The ‘hesitant multilingual’: Why do some students who use multiple languages not identify as multilingual?

While one prevailing view of multilingualism conceives all learners engaged in additional language learning as multilinguals, these learners may not always self-identify as such. The data in this paper come from a project examining the experience of students with a first language other than English at three Canadian universities. This paper focuses on the subset of respondents who did not identify as bi/multilingual in the initial project questionnaire or didn’t know if they were (n = 27 out of N = 173). This was surprising because students’ participation in the project presupposed knowledge of at least two languages, which we assumed would lead them to self-identify as bi/multilingual. We refer to these participants as ‘hesitant multilinguals’. We report on reasons behind their hesitance to self-identify as bi/multilingual through the analysis of follow-up interviews with some of these students (n = 9). Our findings suggest that for this group of students there were three main reasons that led them not to self-identify as multilingual. These reasons include self-perceptions of insufficient language competence, contextual issues specific to Quebec, and affective issues associated with their status as recent arrivals in Canada. We also report on changes to students’ self-identification as bi/multilingual after a year of university study. Copyright © 2025 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.