ABSTRACT
By studying phenomena in relation to a specific language (often English), work investigating the psychology of language learning and teaching (PLLT) has been rooted in essentialist ontologies and has embraced a “monolingual worldview”. Aspects of learner and teacher psychology have been studied in relation to single target languages, and in a compartmentalised manner, isolated from phenomena relating to the other languages in a person’s repertoire. Rather than “whole person” understandings of psychological phenomena, research has provided fragmented insights into aspects of processes separate by design. With a turn to multilingual perspectives now taking place, this is changing. PLLT researchers have begun to approach objects of study from non-essentialist standpoints. In line with the anthology’s aim of theorising and investigating PLLT from multilingual perspectives, this chapter offers a non-essentialist conceptualisation of willingness to communicate (WTC) in contexts where communication can take place in two or more languages additional to a learner’s own. In the 25 years since MacIntyre and colleagues first developed the construct, WTC has been studied in relation to single target languages. Building on the classic pyramid model – a framework which provides a heuristic account of the in-situ assembly of WTC, and which has remained unchanged for over a quarter of a century – this chapter presents a multilingual extension. In contrast to the original two-dimensional model, the more complex geometry of the three-dimensional representation described in this chapter enables understanding of the psychological and communicative antecedents at play in situations where WTC does not just involve speaking or remaining silent, but also encompasses the language in which communication might be initiated, and the switching of codes that might take place during a communication event.
