The Empire Struck Back: Cross‐Cultural Communication in a Multilingual Classroom

Mathew Bumbalough
2015 International Journal of Literacy, Culture, and Language Education  
This pilot study explores language identity in the field of World Englishes as international students in a multilingual writing classroom encounter a Westerncentric teaching environment while struggling to become a part of the World English speaking community. In this instance, the students were able to bring their cultural and linguistic identities into the classroom in order to make meaning, and joined a community of practice that took into consideration their agency and L1 identities. Based
more » ... n my initial classroom observations, I identified a pair of students to interview in order to triangulate and confirm my findings. By conducting semistructured interviews, analyzing paper topics, and learning about the participants" backgrounds, I was able to determine that while English was important to each of them in different ways, their identities were what was most important of all. Through an analysis of their interactions and interviews I assert that they are, in a true sense, speakers of World Englishes who are struggling to create their language identities as they bring their cultural and linguistic capital into the classroom to deal with any issues they face. As a result, there were several gaps I noticed between (western) teaching practices and the World Englishes the students speak. While this is a pilot study, I hope to further investigate my findings in a full ethnography that will expand on the issues in this paper.
doi:10.14434/ijlcle.v4i0.26914 fatcat:fkftku57qrabdeex32yw5uoc3u