Liquid Crystals: A Phenomenological Approach to Complexity of University Students' Identity Formation Through Translanguaging Perspective.

The article focuses on a phenomenological longitudinal study of identity formation among international students in Japan, employing translanguaging as a holistic conceptual framework and Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) as methodology. It examines how two Asian students navigate complex, fluid intersections of language, nationality, religion, and other identity categories amid experiences of power, exclusion, and hope, conceptualizing their identities metaphorically as "liquid crystals" that solidify and liquefy in response to relational dynamics. The study highlights the students' life themes—"to be loved as a precious person" and "climbing up my own lion rock"—which guide their evolving self-understandings and communicative practices beyond fixed categories or binaries. The research underscores the importance of interpreting identity as a dynamic, subjective process shaped by lived experience and relationality, contributing to applied linguistics and broader human sciences by challenging reductive views of identity and advocating for reflective, holistic qualitative methodologies.