subjective
accounts of study abroad experience, which reveal challenges and struggles with re-conceptualizing their identities in the use of the target language in a culturally distinctive context.
Rather than simply investigating the process of how learners acquire a target language, thosestudies have attempted to reveal the contexts including the social, historical or political discourses that are intricately linked to learners’ motives and behaviors. In particular, studies of
non-native English speakers’ experiences in an English-dominant academic discourse communities during study abroad (e.g., Morita, 2004, 2009) underline the necessity of investigating their struggles and needs from socially-sensitive perspectives.
A year-abroad program is still a popular option for Japanese university students (Institute of International Education, 2018) as a part of their degree, however, the outcomes of the
program are still judged according to its effectiveness in terms of linguistic gains. I argue thatthe outcomes do not simply correlate with a learner’s individual differences but also dependon the intricate relationships that are “socially and historically constructed within particular
relations of power” (Norton, 2013, p. 11) in host countries. Thus, in this study, I have decided to focus on a single case study with a Japanese female college student in order to uncoverher challenges and changes over a year period in an American community college. It aims
to contribute to expanding the concepts of study abroad from a socially-informed approach,shedding light on how her participation in English academic discourse has impacted on her
identities. In the next section, I first provide key concepts related to language learner identity
and study abroad research. After describing the research methodology, three stories are analyzed drawing on narrative positioning analysis originally proposed by Bamberg (1997). This
study concludes by discussing the implications of longitudinal narrative research to criticallyexamine learners’ study abroad experiences from a socially-sensitive perspective.

Literature Review
With the flourishing of social constructivist and poststructuralist perspectives, the “socialturn” in applied linguistics (Block, 2003) empowered researchers to understand language
learning as a situated construct, taking account of social, cultural, and temporal context. Concomitantly, learner identity also started receiving attention from applied linguists as a crucial
dimension of language learning. Norton (2013) defines identity as “how a person understands
his or her relationship to the world, how that relationship is structured across time and space,and how the person understands possibilities for the future” (p. 45). The complexity of learner identity construction has also encouraged researchers to pay attention to both the self andthe contexts in which language learning is situated. In particular, socially-oriented approaches have lent their holistic and multifaceted theories to traditional individualistic perspectivesof language learning.
One of the significant concepts adapted from social learning theories is the notion of community, which has been used as an analytical lens to capture the concept of self as multiple, changing, and a site of struggle” (Norton & Toohey, 2011, p. 414). Particularly, Lave andWenger (1991) and Wenger (1998)’s Community of Practice has been used in various studies(e.g., DePalma, 2008; Gu, 2013; Morita, 2004; Norton, 2001; Toohey, 1998) as its proponents
theorize the development and acquisition of new identities through participation in social
communities. The premise of community involves not only the immediate learning environment, but also imagined ones that reflect “the desire of learners to expand their rangeof identities and to reach out to wider worlds” (Pavlenko & Norton, 2007, p. 590). The roleof imagination, as discussed in the major body of research in L2 motivation (Dornyei 2005;
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Transitional Self in Study Abroad: An Analysis of a Japanese Female Student’s Positioning in Narratives

Dornyei & Ushioda, 2009) is prominent in understanding why a language learner is willing toacquire a target language from a psychological account. Norton (2001) suggests an alternative
view of “imagined community”, which enables researchers to investigate not only observablelanguage learning behavior in accessible environments such as language classrooms, but alsoa learner’s imagined social relationships in the future, which sheds lights on the recursive
nature of his or her aspirations toward a target language acquisition.
Another key concept in theorizing language learner identity is investment. Interweavingsocial perspectives with the psychological construct of motivation, Darvin and Norton (2015)
define investment as “a significant place in language learning theory for demonstrating
the socially and historically constructed relationship between language learner identity andlearning commitment” (p. 37). Their proposed “Model of Investment” suggests that investment is situated at the intersection of three constructs; ideology, capital and identity. They
theorize that “if learners invest in a language, they do so with the understanding that they
will acquire a wider range of symbolic and material resources, which will in turn increase thevalue of their cultural capital and social power” (p. 37). While language learner motivation
primarily is viewed as an internal state from a binary perspective (e.g., motivated/demotivated), investment takes a more holistic approach that concerns the situatedness of learners’
positioning in relation to power relationships in various levels including personal, institutional and social. Their case studies with a female learner in rural Uganda and a male learnerin urban Canada provide illustrative examples of how learners’ geographical and social locations as well as economic position enable or restrict their access to a varied range of language
learning opportunities. The construct of investment “recognizes that the conditions of power
in different learning contexts can position the learners in multiple and often unequal ways,
leading to varying learning outcomes” (Darvin & Norton, 2015, p. 37). Thus, the notion of
investment enables researchers to investigate the complexity and fluidity of socially-oriented
desire in language learning.
Following the surge of language learner identity research in applied linguistics, recent
studies of study abroad investigate the complexity of identity construction and L2 use in a
distinctive sociocultural context (e.g., Block, 2007; Chik and Benson, 2008; Kinginger, 2009,2013). Benson et al. (2013) posit study abroad as “an experience in which embodied identities
are relocated and reflexive/imagined identities are challenged by the need to achieve recognition for identities in an unfamiliar cultural setting” (p. 39). Whereas the traditional viewof study abroad concerns the acquisition of a target language as a primary outcome, more
researchers have started shedding light on sojourners’ first-hand experiences of how they
are positioned in the host culture and how they interpret “the social, cultural, and linguistic
practices of their host communities” (Kinginger, 2013, p. 341). Benson et al. (2013) conducteda narrative inquiry with Hong Kong students who had a sojourn experience in English-speaking countries to analyze the relationship between L2 competence and second language
identity development. Their study provides a comprehensive framework that explains theintertwining relationship between the gain of sociopragmatic competence and personal development. It also suggests that those two aspects of learner development powerfully impact
on the learners’ self-concept. Taking a holistic approach, their framework also signifies that
linguistic gain and socio-emotional dimensions of study abroad experience are interwoven
into a second language sojourners’ identity development; hence, engagement in study abroadrequires a deeper insight into learners’ social as well as historical backgrounds and the natureof study abroad programs, which may vary in terms of expectation, participation and interaction with local hosts.
Another important branch of research concerning identity construction in study abroad includes academic discourse socialization (Duff, 2007; Kobayashi, 2016) and academic accultura-

