VOL. 2 (2023)

ISSN 2952-2013 pp. 70-88

https://doi.org/10.33776/linguodidactica.v2.7905

The Impact of Language Socialization on the

Linguacultural and Motivational Proﬁles of

Multilingual Learners

El impacto de la socialización lingüística en los perﬁles

lingüístico-culturales y motivacionales de los aprendices multilingües

Adrienn Fekete

University of Pécs (Hungary)

Resumen:

El estudio analiza cómo las diferentes experiencias y

procesos de socialización lingüística (Ochs & Schieffelin,

2017) dan como resultado que los diferentes orígenes

lingüísticos y culturales de los estudiantes afecten sus ac-

titudes hacia el aprendizaje de idiomas, su autopercep-

ción como estudiantes de idiomas y, en última instancia,

su motivación para aprender idiomas. Los datos se reco-

pilaron a través de autobiografías lingüísticas escritas por

14 estudiantes procedentes de cinco países diferentes

en un aula multicultural de una universidad húngara. El

análisis de contenido de los abundantes datos textuales

señaló un marcado contraste entre la socialización de los

estudiantes húngaros e internacionales, lo que resultó en

dos perﬁles lingüísticos y motivacionales distintos para el

aprendizaje de idiomas. La exposición a múltiples lenguas

(Risager, 2005) durante la socialización en los contextos

del hogar, de las comunidades étnicas/multiculturales o

de la estancia genera actitudes positivas hacia el aprendi-

zaje de idiomas y una autoimagen favorable como apren-

diz de idiomas. Esto hace que sea más probable que los

estudiantes aprendan idiomas adicionales en su tiempo li-

bre además de los idiomas aprendidos en la escuela y les

permite moverse sin problemas entre diferentes culturas y

utilizar sus idiomas en contextos culturales auténticos con

facilidad. Los resultados corroboraron la conexión inhe-

rente entre elección, autonomía, motivación e identidad

en la adquisición de una segunda lengua. Los testimonios

de los estudiantes señalaron el cambio de estatus del in-

glés y el alemán en Europa y en el mundo, lo que resultó

en una mayor motivación para aprender inglés por diver-

sas razones a expensas del aprendizaje del alemán. En

resumen, los hallazgos revelaron que la vitalidad linguo-

cultural de una lengua como factor ambiental y la elección

de los estudiantes de aprender una lengua junto con su

deseo de realizarse a través de la lengua elegida como

factores internos del estudiante impactan en gran medida

el éxito de segunda lengua.

Palabras claves:

Aprendizaje de lenguas; linguocultura; motivación; mul-

tilingüismo; socialización lingüística.

Fecha de aceptación: 06 de septiembre de 2023

Abstract:

The study discusses how different language socialization

(Ochs & Schieffelin, 2017) experiences and processes

result in learners’ different linguistic and cultural back-

grounds affecting their attitudes toward language lear-

ning, their self-perception as language learners, and ul-

timately their motivation to learn languages. Data were

collected via linguistic autobiographies written by 14 stu-

dents who came from ﬁve different countries in a multi-

cultural classroom at a Hungarian university. The content

analysis of the rich textual data pointed out a sharp con-

trast between the socialization of Hungarian and interna-

tional students resulting in two distinct linguacultural and

language learning motivational proﬁles. Exposure to mul-

tiple linguacultures (Risager, 2005) during socialization in

the contexts of home, ethnic/multicultural communities,

or sojourn generates positive attitudes toward language

learning and favorable self-images as language learners.

This makes learners more likely to take up additional

languages in their spare time in addition to languages

learned at school and enables them to move smoothly

between different cultures and use their languages in au-

thentic cultural contexts with ease. The results corrobora-

ted the inherent connection between choice, autonomy,

motivation, and identity in second language acquisition

(SLA). Learner testimonies pinpointed the changed sta-

tus of English and German in Europe and in the world

resulting in increased motivation to learn English for

various reasons at the expense of German learning. In

short, the ﬁndings revealed that the linguacultural vitality

of a language as an environmental factor and learners’

choice to learn a language along with their desire to fulﬁll

themselves via the chosen language as learner-internal

factors greatly impact the success of SLA.

Keywords:

Language socialization; linguaculture; language learning

motivation; multilingualism.

Fecha de recepción: 03 de julio de 2023

The Impact of Language Socialization on the

Linguacultural and Motivational Proﬁles of

Multilingual Learners

El impacto de la socialización lingüística en los

perﬁles lingüístico-culturales y motivacionales

de los aprendices multilingües

Adrienn Fekete

University of Pécs (Hungary)

Contacto:

fekete.adrienn@pte.hu

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[ 72 ]

1. Introduction When teaching international and Hungarian students in the same class, I have often observed a

fathomable difference between their language learning backgrounds and their self-perception.

