Investigating Trans-Speakerism in the Classroom
摘要
This chapter is concerned with trans-speakerism as an empowering approach to promoting multilingualism and multiculturalism in language education. It introduces a classroom project which explored trans-speakerism through language learning life-history interviews. Five undergraduate global speakers of English/global language speakers (GSEs/GLSs)—from Japan, the US, the UK, and Denmark—at a university in Tokyo conducted interviews with each other to explore the ways in which languages and language learning have empowered them and enabled them to experience alternative facets of themselves. In preparation for their interviews and follow-up analysis, participants read about and discussed trans-speakerism and a range of social and psychological approaches to identity and empowerment through language learning and multilingualism. Participants interviewed each other for approximately an hour for each interview session. The interviewers prepared an initial summary of the interviews which they presented to each other as the basis for an extended discussion on trans-speakerism and empowerment. The participants expressed strong affinities for English as well as other languages that were not their native tongues. Despite a range of competing concerns with family, friends, school, and even religion, empowerment through trans-speakerism and multilingualism was a theme that reoccurred across the interviews and follow-up discussions, as will be illustrated through examples provided in the chapter.