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Kie Yamamototion (Fox, Cheng and Zumbo, 2014; Omachinski, 2014; Peeters and Fourie, 2016). These emerging lines of research disciplines illuminate the intricate process of L2 learners’ socialization andinteraction with other members of an academic discourse community. Specifically, they positthat entering a new academic culture requires L2 students not only to adjust to a L2-dominantclassroom but also to learn a set of social as well as literacy practices (Kobayashi, 2016). Thus,
the theoretical implications of those studies put emphasis on the role of social networks including peer and teacher support in/outside classroom as indispensable in promoting newcomers’
engagement and smooth transition into the target academic community.
As discussed in this section, this study takes a social-constructivist perspective on language
learner identity development, shedding light on the process of ‘becoming somebody new,with new patterns of participation’ (Lamb, 2013, p. 37) within a new academic community instudy abroad. In particular, paying closer attention to the research participant’s challenges
and changes in a new academic discourse community, this study aims to gain a deeper understanding of her identity negotiation and development through participation in the target
community. There are still few longitudinal studies that focus on Japanese college students’narrative accounts of their academic classroom experience in study abroad. This study willcontribute to providing a richer understanding of specific issues that they potentially face
while participating in an academic program in English-speaking countries.

Research Methodology
Narrative Inquiry
A narrative inquiry approach is employed in this study. Seeking “lifelikeness”, narrativeinquiry has been receiving a growing interest cross disciplinarily in social science. In particular, narrative plays a crucial role in representing “silenced voices and subjugated knowledge”(Riessman, 2008, p. 186). Barkhuizen, Benson and Chik (2014) note that narrative inquiry is
considered valuable for researchers when they attempt to “capture the nature and meaning ofexperiences that are difficult to observe directly and are best understood from the perspectiveof those who experience them” (p.8). Thus, in the field of SLA, narrative research has been
often used as a way of investigating language learning experience or language teaching experience to reveal the narrator’s sense of self in relation to a particular sociocultural context(e.g., Barkhuizen, 2010, 2016, 2017; Rugen, 2013).
In essence, narrative involves cognitive as well as social processes, which enables narrative research to be approached multidimensionally (Barkhuizen, 2013). The process of making stories involves cognitive activities such as preserving memories, prompting reflections,connecting people with their past and present and assisting them to envision their future(Kramp, 2004). Simultaneously, a narrative must be understood in relation to “social, cultural, and historical conventions as well as by the relationship between the storyteller and theinterlocutor” (Pavlenko, 2002, p. 214). As researchers (Barkhuizen, 2013; Reissman, 2008;
Pavlenko, 2002) argue, narrative inquiry does not rest on factual data analysis on what has
been told. Rather, the complexity of how the narrative is constructed needs to be thoroughly
discussed. The criticality of in-depth analysis on the multileveled narrative context has been
discussed elsewhere (Atkinson 1997; Connelly & Clandinin, 2006; Barkhuizen, 2013; Reissman,2008); yet, as Pavlenko (2002, 2007) points out, its importance is commonly ignored when
researchers aim to find generalized factual data from narrative by simply adapting content
analysis. Hence, adapting the analytical framework that enables me to address the form-content relationship (Barkhuizen, 2009) is necessary in my study.

