The acquisition of an additional language challenges our sense of self. Because our first language forms an integral part of our identity, attempting to express ourselves in a second or additional language threatens that sense of self. Guiora (1984, p. 3—4) attributes this to the other languages’ structural differences in how it organizes the world. Languages can differ widely on how they categorize things and events. based on gender, animacy, formality, time, our attitude towards it, and whether or not we witnessed it first hand. Learning to express ideas in a language that organizes the world in very different ways from one’s first language would require a restructuring of how one sees the world, and one’s place in it. Additionally, as one’s second language is often not as fully developed as one’s first, the smaller range of usable language presents yet another challenge to self-expression (Foss & Reitzel, 1991, p. 130, citing Horwitz et al., 1986).
This leads to a number of issues, particularly for linguistic minority students who are required to learn and perform in a new language at a high level in a relatively short amount of time. The limited self-expression can lead to additional stress, isolation, and less institutional representation. This leads to further disadvantages from the relative lack of social capital compared to linguistic majority students. These compounding non-linguistic issues are not addressed in federal policies that attempt to support marginalized populations through higher education. The upshot is that less than a quarter of linguistic minority students even attempt a 4-year college after highschool to begin with.
There is a lot of room to support students struggling with identity issues in language learning. Outside the classroom, cohorts of students can provide each other with support, and mentors can provide critical support one on one. Faculty, counselors, advisors, and mentors can work with students to map out their socioacademic support networks and coach them on how to ask those resources for help. In the classroom, putting value on students’ linguistic expertise in their own language can be useful in teaching them how to do similar things in English and researchers argue that the labor of identity building should be rewarded in terms of academic credit. Teachers can connect language and identity work in the classroom to future benefits through job applications, scholarships, and other opportunities.