Identity and Language Learning draws on a longitudinal case study of immigrant women in Canada to develop new ideas about identity, investment, and imagined communities in the field of language learning and teaching. Bonny Norton demonstrates that a poststructuralist conception of identity as multiple, a site of struggle, and subject to change across time and place is highly productive for understanding language learning. Her sociological construct of investment is an important complement to psychological theories of motivation. The implications for language teaching and teacher education are profound. Now including a new, comprehensive Introduction as well as an Afterword by Claire Kramsch, this second edition addresses the following central questions: - Under what conditions do language learners speak, listen, read and write? - How are relations of power implicated in the negotiation of identity? - How can teachers address the investments and imagined identities of learners? The book integrates research, theory, and classroom practice, and is essential reading for students, teachers and researchers in the fields of language learning and teaching, TESOL, applied linguistics and literacy. “The publication of Bonny Norton’s Identity and Language Learning in 2000 was a landmark moment in the field of additional/second language learning. The countless discussions in journal articles, research reports and PhD theses in the past decade testify to the power of her multi-faceted and generative ideas. I have no doubt that this revised edition will be on the ‘must read’ list of anyone concerned with additional/second language learning and language education more generally.” Constant Leung, King’s College, University of London, UK “Uniting impeccable scholarship and an enduring passion for social justice, Bonny Norton’s 2000 book Identity and Language Learning is republished here with a magisterial new Introduction by the author and an inspirational Afterword by Claire Kramsch. The book demonstrates anew the intrinsic power of Norton’s constructs of investment, imagined identities and imagined communities, and the paradigm-shifting impact of her theory of identity on an ever-expanding set of questions, contexts, and interdisciplinary approaches to research and teaching in second language education and applied linguistics.” Nancy Hornberger, University of Pennsylvania, USA “Since the publication of the first, pathbreaking edition of this now-classic text, identity has become a central term through which applied linguists have been able to explore the changing, complex and contradictory struggles we encounter as we learn languages. This book has become one of the most significant of the last decade, and will continue to provoke thought, research and discussion for another decade. A key text for any applied linguist.” Alastair Pennycook, University of Technology, Sydney, Australia Bonny Norton is a Professor and Distinguished University Scholar in the Department of Language and Literacy Education, University of British Columbia, Canada. She is committed to social change through the power of ideas and the integration of theory, research, and practice. In 2010 she was the inaugural recipient of the “Senior Researcher Award” by the Second Language Research group of AERA (American Educational Research Association) and in 2012 was inducted as an AERA Fellow. Her website can be found at http://www.educ.ubc. ca/faculty/norton/ Identity and Language Learning Full details of all our publications can be found on http://www.multilingual- matters.com, or by writing to Multilingual Matters, St Nicholas House, 31–34 High Street, Bristol BS1 2AW, UK. Identity and Language Learning Extending the Conversation Second edition BonnyNorton Afterword: Claire Kramsch MULTILINGUAL MATTERS Bristol • Buffalo • Toronto For Anthony, Julia and Michael, who fill my life with love, joy and meaning. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Norton, Bonny Identity and Language Learning: Extending the Conversation/Bonny Norton. 2nd Edition. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Second language acquisition. 2. Language and languages – Study and teaching. I. Title. P118.2.N67 2012 418.0071–dc23 2013022866 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue entry for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN-13: 978-1-78309-055-6 (hbk) ISBN-13: 978-1-78309-054-9 (pbk) Multilingual Matters UK: St Nicholas House, 31–34 High Street, Bristol BS1 2AW, UK. USA: UTP, 2250 Military Road, Tonawanda, NY 14150, USA. Canada: UTP, 5201 Dufferin Street, North York, Ontario M3H 5T8, Canada. Copyright © 2013 Bonny Norton. