I-Migrations in Cultures and Languages

In the theoretical and epistemological frame-works of Vygotsky's cognitive theory and French intellectuals' written legacy (Cixous, Deleuze, Derrida, Foucault, Kristeva, and Lyotard), the research explores philosophical, psychological, and educational migrations of a second language (L2) learner among cultures and languages in her comprehension and further nativization of an L2 through her comprehension and nativization of the culture of the language. The role of Canadian culture in Canada's second/additional language education (SLE) is the research focus. In this research, the concept of Canadian culture is interpreted narrowly as literature, music, arts, and history of its people, and broadly as creations of its people. The dissertation consists of 3 parts: Pre-Theory, Theory, and Post-Theory. The Pre-Theory part is built according to the conventional thesis design: introduction, theoretical framework, literature review, research question, methodology, credibility, and significance. Narrative inquiry (Connelly & Clandinin, 2006) as the initial methodology of the research unfolds in innovative ways as literary-philosophical essays in the Theory part, and later as a music-poetry work in the Post-Theory part. The Theory part is a conceptual philosophy-arts piece of writing that develops based on the principle "writing as a method of knowing". The Post-Theory part is the researcher's music-poetry work "I-Migrations: Psychedelic Story" that is a practical epitome of her research theory. Based on her own way of learning English, first, as a foreign language (FL) in Russia, and then as an L2 in Canada, the researcher theoretically substantiates her postulate of the underestimated role of Canadian culture, in terms of literature, music, arts, and history in Canada's SLE and proposes to make Canadian culture an integral part of Canada's SLE curricula. This research fulfils the gaps in the literature on an older L2 learner's experience across a lifetime and the inclusion of arts and culture alongside of language learning in SLE.