Abstract
The purpose of this reflective study is to understand how English learners’ cultural identities facilitate their confidence to use English within a native English-speaking context. This article covers a qualitative case study using an autobiographical reflection of a Chinese-speaking international student’s studying experiences in a Northern American English-speaking context. The data were collected through weekly interviews and the participant’s diary report. The findings first display the contradictions of self and the other in her mind during the process of using English. Second, the study explores how cultural identity and the negotiations of linguistic codes of the target and mother language interact with each other. Third, the extracts of the study reveal that the participant is aware of her miscommunication in English resulting from her lack of pragmatic knowledge of English. Some instructional suggestions focusing on fostering learners’ target language pragmatic knowledge and their mother cultural identity are presented.
Highlights
When learning a second language, learners cannot completely separate themselves from their cultural context where they rely on the knowledge source constructed from their home society to interpret the meaning of linguistic information of the target language (Hinkel, 1999; Peirce, 1995; Tseng, 2002)
There is a great deal of research focusing on interlanguage pragmatics to examine L2 learners’ language use and acquisition of pragmatic ability
In an L2 context, relatively little pragmatic-based instruction research has explicitly explored the difficulties confronted by learners who lack such competence and how they negotiate for the proper linkage between their mother language and the target language (TL)
Summary
When learning a second language, learners cannot completely separate themselves from their cultural context where they rely on the knowledge source constructed from their home society to interpret the meaning of linguistic information of the target language (Hinkel, 1999; Peirce, 1995; Tseng, 2002). For an effective oral communication in an English-speaking context, English learners ought to construct the identity toward their home culture (Lee, 2002; Milville et al, 2000) to reduce language learning conflicts. This is because the conflicts may result from the incompatibility in identities between home and target cultures (Berry, Kin, Minde & Mon, 1987; de Domanico, Crawford & DeWolfe, 1994). Considerably few studies were undertaken to understand how learners’ mother cultural identity facilitated their pragmatic awareness
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