ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses an autobiographical narrative perspective to consider the role of foreign language learning as a source of cultural capital within a trajectory of social mobility at a particular socio-historical moment. The use of autobiography in applied linguistics takes as its point of departure the increasingly accepted premise that first-person experience is a legitimate source of research data and qualitative, interpretative approach. It is useful to distinguish terminologically between language memoirs and language autobiographies, the former term first coined by Kaplan to denote a literary genre of "autobiographical writing which is in essence about language learning". Language learning is structured by the material and discursive resources of a single life, personal motivations are embedded in wider social developments; in Sue's case the enjoyment of languages at school and a glamorised image of French as a prestigious, desirable other combined with real, material opportunities for a livelihood and career advancement through sustained foreign language learning.