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the publisher. The policy of Multilingual Matters/Channel View Publications is to use papers that are natural, renewable and recyclable products, made from wood grown in sustainable forests. In the manufacturing process of our books, and to further support our policy, preference is given to printers that have FSC and PEFC Chain of Custody certifi cation. The FSC and/or PEFC logos will appear on those books where full certifi cation has been granted to the printer concerned. Typeset by Techset Composition India (P) Ltd., Bangalore and Chennai, India. Printed and bound in Great Britain by Short Run Press Ltd. Language is the place where actual and possible forms of social organization and their likely social and political consequences are defined and contested. Yet it is also the place where our sense of ourselves, our subjectivity, is constructed. Weedon, 1997, p. 21 Just as, at the level of relations between groups, a language is worth what those who speak it are worth, so too, at the level of interactions between individuals, speech always owes a major part of its value to the value of the person who utters it. Bourdieu, 1977, p. 652 Contents Preface ix Introduction 1 Revisiting Identity and Language Learning 1 Relevance of Identity Research to Language Learning 2 Poststructuralist Theories of Identity 3 Identity and Investment 5 Imagined Communities and Imagined Identities 8 Identity Categories and Language Learning 11 Methods and Analysis of Research 13 Identity and Language Teaching 16 Emerging Themes and Future Directions 22 Structure of the Book 26 1 Fact and Fiction in Language Learning 41 Saliha and the SLA Canon 42 Identity and Language Learning 44 Power and Identity 46 Motivation and Investment 50 Ethnicity, Gender and Class 52 Rethinking Language and Communicative Competence 53 2 Researching Identity and Language Learning 58 Methodological Framework 58 Central Questions 60 The Researcher and the Researched 60 The Project 62 Data Organization 71 Comment 73 3 The World of Adult Immigrant Language Learners 76 The International Context 76 vii viii Identity and Language Learning The Canadian World of Immigrant Women 80 Biography, Identity and Language Learning 85 Comment 95 4 Eva and Mai: Old Heads on Young Shoulders 97 Eva 98 Mai 111 5 Mothers, Migration and Language Learning 124 Katarina 126 Martina 131 Felicia 138 Comment 144 6 Second Language Acquisition Theory Revisited 146 Natural Language Learning 147 Alberto and The Acculturation Model of SLA 150 The Affective Filter 156 Reconceptualizing Identity 161 Language Learning as a Social Practice 166 Comment 168 7 Claiming the Right to Speak in Classrooms and Communities 170 Formal Language Learning and Adult Immigrants 171 Beyond Communicative Language Teaching 175 Rethinking Multiculturalism 179 The Diary Study as a Pedagogy of Possibility 182 Transforming Monday Morning 188 Concluding Comment 190 Afterword: Claire Kramsch 192 Why the Interest in Social and Cultural Identity in SLA? 193 Three Influential Concepts 195 The Future of the ‘Right to Speak’ 196 Discussion 197 Conclusion 199 References 202 Index 211 Preface About three years ago, a student in one of my classes at the University of British Columbia (UBC) asked me why my 2000 book, Identity and Language Learning, was not available as an e-book. Once again, my students had caught me off-guard in the realm of technology. We embarked on a class discussion on the merits of e-books for them, and my students informed me that e-books are much more affordable than printed texts, a very important con- sideration for them; and they are also more accessible, portable, storable, and searchable. Convinced, I entered into an agreement with Multilingual Matters to publish a second edition of my 2000 book in both electronic and print format. The second edition includes a new comprehensive Introduction, updating the literature on identity and language learning, as well as an insightful Afterword by Claire Kramsch, which locates the book within its wider historical and disciplinary context. I am very grateful to Claire for her outstanding scholarship and her generosity of spirit. Warm thanks also to Tommi Grover, Anna Roderick and the remarkable team at Multilingual Matters for helping to sustain and extend the global conversation on identity and language learning. In my post-2000 research journey, I have been privileged to publish col- laboratively with a number of colleagues who share an interest in identity and language learning, and whose influence is pervasive in the Introduction to the second edition. The process of co-editing books and journal special issues with Kelleen Toohey, Christina Higgins, Yasuko Kanno, and Aneta Pavlenko has been inspiring. I have also greatly enjoyed co-publishing with Margaret Early, Maureen Kendrick, Carolyn McKinney, Lyndsay Moffatt, Diane Dagenais, Gao Yihong, Margaret Hawkins, Brian Morgan, and Sue Starfield. Doctoral students have injected my research with energy and insight, and I thank, in particular, Juliet Tembe, Harriet Mutonyi, Shelley Jones, Sam Andema, Ena Lee, Sal Muthayan, Lauryn Oates, and Espen Stranger- Johannessen. At the University of British Columbia, I have benefited greatly from regular interaction with a remarkable group of colleagues, including Patricia Duff, Lee Gunderson, Ryuko Kubota, Ling Shi, and Steven Talmy. After working closely with all of these exciting scholars, over many years, the distinction between ‘colleague’ and ‘friend’ becomes difficult to draw. ix