English as a Liminal Language: Education, Migratory Imagination and Adolescent Identity (A Cultural Study in the Diasporic Context of Bandar Anzali, Iran)

Abstract

Purpose: The present study aimed to explore how English language learning functions as a liminal cultural space shaping educational experience, migratory imagination, and adolescent identity construction within the diasporic sociocultural context of Bandar Anzali, Iran.

Methods and Materials: This study employed a qualitative cultural studies approach grounded in interpretive social research and critical sociolinguistics. The research design relied on qualitative analysis of cultural and educational sources representing English language learning experiences among adolescents. Data consisted of educational discourses, locally circulating cultural texts, youth narratives, institutional representations of English education, and theoretical sources related to language, identity, globalization, and diaspora. Materials were selected through purposive and theoretical sampling based on relevance to identity formation and migratory imagination. Data collection emphasized publicly available and culturally situated texts rather than individual measurement. Analysis was conducted using thematic and interpretive discourse analysis informed by cultural theory, identity studies, and sociolinguistic frameworks, involving open coding, category development, and interpretive synthesis to identify recurring symbolic patterns linking language learning with social aspiration and identity negotiation.

Findings: The findings indicate that English operates as symbolic capital associated with social mobility, prestige, and participation in global modernity. Adolescents experience English learning as a liminal identity condition characterized by negotiation between local belonging and imagined global futures. Language education fosters migratory imagination even in the absence of physical migration, enabling youth to mentally inhabit transnational identities. Educational environments function as spaces of ethical self-formation and narrative reconstruction, while translingual practices produce hybrid cultural expression rather than linguistic replacement. Emotional engagement with English learning reinforces investment in future-oriented identities, demonstrating that language acquisition simultaneously transforms self-perception, aspiration structures, and social positioning.

Conclusion: The study concludes that English in the Bandar Anzali context should be understood not merely as a foreign language but as a cultural threshold mediating globalization, identity transformation, and diasporic imagination. English learning becomes a process through which adolescents negotiate modernity, mobility, and belonging, revealing language education as a central site of cultural transition in contemporary globalized societies.