“Bloom and Grow Forever”

Abstract

This chapter discusses how the author's experiences growing up in Austria influenced her early experiences as an English language learner in the U.S. and later as a faculty member in a U.S. university setting. She uses Stuart Hall to show how our perspectives of the languages we speak and our understanding of our own multiple and shifting identities, and the identities of those we come in contact with, greatly influence our subsequent interactions with cultures and languages that are different from our own. She adapts the concept of Mary Louise Pratt's “contact zones” to show that our languages and our identities, and with it our ideologies, determine how we understand ourselves and those we come in contact with.