The role of organic linguistic repertoires and complementary schooling in young people's identity construction: Doing linguistic ethnography in a German Saturday school in London

Abstract

The motivation for this research was to explore the relationship between linguistic repertoires and complex identities of young people attending a complementary language school in a multilingual city. The research design was influenced by linguistic ethnography (LE) and the context of a complementary school. Research was conducted in a German Saturday school, over a period of six months, using observations, language portrait work and semi-structured interviews with five young people and their teacher. I further gathered contextual data such as the background of students currently attending the school and wrote a research diary. All data were transcribed and analysed using a combination of post-structural discourse analysis and thematic analysis (PDTA). The findings highlighted the complexities of young people’s identities in relation to their organic linguistic repertoires (OLR). The term OLR points toward the dynamic nature of ‘languages’ that appear less visible in the term language repertoire or plurilingualism. The findings of this study suggest that young people’s language practices can be associated with linguistic identity, and where a variety of discourses are at play in complementary schools as sheltered spaces, thereby shaping young people’s identity development. The study further suggests an alteration of students’ identity development throughout the study and their increased awareness of their OLR was a result of the language portrait activity. I demonstrate how the relationship among different languages, language varieties, accents and dialects in a young person’s OLR are related to classroom performances and how the young people cross linguistic boundaries. The study is also unique in attending to everyday language practices, through a linguistic ethnographic lens, of young people attending a German Saturday school in the context of complementary schooling in the UK. In addition, focusing on young people in an A-level classroom depicts a much-understudied group and further sheds light on the similarities between students in these settings and perhaps other complementary schools.