Language, Learning, and Globalization:
Interdisciplinary Investigation of Foreign Language Learners

Chad Nilep

Abstract for paper presented at
Culture, Language and Social Practice Conference
University of Colorado
5-7 October 2007

Foreign language learning is of interest to scholars in a variety of subdisciplines, including applied linguistics, education, bilingualism, and educational anthropology. Furthermore, its "globalized" nature sometimes interests sociocultural anthropologists, ethnolinguists, and various critical scholars. How can a sociocultural linguist whose interests lie in linguistic anthropology and discourse analysis, but whose fieldwork involves foreign language learners, contribute to this broad interdisciplinary conversation?

My current research combines participant observation and close analysis of discourse in order to investigate the ways that participants in "Hippo Family Club," a transnational language-study group, (re)create discourses of what the club means and how it works. My own interests relate primarily to linguistic ideologies and the construction of identity. At the same time, though, the nature of the subjects and field sites makes the work of interest to various scholars and obliges me to consider diverse perspectives.

This presentation, then, has two elements. First, I describe the practices of Hippo Family Club member-learners in the United States, Japan, and elsewhere. Special attention is given to the construction of an imagined, international "family" of users. Second, I reflect on my attempts to position this work, and on the uptake by scholars in various subdisciplines.

Hippo Family Club is an international organization founded in Japan and dedicated to learning foreign languages. Members listen to audio recordings of multiple foreign languages and repeat the stories they hear. Then, once per week all members meet to play games, sing songs, and recite together stories from the recordings. In these weekly meetings, children and adults, veterans and novices are all expected to work together to re-tell the stories and to practice speaking target languages. In this way, members believe that they can learn several foreign languages at the same time, without studying grammar, translation, or other elements of traditional language learning.

Participant observation and discourse analysis reveal particular ideologies of language and of socialization in members' practices. For instance, members claim that they are able to acquire multiple languages "naturally," without study. There is, at the same time, an orientation to wider social expectations that language learning is difficult: members frequently testify to newcomers that they had low initial expectations for the learning method, and were surprised by their eventual triumph in becoming multilingual.

Whenever I present my observations and findings related to Hippo ideology and identity, I am asked questions such as, "How effective are these methods?" Naturally, participant observation does not yield the sort of data normally used to answer such questions in the fields of assessment and testing, second language acquisition, or applied linguistics. I am able, though, to relate grounded observations of affective factors, and to show specific examples of learner's target-language discourse. At the same time, I find the consideration of individuals' face-to-face practices vital to grounding macro-level analyses of globalization, modernity, and language ideologies. Field methods combining ethnographic observation and close analysis of discourse thus contribute both to understandings of identity and ideology, and to questions related to educational practices and outcomes.

Chad Nilep is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Colorado at Boulder, and editor of Colorado Research in Linguistics. He can be reached at:Chad.Nilep@Colorado.edu.