My Cannibalized Self: An Autoethnography. Biliteracy Development in Japanese Heritage Language Study

by Michael Kay Allred

Overview

My Cannibalized Self: An Autoethnography of Biliteracy Development in Japanese Heritage Language Study is the author's personal account of his attempt to learn Japanese through a masters program in Japanese-English technical translation. Through descriptions of his lived experience as a biracial Japanese American and a lifetime of attempts to learn his heritage language in various contexts, this narrative captures how he used autoethnography and a framework of cannibalism to transform the frustrations and failures he perceived in the acquisition of his heritage language to form a bilingual, bicultural self and a new relationship with Japanese that embraces all of his linguistic and cultural heritage and breaks from the monolingual norms that had damaged his sense of self as a speaker of Japanese. Through this process, he developed a form of autoethnographic writing that he termed the anthropophagic crafting of the self to create a new, agentive sense of bilingual and bicultural identity formation and method of heritage language study in which heritage language learners cannibalize their cultural and linguistic funds of knowledge and lived experience to develop a complex, dynamic sense of self as (emerging) bilinguals which counters the normativizing violence they face in acquiring their home language. This conception of bilingualism, biculturalism, and biliteracy development is meant to foster an appreciation for the linguistic and cultural heritage of heritage speakers that is often devalued by larger society and the dominant culture while honoring the other influences that make up their dynamic language system and complex identity through an agentive process of cultural transformation in which heritage language learners craft their identities specific to who they are as individuals and how they craft their sense of identity. This study is simultaneously an account that provides new, nuanced understanding of the obstacles that he and many heritage speakers face, a celebration of what heritage language study has the potential to be both for the well-being of the whole person and for her language development, and an in-depth treatise on an autoethnographic method that details the iterative writing process that forms the basis of this conception of identity formation, heritage language study, cultural transformation, and therapeutic process of self-acceptance.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940163451494
Publisher:	Deep University Press / Deep Education Press
Publication date:	06/01/2016
Sold by:	Smashwords
Format:	eBook
File size:	783 KB

About the Author

Michael Kay Allred graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison with a PhD in Curriculum & Instruction specializing in World Language Education. In addition, he earned an MA in French from the University of North Texas and a Master of Engineering in Technical Japanese also from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Before completing his graduate studies, Michael was a teacher of Japanese, French, and Spanish in public high schools in Texas. In his research, he specializes in discovering new, holistic approaches to world language education and understanding the educational and psychoemotional needs of heritage language learners in mainstream education as well as in heritage and bilingual education to foster heritage language acquisition and mother tongue maintenance in immigrant communities in the United States; particularly in Spanish and Japanese language communities. From his diverse experiences as a language learner, teacher, and burgeoning academic, he constructed holistic approaches to teaching world languages to mainstream students and heritage language learners through a framework of anthropophagy in which language learners cannibalize authentic pieces of literature, music, television, art, and other forms of expression in the target language and from the target culture for the creation of a bi/multilingual and bi/multicultural self that can communicate in the target language in a way that is appropriate to how native speakers express themselves and the norms of the target culture. This bi/multilingual and bi/multicultural sense of self addresses the increasingly global nature of the ways in which language learners will use the target language in their professions and how the target language and culture will become an integral aspect of their identity as citizens of the world.