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Narrative Positioning Analysis
While there is no single analytical approach to narrative inquiry, I find narrative positioning analysis (Bamberg, 1997, 2003, Bamberg & Georgakopoulou, 2008) useful for the present
study. The notion of positioning is initially developed by Davies and Harré (1990), which isdefined as discursive practice where “selves are located as observably and subjectively coherent participants in jointly produced storylines” (p. 48). Thus, positioning analysis allows
researchers to make “the interactive site of storytelling the empirical ground, where identities
come into existence and are interactively displayed” (Bamberg, 2004, p. 36). Bamberg (1997)
has proposed three different levels of positioning which enable researchers to analyze thetransitional nature of narratives from both local and global perspectives. The first level mainly concerns the contents of the story, including the characters described by a narrator, therelationship among them, and the particular context drawn in the narrative. The second leveltakes a closer look at the way the narrator positions him/herself to the audience. Finally, thethird level aims to unfold the construct of selves produced by narrators themselves, weaving
the first two levels of positioning together.
Along with positioning analysis, Bamberg’s (2012) three realms of identity construction
were adapted as an analytical scope in investigating the transitional process of the research
participant’s identity construction. Defining identity construction as “dilemmatic spaces”(Bamberg, 2012, p. 204), he sheds light on (a) sameness/difference, (b) agentive/recipient and(c) constancy/change in analyzing narrative. The first point concerns how a narrator considers the sameness or difference in relation to other characters in the narrative to claim his/her positioning. The second point refers to how a narrator makes sense of an event as a resultof his/her agentic action or others. The third point focuses on the transition between present
and the past as a means of meaning-making of his/her change.
Bamberg (2011, 2012) denotes the significance of positioning within those three dilemmatic
spaces which appear in rather mundane conversations, as he calls “small stories” as opposed
to big stories that consist of autobiographical narratives. The significance of small stories has
been argued by narrative researchers (e.g., Barkhuizen, 2013; De Fina, 2013; Early & Norton,
2013; Rugen, 2013) as useful data set to investigate narrators’ transitional identities in everyday interaction. Compared to big stories, which are articulated from formally structured
research settings, small stories seek to obtain research participants’ “moment-to-moment
identity work” (Rugen, 2013, p. 201). The data used for the present study mainly entails theresearch participant’s everyday life in study abroad, thus each story may appear as a sort of
informal chat Nevertheless, what makes a narrative as a meaningful sense-making practiceis the audience’s insight into “how the referential world (of what the story is about) is constructed as a function of the interactive engagement, where the way the referential world is
put together points to how tellers “want to be understood” (Bamberg, 2011, p. 10). The analysis of the series of narratives in the present study, therefore values the essence of small stories to reveal how the research participant of this study, a Japanese female college student,
was trying to make sense of herself in relation to specific social as well as spatiotemporalcontexts. In the following section, I illustrate the detailed analytical framework.

Research Participant
The research participant in this study, Emi (pseudonym) was a college student in her second
year of study in the English department of a foreign language university in Japan when thisresearch started. Born in Japan, her parents encouraged her to learn English as a foreign language at an early age. Since then, the English language became her interest as well as enjoyment. Although her English classes in junior high school as well as high school significantly

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lacked the opportunities for communicative language learning, she imagined herself becoming bilingual and studying abroad in the future. I, as a learning advisor, first met Emi in April
2016. She requested a weekly advising appointment with me to talk about English learning;sometimes she had a number of grammatical questions, and other times we talked about her
personal issues in English classroom including anxiety, peer pressure and her willingness totry more challenging assignments. I gradually got intrigued by the multifaceted selves she
showed in the advising sessions, which encouraged me to ask her to participate in the longitudinal research while she was studying abroad.
Prior to study abroad, she was envisioning herself as a highly proficient English learner.
When asked about her future self-image after completing study abroad, she described hervision as follows: “I want to be like Japanese English teachers here. I feel I get misunderstoodwhen explaining a complicated thing. I want to speak good English so that I won’t be misunderstood by native English speakers” (Emi, August 2016, personal communication). She wasalso hoping to work in the hospitality industry possibly as working as a cabin attendant using
English.

Data Collection
Three stories presented here are a part of a longitudinal data set from the 14-month narrativeinquiry. This study mainly used a series of semi-structured interviews as the primary data
set. Additionally, audio recordings of advising sessions with the research participant as wellas my own advising notes were also used as supplementary data to understand how she had
been making sense of herself in different spatiotemporal contexts. While each interview covered various stories including Emi’s language learning history, as aforementioned, I particularly focused on small stories. Therefore, illustrative stories were selected in the process oftranscribing/re-reading stage from the three interviews that were held between October 2016
and September 2017. The first and second interviews were conducted via Skype and the third
one was held in person on campus. The first two interviews used Japanese as a main languageof communication; hence, once transcription was complete, it was translated into English
by the researcher. In the third interview, original transcription is presented as Emi chose to
speak in English. In presenting the interview transcripts in Findings, I follow Barkhuizen(2017) by breaking the stories down into lines of idea units, which was originally suggested byGee (1986).

