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Article published In:
Study Abroad to, from, and within Asia
Edited by John L. Plews and Jane Jackson
[Study Abroad Research in Second Language Acquisition and International Education 2:2] 2017
► pp. 240–262

Linguistic identity changes of Chinese international students in Germany

A pilot study

| Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main

This article presents findings from a pilot study that aimed to examine Chinese international students’ linguistic identity changes in relation to their English as a lingua franca (ELF) experience and their multilingual competencies in Germany. Data were collected through two rounds of in-depth, semi-structured interviews with seven Chinese postgraduate students over a period of three to five months, with email reports as a supplementary method. A phenomenological approach was then used to interpret four students’ study-abroad experience by looking at relationships among language, identity, and context. The findings suggest that most of the ELF-users demonstrated positive transformation of linguistic identities within the university setting, but ELF also led to a role of ‘bystander’ in German society. The Chinese students’ multilingual identity development demonstrated diverse features and various reasons for this were identified, such as the context in which their social interaction took place, the perceived power relationships between speakers, and the extent of their multilingual competencies.

Keywords: linguistic identity, English as a lingua franca, multilingual, Chinese in Germany, international students
Article outline
  • 1.Conceptual framework
    • 1.1Identity
    • 1.2English as a lingua franca
    • 1.3Multilingualism and multilingual identity
  • 2.Method
    • 2.1Research participants
    • 2.2Data collection
    • 2.3Phenomenological analysis of the data
  • 3.Findings
    • 3.1Aniu’s story: From English for professional purposes and socio-economic upward mobility to struggling with academic ELF
    • 3.2Ingrid’s story: The desire for multilingual competencies and making progress in ELF
    • 3.3Julia’s story: Positive ELF user to vulnerable German learner / user
    • 3.4Lin’s story: Positive linguistic identity change and multilingual identity revisited
  • 4.Discussion
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Note
  • References
Published online: 30 December 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/sar.15024.mae
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