While Hungarian students often lament the difﬁculties of learning languages in school and struggle

to become proﬁcient in at least one foreign language (FL), which in most cases is English, interna-

tional students seem to be accustomed to speaking more languages with ease. Since the language

of instruction and communication at the Institute of English Studies of this Hungarian university is

English, all students have attained a proﬁciency level between upper B2 and C1 by the time they

attend my courses. Hungarian students studying at the BA and MA programs offered by the Ins-

titute of English Studies are required to pass a C1 level proﬁciency exam in English during their

studies, and international students are expected to have a similarly high English proﬁciency level in

order to apply for a study abroad program. Therefore, the sharp contrast between their linguistic

proﬁles does not stem from a learner-internal problem such as low language aptitude or the lack of

motivation to learn English. Personal communication with students led me to believe that language

socialization is responsible for the different linguistic proﬁles of the two cohorts. Intrigued by this

realization, we wanted to gather empirical evidence for this ratiocination to point out how different

socialization contexts and processes result in different linguacultural and language learning moti-

vational proﬁles.

Most studies on language socialization investigate the language socialization of immigrants (see,

for example, Lynch, 2023; von Essen, 2023) and of study abroad students (see, for example, Isabe-

lli-García et al., 2018; Jackson, Sin Yu, & Sun, 2019). By contrast, only a few studies examine sociali-

zation processes taking place in the language classroom (see, for example, Dragoescu Ulrica, 2019;

Dumalo, 2020). When Fekete (2020a) examined Hungarian English learners’ language socialization

experiences to cast light on their linguacultural identities and emotional responses to language

learning (LL), the results already pointed out differences between Hungarian students having been

socialized in English language education in Hungary and those who had learned English in other

linguacultural contexts.

However, there is still a gap in research shedding light on how different (language) socialization

contexts and processes affect the linguacultural proﬁle of language learners including the number

of languages learned, attained proﬁciency levels, and learners’ general attitude to language lear-

ning that ultimately affects their motivation to learn languages. Therefore, the present study ﬁlls

this gap by collecting data from students with different linguacultural and national backgrounds to

point out how language socialization is responsible for learners’ different linguistic backgrounds,

attitudes, and language learning motivation. The present study is part of a larger research project in

which international and Hungarian students’ linguistic autobiographies were analyzed. The results

discussing special cases on the impact of language socialization in the context of family, education,

and sojourn on psychological, emotional, and identity responses to language learning and use are

published in another study (Fekete, in press a), while the results delineating the participants’ lingua-

cultural and motivational proﬁles are discussed herein.

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Socialization is construed as a process through which young individuals and novices learn the accep-

ted and expected norms of social behavior and cultural practices that affect their ways of thinking,

behaving, and speaking with others as well as how they interpret human and natural phenomena

in the world (Ochs & Schieffelin, 2017). Thus, socialization takes place in the everyday practices of

life including homes, schools, workplaces, sports, arts, and media via interactions with others such

as family members, friends, colleagues, and other individuals belonging to the same linguacultural

community (Ochs & Schieffelin, 2012).

Socialization, especially language socialization, has a great impact on the linguistic and cultural pro-

ﬁle of the individual, as language and culture are interwoven in language learning (Kramsch, 1998).

Therefore, the term linguaculture or languaculture (Risager, 2005) refers to the inherent and inse-

parable connection between language and culture – irrespective of whether it is the mother tongue

(L1) or any other language learned later in life (L2). When learning a new language – be it a foreign

language acquired in school or a heritage language learned at home or in an ethnic community -

cultural dimensions such as cultural products, practices, perspectives, persons, and communities are

inherently embedded in the new language (Moran, 2001). This process results in seeing the world

from different perspectives by multilingual speakers (MLSs). Linguacultural perspectives associated

with an L2 are inaccessible to monolingual speakers (MoLSs).

Similarly, the term enculturation refers to how individuals become cultural beings by learning how to

think, speak, and act similarly in each culture (Sussman, 2002). These learned cultural perspectives

settle on people like invisible glasses shaping how they perceive human relations and natural phe-

nomena. The process of enculturation becomes complete by late adolescence, shaping people’s

linguacultural and social identities. These cultural perspectives remain invisible to people unless

they encounter a new culture or a new language with new cultural dimensions inherently embedded

in it. By consciously or unconsciously comparing the two linguacultures, people become aware of

their L1 cultural perspectives and the identities associated with them. Since language is integral to

socialization and enculturation processes, language and culture are intertwined in second language

acquisition (SLA). The terms socialization and enculturation are used interchangeably in this paper to

refer to the processes and experiences of novices in a new real or imagined community.

The momentum that the ecological perspective has gained in various disciplines such as psycholo-

gy, anthropology, and L1 socialization shows its applicability in the study of SLA (Ochs & Schieffelin,

2017, pp. 2-9). Therefore, language ecology has provided the link between socialization and SLA

(Kramsch, 2002). The ecological perspective in SLA puts forth that language learners, the language

they learn and speak, and the environment in which they learn and use their languages are insepa-

rable and thus should be examined as a perpetually interacting relationship (Steffensen & Kramsch,

2017). Consequently, language learning and use are construed as naturally emerging from interac-

tions between MLSs and their environments. This points out the mediating function of language in

education, culture, and society alike (Steffensen & Kramsch, 2017, p. 1).

