Foreign Language Students’ Perceptions of Their Identity

Liliana Piasecka

doi:10.31261/TAPSLA.2019.05.06

Published: 2019-06-30

Vol. 5 No. 1 (2019)

Foreign Language Students’ Perceptions of Their Identity

Liliana Piasecka

Website: http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3474-3235

Section: Articles

https://doi.org/10.31261/TAPSLA.2019.05.06

Abstract

Foreign language learning innvolves cognitive, affective and social functioning of the persons involved in this experience. As a social practice, it is also related to the learners’ perceptions of their identity, specifically to their language identity which refers to the relationship between one’s sense of self and the language used to communicate. This implies that using a system of communication, the speaker develops a new sense of self that remains in a dynamic relation with other senses of self, based on (an)other language(s) the person knows.

Language learners’ identity is no longer defined as fixed and stable but as “complex, contradictory and multifaceted” (Norton 1997, p. 419). It is dynamic because learners enter into various discourses and negotiate their position within different communities of practice. Language both shapes and is shaped by identity of its users.

This article discusses how students of English as a foreign language perceive the role of this language in their construction of selves/identity. First, postmodern conceptualisations of identity and identity categories are presented along with their relevance to the field of Second Language Acquisition. Second, selected empirical studies pertaining to adult immigrant contexts, foreign language contexts and study abroad contexts are briefly reported. Then the results of an empirical study on the students’ of English (n=83) perceptions of their identity in the context of foreign language study are introduced. The study revealed that most of the participants realise complex relations between language learning and their identity and are aware of the effects that studying English (as well as other foreign languages) has on them. English gave them new possibilities in life, allowed them to communicate with people worldwide and make friends with them. They have new and interesting prospects for the future. It affected their personality by making them more open-minded and tolerant of otherness. The knowledge of English gives the students power, prestige, and opportunities to live and work in a changing world of complex social relations.

Keywords:

foreign language learning , postmodern identity , investment , study abroad , English Philology

Download files

PDF

Citation rules

Piasecka, L. (2019). Foreign Language Students’ Perceptions of Their Identity. Theory and Practice of Second Language Acquisition, 5(1), 93–112. https://doi.org/10.31261/TAPSLA.2019.05.06

Cited by / Share

References

Bakhtin, M. (1981). The dialogic imagination: Four essays by M. M.
Google Scholar

Bakhtin. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Google Scholar

Block, D. (2007a). Second language identities. London, New York: Continuum.
Google Scholar

Block, D. (2007b). The rise of identity in SLA research, post Firth and Wagner (1997). The Modern Language Journal, 91, Focus Issue, 863–876.
Google Scholar

Bourdieu, P. (1977). The economics of linguistic exchanges. Social Science Information, 16(6), 645–688.
Google Scholar

Bourdieu, P.(1991). Language and symbolic power. J. Thompson (Ed.). (G. Raymond & M. Adamson, Trans.). Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Google Scholar

Bremer, K., Broeder, P., Roberts, C., Simonot, M. & Vasseur, M.-T. (1993). Ways of achieving understanding. In C. Perdue (Ed.), Adult language acquisition:Cross-linguistic perspectives (vol. 2, pp. 153-195). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Google Scholar

Bremer, K., Roberts, C., Vasseur, M.-T., Simonot, M. & Broeder, P. (1996). Achieving understanding: Discourse in interculrural encounters. London: Longman.
Google Scholar

Bucholtz, M. (2003). Sociolinguistic nostalgia and authentification of identity. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 7(3), 398-416.
Google Scholar

Butler, J. (1999). Gender trouble: Feminism and the subversion of
Google Scholar

identity. London: Routledge.
Google Scholar

European Comission, (2014). The Erasmus impact study. Effects of mobility on the skills and employability of students and the internationalisation of higher education institutions. Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union.
Google Scholar

Firth, A. & Wagner, J. (1997). On discourse, communication, and (some) fundamental concepts in SLA research. The Modern Language Journal, 81(3), 285-300.
Google Scholar

Foucault, M. (1984). The order of discourse. In M. Shapiro (Ed.), Language and politics (pp. 108-138). New York: New York Press.
Google Scholar

Gass, S. (1998). Apples and oranges: Or why apples are not oranges and don’t need to be. A response to Firth and Wagner. The Modern Language Journal, 82(1), 83-90.
Google Scholar

Goldstein, T. (1996). Two languages at work: Bilingual life on the production floor. New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
Google Scholar

