Rethinking identity in adult language learning classrooms

Abstract

The aim of this chapter is to explore how participants in a Swedish language learning program, Swedish for immigrants (SFI) use their (multi)linguistic resources in negotiating identity. The SFI program has been an established educational form in Sweden since 1965 and is free of charge for adults categorized as immigrants. The study presented in the chapter combines a sociocultural framework that emphasizes the relationship between learning, participation and identity with a post-structural and intersectional understanding of identity. Grounded in an ethnographic framework, the study has a multi-scaled approach, first zooming into the national policy of the SFI program and, later on, into interaction between participants in one SFI classroom. The analysis of the classroom interaction displays how the participants constitute and negotiate meaning about the world, who they are through (trans)languaging and how identities in the classroom intersect and enforce an unequal distribution of power.