Analytical Framework
The process of data analysis in this study consists of three stages. The first step entailed
reading and re-reading the transcripts of each interview and adding notes in the parts thatsignaled Emi’s identity negotiation and construction. As narrative researchers suggest, narrative data analysis requires iterative, recursive and emergent approaches (Barkhuizen, Benson& Chik, 2014; Gu, 2013; Miyahara, 2015). Simultaneously, I incorporated what Miyahara (2015)
suggests as a “memoing” process in the first stage to add my thoughts and theoretical background from existing literature. This process also helped me organize my analytical perspective on what has been told in the narrative. The second step followed Bamberg’s (2012) three
realms of identity construction described above to investigate the dilemma within her senseof self that the research participant faced. In this stage, the guided questions “how does theresearch participant want the audience to understand who she is?” and “How does she makesense of herself through storytelling?” proposed in Bamberg’s (1997) positioning analysis
were also helpful to pay closer attention to how she positioned herself/was positioned in relation to others and how the positioning was understood by her in the meaning-making proLearner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 3 • December 2019157

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cess. This process, once again, required constant iteration. Lastly, the findings in the first andsecond analytical stage were compared and analyzed to highlight the critical experiences that
impacted on Emi’s identities. In this stage, the contextual transition (e.g., social/academic
discourse) was also considered as a crucial factor that impacted on her identity construction. Figure 1 illustrates the analytical process.

Figure 1. Process of Analysis.
While the analysis of this study draws on Bamberg’s (1997) positioning analysis, I also adhere to what Riessman (2008) suggests as “hallmarks of narratives”, which emphasize sequential and structural features of each story. As she warns, rigorous categorization may leadto the loss of the essence. Thus, the present study also attempts to maintain narratives as awhole rather than de-contextualizing and extracting the positioning elements.

The Researcher Positionality
One dimension of this study rests on my positionality, particularly my sociocultural background and my profession of learning advisor in terms of co-constructing narratives with
Emi. The present study adopts Atkinson’s (2005) situated qualitative research approach,which stresses “the quality of what is being studied from the actor’s point of view (p. 50).
Sharing the first language, educational background, and my own study abroad experience inan English-speaking country, my researcher positionality as an “insider” research participant has also become an important dimension of situatedness in this study. This “insider”
perspective was adapted from Morita (2002, 2004) and Miyahara (2015), who also researched
Japanese learners of English. Both studies, although the research contexts are different, describe the researchers’ positionality as a crucial lens to delve into the learners’ narratives.
While I maintained my neutral position while listening to her stories, I was also aware thatcritical experiences she faced in the United States reminded me of my own past experiences as
a learner of English.
In the research context of this study, my professional role as a learning advisor also has
contributed to co-constructing the narrative with Emi. Working with her outside the class-158

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Kie Yamamotoroom, our advising session was never compulsory; in other words, it occurred when she waswilling to share something with me. In addition to sharing similar backgrounds with her, myprofessional role as a learning advisor allowed me to reduce the researcher-researched divide
by dissolving the ‘rigid hierarchical power structure’ (Morita, 2002, p. 71) in the expert-novice relationship in the institutional context. Rather than taking an objective approach, I took
advantage of my positionality in this study in various research dimensions including datacollection as well as data analysis.
Simultaneously, I paid careful attention to the delicate research dimensions of narrativeinquiry because it is built upon an “inherently relational endeavor” (Josselson, 2007, p.537).
As Josselson (2007, p. 538) describes, narrative researchers play a “dual role-in an intimate
relationship with the participant and in a professionally responsible role in the scholarly
community” Thus, in addition to following the ethical procedure provided by the researcher’s
institution, the series of interpretive work based on the analysis was shared with Emi in orderto make sure that I was representing her voice in an ethical way.

Findings
This section presents the analysis of the conversational narratives in the selected excerpts
from three different periods of time respectively.

Dilemma of Being an International Student (October 2016)
It had been about two months since Emi moved to the United States. We made time to chatvia Skype after she finished her class. In this conversation, she shared various events happening in everyday life including her new friends, her host family, difficulties and excitementin school. Particularly, her experience of being an “international student” in the new academic community struck me the most.
(Y=Yamamoto; E=Emi)
1.	

Y How do you like your classes?

2.	

E Well, basically my advisor helped me choose the classes

3.	

that were popular among international students. Of course I am studying hard,

4.	

but no matter how hard I study, everyone gets good grades, which is

5.	

not rewarding...It’s a community college, so everyone cares about grading.

6.	

The teacher gives everyone a good grade.

7.	

To me, grading is not a problem. Next semester, I am thinking about

8.	

taking classes that have more American students.

9.	

Y I see I see. So are you becoming confident of your English skill?

