The reflective positioning of Japanese EFL students in the negotiation of their own emergent bilingual identities

ABSTRACT

Although the emergent bilingual status of foreign language (FL) students is often overlooked, that is not to say that students do not, on some level of consciousness, experience changes in their identity as a result of their emergent bilingualism. The continuous process of identity (re)negotiation, that is, the reorganising of one’s subject position in relation to contextualised linguistic and social factors, has a significant impact on FL students. The present study takes a multi-theoretical approach to investigate the factors involved in the negotiation of Japanese EFL students’ emergent bilingual identities through the use of a questionnaire. The results show that the majority of the participants perceived some level of change in their identity, unrelated to any specific determinants. Furthermore, those with longer EFL learning histories, higher proficiency levels, or those majoring in globally-minded studies were more likely to feel they belong to English-speaking (imagined) communities.

KEYWORDS:

• Identity
• emergent bilingualism
• identity negotiation
• multilingual identity
• Japanese EFL education
• Japanese identity

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Blake Turnbull

Blake Turnbull is a lecturer in the Department of Intercultural Studies at Otani University, Japan. His research focuses on translanguaging and emergent bilingualism in foreign language education, particularly within a Japanese EFL context.