Postmemory and multilingual identities in English language teaching: a duoethnography

Abstract

ABSTRACT Postmemory, the narrativised intergenerational transfer of often traumatic experiences, is a crucial component of multilingual identity negotiation. In this article, we focus specifically on the curricular interactions and personal and collective aspirations of multilingual students who use English for academic purposes. We situate our discussions in the literature on critical pedagogy, affect/emotion theory, and memory studies. We utilise duoethnography as a methodology for our dialogic inquiry. A duoethnographic approach enables us to be both self-reflexive and socially transformative through our explorations of lived experiences of language loss and gain and of our historical becoming of professional language educators. We highlight how multilingual identities are constructed, challenged, and reconstructed not only by social practices of sign-use, but also by intergenerational spatial mobility and the distributed nature of postmemory. Finally, we provide pedagogical implications for language education that seek to foster critical affective literacies. Turning to affect and emotion is important to move the discussion of multilingual identities beyond physical signifiers of social differentiation (i.e. race, gender, ethnicity, and class). Pedagogical attention to memory, affect and identity may offer us a more nuanced understanding of teachers’ and students’ agency and investment in multilingual semiotic practices.