‘I am Italian in the world’: a mobile student’s story of language learning and ideological becoming

ABSTRACT

This article theorises the relationship between language and intercultural learning from a Bakhtinian dialogic perspective, based on the language learning story of Federica, a mobile student in UK higher education (HE). I first outline the context of UK HE and its internationalisation agenda, discussing how research in this field has conceptualised language, intercultural communication (IC) and international students in terms of a totalising boundary between self and other. I link this to current concerns in IC regarding the philosophical underpinnings of the field, specifically the aporia created as a result of the totalising self/other relation in prevailing IC discourse. I then present a means of addressing this aporia through a Bakhtinian theorisation of the relationship between language and intercultural learning. This theorisation offers a relational perspective on the self and the other in which intercultural learning is a process of ideological becoming with the other, enacted in, with and through language, as illustrated in Federica’s story of learning English. The article concludes with a call for language and communicative practices to be placed at the heart of HE internationalisation agendas and for HE practitioners to recognise shared responsibility for IC.

Questo articolo teorizza la relazione tra lingua e apprendimento interculturale dalla perspettiva dialogica bachtiana, basato sulla storia di apprendimento di Federica, una studentessa universitaria transnazionale. In primis contestualizzo il percorso formativo universitario del Regno Unito e la sua internazionalizazione, spiegando come gli studi in questo settore possano concettualizzare la lingua, la comunicazione interculturale (IC) e il confine tra sé stessi e gli altri, in particolare degli studenti internazionali. Queste trovano spazio negli ultimi studi di IC in termini filosofici, specificatamente la aporia creata come risultato della relazione totalizzante sé stessi/altri nel suo discorso. In seguito presento come indirizzare questa aporia attraverso la teorizzazione bachtiana della relazione tra lingua e apprendimento interculturale. Questa teorizzazione offre una prospettiva relazionale del sé stessi e degli altri nella quale l’apprendimento interculturale è un processo di divenire ideologico con gli altri, attivato tra, con e nella lingua, come dalla storia di apprendimento della lingua inglese di Federica. L’articolo si conclude col discutere la necessità di posizionare la lingua e le pratiche comunicative al centro dell’internazionalizzazione dell’istruzione universitaria, auspicando che i professionisti del settore possano riconoscere una responsabilità condivisa sul tema della comunicazione interculturale.

KEYWORDS:

• Language learning
• intercultural learning
• higher education
• mobile/international students
• dialogism
• ideological becoming

Acknowledgements

Thanks are due to Federica, Richard Fay and Susan Brown, for their contributions to the research here reported. I would also like to thank my colleagues Khawla Badwan, Jessica Bradley and Rob Sharples, and the two anonymous reviewers, for their very helpful and supportive feedback.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Funding

This work was supported by a studentship from the UK Economic and Social Research Council.

Notes on contributor

Lou Harvey is Lecturer in TESOL in the School of Education, University of Leeds, where she is Deputy Director of the Centre for Language Education Research. Her chief research interests are the language and intercultural motivation and learning of higher education students, and creative and arts-based intercultural research methods.