Language ecology deems SLA a dynamic and temporal process that is replete with changes. Its mul-

tiscalar view takes into account not only the individual speaking and learning languages but also the

2. Theoretical Framework

2. 1. Language Socialization and Enculturation

2. 2. Language Ecology and

Second Language Acquisition

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educational and socio-cultural context in which they utilize their languages. The ecological view of the

multilingual individual is also multiscalar by considering their past experiences as children, their pre-

sent learning processes, and their future goals and aspirations (Steffensen & Kramsch, 2017, p. 5-6).

Successful language learning hinges on a multitude of factors including learner-internal factors such

as language aptitude, motivation, language anxiety, and willingness to communicate (WTC) as well

as environmental factors, for example, the learning environment including peers, teachers, teaching

methods, assessment, educational requirements, and the broader sociocultural environment. The-

refore, both the micro- and macro-environment have been found to have a great impact on the

success of (language) learning (Fekete, in press b) pointing out the need for a complex and holistic

approach to the study of language learners and language learning processes afforded by language

ecology (Fekete, 2020a, 2022 press a). The ecological perspective is not constrained to present

processes but can point out how past socialization experiences have shaped MLSs’ attitudes to lan-

guage learning feeding into their motivation to learn languages, which ultimately acts upon the

success of language learning. Success, however, may be perceived in different ways, for example,

the number of languages spoken by the individual, attained proﬁciency levels, the ease of learning

and speaking languages, as well as material, personal, or cultural gains through language and the

transformation the individual undergoes via language.

In the past, research on how language socialization and SLA shape learners’ and teachers’ identities

and emotions was a marginal ﬁeld of English applied linguistics. However, English becoming a lin-

gua franca on the Internet and in life has made communication, traveling, relocation, and study and

work abroad easier, resulting in even more multicultural, multiethnic, and multilingual communities

than ever before. Therefore, research into identity has gained momentum both in immigrant (Nor-

ton, 2013; Pavlenko, 2003; Pavlenko & Blackledge, 2004) and in (multicultural) classroom contexts

(Fekete, 2016, 2020a, 2020b, 2022; Kramsch, 2009; Ótott, 2022).

Similarly, language socialization processes have been, most often, examined in immigrant and multie-

thnic communities (Cho, 2016; Lynch, A, 2023; von Essen, 2023) or in study-abroad contexts (Isabe-

lli-García, 2017, Isabelli-García et al., 2018; Jackson, Sin Yu, & Sun, 2019; Szentpáli Ujlaki, 2008) (also

resulting in temporary multiethnic communities). Socialization processes taking place in the language

classroom, however, have been scrutinized by only a small number of researchers (Dragoescu Urlica,

2019; Dumalo, 2020; Fekete, 2020a; Horváthová, 2022; Nagao, 2014; Ortaçtepe, 2015).

Involving young learners Horváthová (2022) examined learners’ responses to English language so-

cialization via picture books and Chaparro looked at children’s interactions in a multilingual and

multicultural kindergarten in an ethnographic study. In the case of university students, Nagao (2014)

revealed how active participation facilitated the socialization of a Japanese university student in

Australia, and Fekete (2020a) explored the linguistic and cultural identity construction of Hungarian

English learners who had been socialized in different linguacultural contexts. In the ﬁeld of health

sciences, Dragoescu Urlica (2019) put forth an eco-linguistic approach to communication and later

the author and her colleagues proposed an eco-holistic approach to develop learners’ communica-

tive competence in the ﬁeld (Dragoescu Urlica, Durau, Iosim, & Lungu, 2022).

2.3. Empirical research on the impact of

language socialization on SLA

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Regarding teachers, Ortaçtepe (2015) and Uştuk (2021) studied the ways teachers handled and re-

conciled identity conﬂicts resulting from different socialization contexts. In the context of online edu-

cation, Fekete (2021) examined how the drastic change of switching from ofﬂine education to online

learning during the COVID-19 pandemic affected teachers’ identity and emotional responses to the

novel socialization context. Teachers’ professional identities in online education were found to be cha-

racterized by anxiety, struggle, and a sense of loss, while their ofﬂine identities were reported to be

characterized by success and self-fulﬁllment. Similarly, learners’ psychological and identity responses

were also negatively impacted by online learning. Enhanced anxiety levels and decreased motivation

and willingness to communicate levels characterized the majority of the participants in the study (Fe-

kete, in press b).

The study (Fekete, in press a) detailing the results of this research project not discussed herein points

out the impact of language socialization in the context of family, education, and sojourn on emotio-

nal, psychological, and identity responses to SLA. The ﬁndings corroborated that negative language

socialization experiences lead to negative psychological, emotional, and identity responses whereas

positive experiences are conducive to positive responses.

In the context of education, unfavorable teaching methods, discriminative teaching practices, and

bullying were found to be responsible for negative psychological, emotional, and identity respon-

ses in learners, often resulting in learners’ demotivation or giving up learning altogether. ‘Language

socialization shock’ was found to be either a stress-inducing experience or a liberating and self-ful-

ﬁlling experience not found in the old socialization context. Both positive and negative ‘language

socialization shock’ may be experienced in the context of education and sojourn.