10.	 E Oh no. I really feel teachers at (her home institution)speak English
11.	

really clearly and slowly after taking classes here.

12.	 I can only understand 70 percent of what the teachers say in class here.
13.	 Even my English writing teacher speaks really fast.
14.	 She always encourages me to come ask her questions though.
15.	 When I have a discussion with American students, I am like “I have no idea
16.	 what they are saying”. I haven’t been able to say much in class.

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17.	 Coming here, international students are quiet while
18.	 American students talk a lot. They suddenly raise their hands and start talking…
Throughout the story, Emi describes the reality in her new life within the new academic discourse. There are clear differences between what she had expected to become before
studying abroad in America and how she is positioned in American classroom. She becomesaware that she is seen as one of many international students by being put in the classes that
seemed to be easy to pass (line 2-4). It is intriguing to point out that Emi calls a group ofinternational students third person singular “everyone”; moreover, her statement “Grading
is not a problem” (line 7) distinguishes her motivation of learning from other international
students who appeared to be desperate to get good grades. Simultaneously, she expressed her
willingness to be part of the classroom that had more American student (line 8) in hoping tobe equally assessed by her instructor and possibly situate herself within more academicallychallenging environment.
When the topic moved onto the improvement in her English skill, she started illustrating
how she became a passive participant in class by comparing the nature of the community inher home institution and the new school. At a glance, the contrast seems to simply indicate
her lack of English proficiency; however, more importantly, the detailed illustration of othercharacters in this part of the story highlights her struggle with negotiating her identity in alinguistically as well as socioculturally different context. Whereas she successfully maintained
her reflexive identity as a hardworking and competent student in the community of English
learners at her home institution, she marginalized herself in the new academic community,
attributing to the lack of her English proficiency. Additionally, she considered herself as aninternational student (line 17) as opposed to American students who “suddenly raise theirhand and start talking” (line 18) in the new academic discourse. This shows her ambivalentsense of being “international student”; while she was resisting against the generalization ofinternational students earlier in the story, she also positioned herself as a part of the group by
accepting her marginalized presence in classroom.
Against her imagined college life in America, this story reveals her dilemma of being an international student. Her desire to be recognized as a legitimate member of the target community was, from her perspective, rejected. Simultaneously, she became conscious of her marginal position as a non-native English speaker in the English academic discourse community.

Surviving in the Classroom (February 2017)
Three months had passed since the last interview was held. I reached Emi by email to see how
she was doing as I was concerned about her situation. When we finally made time to talk via
Skype, I immediately noticed that the tone of her voice was very different from the previous
interview. Indeed, we talked more than one hour on that day. While there were a number ofsmall stories in this interview, I selected the one that illustrates the dynamics of identity construction after going through linguistic as well as emotional challenges in the new academic
discourse community.
19.	 Y How do you find the coursework in your classes?
20.	 E It’s really challenging to be honest. The book we have been reading is for21.	 American students. It’s about Christianity, which I am not familiar with at all.
22.	 It takes ages for me to read the textbook because there are160

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Kie Yamamoto23.	 way too many unknown words that American students even don’t know.
24.	 Y Wow, that must be really difficult!
25.	 Have you asked American students about the coursework?
26.	 E Yes yes. She said “I have no idea what the book is about and27.	 I really respect you reading this.” (Chuckle)
28.	 I am also taking Public Speaking because I want to improve my presentation skill.
29.	 Y Public Speaking?! Wow, you are so brave. Are there a lot of international students?
30.	 E No, many of them are American. So I often feel pressured…
31.	 I don’t want to fall behind everyone in the class you know.
32.	 Although my English has Japanese accents, at least I want to get attention from33.	 American students by choosing an interesting topic. That’s how I am surviving.
34.	 Y Do you see any change within yourself?
35.	 E I used to think I must become outgoing and speak a lot in front of others.
36.	 So I also need courage to say something in class.
37.	 In class, there are always outspoken students who immediately become
38.	 a center of the class discussion. While they are influential in class, one day,39.	 I was told by my teacher: “Although you don’t speak up much in discussion,
40.	 reading your essay, I can certainly understand that you have an insightful idea”.
41.	 Since then, I started thinking
42.	 “speaking up in classroom is not the only way to be the best in class”.
In this story, Emi describes how she is negotiating her identity in American-dominantclassrooms. First, Emi refers to the course material that is supposed to be for “American
students” (line 21). In addition to unfamiliar contents of the reading, she explains numerous
amount of vocabulary she had never seen. The meaning-making she attempts to do here isnot complaining the difficulty of the class; rather, she is positioning herself as a non-American student who is tackling the same academic subject as local students. Her American classmate who “respects” (“Sonkei” in Japanese) Emi (line 27) is referred as a convincing fact thatshe got acknowledged as a legitimate member of the classroom community. Compared to her
marginal position as an international student described in the first story, the second shows
how she resisted her imposed position and gained legitimacy by making effort for the classparticipation.
The next element of the story also represents how she is repositioning herself in the English academic discourse. While she still possessed the belief of the power of native English
as opposed to non-native English, she came up with the strategy to avoid being judged as a
deficit non-native English speaker and “get attention” (line 32) from American students bychoosing an intriguing academic topic. As depicted in the first story, her struggle with ascribed identity as an international student had seemed to impact on how she had positioned
herself in the new academic discourse at the beginning of her study; simultaneously, insteadof accepting the marginal position, in this story, she is making sense of agentic attitude toward classroom participation as a way to “survive” (line 33) to be recognized as a legitimate
member of the community.
Another significant experience described in this story is being accepted as a competent
member in classroom by her teacher. In this story, when asked about the change withinherself, she describes her imagined identity as an outgoing and talkative student (line 37) in
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classroom in order to be recognized as a good student. This image is contrastive to what she
illustrated herself as an international student in the previous story (line 17). However, while
she was positioning herself as a passive student as opposed to outspoken local students inclassroom, in the writing class, she starts talking about her writing teacher who acknowledged Emi’s voice in her writing (line 37-38). This experience appears to have a powerful impact on re-envisioning herself as a competent student who can aim to be “the best in class”(line 42).
The whole story in this story represents how she changed herself against challenges in the
new academic discourse. She is making sense of each classroom experience as significant
elements to regain her reflexive identity, which gave her confidence to be a legitimate member of the target community. At the same time, her teacher’s feedback played a crucial role inre-envisioning her positive self.

