Language and Culture ─ Reflective Narratives and the Emergence of Identity

This state-of-the-art exploration of language, culture, and identity is orchestrated through prominent scholars’ and teachers’ narratives, each weaving together three elements: a personal account based on one or more memorable or critical incidents that occurred in the course of learning or using a second or foreign language; an interpretation of the incidents highlighting their impact in terms of culture, identity, and language; the connections between the experiences and observations of the author and existing literature on language, culture and identity.

What makes this book stand out is the way in which authors meld traditional ‘academic’ approaches to inquiry with their own personalized voices. This opens a window on different ways of viewing and doing research in Applied Linguistics and TESOL. What gives the book its power is the compelling nature of the narratives themselves. Telling stories is a fundamental way of representing and making sense of the human condition. These stories unpack, in an accessible but rigorous fashion, complex socio-cultural constructs of culture, identity, the self and other, and reflexivity, and offer a way into these constructs for teachers, teachers in preparation and neophyte researchers. Contributors from around the world give the book broad and international appeal.

David Nunan is Vice President for Academic Affairs at Anaheim University, California, Emeritus Professor at the University of Hong Kong, Professor in Education at the University of NSW, and Senior Academic Advisor to Global English Corporation in San Francisco.
Julia Choi is Teaching and Research Assistant in the Faculty of Education at the University of Technology, Sydney.

Foreword
Bonny Norton
Preface
David Nunan & Julie Choi
Acknowledgments
1
Language, culture and identity: Framing the issues
David Nunan & Julie Choi
2
Coat hangers, cowboys, and communication strategies: Seeking an identity as a proficient foreign language learner
Kathleen Bailey

3
Speaking Romance-esque
David Block
4
空 Collaborating on community, sharing experience, troubling the symbolic
Michael Brennan
5
Achieving community
Suresh Canagarajah
6
Another drink in Subanun
Mark Cherry

7
Nonghao, I am a Shanghai noenoe: How do I claim my Shanghaineseness?
Alice Chik
8
Living on the hyphen
Julie Choi
9
Negotiating multiple language identities
Mary Ann Christison
10
Minna no Nihongo? Nai!
Martha Clark Cummings
11
Elaborating the monolingual deficit
Julian Edge
12
The foreign-ness of native speaking teachers of colour
Eljee Javier
13
Otra estaciòn – a first Spanish lesson
Rod Ellis
14
Bewitched: A microethnography of the culture of Majick in Old Salem
Bud Goodall

15
Am I that name?
Stacy Holman-Jones
16
English and me: My language learning journey
Angel Lin
17
Adaptive cultural transformation: Quest for dual social identities
Jun Liu
18
On this writing: An autotheoretic account
Allen Luke
19
Changing cultures and identities in bicultural names: From parents to children
Steve Marshall and Tim Mossman
20
The festival incident
Michael McCarthy
21
Berlin Babylon
Stephen Muecke
22
Changing stripes—chameleon or tiger?
Denise Murray
23
Vanishing Acts
Cynthia D. Nelson
24
Dog Rice and Cultural Dissonance
David Nunan
25
‘Where am I from’: Performative and metro perspectives of origin
Emi Otsuji

26
Sweating cheese and thinking otherwise
Alastair Pennycook
27
Multilingual couple talk
Kimie Takahashi
28
Transforming identities in and through narrative
Sumiko Taniguchi
29
A short course in Globalese
Nury Vittachi
Afterword
Claire Kramsch