Since individuals yearn for self-fulﬁllment, success, and positive identities in language learning, they

often change language socialization contexts to achieve this goal by using the L2 in a new context

(e.g., during sojourn or study abroad) or by taking up a new L2 in which they can ‘start over’ and lea-

ve behind the negative experiences associated with the old L2. The study featured the special case

of a learner raised bilingual by non-native German-speaking parents. While the linguistic gains were

found to be undeniable, the results riveted attention to the long-term psychological and emotional

responses of the parents and the children, their bonding mechanisms, and the family dynamics.

The research was conducted at a Hungarian university with the goal of shedding some light on how

the different language socialization processes of international and Hungarian students affect their

linguacultural and language learning motivational proﬁles. The course Intercultural Communication

taught by the researcher-teacher is a compulsory course for full-time students in the BA in English

Studies program and an elective course for visiting international students.

The study answers the following two research questions: How do the language socialization proces-

ses of the two cohorts affect, ﬁrst, their linguacultural proﬁles and, second, their language learning

motivational proﬁles?

3. Methods

3. 1. Context and aims of research

3. 2. Research questions

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Fourteen students, aged between 21 and 25, participated in the study coming from ﬁve countries:

Hungary, Spain, Indonesia, Ukraine, and Bosnia-Hercegovina. The number of Hungarian (N8) and in-

ternational students (N6) was balanced as well as their gender distribution with eight female and six

male students. All Hungarian students and one international student were enrolled in the full-time

BA in English Studies program, three international students were enrolled in the same program at

their home university, and two international students majored in a different subject in their country.

A concise summary of the participants’ linguacultural background is presented below.

International students:

Diego, from Galicia, Spain, spoke ﬁve languages and had always been surrounded by other cultures

and languages both in Galicia and in Hungary. Besides Spanish, his mother tongue (L1), he proﬁ-

ciently spoke the local language, Galician which is linguistically related to Portuguese; therefore,

speaking Galician he understood written and spoken Portuguese. He had been learning English

since kindergarten and had reached a C1 proﬁciency level in English. He had learned German in

secondary school and had been learning Italian for three years by the time of the research in which

he had reached a B1 level proﬁciency level. At the time of the research, he was living in Hungary as

an ERASMUS student where he was speaking English as a lingua franca (ELF) with Hungarians and

international students coming from different countries. He reported to be enjoying learning about

Hungary and Hungarian culture, but he was not learning Hungarian. Instead, he was learning Ser-

bian. He expressed his wish to later live in Greece or Italy to learn the local language.

Ademir, a student from Bosnia-Hercegovina, spoke Bosnian as a mother tongue but understood

Croatian and Serbian languages as well due to the linguistic similarities of these Slavic languages.

He had learned English since elementary school and had learned German in high school.

The two Ukrainian students considered themselves bilingual, as Ukrainian and Russian were spoken

in their families while growing up. They said this was true for most Ukrainian families, as for histori-

cal reasons, Russian was widely spoken in Ukraine. They had been learning English since elementary

school and had attained C1 proﬁciency in English. They both had learned German for two years wi-

thout achieving high proﬁciency in that language. Larysa had never lived abroad before spending a

semester in Hungary, whereas Liliya had learned Polish for two years in high school and she had spent

a year in Poland studying her subjects in English and Polish. While Larysa’s home university was in

Ukraine, Liliya had been studying at UP as a full-time student for two years by the time of the research.

The two Indonesian students spoke the ofﬁcial language, Bahasa Indonesian, as their ﬁrst language

but had learned four other languages while growing up in a multilingual and multicultural environ-

ment. They both had been learning English since kindergarten reaching the C1 proﬁciency level.

Indah was from the Sundanese region of Java Island where she had learned to speak the local lan-

guage, Sundanese, ﬂuently and had learned the mother tongue of her parents, Karonese. During

high school, she had started learning Korean and she had visited South Korea with her family once.

In addition to Indonesian and English, Annisa had learned Korean for three years in high school as

well as Japanese in her free time. She reported having only limited proﬁciency in these languages

and in her heritage language, Javanese, which was the language spoken by the ethnic group her

3. 3. Participants

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family belonged to. She reported being able to understand but not speak these languages. At the

time of the research, the two students had been living in Hungary for four months.

Hungarian students:

The Hungarian students’ mother tongue was Hungarian, but they had reached a C1 level proﬁciency

in English having passed the compulsory internal C1 level proﬁciency exam organized by the Ins-

titute of English Studies. All of them had learned at least another FL in addition to English because

in Hungary it is compulsory to learn 2 FLs in high school and one in a vocational secondary school.

Tamara’s mother tongue was Hungarian, but she had been raised as a bilingual in the family. Her father

had learned German as a heritage language and had lived in Germany for some years and thus deci-

ded to talk with the children in German instead of Hungarian. So, she grew up hearing both Hungarian

and German while their mother and the rest of the world had talked with them in Hungarian. She had

also learned German as an FL from elementary school to the end of high school and had begun lear-

ning English in secondary school. She had stopped learning and using German after secondary school

graduation and by the time of the research she reported to have forgotten most of it.