Memento of Study Abroad (September 2017)
Approximately six months had passed since I talked with Emi last time online. We tried to arrange the chat several times, but she was extremely busy with her course work. Particularly,
she got an intern position at a local airport as well as a tourist office. In our email exchange,
she was describing how busy her life was; it also signaled her life had been filled with excitement and new experience.
When I finally met up with Emi in person in Japan, she appeared to be different from who
she had been before leaving for the United States. The dialogue presented here is informal as
it was a sort of “catch up” conversation after a while. It should be noted that the languageof this conversation was entirely English unlike the first two interviews as it naturally beganwith greetings in English. The story begins with the scene where she is opening her backpack, which is full of her coursework papers in America.
41.	 Y Wow, your backpack is full.
42.	 E I still keep all of my essays (showing Yamamoto the pieces of writing)...this is from
43.	 Spring quarter...and this is my CV...it’s fake though (chuckle)
44.	 Y Oh come on, it’s not fake!
45.	 E It’s not real, but we imagined our future and wrote this.
46.	 How was the rest of your study?
47.	 Good. English class was difficult, and my grade wasn’t good. But I learned a lot.
48.	 My teacher’s feedback was very helpful. I took astronomy too, but I didn’t like it.
49.	 When I asked him questions, he often said “Oh, you are an international student,
50.	 so you don’t need to know this.”51.	 Y That’s terrible.
52.	 E Yes, I took the class not for grade. I just wanted to learn.
53.	 (Showing another piece of paper) This is also from Spring quarter.
54.	 Because I was interested in racism, because I was in America, we had election.
55.	 I have many pictures (of political protests) to show you. We went protesting
56.	 in a university. These protests are very common in America.
57.	 Y Wow. I think you went to the States during a very dynamic period.
58.	 E Yes...this (photos) is kind of my memento.

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59.	 Y Actually, when you were telling me about the protest, I was really surprised.
60.	 Because you know...to me, you were definitely not a kind of the person
61.	 who goes protesting.
62.	 E Yes haha (chuckle)!
63.	 Y How did you feel about the people voicing in the protest?
64.	 E I was so impressed. I think the most powerful thing
65.	 my host mother (who took her to the protest) said “Future depends on our children
66.	 not on us. We have to show them the right thing to do.” I thought “that’s right”!
67.	 I also met so many LGBT people in Bellingham. At first, I felt really strange
68.	 to talk to those people because I was not used to communicating them in Japan.
69.	 But now, I want to encourage them.
The first thing that caught my attention while transcribing the interview was her positioning as a legitimate member of the English academic discourse community. The contrast of
two classes, English and physics implicates how she resisted against the unwanted identity
as a needy international student. Her statement “I just wanted to learn” also emphasizes herreflexive identity as an active student in the target community. Another remarkable change
from the previous stories is her integration to the communities in the host country. Interestingly, Emi frequently used first person plural “we” when describing her experience (line 45,
54, 55) in this story while she distinguished her and other classmates, especially American
students by calling them “they” in the previous stories. She continues on how she became
passionate about learning racism because of the presidency election (line 54), which evoked
the tension in cultural as well as racial divides at that time.
Moreover, she calls the pictures of young people protesting against racism and sexism at auniversity in the town she lived “my memento” (line 58), which signals her strong attachment to the community in the spatiotemporal context. Later in the interview, she described
how the protest made her think about herself as minority in America. “Living in Japan, I had
never felt being a minority because a lot of us come from the same cultural background. Because we are same, I never had thought my opinion would matter” (Emi, personal communication, September 2017).
At the end of this interview, I asked her what English means to her. “English is part of myself. My English is still not perfect and I am still a learner, but I use English not for learning
the language but for communicating with people I like” (Emi, personal communication, September 2017). Whereas she had been longing for becoming a good speaker of English as her
imagined-self prior to study abroad, a year later, she clearly envisioned herself as a legitimate
member of the target academic community in America. Additionally, her identity as a Japanese learner of English no longer appeared to be a significant facet in constructing her senseof self.
Participation in the socially-constructed communities outside academic classroom has also
become a salient experience that impacted on her emerging dimension of her identity construction.

