In our paper, we explore several aspects offered by language autobiographical accounts. The data were collected through what we called “Name linguistic autobiography”, an instrument that helped us explore the perceptions of 24 Romanian students regarding their experience with languages and their context of use while developing their linguistic heritage. Our analysis, drawing on a combination of linguistic analysis and Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) as theoretical support, established the topics and sub-topics that were encoded by language users in name acrostics. Among them, we identified awareness of own resources, potential, strengths and weaknesses of own success and failure; effective language learning techniques; the social dimensions of language and identity shaping and re-shaping through language learning and use. The analysis also revealed the fact that emotional expression played an important part in the students’ disclosure of self. Their attitudes and feelings while involved in various experiences with language were displayed freely. We concluded that the Name linguistic autobiography, despite some limitations, may offer a basic image of the subjects’ language experience and development of linguistic heritage, but it needs to be followed by a more thorough analysis to validate the results and to offer more insights into the use of language autobiographies as pedagogical and educational devices. This is why future research will have in view in-depth interviews and written language autobiographical narratives.