Sarah had grown up in a monolingual Hungarian family but had started learning English in elemen-

tary school. Her second FL in high school had been German in which she had not attained a high

proﬁciency level. She had lived and worked as an au pair in Sweden for seven months where she

had learned Swedish at a beginner level. In addition to her major in BA English studies, she had

taken up a minor in Russian one and a half years before the research, so she had been learning the

language since then. She reported being multicultural due to her sojourn in Sweden and her short

visit to England.

Sophia growing up in a monolingual Hungarian-speaking family had been learning English since

elementary school. She had learned French in the four years of secondary school because it was

compulsory to learn a second FL.

Aaron’s mother tongue was Hungarian, but he had grown up in a Swabian village; thus, he had been

required to learn German as an FL from kindergarten to the end of high school. He had been learning

English since high school. He had never chosen to learn German, but it had been his choice to learn

English. He quit learning German the moment it was not compulsory but continued learning English at

university. He noted his dislike for German learning and reported having forgotten much of it.

Robert had been learning English since elementary school and had learned Latin in the medical

school he had attended prior to his BA in English Studies program. He had not learned a second L2

in secondary school. He reported being very proud of his Hungarian identity and Hungarian roots,

and cultivating the Hungarian language was important to him.

Ben had learned German as a compulsory FL in elementary and secondary school and only started lear-

ning English as a high schooler. While he reported his dislike for German, he enjoyed learning English.

Paula had been learning English since elementary school and had attended a bilingual English-Hun-

garian secondary school where certain subjects were taught in English. She had enjoyed learning

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English and learning about English-speaking cultures. She had visited London and New York once.

She wanted to become a translator using English and German after graduation; therefore, she re-

sumed learning German to pass a B2 level German language exam, which was a prerequisite of the

translation program she was planning to apply for.

Jensen had started to learn English in elementary school and continued his studies in a bilingual

English-Hungarian high school. In secondary school, he had learned German without achieving high

proﬁciency in the language.

A single research instrument, a home assignment for students, was utilized to answer the research

questions. Students were invited to submit their linguistic autobiographies via email discussing their

experiences, emotions, decisions, and actions inﬂuenced by the languages they spoke or had ever

learned. For their work, they earned course points that counted in their ﬁnal assessment. The task

was explained to them in class and in a message posted in their Microsoft Teams group only accessi-

ble to the students and the teacher of the course. Students’ names were only drawn on when giving

them course points for completing the assignment. The names used herein are pseudonyms to pro-

tect the participants’ identities. The assignment served research and pedagogical purposes as well.

While collecting data for this research, it facilitated students’ self-knowledge via intro- and retrospec-

tion and an insightful in-class discussion on the transformative potential of language learning.

The study being part of a classroom and action research project is embedded in the qualitative

research tradition that has the potential to uncover rich details, subtleties, and idiosyncrasies that

do not emerge in quantitative research (Dörnyei, 2007). Linguistic autobiographies were unstruc-

tured essays that varied in length and detail. When important details were missing in the linguistic

autobiographies, the researcher-teacher reached out to the students for clariﬁcation via email.

Those details were added to the autobiographies.

The goals of action research are twofold: 1) to better the researcher-teacher’s teaching practice

and 2) to publish the ﬁndings (Nunan & Bailey, 2009). The coding process of the collected rich

textual data included highlighting experiences and events pertaining to the research questions

(Saldana, 2013). When coding the data on the participants’ backgrounds, two different patterns

emerged characterizing the two cohorts in terms of languages learned and cultures being expo-

sed to. These differences were found to be responsible for students’ different attitudes to langua-

ge learning feeding into their motivation to learn languages. These data provide the basis of the

case study presented herein.

Two distinct trends emerged in the linguistic and cultural proﬁles of international and Hungarian

participants. Regarding language learning, international students had grown up in multilingual and

multicultural environments learning at least two languages at home (their L1 and the local/ethnic

language) from childhood in addition to the languages they had learned in school as an FL. By con-

3. 4. Research instruments and procedures

3. 5. Research methods and data analysis

4. Discussion of results

4.1. Linguacultural proﬁles

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trast, Hungarian students had only learned Hungarian growing up in addition to learning two requi-

red FLs in school. While Hungarian students had only learned the compulsory number of languages

in schools, international students had learned additional FLs outside of school in their free time or in

their ethnic community. Table 1 shows the number of languages the participants had learned.

Table 1. Number of Languages Students Learned Including Their Mother Tongue

Three languages Four languages Five languages

Hungarian students 7 - 1

International students 1 2 3

Total 9 1 4

Source: own elaboration

There is a sharp contrast regarding the number of languages acquired by students in the two co-

horts. While Hungarian students save Sarah had only learned as many languages as they had been

required to learn in school, international students had learned more languages outside school due

to having been socialized in a multilingual (and multiethnic) environment where using more langua-

ges in different contexts was a natural phenomenon expected of family/ethnic community members.

