Resumes and job postings as cognitive tools for narrating Anglophone language learners’ multilingual–professional identities and trajectories in career advising appointments

Abstract

Empirical research on the relationship between language learners’ (LLs’) multilingual and professional development has remained scant in conversations surrounding LLs’ sustained engagement with a target language (TL) beyond higher education. To address this gap, this article examines the co-construction of US collegiate LLs’ multilingual–professional identities and trajectories in career advising appointments where language is cast as a measurable, marketable skill on resumes and job postings. Data include six audio-recorded, transcribed career advising appointments and 20-minute post-advising interviews with collegiate LLs of three non-English TLs. Through the theoretical lens of figured worlds, the thematic and narrative analyses jointly demonstrate how resumes and job postings function as cognitive tools that prompt LLs to develop stances toward their willingness and preparedness to use the TL in professional settings. Such stances are associated with various manifestations of linguistic insecurity when language is presented as a technical skill on those artifacts. Yet, the analysis shows how LLs work with career advisors to narratively position themselves in relation to “objective” proficiency descriptors and the ideological bi–monolingual in positions of employment and along professional trajectories. Implications for strengthening LLs’ capacity to translate classroom language learning to participation in personally relevant multilingual communities are discussed.