16

How does identity impact on language

learning?

In one of his last pieces for the New York Review of Books, the historian Tony Judt, terminally
ill with motor neurone disease and reflecting on his life and work, admitted to a feeling of never
having had a narrowly defined sense of identity – whether geographical, political or religious.
There was no single social grouping that he strongly identified with. But this was not a source of
anxiety. On the contrary: ‘I prefer the edge: the place where countries, communities,
allegiances, affinities, and roots bump uncomfortably up against one another.’

Having myself lived most of my life ‘on the edge’, one way or another, I share something of
Judt’s preference for rootlessness. I’ve lived twice as many years away from my country of
birth as I ever lived in it. And, despite having been granted Spanish citizenship, I don’t feel a
strong affinity for my elective new ‘home’. On the downside, however, this reluctance to forge
an alternative Spanish identity probably accounts, in part at least, for my less than native-like
fluency in Spanish.

The notion of identity has now moved to the very heart of second language learning theory. As
Norton and Toohey (2002: 115) argue: ‘Language learning engages the identities of learners
because language itself is not only a linguistic system of signs and symbols; it is also a complex
social practice in which the value and meaning ascribed to an utterance are determined in part
by the value and meaning ascribed to the person who speaks.’ Becoming a member of what
Lave and Wenger (1991) term ‘a community of practice’ assumes the capacity – and
willingness – to identify, and be identified, with the members of the target group (and, by
extension, to relinquish membership, even temporarily, of one’s own group).
In fact, a post-modern gloss of Tony Judt’s condition (and of mine) is not that we have no
identity but that we have multiple – and often contesting – identities, and it’s the business of the
second language acquisition project to find a match between an existing identity and the target
one. This at least is the thinking that underlies the concept of ‘the ideal L2 self’ as promoted by
Zoltan Dörnyei (2009: 29) in a compelling new theory of motivation: ‘If the person we would like
to become speaks an L2, the “ideal L2 self” is a powerful motivator to learn the L2 because of
the desire to reduce the discrepancy between our actual and ideal selves.’ But being an ‘edge
person’ means that this ideal L2 self is elusive.

In the absence of appropriating the identity of a real or potential L2 user, one possibility might
simply be to manufacture one. This strategy, at least, seems to underlie the practice in
Suggestopedia, of assigning learners new, L2 speaking, identities, including giving them new
names and biographies. Larsen-Freeman (2000: 82) comments that this is based on the
assumption ‘that a new identity makes students feel more secure and thus more open to
learning’.

Does this openness to learning extend as far as pronunciation, I wonder? Because

pronunciation seems doggedly resistant to identity reconstruction: however much we might
want to ‘lose our selves’ in a new language, our accent survives as a trace of our former selves.
Apart from purely physiological reasons, this L1 identity ‘residue’ may be the result of the
tension between ‘belonging’ and ‘becoming’. In a study on the relation between accent and
group affiliation (Gatbonton, Trofimovich and Magid 2005: 504), the researchers concluded that
‘L2 learning entails choices … between the reward of being efficient in the L2 (indicating the
need for language ability best suited for communicative success) and the cost of not marking
the right identity (implying a risk of being labelled disloyal).’

The tension between wanting to sound like a native speaker but not wanting to let go of one’s
original identity is particularly acute for teachers of English, as Jennifer Jenkins (2007: 231)
found out, while investigating attitudes to English as a Lingua Franca (ELF): ‘There was a
strong sense that [her NNS informants] desired a native-like English identity as signalled by a
native-like accent, especially in their roles as teachers.’ Hence most of her informants rejected
the notion – urged by proponents of ELF – that an intelligible but locally accented English is
acceptable. Jenkins adds: ‘Many perceived an almost immutable link between a native-like
English accent and their chances of success in their teaching careers. And yet most also
expressed an attachment to their mother tongue and nationality, projected through their English
accent, that they seemed reluctant to relinquish’ (ibid.). Those who recognized the contradiction
used the term ‘linguistic schizophrenia’ to describe it. It could be argued that this split
personality is simply the healthy tension that results from having two competing identities – as
emigré football supporters might also have experienced, watching their (new) home team play
the team whence their ethnicity originates.

More recently, the construction of an idealized identity is at the heart of computer gaming and
of virtual environments such as Second Life (SL). My avatar in SL, for example, allows me to
interact there in ways that – arguably – outperform my ‘real-life’ personality. Does online identity
creation offer advantages to language learners, then?

James Paul Gee would argue most emphatically that it does. In his book What Video Games
have to Teach us about Language and Literacy (2007: 46) he suggests that, by allowing
gamers to customize their virtual identities, video games ‘encourage identity work and reflection
on identities in clear and powerful ways’. Such identity work is crucial, he claims, since ‘all
learning in all semiotic domains requires taking on a new identity and forming bridges from
one’s old identities to the new one’ (2007: 45). Video games and virtual environments would
seem to offer learners the opportunity to design ‘ideal language-using selves’. The question
remains, of course, as to whether these games and these environments provide the kind of
language-using opportunities that these ideal selves can usefully exploit.

As a footnote, Facebook’s founder Mark Zuckerberg is reported to have said: ‘The days of
having a different image for your … co-workers and for the other people you know are
probably coming to an end pretty quickly … Having two identities for yourself is an example of a
lack of integrity’ (Guardian Weekly, 6 June 2010: 22).

Clearly Mark Zuckerberg has never learned another language!

Questions for discussion

1. Do you experience (or have you experienced) a tension between two different identities as
you move from one language to another?

2. Can you learn a language and not identify with the speakers of that language?

3. Have you observed, in your students, a correlation between identification with the target
language community and communicative success?

4. Can teachers influence their learners’ perception of their ‘ideal L2 self’? How?
5. Does the idea of English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) contradict the idea that language learning
involves identification with a target language community?

6. Do you consciously adjust your accent – in the classroom – to reflect the learners’
expectations of an idealized English speaker?

7. What do you think of the idea of assigning learners (or letting them choose) an English
identity, e.g. by giving them English names?

8. Do you think that avatar-mediated online interaction offers a viable language learning
experience for some learners?

References
Dörnyei, Z. and Ushioda, E. (eds.) (2009) Motivation, Language Identity and the L2 Self,
Bristol: Multilingual Matters.

Gabanton, E., Trofimovich, T. and Magid, M. (2005) ‘Learners’ ethnic group affiliation and L2
pronunciation accuracy: a sociolinguistic investigation’, TESOL Quarterly, 39, 3.

Gee, J.P. (2007) What Video Games have to Teach us about Learning and Literacy, New
York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Jenkins, J. (2007) English as a Lingua Franca: Attitude and Identity, Oxford: Oxford University
Press.

Larsen-Freeman, D. (2000) Techniques and Principles in Language Teaching (2nd ed.),

Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Lave, J. and Wenger, E. (1991) Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation,

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Norton, B. and Toohey, K. (2002) ‘Identity and language learning’, in Kaplan, R. (ed.) The
Oxford Handbook of Applied Linguistics, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

To see how readers responded to this topic online, go to

http://scottthornbury.wordpress.com/2010/06/13/i-is-for-identity-2/