Speaking local and ethnic languages indexed their belonging to a speciﬁc community and it was

part of everyday life; therefore, students had learned these languages naturally in informal (herita-

ge/ethnic) contexts. The only exception in the Hungarian cohort was Sarah, who similarly to other

Hungarians had struggled with languages in school but later started enjoying using ELF in Sweden

where she also learned the local language in a native environment.

Although all participants had learned English as an FL in schools, they used it very differently and

for different purposes. While international students used ELF in Hungary, Hungarian students mostly

used English as a foreign language (EFL) in Hungary when talking with their peers and teachers at

university. However, despite their different linguistic backgrounds, both cohorts had the opportunity

to speak ELF and interact with students from different cultures during the course.

Regarding the participants’ cultural background, a sharp difference was detected in their cultural ex-

posure. Table 2 delineates students’ exposure to cultures in their home country and during sojourn

where exposure to a culture means exposure to one or more cultures while growing up and sojourn

refers to the number of sojourns students had experienced at the time of the research.

The ﬁgures pinpoint a sharp difference in the cultural experiences of students. International students

had been exposed to different cultures when growing up and they had experienced at least one so-

journ. By contrast, Hungarian students had grown up in monolingual families and had only been expo-

sed to Hungarian culture. Although some ethnic groups (such as German/Swabian, Croatian, Serbian,

or Roma) live in the area of the university, these groups are largely assimilated into the Hungarian

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community. Nevertheless, the linguistic autobiographies delineated three special cases among Hun-

garian students. The multicultural experiences of these three students differed from the monocultural

backgrounds of the other students. Aaron had grown up in a Swabian village (populated by people

with German ancestors), but he had been born in a Hungarian-speaking family, and he had only lear-

ned German as a compulsory foreign language in school; he had never chosen this language. There-

fore, his exposure to German and Swabian culture was not a transformative or meaningful experience

for him. Tamara had grown up hearing two languages in the family. Although her parents’ mother

tongue was Hungarian, they had decided to raise bilingual children, so the father, coming from a Ger-

man-speaking family background, had spoken to her in German instead of Hungarian. Nevertheless,

her exposure to German had been rather linguistic than cultural. Sarah had spent seven months in

Sweden working as an au pair where she had been speaking ELF with the locals and other sojourners.

She reported to have become multicultural in Sweden where she had been exposed to a diversity of

cultures including the host culture. Regarding sojourn, only one Hungarian student, Sarah, had lived in

a foreign country while all international students had experienced at least one sojourn.

Table 2. Students’ Exposure to Cultures (Cs)

Exposure to 1 C Exposure to 2 Cs Exposure to 3 C3 No sojourn 1 sojourn 2 sojourns

Hungarian students (N8) 8 0 0 7 1 0

International students (N6) 0 4 2 0 5 1

Source: own elaboration

In summary, despite the cultural and ethnic diversity of Hungary and that of the international students

studying at the university, Hungarian students were rarely exposed to the cultural and linguistic di-

versity of their broader community or to the cultural diversity of international students at the univer-

sity, as they rarely interacted with international students apart from classes. International students,

on the other hand, were exposed to the cultural diversity of their home communities and to that of

other international students during their sojourn in Hungary as they tended to form an international

community – an enclosed international bubble - within the Hungarian community. Therefore, they

were only marginally exposed to the host culture and Hungarian people. This ﬁnding is in line with

the ﬁndings of another study examining study-abroad medical students’ Hungarian socialization at

the University of Pécs (Krommer, 2020). The only shared cultural experience of the two cohorts was

that their exposure to the cultural diversity of Hungary was very limited.

The language learning narratives shared in the linguistic autobiographies shed light on students’

language learning motivation. Table 3 below summarizes what languages students had learned, and

Table 1 above presents how many languages students had learned.

Table 1 points out that save one student, the Hungarian students had only learned as many foreign

languages (N2) as they had been required to learn in school, and they had not taken up a third lan-

4.2. Motivational proﬁles

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guage as a hobby (save Sarah). After English, the second most popular FL was German. For German

learners, German was always a language that they had to but did not choose, to learn. Although

English is a compulsory FL in Hungarian education, all participants reported to have enjoyed lear-

ning English in school (often after some initial hardships). Despite the positive experience of English

learning, Hungarian students were not motivated to learn another FL outside school. By contrast, in-

ternational students chose to learn languages beyond the school requirement. It can be concluded

that international students exhibited more favorable attitudes towards SLA and had higher levels of

motivation to learn languages in general.

Table 3. Languages Learned by Students

Languages learned by students Number of students

English 14

German 7

Bahasa Indonesia, Korean 2

French, Russian, Swedish, Galician, Italian, Serbian, Polish, Latin, Sundanese, Karonese, Japanese 1

Source: own elaboration

Regarding students’ attitudes towards the most popular FLs, English was a language of success, joy,

and high attainment for both cohorts. However, Hungarian students contrasted the joy of learning

English with the tediousness of learning German. German was mostly learned either because it was

compulsory or because German was thought to be a useful language in Hungary and in Europe.

