Lecture 2

Language and Identity in SLA

-What does language mean?
-What does identity mean?
-What are the types of identity?
-How are language and identity connected?
-How language shapes identity and the way we
think?
 The relationship between language and identity is a strong
unbreakable relationship, both of them affect each other in some
way, and every person is affected by this relationship. Our language
and our surroundings determine who we are, considering the
1 importance of the language that is used among us and between us.

One of our most important properties in life as human beings is

speaking, to have the ability to express our ideas and beliefs, and the
2 important thing is our identities and who we are.

Our language plays an important role in shaping us from different

aspects, such as our gender identity, our social identity, as well as
the role we play and contribute in our own community or any other
community we are involved in; that is simply because our language
3 is more than just linguistic behaviors we perform, it is who we are.
 According to Hall (1997), there is a strong
relationship between the concepts of language,
identity,
and cultural differences. He argued that while
culture is concerned about ‘sharing meaning’,
language is a link
that is used to ‘make sense’ of things, and
meaning can be exchanged and produced. He also
mentioned that
language is essential to culture and meaning and
can be considered the key container of the values
and meanings
of culture. It works through what he calls the
‘representational system’

1. Language is the carrier that reflects our identity to others and

delivers our culture.

2. Identity is “people’s concepts of who they are, of what sort of people

they are, and how they relate to others”.
 How we speak influences our
identity; identities are formed
socially through language

Language and Identity

• Joseph (2004:188); Language and • Norton (2013); identities are
identity cannot be separated acquired through the
because they are “completely interchange or communication
bound up with each other on with others
every level, both personal • Abdallah-Pretceille (2006);
national and beyond” identities are the product of
• Fluidity; identities are dynamic discourses and relationships
and fluid; what we can choose to • We all create a ‘narrative self’ or
portray to the world outside of a story we tell ourselves
ourselves internally that helps connect
• Meyer; Identity – the whole sum and hold our multiple identities
of characteristics given by place, together
gender, age, race, history, • Lemke (2008); “Many applied
nationality, sexual orientation, linguists understand identities
religious beliefs, religious as socio-culturally constructed
orientation, ethnicity, and above ongoing narratives, which
all the blacks between all these, develop and evolve across
allowing people to be part of one different spatiotemporal scales,
 Identities are dynamic

• Identities are not simple and static (previous research) but dynamic and
ongoing (lifelong process). They change with new life experiences, and over
time, we add identities to our collective group of identities
• Depending on the situation, our identity can be chosen based on gender, social
class, education level, personal interest, occupation, etc
• Going back to the idea of identity changing over time. Researchers used to
believe that once we reached adulthood, our identity was set in stone.
However, it is not believed that identity is a dynamic entity that changes with
new life experiences. We may live in different cultural groups and have different
occupations.
• Katz-Wise et al (2010); The transition to parenthood is one of the most notable
developments in adults.
• Woodward (1997:240); Parenthood identity, and in particular motherhood
identity are cultural
• identities that are difficult to control because they are historically situated and
are ‘subject to social
• economic and cultural practices
• -Abdallah-Pretceille (2006); Identities are said to be ‘fragmented’. They are
made up of parts of specialized identities such as; Social identities (Riley,
 Multiple and Contradictory
Identities

Identities within us can also be contradictory. We tap into different identities

depending on the situations we are in
• Primary Identity; the set of values, beliefs, and experiences that we feel defines
us as an individual. Does not change significantly over time. The most stable. The
one we go back to.
• Situational Identities; use depending on the context we’re in.
• Kramsch (2006:99); Subjective responses (SLA); “As a sign system, language
elicits subjective responses in the learners themselves; emotions, memories
fantasies, projections, identifications. Because it is not only a code but also a
meaning-making system language constructs the historical sedimentation of
meanings that we call our ‘selves’.”
• Dervin (2012); fluidity; we constantly switch identities:
• e.g. we choose to use different identities depending on the context and the group
we are in.
• “In a globalized world, we have to deal with our own and others’ diversity
permanently”.
• The origins of bilingual individuals who have several national identities cannot be
singled out or it leads to intercultural impostures.
• Individuals have complex social, religious, and emotional origins and should feel
• LePage & Tabouret-Keller (1985); Differences between
speakers (or even in the speech of a single speaker) can be
thought of as acts of identity. In acts of identity, people reveal
both their identity and their search for social roles.
• -Holliday et al (2004); Identities represent the way individuals
believe others view them
• -Meyerhoff (2011:17); The differences in how speakers use
language depend on what kind of person they perceive
themselves to be, ow how they want to be perceived by
others. Different ways of using language (i) constitute social
actions, and (ii) involve expressing social and personal
identities.
• Old perspective; if you had two cultural identities, you were
‘torn between two worlds’.
• New perspective; we can flip back and forth from one cultural
identity to another based on our cultural context
 Cultural Identities

