Social Identities and Multiple Selves in Foreign Language Education

✍ Scribed by Damian J. Rivers; Stephanie Ann Houghton (editors)

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2013
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 257
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Within foreign language education contexts across the globe, inadequate attention has been paid to documenting the dynamics of identity development, negotiation and management. This book looks at these dynamics in specific relation to otherness, in addition to attitudinal and behavioural overtones created through use of the term ‘foreign’ (despite its position as an integral marker in language acquisition discourse).
This book argues that individual identities are multidimensional constructs that gravitate around a hub of intricate social networks of multimodal intergroup interaction. The chapters pursue a collective desire to move the notion of identity away from theoretical abstraction and toward the lived experiences of foreign language teachers and students.
While the identities entangled with these interactions owe a significant measure of their existence to the immediate social context, they can also be actively developed by their holders. The collection of chapters within this book demonstrate how foreign language education environments (traditional and non-traditional) are ideal locations for the development of a sophisticated repertoire of discursive strategies used in the formulation, navigation, expression and management of social identities and multiple selves.

✦ Table of Contents

Cover
HalfTitle
Series Page
Title
Copyright
Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Notes on Contributors
Introduction: Identities in Foreign Language Education
Overview of the volume
1 The Institutional and Beyond: On the Identity Displays of Foreign Language Teachers
Introduction
The difficulties of identifying identity
Identity as social competence: Contexts and boundaries
Identity and language
Language learning and learner identity
Teacher identity and professionalism: Teaching as identity work
Data and methodology
Analysis: L2 teachers’ self-categorizations
The teachers’ orientation to self-derision
Data discussion
Self-categorization practices and pedagogical functions: Cognition and emotion
Limitations of the data presented
Conclusion
Transcription conventions
2 Implications for Identity: Inhabiting the ‘Native-Speaker’ English Teacher Location in the Japanese Sociocultural Context
Introduction
The ‘native-speaker’ conspiracy
Furnishing the imagination
The study
Data analysis and discussion
Implications and conclusions
3 Professional Identities Shaped by Resistance to Target Language Only Policies
Introduction
Beginnings: Becoming a late French immersion teacher in Canada
Moving to Japan: Moving from French immersion to EFL teaching
Returning to LFI teaching and pursuing an M.Ed.
Working as an EFL teacher-researcher at a private university in Japan
Third time lucky: Successful policy change from the bottom up
Conclusion
4 Language, Culture and Identity: Transcultural Practices and Theoretical Implications
Introduction
Literature review
Research design
Findings
Across-group findings
Discussion
Conclusion
5 Social Identifications and Culturally Located Identities: Developing Cultural Understanding through Literature
Introduction
The investigation
Data presentation: The case of Tess
Discussion
Conclusion
6 Reimagining Sociolinguistic Identification in Foreign Language Classroom Communities of Practice
Introduction
The sociolinguistic reality of multiple and shifting identities
Traditionally imagined identities – nationalist paradigms in the foreign language classroom
Communities of practice – a model for imagining multimembership
Implications for practice in foreign language classrooms
Summary
Conclusion
7 The Foreign Language Imagined Learning Community: Developing Identity and Increasing Foreign Language Investment
Introduction
Background
Present study
Discussion of results
Conclusion
8 Foreign Language Motivation and Social Identity Development
Introduction
Identity in foreign language learning motivation research
Participants
Methodology and design
Findings
Discussion
Conclusion
9 Emotive Accounts of the Self during an ERASMUS Sojourn Abroad
Introduction
Researching affective lexicon
Methodology
Emotive accounts of self
Discussion
Transcription conventions
10 Setting Standards for Intercultural Communication: Universalism and Identity Change
Introduction
The Intercultural Dialogue Model
The study
Data analysis
Data presentation
Discussion
Conclusion
References
Index