Nonetheless, students noted they had not enjoyed learning it or had not taken it seriously and they

reported to have forgotten most of what they had learned. While in English they all took at least one

language examination and achieved high (C-1 level) proﬁciency levels, they did not take a language

exam or attain high proﬁciency levels in German.

Regarding their motivation to learn languages, all participants exhibited intrinsic, integrative, and

instrumental motivation to learn English, whereas their motivation to learn German was mostly ex-

trinsic. Only two students experienced instrumental motivation. Paula had to pass a B2 level German

exam to apply for an MA in translation program and Tamara had been expected to use German to

communicate with her father in the family, but she highlighted her reluctance to speak in German

(possibly bordering on instrumental and extrinsic motivation in her case). However, all other FLs

(Russian, Swedish, Polish, Serbian, Italian, and Korean) that students had chosen for themselves were

out of intrinsic or integrative motivation associated with their enjoyment of learning the language or

their interest in the FL culture.

German associated with extrinsic motivation:

It is very hard to learn German… we were not that excited about the language either, so somewhe-

re in eleventh grade we gave up learning. Paula

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In elementary school, I started learning German, not because I was interested in it, but because I

had no choice. Even though I studied it for such a long time, I barely remember anything about

German. Ben

German was dry and tedious, which made it difﬁcult for me to deal with it outside the classroom.

As my attitude to the language did not change, soon after graduation I forgot everything related

to the German lessons. Sarah

English associated with intrinsic motivation:

I liked learning English because the lessons were interactive and interesting. Lara

I also found out soon that I took a liking to the English language, ﬁnding it interesting and exciting.

English associated with integrative motivation:

My parents saw that I loved to learn this language [English] deeper, so they started to buy me

Western storybooks and installed cable TV in my house to access Western channels. Indah

I was very much keen on the English culture. Our teacher showed us several videos of how English

people celebrate Christmas or live their everyday lives. It was very fascinating for me, and I had

always wanted to visit London and New York City. These were my two dream cities. Paula

English associated with instrumental motivation:

Over the course of years only as a result of playing video games and watching videos in English,

I could understand English better. Ben

[English] was a key to reaching more information in the world. For instance, when I searched for

something on the Internet and I did not ﬁnd it in Hungarian, I used English, instead. Lara

The knowledge of the English language gives me the opportunity to travel freely. Larysa

Other foreign languages associated with integrative motivation:

Then in the tenth grade, I began to study Polish for myself. In the second year, I went to an exchan-

ge program in Poland where almost all education was in Polish. Liliya

My plans for the near future are to study and to live in a different country in order to learn its lan-

guage or to improve it, I would like these countries to be either Italy or Greece. Diego

An interesting ﬁnding is that in the case of English learning, two motivational types, intrinsic and

instrumental motivation, were more salient than integrative motivation in the data sets referring to

enjoyment and non-linguistic goals associated with English learning. Gaming, watching ﬁlms, or

traveling were more frequently noted beneﬁts than interest in English-speaking cultures. This ﬁn-

ding shows how the world of English has changed. In the past, students learned English as a foreign

language to communicate with native speakers and to learn about their culture. However, in a world

where English has become an omnipresent lingua franca, learners may ﬁnd it hard to identify with a

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single native-speaking community; instead, they may prefer to relate to a global community in which

English knowledge is valued reﬂecting their International Posture (Yashima, 2009).

International posture is associated with instrumental motivation to learn English, as well as openness

towards other cultures and intercultural communication. This change in the world is described in the

students’ linguistic autobiographies. This phenomenon, however, is not true for other foreign lan-

guages that are not world languages, for instance, Diego reported his plan to live in Italy to master

the language, and Liliya chose to learn Polish, which allowed her to study and live in Poland.

Regarding the relationship between motivation and language attainment, research (Fekete, 2018)

has shown that intrinsic and integrative motivation are the most effective types of motivation in the

long run, usually resulting in higher proﬁciency levels, while extrinsic and instrumental motivation is

mostly effective in the short run because learners usually stop learning the language once the extrin-

sic or instrumental forces cease to exist. Therefore, Hungarian students’ unfavorable attitudes toward

German and their limited success in learning the language are not surprising. Similarly, international

students exhibited no motivation whatsoever to learn the language of their host country, Hunga-

rian. Hungarian students’ reluctance to learn German and international students’ lack of interest in

learning Hungarian during their sojourn while they all were enthusiastic about learning English may

have to do with the linguistic vitality of these languages (Clément, 1980; Gyles & Byrne,1982).

The linguistic and cultural vitality of English worldwide is very high due to its omnipresence and lin-

gua franca status in the world and due to the globalization of English-speaking cultures and media.

