Language, Identity, and Investment in the Twenty-first Century

Abstract

This chapter examines the trajectory of Bonny Norton’s research on identity and language learning, highlighting her construct of investment, developed as a sociological complement to the psychological construct of motivation (Norton, 2013). An important focus of the chapter is the expanded 2015 model of identity and investment (Darvin & Norton, 2015), which responds to the changing communicative landscape of an increasingly digital world, and locates investment at the intersection of identity, capital, and ideology. Norton exemplifies her theories with data drawn from her collaborative research on language learning in Uganda and Iran. She concludes that the challenge for language teachers internationally is to promote learner investment in the language and literacy practices of classrooms by increasing the range of identities available to language learners.