ABSTRACT
In this chapter, I describe my experience as an outsider, as a language learner and as a multilingual and intercultural communication researcher with folk theories of language, folk assumptions of language hierarchy and folk desires of speaking a language like a ‘native speaker’. I recount the moments which heightened my awareness of folk theories of linguistic hierarchy, a pecking order of language varieties and accents, as well as unequal distribution of language(s) as resources. I trace my transformation from a polite and norm-abiding language learner to a legitimate speaker of English as a Lingua Franca (ELF), and from a ‘quiet’ Chinese colleague to a transnational academic with senior leadership roles. I work with my own experience and feelings, thoughts and intimate perspectives. The loss of my father, who has been the most influential person in my life, in the lead-up to writing, has made the research and writing process poignant and at the same time, therapeutic. Autoethnography offers me a space to remember and re-establish those precious moments of life and to give them new meanings in the nexus of ‘the cultural, the historical, the political, the embodied and the imaginary’ (Metta, this volume).
