Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

The Multilingual Subject: What Foreign Language Learners Say About Their Experience and Why It Matters (review)

The Multilingual Subject: What Foreign Language Learners Say About Their Experience and Why It... Book Reviews The Multilingual Subject: What Foreign Language Learners Say About Their Experience and Why It Matters. By Claire Kramsch. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. vii + 231 pages. $33.95. At a time when the multilingual experience has been amply documented first- hand by writers and scholars, reflected on by literary authors, and studied by applied linguists, Claire Kramsch makes a case for her monograph The Multilingual Subject by focusing on the subjectivities of becoming multilingual. Kramsch defines the "subject" as a "symbolic entity that is constituted and maintained through symbolic systems such as language" (17) and subjectivity as "our conscious or unconscious sense of self as mediated through symbolic forms" (18). She explores "subjective aspects of language acquisition" (5) in adolescent and young- adult language learners through retrospective language testimonies and memoirs, spoken and written data from language learners-- including journals; oral interviews and transcriptions of classroom discourse; essays on what it means to be multilingual; and finally, online data from language students participating in chats, telecollaboration projects, and text messaging exchanges. Kramsch readily acknowledges the challenges of relying on and interpreting "modes of inquiry" that are not typically part of second language acquisition research: language memoirs http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Monatshefte University of Wisconsin Press

The Multilingual Subject: What Foreign Language Learners Say About Their Experience and Why It Matters (review)

Monatshefte , Volume 103 (3) – Sep 28, 2011

Loading next page...
 
/lp/university-of-wisconsin-press/the-multilingual-subject-what-foreign-language-learners-say-about-ifXRytJ0Rl

References

References for this paper are not available at this time. We will be adding them shortly, thank you for your patience.

Publisher
University of Wisconsin Press
Copyright
Copyright © University of Wisconsin Press
ISSN
1934-2810
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Book Reviews The Multilingual Subject: What Foreign Language Learners Say About Their Experience and Why It Matters. By Claire Kramsch. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. vii + 231 pages. $33.95. At a time when the multilingual experience has been amply documented first- hand by writers and scholars, reflected on by literary authors, and studied by applied linguists, Claire Kramsch makes a case for her monograph The Multilingual Subject by focusing on the subjectivities of becoming multilingual. Kramsch defines the "subject" as a "symbolic entity that is constituted and maintained through symbolic systems such as language" (17) and subjectivity as "our conscious or unconscious sense of self as mediated through symbolic forms" (18). She explores "subjective aspects of language acquisition" (5) in adolescent and young- adult language learners through retrospective language testimonies and memoirs, spoken and written data from language learners-- including journals; oral interviews and transcriptions of classroom discourse; essays on what it means to be multilingual; and finally, online data from language students participating in chats, telecollaboration projects, and text messaging exchanges. Kramsch readily acknowledges the challenges of relying on and interpreting "modes of inquiry" that are not typically part of second language acquisition research: language memoirs

Journal

MonatshefteUniversity of Wisconsin Press

Published: Sep 28, 2011

There are no references for this article.