Picking Through Our Baggage: A Duoethnography of Japanese L2 Learning

Abstract

Across our lifelong learning journeys, we encounter countless positive and negative experiences that come to shape our evolving perspectives. As language learning can certainly be viewed as a lifelong endeavor, this accrued emotional “baggage” (Falout et al., 2015) will conceivably affect the way we perceive the act of learning or, indeed, the target language itself. In this duoethnographic study, the authors, two learners of Japanese, explore the ways in which their attitudes towards language learning have been shaped by their historical life trajectories. The authors recorded critical conversations, took reflective notes, and collaboratively analyzed this data using reflexive thematic analysis. Through the juxtaposition of their backgrounds and unique struggles with Japanese, the authors attempted to engage in transformative dialogue that challenged established personal narratives and facilitated deeper self-understanding. Through this duoethnographic study, the authors discovered that their attitudes towards standardized testing and communicative proficiency in Japanese were profoundly shaped by historical and sociocultural factors that even predated their arrival in Japan. In a concluding discussion, some implications of this study, as well as duoethnography more broadly, were also examined by the authors.