Disinventing and reinventing the self: international students’ identities and second language learning histories
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Date
2020-03
Authors
Afrin, Sajia
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Abstract
International students learning a second language may experience a sense of dislocation because they transgress many physical and symbolic boundaries. Belonging to different contexts and learning English language in those contexts provides different identities for students to negotiate that are not always positive and necessitate repositioning their identities in multiple contexts. Therefore, this comparative life history investigates the perceptions of four international students (including the researcher) regarding their identities within their English language learning histories. It also explores how they feel about their institutional and social positionings. The process of data collection is individual interviews (two sessions with each participant) and identity texts. The deep analysis of these individual life histories interpreted the participants’ ‘true identities’ as retrieved from their active choice of restorying their experiences of learning English language. Through a post-structuralist interpretive framework, the specific details of the participants’ small stories reveal that these English language learners perceive themselves differently in multiple contexts and even within same context. The study also explores that the perceptions of the participants are very often influenced by linguistic hegemony.
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Keywords
Identity, Life history, Language hegemony, Second language learning