Identity and Language Learning: Extending the Conversation

by Bonny Norton

Identity and Language Learning draws on a longitudinal case study of immigrant women in Canada to develop new ideas about identity, investment, and imagined communities in the field of language learning and teaching. Bonny Norton demonstrates that a poststructuralist conception of identity as multiple, a site of struggle, and subject to change across time and place is highly productive for understanding language learning. Her sociological construct of investment is an important complement to psychological theories of motivation. The implications for language teaching and teacher education are profound. Now including a new, comprehensive Introduction as well as an Afterword by Claire Kramsch, this second edition addresses the following central Under what conditions do language learners speak, listen, read and write?- How are relations of power implicated in the negotiation of identity?- How can teachers address the investments and imagined identities of learners?The book integrates research, theory, and classroom practice, and is essential reading for students, teachers and researchers in the fields of language learning and teaching, TESOL, applied linguistics and literacy.

Genres: Language, Nonfiction, Canada

240 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2013

Reviews

[Betsy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a classic work of contemporary sociolinguistics and should be read by anyone interested in the real world ways that immigrant women learn to use language in a new country. My only complaint is that the second edition is really a reprint of the first with the addition of a new introduction by the author and an afterword by Claire Kramsch. These are excellent additions, with commentary on how the first edition led to new avenues for research and theory, but I would have also liked to know more about Norton’s thoughts on the content of the original chapters. While she says in the intro that she didn’t want to change those chapters, she could have added commentary at the end of each or something like that.

[Dawn · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is such a well written collection of some of BN’s most important research. I would recommend it to anyone interested in the topic and everyone who needs to learn the value of qualitative research. This should be required reading for future foreign language teachers regardless of which groups they will be working with.

[Intan · Rating 4 out of 5]

a well-written book of contemporary sociolinguistics about ways that immigrant women learn to use language in a new country. Tbh, I only read it for the sake of my research project but ended up recommending it to everyone who needs to learn the value of qualitative research. Lots of insight.