• Jardine, Kristeva & Gora (1980); Language enables

individuals to distinguish between self and other and share
cultural meaning
- Members of the group share: a common language and a
common set of values/beliefs
- Members of the group might share: a common ethnic
background and a common geographic origin
• Individual identities; who we think we are at our core
• Psychological identities; how we perceive ourselves,
mentally and emotionally
• Social identities; how we portray ourselves in a social
situation
• Collective identity; group that we feel we belong to
• Cultural identity/ies; cultural groups that we feel we belong
to
• Joseph (2004); language identities give individuals a sense of
belonging, language are storehouse of history and literacy
tradition
• Mikhail Bakhtin (1985-1975); “our utterances are made from
others’ words so that speech contains both our-own-ness and
otherness
• Li Wei (2008:13); Identity and identification – through
language choice, we maintain and change ethnic group
boundaries and personal relationships, and construct and
define ‘self’ and ‘other’ within a broader political economy
and historical context. So, the issue of language use that
linguistics and psycholinguists are concerned with becomes
an issue of identity and identification for the sociolinguist.
• Languages as a sign of identity; language can be very important to
maintain the sense of identity of some groups
• Don’t assume that your first cultural identity is going to be your
primary identity.
• Identities in a globalized world; today, individuals can travel and
migrate much more easily than they used to. National identities,
which used to be firmly based on citizenship and the possession of
a passport are being challenged.
• Multiple cultural identities; when you shift between different cultural
identities, you’re also shifting yourself in terms of power and
prestige.
• Language and loss of identity; when you lose a language, you lose
the identity that foes with the language challenging to add an
identity
Ferdinande de Saussure (1966) - study of linguistic knowledge that
allowed understand language's stable patterns and structure
Theoretical framework
Mikhail Bakhtin (1985) - language as situated utterances in which
speakers, in dialogue with others, struggle to create meanings. Social
usage of the language, speech communication as a chain
Hall, Cheng & Carlson (2006) - a usage-based view of language
knowledge
Pierre Bourdieu (1970) - the importance of power in structuring
discourse, linguistic discourse as a symbolic asset

Hall (1997) - identity is not essence, but a positioning in particular

historical and cultural environments.
Bakhtin (1981) - how position or status was signaled in language in
works of fiction and conversation in general. How contexts shape
positioning among particular interlocutors.
Davies&Harre (1990) - Position as the central organizing concept for
analyzing how it is that people do being a person. Identities or
positions are often given by social structures or ascribed by others,
they can also be negotiated by agents who wish to position themselves.
Menard-Warwick - classroom materials, activities, and social discourses
often constrain students' possibilities for claiming desirable identities.
Teachers should enable learners to struggle against some of the
disempowering tendencies of the linguistic practices of their new
culture.
 Identity and SLA

Investment, motivation, and SLA

• Motivation is a fixed characteristic of individual language learners, those who didn't learn
weren’t motivated
• Norton - high levels of motivation didn't necessarily result in "good" language learning.
Unequal relations of power between language learner and target language speaker.
Investment and motivation in SLA
• Norton - investment + identity = the socially and historically constructed relationship of
learners to the target language and their sometimes ambivalent desire to learn and practice
it
• Motivation as a psychological construct, investment as a sociological construct. The
investment seeks to make a meaningful connection between a learner's desire and
commitment to learning a language and their changing identities.
Imagined communities and imagined identities
• Anderson (1991) - in imagining ourselves allied with others across time and space, we can
feel a sense of community with people we have not yet met and with whom we may never
have any direct dealings.
• Imagined communities and imagined identities - there is a focus on the future when learners
imagine who they might be, and who their communities might be when they learn a
language
• Kanno - educators' visions of children's imagined communities drew forth different forms of
bilingual education, and maintained existing inequities among upper-middle-class and
immigrant and refugee children
• Blackledge (2003) - the discourses of the dominant group which assumed an imagined
 Identity in the school context

Identity formation is formulated by Erikson as a lifelong process.

However, education and school tasks resonate in the discussion of
identity formation in terms of long-term meanings and relational
effects. Experiences during adolescence, particularly in social
contexts such as schools, carry pivotal meaning in people’s lives,
among other reasons, because of adolescents’ emerging cognitive
capacity, which, in turn, elevates their self-reflection ability and
develops in tandem with identity.
Identity development and learning seem to go hand in hand. Being
engaged in identity construction involves learning, and “learning
implies becoming a different person” (Lave & Wenger, 1991, p. 53).
A school as a social community provides a relational web, a system
of relations that creates meaning. Students’ active participation –
through tasks, active expression of interest, and the experience of
unfolding understanding in action – promotes their learning.
 The idea of culture in English language teaching

To discover the role of culture in EFL teaching, several studies were conducted and
reviewed.
• Lado, Robert (1957) describes culture as “cultures are structured systems of patterned
conduct.” This definition signaled two categories that are significant in the notion
of culture: (A) Structured, and (B) Patterned.
• Robinson, Jacob (1988); describes culture from four viewpoints:
a) Behaviorist’s approach - Culture is a set of patterned behaviors,
b) Functionalist approach - Culture is to make sense of the behaviors,
c) Cognitive approach - Culture is a process of interpretation, and
d) Symbolic approach - Culture is the product after interpretation.
Therefore, cultural significance is shaped by learners’ internal interpretative
process. Culture is both a process and a product. Culture must be examined and explained
as a procedure and product.
Kramsch C. (1993) describes that “culture is a social construct, the product of self and
other perceptions”. The meaning indicated that culture is not shared but also
separable.
 Conclusion

Culture and language teaching are two sides of a coin. It is indivisible, and culture is
always implanted, and mixed into language language-learning context.
According to Hall (1997), language presents a general frame of how representation and
culture work. He mentions two approaches: the semiotic approach deals with how
representation works and with how language produces meanings and the discursive
approach is concerned with the effects and results of representations. He adds that
constructivism, which is a model of its approaches -semiotics and discourse- can display
the effects of representation, knowledge, and relationships with power as well as
historical specificity. Furthermore, he believes that there are no wrong or right meanings
because meanings change according to their usage, context, and historical events. They
are governed by power, emotions, and feelings, so they play a big role in identifying
others in terms of excluding or including them, especially once ‘identity is marked out by
difference’.
Thanks for your
attention