Standard English, Native Accent, Shifting Ideologies, and Becoming: Languaging of an International Student in Canada

This paper presents a case study analysis of a Bangladeshi international student’s English language learning trajectory in Canada. The study chronicles the initial phase of his desire to learn a “native” English accent and his conceptualization of Canada as a white nation-state. It also explores his language ideology shift, his languaging experience across multilingual communities, building community, and belongingness. Although research on international students in Western contexts is prominent, a transnational approach is needed to understand the mechanism of ideology construction. It is also important to reconceptualize language to understand the language practices of the students in different domains. Drawing on a raciolinguistic framework, the study explores how such ideologies are constructed transnationally and how they shape racialized “non-native” English speakers’ language practices, attitude, and their sense of self. To understand the participant’s ideological shift, drawing on language ecology and languaging theories, the study conceptualizes communication as an embodied experience and explores the translanguaging and trans-semiotizing practices of the participant and his construction of an emergent self-informed-by-a-sociolinguistic ethnographic framework, data was generated through semi-structured interviews, participant observations, and diary entries with narrative inquiry and critical discourse analysis as analytical framework. Findings suggest that raciolinguistic ideologies at the macro and micro level shaped the participant’s learning practices and his position as an international student. It shows his shift from raciolinguistic ideologies to community building through languaging outside of the academic institution. The study calls for reconceptualization of language while adopting an intersectional approach in second language research.