The Impact of Language Socialization on the Linguacultural and Motivational Profiles of Multilingual Learners

Abstract

The study discusses how different language socialization (Ochs & Schieffelin, 2017) experiences and processes result in learners’ different linguistic and cultural backgrounds affecting their attitudes toward language learning, their self-perception as language learners, and ultimately their motivation to learn languages. Data were collected via linguistic autobiographies written by 14 students who came from five different countries in a multicultural classroom at a Hungarian university. The content analysis of the rich textual data pointed out a sharp contrast between the socialization of Hungarian and international students resulting in two distinct linguacultural and language learning motivational profiles. Exposure to multiple linguacultures (Risager, 2005) during socialization in the contexts of home, ethnic/multicultural communities, or sojourn generates positive attitudes toward language learning and favorable self-images as language learners. This makes learners more likely to take up additional languages in their spare time in addition to languages learned at school and enables them to move smoothly between different cultures and use their languages in authentic cultural contexts with ease. The results corroborated the inherent connection between choice, autonomy, motivation, and identity in second language acquisition (SLA). Learner testimonies pinpointed the changed status of English and German in Europe and in the world resulting in increased motivation to learn English for various reasons at the expense of German learning. In short, the findings revealed that the linguacultural vitality of a language as an environmental factor and learners’ choice to learn a language along with their desire to fulfil themselves via the chosen language as learner-internal factors greatly impact the success of SLA.