Exploring multilingual awareness development in learners of multiple foreign languages: a social cognitive perspective

Abstract

ABSTRACT Despite much research on how multilingual learners view the linguistic properties of language, how they perceive languages as cultural capital has been far less investigated. Drawing on the theories of social cognition, this study explores how multiple foreign language learners’ impressions, as a lens to observe their multilingual awareness, are formed and transformed regarding the linguistic features of language as well as the cultural capital derived from language learning. In this article, we report on a multiple-case study on the multilingual awareness development of four Chinese multilingual learners who learnt and used English as their first foreign language amongst other foreign languages such as French (including varieties spoken in France, Belgium, Cameroon, and Cote d’Ivoire) and Malagasy. Findings show that initial multilingual awareness as social cognitive schema can persist into subsequent foreign language learning and use, and can also change and transform as learners take a more effortful approach to processing information from their linguistic and social circumstances when they learn and use a new foreign language. In brief, multilingual awareness development in multilingual learners of foreign languages may follow a dual-process model, encompassing different patterns of development, i.e. incremental change and diversificational change.