In Between Languages Narrative Research into Learners’ Language “Space”

Abstract

Narrative has been one of the major concerns in social science research ever since the mid-twentieth century, and the area of second language acquisition (SLA) is no exception. Researchers have turned to the investigation of learner-produced narratives to extend the understanding of many key concepts in SLA theory. This type of research approach takes language learning beyond the acquisition/assimilation of linguistic structures and is meant to focus on learners as social selves actively involved in the construction of a linguistic identity. In this paper, I investigate how learners of English as a foreign language, whose first languages are Arabic, Chinese, French, Hindi, Hungarian, Kurdish, Parsi (Farsi), Romanian, Russian, and Spanish, narrate their own experiences of learning this language. This investigation is based on a dataset of language learning experience written accounts with reference to learner life events. In the analysis, I apply two analytical frameworks for the examination of the data: a) grounded theory procedures (Corbin and Strauss 2007), which are often employed with narrative data, and b) a “positioning approach to narratives” (Bamberg 1997) in order to detect the learners’ positioning strategies in the hope of revealing their linguistic identity claims in relation to who they are and how they make sense of their language learning experience. Results show how the learners position themselves in relation to “the other” (teachers, family, fellow learners, and the researcher), to themselves as learners, and to the language they learn.

Keywords

• narrative research
• second language acquisition
• language learning experience
• positioning strategies