Identity: The situated construction of identity and positionality in multilingual classrooms

Abstract

Identity and language learning is one of the most vibrant areas of current research that considers language learning as a fundamentally social process. While recognizing the limitations of more traditional psycholinguistic models that see language learning as primarily an individualistic mental process, many scholars are now interested in exploring the socially, culturally, and historically situated nature of language learning (Zuengler & Miller, 2006). Parallel to this changing view of language learning is the changing notion of language learners: learners are now seen in terms of their dialectical, or mutually constitutive, relationship to the social world rather than as constellations of particular cognitive styles, affective orientations, and personality types (Norton & Toohey, 2001). Within this view, identity is understood as being constructed and negotiated within a given discourse community. While scholars have drawn from various conceptions of identity, two theoretical orientations that have been particularly influential in second language acquisition (SLA) are what I broadly call sociocultural frameworks and poststructuralist/critical feminist frameworks. The former includes language socialization (Ochs, 1993) and community-of-practice perspectives (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Wenger, 1998), both of which view language learning as a process of participating in the practices of a given community and gaining competence and membership within that community.