Discussion
The previous section has attempted to investigate the identity construction of Japanese learner of English in study abroad context by unpacking three small stories. The analysis on eachstory mainly has focused on Emi’s positioning in relation to others, which clearly illustrates
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the discursive and transitional process of Emi’s identity construction throughout participationin the target language communities. In this section, I discuss three key issues that impacted
on Emi’s identity construction.

Representation of International Students in English Academic Discourse
As seen in the first story, Emi had struggle with internalizing the positioning of international student. The representation of international students in western higher education has
been problematic, labelling them as deficit or less capable (Leki, 2001; Kettle, 2017). As Emi
frustrated with her teachers, there has been a strong essentialist view that generalizes international students as deficient (Kettle, 2017). In this view, as Leki (2001) points out, language
ownership creates power relations that marginalize international students automatically. Not
only the deficit model of international student is shared as a norm within an institution, I
problematize the fact that the negative labelling even could impact on the learners’ self-concept, as seen in Emi’s narrative. In her case, the supportive others (Kettle, 2017) including her
teacher and her host family played crucial roles in providing inclusive approaches to Emi. In
particular, when her writing teacher acknowledged Emi’s participation and engagement inclassroom in the form of writing, Emi’s diminished self-image was powerfully re-conceptualized to be positive and empowering one.
It must be recognized that this type of support is inevitable in the transitional period of
identity construction in study abroad context. I echo Morita’s (2004, p. 598) quote: “insteadof assuming that individual students simply behave according to their abilities or cultural
personal preferences, instructors should question what kinds of roles and statuses a givenclassroom community comprises and how those roles are shaping or being shaped by classroom interaction”.

Investment in English Learning
The series of narratives from the beginning of her study abroad has captured the change in
Emi’s investment in language learning. Initially, her desire to study abroad stemmed fromlanguage acquisition and immersion in a local native English speakers’ community, imagining herself becoming a good speaker of English who would not be misunderstood by native
English speakers. As illustrated throughout the three stories, however, language acquisition
became no longer the subject of her initial investment. Instead, she was working extremely
hard to gain legitimacy as a competent student in the target academic discourse community.
Drawing on Darvin and Norton’s (2015) investment model, distinctive language ideologies
in Emi’s home country and host country can be seen as one of the powerful contributors to
impacting on her investment in English learning. While attainment of high proficient English
is symbolized as an advantageous capital for global society in Japan, she faced the position of
being in a marginal position as a non-native English speaking student. In other studies suchas Norton (2013), L2 learners showed their resistance to the language power by refusing toattend their language classes. In this study, Emi did so by proactively and strategically participating in the community, which eventually lead her to gain her imagined position and social
capital.
At a glance, her study abroad experience may appear as a story of “highly motivated language learner”. Emi was indeed a resilient and hardworking person who did not easily giveup on participating in the target community. Nevertheless, from a longitudinal perspective,
this study also illustrates how her investment changed over time in relation to capital, identity and ideology as Davin and Norton (2015) suggest.

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Target-Language Mediated Subject Position as an Independent Self
Comparing Emi’s identity illustrated in each narrative, it can be found that the sense of diversity is one of the crucial factors that impacted on constructing her sense of self.
Whereas her identities prior to study abroad appeared to be “relatively fixed position insocial and cultural space” (Benson et al., 2013, p. 163), the third small story depicted how her
imagined community she belonged to change as a result of study abroad. The uniqueness ofher narrative lies in how she reflected on her position as minority in the American academic community and intertwined her own story with other minorities’ lived experience. In her
narrative, the political protest she participated in with her host mother was marked as access to this sense of diversity as she described “it was my memento”. Her liberated sense of
self was clearly illustrated in her post-study abroad reflection (see Ota & Yamamoto, 2018),
which described how she became more open-minded and sensitive to inequality in Japan.
This change can be also seen as another facet of her multilingual identity development. Block(2007) describes such an emerging identity as “target-language mediated subject positions”,
which are found as a result of exposure to culturally as well as linguistically distinct context. Identity facets such as gender, race, social class and nationality are often challenged andre-imagined in study abroad context. Particularly, in previous studies that focus on Japanese
female learners of English in western context (Block, 2007; Piller & Takahashi, 2006; Skarin, 2001), the learners gained gender-related sense of self which lead “knowledge and ability they would take back home with them” (Block, 2007, p. 184) as outcome of their sojournexperience. In Emi’s case, the sense of diversity she experienced empowered her to have a“voice”, which she found invaluable hence represents who she became.

