Navigating language learning through metalinguistic beliefs: a theoretical exploration informed by multilingual narratives

This article reconceptualizes metalinguistic beliefs in multilingual learning by examining how they are constructed and mobilized in learners' narratives. Rather than treating self-reports as evidence of stable internal knowledge structures, the study approaches beliefs as discursively enacted interpretations that emerge through storytelling. Drawing on six multilingual life-story interviews conducted in Germany, the analysis combines narrative inquiry with reflexive thematic analysis to identify both the discursive mechanisms through which beliefs are expressed and their recurrent content across cases. The findings show that metalinguistic beliefs are constructed through epistemic positioning, modality, metaphor, and narrative sequencing. Three recurring domains were identified: beliefs about language (e.g., language as structured system, cultural world, or representation of cognition), beliefs about learners (e.g., inherent dispositions, self-regulatory tendencies, and heterogeneity), and beliefs about learning processes (e.g., experiential, cumulative, pattern-driven, and condition-dependent development). These beliefs function as interpretive resources that organize experience, stabilize explanations of progress and difficulty, and shape perceived agency across multilingual trajectories. Situated within a Complex and Dynamic Systems Theory framework, metalinguistic beliefs are understood as emergent and temporarily stabilizing components of multilingual meaning-making. This perspective refines their conceptualization and highlights the value of multilingual narratives for examining how such belief systems develop and operate.