Identity and language learning

Identity and language learning

1. Theories of language

   • Structuralism
     • Idealizes language and does not take the speaker into account
     • Linguistic communities are homogeneous
   • Poststructuralism
     • They study language along with its speaker
     • Linguistic communities are considered heterogeneous because of matters of truth and power

2. Theories of learning

   • Social practice
     • It was thought that language learning ocurred solely in the mind. However, it is social activity the one that allows true learning to happen
     • The learner's profile changed
   • Learning through coparticipation in community
   • Language is acquired through social interactions
   • SLA: Relational activity that occurs between specific speakers situaten in specific sociocultural contexts.

3. Theories of the learner

   • The perspective of the second language learner's identity shifted from being something relatively fixed and long term to
     • SLA needs to establish a relationship between the language learner and the social world

4. Toward the future

   • Future goal: To develop understandings of language learning from a social, semiotic and emotional stances.

5. 1. Language learning engages the identities of learners, and not only linguistic dimensions

   • 2. Identity is considered not as something static and one-dimensional, but as a multiple, changing and a site of struggle
     • 3. The social dimensions by which poststructuralism redefines them