Conclusion
This article has presented an analysis of small stories, which illustrated the dynamic identity work by a Japanese learner of English in study abroad context. Detailed attention to positioning of the characters as well as Emi’s dilemmas have revealed resistance, negotiation,
re-imagination and emergence of new identities. In her case, growing L2 competence certainly impacted on her positive sense of self as a user of English in the academic community,
as Benson et al. (2012) propose in their framework. However, more importantly, the challenges and changes in her study abroad have remarked the dynamics of learner agency andsocial contexts in English academic discourse community. While Emi’s initial desire to acquire
English derived from her social and historical backgrounds remained the core of her reflexive
identity at first, she also faced the power relations between local students and international
students, which became a critical struggle in maintaining her positive sense of self. Simultaneously, she proactively tried strategic actions to gain legitimacy in the target classrooms
rather than accepting the marginal position. The uniqueness of this study also lies in how
Emi’s English-mediated subject position as an independent woman was emerged throughout
socialization with other members of the community, who powerfully empowered her to reflect on her identity in relation to the diverse world. I conclude this article by reflecting on thesignificance of narrative inquiry in language learner identity research.
First, as I have tried to demonstrate in my analysis, narrative inquiry unfolds not only what
happened but also how it was understood and made meaning in varying spatiotemporal aswell as contextual orientation of her stories. In this study, the positioning in narrative haschosen as an analytical scope to understand how the narrator, Emi was trying to make senseof her experience. Constructing a narrative as a “transitional space” (Sclater, 2003, p. 10), analyzing not only contents’ of the story but also temporal as well contextual nature that agentic subjects hold is crucial. Weaving the three stories together, crucial issues such as the marLearner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 3 • December 2019165

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ginal positioning of international students, the importance of acknowledgement from othermembers of the community became evident in her lived experience. These are also powerful
voices that allow researchers to explore more in multilingual identity in study abroad context.
Second, narrative inquiry encourages narrators to retell their stories. When I shared mypreliminary analysis with her, her immediate response was “It is really interesting to lookback who I was!” She was surprised at her past imagined self-comparing to her present self
and felt emotional about the journey of “becoming” in the socioculturally different community. By retelling of her own narrative, she was unearthing and making sense of her pastexperience. This re-storying, as Barkhuizen (2009) denotes, serves as a reflective space inrepositioning and reimagining her identities built on her study abroad experience. Emi indeed
engaged in retelling her stories in writing as well as in presentation to disseminate her experience and empower other students to study abroad as a chance to new “self”.
Finally, narrative inquiry is, as discussed through this study, fundamentally a social practice co-constructed by a narrator and audience. As I was a primary listener of her storytelling, a whole research process required me not only to analyze how she was trying to makesense of her lived experience but also to pay closer to attention to my own positionality. Whiledelving myself into her stories, there were several powerful moments that emotionally moved
me. At those points, I was departing from my position as a researcher or a learning advisor;
instead, her story brought me my past self as a Japanese student in England who struggledwith similar situations. The feeling of “I was there too” is fairly subjective and in my professional work, I try my best to avoid my personal view in order to encourage students to maketheir own decisions. In research setting, subjectivity is even considered a distractor to obtain“objectifiable” data. Nevertheless, this study enabled me to consider the role of narrative
researcher in depth. I hope I clarified my positionality enough to help readers to understandEmi’s narrative as socially constructed products rather than a simple summary of the incidents in her study abroad experience.
This study has rested on a single research participant’s perspective; hence, as clarified
earlier, the aim of this research does not intend to generalize the findings to represent study
abroad experience. Nevertheless, it is my hope that this study encourages researchers totake an in-depth longitudinal case study approach in order to unfold the complexity of study
abroad experience. The collection of such studies will help understanding learners as “multifaceted social beings” (Miyahara, 2015) in socioculturally distinct discourse communities.
Simultaneously, it should be reminded that narrative practice itself serves as a social space forthem to disseminate their lived experiences.

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

Author Bio
Kie Yamamoto is a senior learning advisor in the Self-Access Learning Center (SALC) at Kanda University of International Studies, Japan. She holds an M.S.Ed from Temple University
Japan, and is currently pursuing an Ed.D at the University of Bath in the UK. Her researchinterests include advising in language learning, language learner identity, narrative analysis
and student engagement in higher education. Email: yamamoto-ki@kanda.kuis.ac.jp

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