Multilingual Becoming: Exploring Affects in Multilingual Young Adults’ Autobiographical Narratives Through Rhizomatic Analysis

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Saturday 8:00 am Four Seasons Ballroom 2-3
  In Roundtable Session: Ideology, Capital, and Agency: Immigrant and Multilingual Learners' Negotiation of Identity in Language Classrooms (Table 9)

Abstract

Increasing multilingualism in young adults’ lives urges additional research on their experiences. Using rhizomatic analysis, this study examines the relationality of social and material “forces of encounter,” or affects, in nine multilingual college students’ multilingual becoming. Participants’ interviews with nine participants and their photos and online activities served as an assemblage of participants’ experience. This study highlights three entry points for discussing how multilingual acquisition changes in bodily state. The first entry point highlights deterritorialization as participants started learning English as their additional language. The second entry point discusses reterritorialization through (re)connecting with heritage language. The third entry point focuses on the changing nature of these affects, the tendency for the components to break apart, come together, close, and open.

Authors

• Kwangok Song, University of Kansas

• Emily J. Tummons, University of Kansas

• Liyan Yang, University of Kansas

• Rachel Kook, University of Kansas

• Sarah AlRasheed, University of Kansas