Exploring Advanced English Learners’ Multilingual Identity Construction from Multiple Perspectives

Abstract

In my doctoral dissertation I explore advanced English learners’ multilingual identity construction from various perspectives synthetizing two traditions: research into L2 learners’ identity construction and traditional SLA research into individual differences. The study of English as a lingua franca along with dynamic systems theory comprise the further theoretical frameworks. Despite the dominance of qualitative data, the relatively large number of the participants (N=42) allowed me to present and discuss some numerical data on trends and frequencies, thus making the dissertation a mixed methods study. The dissertation is also classroom research and action research, since the study was conducted in a classroom, and the teacher and the researcher conducting the study are one and the same person. The participants of my study were 42 English majors studying at the Institute of English Studies, University of Pécs, Hungary who attended three Listening and Speaking Skills II courses that I taught in the spring semester of the 2014/2015 academic year. The data collection instruments included a structured speaking task (a structured interview recorded by students), a structured writing task, and a questionnaire on individual differences comprising open-ended questions. The datasets of oral and written texts allowed the triangulation of data. To analyze the data, I performed qualitative content analysis to detect emerging themes, which was an iterative process characteristic of such research. Having detected emerging themes, I counted frequencies to complement and support the qualitative results. The findings confirmed that L2 learners respond emotionally to L2 learning and make SLA an embodied experience. The findings also pointed out that learners utilize their L2 to create subjective meanings in the L2 as well as to create an inwardly generated multilingual identity reflecting their desire for self-fulfillment via the L2. Their identity construction drawing on their imagination and their real-life experiences reflects their identification with other L2 speakers. Based on these findings, I coined the term of the language learner’s imagined L2 habitus. The data also revealed that the participants are shifting to using English as a lingua franca, and the emerging themes led me to revisiting Yashima’s (2009) concept of international posture from the perspective of identity research. Finally, when investigating the students’ individual differences drawing on traditional SLA research and identity research, I came to see that both identity construction and individual differences are best viewed as a complex dynamic system, in which horizontally and vertically interacting individual differences constitute the levels of the system, and the changing behavior of these levels shape the learner’s identity construction as system-level behavior. Furthermore, the system also interacts with other systems (i.e. other L2 speakers) as well as with contextual factors.