This contribution focuses on a specific aspect of individual language experience (Spracherleben) which can be observed in language biographical narratives in different forms: desires and imaginations linked to early childhood referring to a >language before< which can be mobilized as a resource in situations of crisis.
In our multimodal language biographical approach we take the perspective of the speaking subject, this means that not a particular language or variety serves as point of departure, but language experience with its bodily and emotional dimension. We use the term >language experience< to designate an approach exploring how individuals in their heteroglossic lifeworlds (Lebenswelt) perceive and evaluate their linguistic practices, which experiences, emotions and beliefs they tie to these experiences — or how they position and represent themselves as multilingual beings. The focus is on the one hand on the interrelatedness of language experience and individual life trajectories, on the other on socio-historic configurations with their constraints, power formations, orders of discourse and language ideologies. Our multimodal approach which combines creative drawing (language portraits) and biographical narratives as empirical data foregrounds the entire linguistic repertoire in its heteroglossic dimension and can thus contribute to overcoming dichotomies as those between language of origin and target language, of first language and language of integration.