Second language learning and identity: Cracking metaphors in ideological and poetic discourse in the third space

This research study examines second language learning and identity construction through a hybrid design of case study and autoethnography. It argues for an elaborated understanding of the way that second language learners of English participate in the learning process in multiple contexts, in multiple discourses. From this perspective it considers the interdependence of language and identity in order to understand the experiences and difficulties of many second language learners. This research focuses on the identity struggles of Japanese women learning English as a second language from the perspective of sociocultural theory and critical theory in a postmodern stance. This framework allows me to consider how social identities are created discursively, how our conceptual metaphors function in Japanese and English, and how the process of participating in a new language and a new culture results in our living in neither culture but in hybrid spaces. Using autoethnography, I draw on my experiences as a Japanese woman learning English as a second language to understand what it means for a Japanese woman to be an English language learner as well as how English affects the identities of Japanese women. At the same time, the study also involves additional participants, namely three female Japanese students learning English in a Canadian University in Ontario. This hybrid design allows for a broader understanding of our everyday lives, languages, metaphors, and known and un-known selves as they take shape and transform. Using diary research, interviews and conversational group meetings, I examine how our individual and collective stories emerge. To do this I turn to four different discourse genres; narrative, haiku, metaphor and academic discourse. I choose to write narrative discourse to express our stories poetically. My decision to create was inspired by haiku, a genre that expresses my changing values and never-ending painful transformations. The untranslatable nature of language and this journey of women inspire haiku that emerges in a third space of the said and the unsaid. Finally, I turn to academic discourse to compose the meta-story of what I am doing and why, and to situate my identity and my research in a theoretical framework. The stories from the four of us contribute to a portrait of the tremendous ideological transformations involved in learning a second language. From the language of the research participants, we see how our conceptual system varies across cultures, implying multiple realities. This suggests that to promote cross-cultural understanding, we need to engage deeply with our experiences as they evoke the curriculum as lived.

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