Chapter 11

Duoethnographic inquiry into translingualism and language teacher identity

Recent investigations into multilingualism and translanguaging by language teachers have highlighted the importance of individual identity and social context in determining the scope or ability to carry out translingual practices and enact preferred identities (Nagashima & Lawrence, 2020). In this chapter we take up the call issued by Lee and Canagarajah (2019) to examine the ways in which “contradicting ideologies about language and language teaching and their experience of power, privilege, marginalization or other lived experiences and identities interplay in enacting translingual dispositions” (p. 361). We do this by adopting a two-stage duoethnographic approach to explore the experiences of two multilingual migrant English teachers; one a “non-native speaker” teaching in the “native” English environment of the UK, and the other a “native speaker” teaching in the “non-native” environment of Japan. The study reveals that monolingualism and native-speakerism in the local communities have heavily influenced our willingness to claim a bilingual identity, preventing us from adopting a translingual disposition. It also puts constraints on our autonomy in professional identity negotiation and results in us de-emphasising or concealing our national origins. However, our stories also show that teachers’ small acts of resistance can afford them the possibility to challenge existing ideologies.