Thus, one can access all kinds of information and products about and from different cultures in Engli-

sh. By contrast, although German is an important language in Europe and two German-speaking

countries (Austria and Germany) are in geographical proximity to Hungary, the linguistic and cultural

vitality of German cannot compete with that of English. German-related products and information

may be available in English and English language cultural products are excessively available on the

Internet and in the media; therefore, English usually generates higher levels of instrumental and

integrative motivation in language learners than German. As Ben put it “there is no point in learning

German, because everything is in English and everyone speaks English”. Furthermore, the partici-

pants noted they had found German harder to learn than English, possibly further decreasing their

intrinsic motivation to learn German. Finally, Hungary - being a small country in Central Europe with

Hungarian only spoken by approximately nine million people - the language has very low linguistic

and cultural vitality compared to English or other Western European languages. Therefore, it is no

surprise that international students did not show any type of motivation to learn Hungarian during

their study abroad, especially because they mostly interacted with other sojourners in English, and

they could (more or less) interact with the locals using English.

The ﬁndings delineate distinct linguistic and cultural differences in the two cohorts. Most Hungarian

students grew up in monocultural and monolingual environments and (save two students) they had

only learned as many languages as was required by their formal education. By contrast, international

students had grown up in multilingual and multicultural environments where they had acquired at

least two languages in addition to the languages they had learned later in school. Therefore, their

multiculturalism stemmed from their ﬁrst-hand experiences with other cultures and their sojourns,

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while Hungarian students’ multiculturalism derived from their second-hand experiences in the form

of ﬁlms, books, media, websites, or their studies.

Regarding their English use, international students were using ELF in Hungary mostly with other

sojourners, while Hungarian students were more likely to speak EFL with their Hungarian classmates

and teachers at the university, as they rarely interacted with international students in and outside the

classroom.

The ﬁndings of the study corroborated that learners’ different (language) socialization was responsi-

ble for the different linguacultural and language learning motivational proﬁles of Hungarian and in-

ternational students. International students had been exposed to more cultures and languages while

growing up, and they had learned these languages naturally in authentic, native-speaking contexts

enabling them to move smoothly between different cultures and languages. In contrast, Hungarian

students had only learned FLs in schools where SLA was often perceived as a struggle associated

with learning languages in a formal context. Sarah’s case is a great example of personal and linguis-

tic transformation. Her struggle and anxiety linked to learning/speaking English in school ceased to

exist when she moved to Sweden, which enabled her to use the language in an authentic context

focusing on successful communication instead of appropriacy and perfection emphasized in school.

This and another study (Fekete, in press) pointed out that German was unanimously associated with

struggle and failure by both Hungarian and international students, while English became a language

of success and self-fulﬁllment for all students, although often preceded by phases of struggle.

Fekete (in press a) pointed out that unfavorable teaching methods, discriminative teaching practices,

and bullying, leading to classroom dynamics inconducive to an engaging and motivating learning

experience, trigger negative emotional, psychological, and identity responses in FL learners, which

often results in their losing motivation or quitting language learning altogether. This seems to be

a more pronounced problem in the case of German learning. The fact that English has become an

omniscient lingua franca in the world has decreased the linguistic vitality and usefulness of German

in Europe.

Therefore, while the globalization of English-speaking cultures and media can provide learners with

intrinsic, integrative, and instrumental motivation to learn the language, German can only provide

such impetus to speciﬁc groups of learners wanting to work or study in a German-speaking company

or desiring a profession or a job requiring German. All students in the study had stopped learning

German upon high school graduation pointing out that they had only been extrinsically motivated to

learn German. By contrast, English had been their choice of an FL that had completely transformed

their lives (and made them abandon German learning).

Two studies by Fekete (2022, in press a) pointed out that even highly proﬁcient German learners

with a German-speaking family background had left behind German learning only to master Engli-

sh and transform their lives via it. The special case of Tamara (Fekete, in press a) shed light on some

of the psychological, emotional, and identity perspectives of raising a bilingual child by a non-na-

tive German-speaker parent while also pointing out that the educational system is often not prepa-

5. Conclusions

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red for such advanced German learners as Tamara had been. Since the number of German learners

has signiﬁcantly dropped, more advanced German learners may be placed with beginner learners,

especially in smaller schools, thus creating a great source of demotivation for more advanced Ger-

man learners.

The results pointed out that English was the most popular language with the participants triggering

intrinsic, instrumental, and integrative motivation as well as self-fulﬁllment in them. Similarly, other

languages chosen by the participants, such as Polish or Korean, also generated intrinsic, integrative,

and instrumental motivation in them and became a meaningful and transformative experience for

them. This highlights the signiﬁcance of and the inherent link between choice, autonomy, motivation,

and identity in SLA. Consequently, positive and successful experiences associated with language

learning during socialization in the contexts of family, ethnic communities, education, and sojourn

trigger positive attitudes towards general language learning that feed into learners’ motivation to

learn additional languages in their leisure time. Therefore, the divide between the participants was

not whether they were international or Hungarian students but whether they had been exposed

to multiple languages and cultures in their (language) socialization when growing up or during a

sojourn. In the study, international students happened to have been socialized in multilingual and

multicultural environments while the Hungarian students, apart from Sophie, had not. This explains

the different linguacultural and motivational proﬁles of the students.

In conclusion, the ﬁndings revealed that the linguacultural vitality of a language as an environmental

factor and the learner’s choice to learn a language along with their desire to fulﬁll themselves via the

chosen language as learner-internal factors greatly impact the success of SLA.

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