Student teachers in Brazil and in Finland envisioning themselves as multilingual professionals

In recent decades, multilingualism has become an important field of research in applied linguistics. However, the phenomenon has been often studied at its cognitive and linguistic levels. On the other hand, there has also been calls to approach multilingualism as subjectively experienced. This study focuses on the emotions and beliefs Finnish and Brazilian student teachers attach to their future professional identities. The study is based on co-operation where the same visual data and accompanying verbal task were collected from language teacher students in two different contexts. In the task, the research participants envisioned their desired and feared for professional futures. The data consist of 122 visualizations, half from Brazil and the other half from Finland. The technical design of the visualizations was decided by the research participants, and some decided to draw, whereas others used ready-made pictures on the internet and in some cases further modified by the participants. In the analysis, the images were analysed according to a qualitative coding system that was created to study the emotions, beliefs and identities attached to their possible multilingual experiences. The study of two contexts makes visible the ways in which emotions and beliefs make multilingual experience situated and embodied. Whereas the Finnish student teachers lived in a multilingual context with different languages present in their everyday lives, the Brazilian students lived in a more monolingual context where the English language was hoped to open doors for a more international career. In both groups, dreams were often related to a sense of belonging and cooperation with others, whereas the undesired future was related to isolation and an experience of frustration. Both in Finnish and Brazilian data, being a multilingual professional was sometimes examined from the perspective of social status.