engleski

What is “authentic” in the professional identity of foreign language teachers teaching abroad?

In this paper we aim to explore the complexities of contemporary identity practices in superdiverse societies today. We opt for a realistic, anti-essentialist approach to studying identity practices as discursive orientations towards sets of features that are (or can be) seen as emblematic of particular identities. We draw on the theory of identity in a context of superdiversity proposed by Blommaert and Varis (2013, 2015) to answer the question how authenticity is manufactured by blending a variety of semiotic resources, some of which are sufficient ('enough') to produce a particular targeted authentic identity, and consequently enable others to identify us as 'real', 'authentic' members of social groups. We do so by looking into experiences of foreign language teachers teaching abroad (FLTTA), a specific type of glomads or professionals who live and work abroad, frequently transgressing social, linguistic, and cultural spaces and borders (Podboj & Lujić, 2020). We build on our previous research about Croatian and French FLTTAs, where we investigated how various ideologies and other social aspects of the fragmented spaces they navigate affect their agency and their positioning as multilingual teachers, speakers and learners of certain languages. We expand our findings by looking into the dynamic nature of the concept of enoughness. Our data consists of two segments: personal narratives about FLTTAs professional identity experiences elicited via semi-structured interviews, and open-ended questionnaires, where we specifically focused on the concept of enoughness. The data is analyzed qualitatively and presented as several mini case- studies, with illustrative examples that are thematically related to enoughess. The aim of our analysis was to identify features for ‘being admitted into and being recognized as’ a FLTTA. More specifically, what makes these individuals being perceived as ‘having enough’ of FLTTAs’ features, or recognized as ‘real’ or ‘authentic’ members of this social group? Additionally, do they perceive themselves as authentic enough?

authenticity ; enoughness ; foreign language teachers teaching abroad (FLTTA) ; identity ; professional identity ; social groups

nije evidentirano