Hall, J. K., Cheng, A. & Carlson, M. (2006). Reconceptualizing multicompetence as a theory of language knowledge. Applied Linguistics, 27(2), 220-240.
Google Scholar

http://ec.europa.eu/programmes/erasmus-plus/opportunities/students_en
Google Scholar

Kanno, Y. & Norton, B. (2003). Imagined communities and educational possibilities: Introduction. Journal of Language, Identity and Education, 2(4), 241–249
Google Scholar

Kinginger, C. (2004). Alice doesn’t live here anymore: Foreign language learning and identity reconstruction. In A. Pavlenko & A. Blackledge (Eds.), Negotiation of identities in multilingual contexts (pp. 219-242). Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters
Google Scholar

Kinginger, C. (2009). Language learning and study abroad. A critical reading of research. Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan
Google Scholar

Kramsch, C. (2013). Afterword. In B. Norton, Identity and language learning. Extending the conversation. 2nd ed. (192-201). Bristol, Buffalo, Toronto: Multilingual Matters.
Google Scholar

Lantolf, J. & Genung, P. (2003). “I’d rather switch than fight“: An activity theoretic study of power, success, and failure in a foreign language classroom. In C. Kramsch (Ed.), Language acquisition and languae socialization (pp. 175-196). London: Continuum.
Google Scholar

McMahill, C. (1997). Communities of resistance: A case study of two feminist English classes in Japan. TESOL Quarterly, 31(4), 612-622.
Google Scholar

Menard-Warwick, J. (2005). Both a fiction and an existential fact: Theorizing identity in second language acquisition and literacy studies. Linguistics and Education, 16(3), 253-274.
Google Scholar

Norton, B. (1997). Language, identity, and the ownership of English. TESOL Quarterly, 31, 409-429.
Google Scholar

Norton, B. (2006). Identity: Second language. In Brown, K. (ed.), Encyclopedia of language and linguistics, vol. 5 (pp. 502-508). Amsterdam: Elsevier.
Google Scholar

Norton, B. (2013). Identity and language learning. Extending the conversation. 2nd ed. Bristol, Buffalo, Toronto: Multilingual Matters
Google Scholar

Norton, B. & Toohey, K. (2011). Identity, language learning and social change. Language Teaching, 44(4), 412-446.
Google Scholar

Pavlenko, A. & Blackledge, A. (2004). Introduction: New theoretical approaches to the study of negotiation of identities in multilingual contexts. In A. Pavlenko & A. Blackledge (Eds.), Negotiation of identities in multilingual contexts (1-33). Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters
Google Scholar

Perdue, C. (Ed.). (1984). Second language acquisition by adult immigrants. Rowley, Mass.: Newbury House.
Google Scholar

Piasecka, L. (2012). Identity and language: A foreign language learning perspective. In Piechurska-Kuciel, E. & L. Piasecka (eds.), Variability and stability in foreign and second language learning contexts (pp. 116-133). Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishers.
Google Scholar

Polanyi, L. (1995). Language learning and living abroad. In B. Freed (Ed.), Second language acquisition in a study abroad context (pp. 271-279). Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Google Scholar

Puri, J. (2004). Encountering nationalism. Oxford: Blackwell.
Google Scholar

Rampton, B. (1997). Displacing the ‘native speaker’: Expertise, affiliation, and inheritance. ELT Journal, 44, 97-101.
Google Scholar

Reich, R. (1991). The work of nations. New York: Vintage.
Google Scholar

Rockhill, K. (1987a). Literacy as a threat/desire: Longing to be SOMEBODY. In J. Gaskill & A. McLaren (Eds.), Women and education: A Canadian perspective (pp.315-331). Calgary, Alberta: Detselig Enterprises Ltd.
Google Scholar

Rockhill, K. (1987b).Gender, language and the politics of literacy. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 18(2), 153-167.
Google Scholar

Sigalas, E. (2010). Cross-border mobility and European identity: The effectiveness of intergroup contact during the Erasmus year abroad. European Union Politics, 11(2), 241–65.
Google Scholar

Weedon, C. (1997). Feminist practice and poststructuralist theory. 2nd ed. Oxford: Blackwell.
Google Scholar

Vol. 5 No. 1 (2019)
Published: 2019-07-25

ISSN: 2450-5455

eISSN: 2451-2125

10.31261/tapsla

Publisher

Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Śląskiego | University of Silesia Press

Submit