2.1.1 Intersectionality

In the context of globalization, social categories such as ethnicity, gender, and class require more nuanced research, particularly with regard to the intersections of these categories – which has also been called ‘intersectionality’ (Block & Corona Reference Block and Corona2014). A focus on intersectionality is important because social categories are often overlapping and interdependent. For example, the plight of struggling immigrant students cannot be attributed solely to the identity inscription of nationality or ethnicity, but must be examined with respect to other categories such as class, gender, and religion. In a study which crosses ethnic, gender, and sexuality divides, Appleby (Reference Appleby2012) found, for example, that White Australian men teaching in Japanese language schools struggled to negotiate a particularly complex contact zone, which may have limited their professional and pedagogical aspirations. Also in Japan, Kamada's (Reference Kamada2010) study of the hybrid identities of adolescent girls who were ‘half’ Japanese was focused on issues of both ethnicity and gender, and illustrates how these young women struggled to negotiate desirable identities when confronted by marginalizing discourses.

Exemplar: As noted in 1.3, the construct of investment has gained much traction in identity research over the last two decades. Following their review of the rich body of investment-oriented identity work, Darvin & Norton applied their model of investment, incorporating identity, capital, and ideology, to the case of a female language learner, Henrietta, in a poorly resourced Ugandan village, and the case of a male language learner, Ayrton, in a wealthy neighbourhood in urban Canada. Their findings revealed that the imagined identity of each learner was inextricably linked to the levels of capital (social, economic, and cultural) available to them and the ideologies with which their participants’ learning experiences were associated. While Ayrton's learning was buoyed by access to high levels of capital in the context of neoliberal ideological practices that sustained his imagined cosmopolitan identity, Henrietta's dreams of assuming an imagined identity of a knowledgeable global citizen were challenged by limited access to capital and a hegemonic ideology that reproduces the global North/South divide. Building on this example, future studies might wish to explore how this model of investment can be applied to other learning contexts. For example, extending the work of Stranger-Johannessen & Norton (Reference Stranger-Johannessen and Norton2017), scholars might wish to compare and contrast the identity realizations of a female elementary school teacher in a poorly resourced Ugandan community with that of another female elementary school teacher in a well-resourced UK community to determine how issues of ideology, capital, and identity might impact their language teaching.

2.1.2 Race and ethnicity

While we anticipate that more intersectional research will be conducted in the future, we also recognize that interest in particular social categories, such as race, remains resilient (Motha Reference Motha2014). Anya (Reference Anya2011, Reference Anya2017) has found that African American college students who wish to learn a second language (L2) are drawn by the desire to connect with and learn more about Afro-descendant speakers of their target languages, while Feinauer & Whiting (Reference Feinauer and Whiting2012), who studied Latino communities, endorse ethnic-identity-development processes for pre-adolescent language minority youth. Also with respect to ethnicity, the long-standing native- and non-native speaker distinction continues to attract L2 identity research (e.g., Moussu & Llurda Reference Moussu and Llurda2008; Gatbonton, Trofimovich & Segalowitz Reference Gatbonton, Trofimovich and Segalowitz2011). However, we suggest that this enduring interest in race and ethnicity needs to be seen in relation to the neoliberal turn, which, as Pujolar & Jones (Reference Pujolar, Jones, Duchêne and Heller2012) show, has resulted in the marketization of ethnolinguistic ‘authenticity’ to generate income. Increasingly, such a distinction has both heritage-related and economic consequences because belonging to certain privileged ethnicities, in particular, brings with it opportunities associated with being a native speaker. Blommaert's (Reference Blommaert2009) study of call centers in India, which examines learners’ strong desire to sound like a native-English speaker because it helps secure lucrative jobs, is a stark reminder of this reality, as is Pujolar & Jones's (Reference Pujolar, Jones, Duchêne and Heller2012) investigation of the marketization of Catalonian ethnolinguistic ‘authenticity’ to generate tourist income. Overall, research on race and ethnicity will feature heavily in the identity research agenda because these two social categories continue to be highly relevant issues in education.

Exemplar: As earlier research has shown, claiming ‘authentic’ ethnolinguistic identity and native-speaker status brings with it financial rewards. However, equally interesting would be an investigation of the experiences of non-native English-speaking teachers (NNESTs) who constitute a significant and growing segment of students enrolled in teaching English to speakers of other languages) (TESOL) programs in English dominant countries. In 2012 G. Park published a study that investigated a teacher's journey in claiming and embracing her non-native-speaker identity. Drawing on narratives (see 3.1) and interviews conducted with her focal teacher, Park traced how the teacher ultimately overcame her linguistic powerlessness over the course of working with an inspiring non-native English-speaking teacher educator. Scholars are directed to the appendices to Park's article that contain helpful directions on how to design email autobiographical (e-auto) narratives and prompts for e-journals. Following Park's research design, we recommend that classroom observations of focal NNEST teachers be conducted to further triangulate data sources. Such research would help shed light on how NNEST identities are enacted in classroom practice. While Park worked with East Asian teacher participants, we recommend that future research also include teachers from other regions of the world. Further, we suggest that spatiotemporal scales (see 1.3) be applied to the analyses of the data to produce a more nuanced understanding of how teacher identities change over time and space.

2.1.3 Social class

Neoliberalism and globalization also serve as analytical tools in new conceptions of social class, (Rampton Reference Rampton2011; Snell Reference Snell2013; Block Reference Block2014). Much of the identity work on class thus far (e.g., De Costa Reference De Costa2010a; Norton Reference Norton2013; de Costa Reference De Costa2016b) has drawn on Bourdieu's (Reference Bourdieu, Thompson, Raymond and Adamson1991) constructs of capital and habitus, which conceive of class as relational and emergent. A welcome addition to these debates is a special issue on social class, edited by Kanno & Vandrick (Reference Kanno and Vandrick2014), in the Journal of Language, Identity & Education. The contributions provide a lens through which scholars can examine how language learning and teaching can either reproduce or disrupt economic and social inequities. While recognizing that the emergence of the neoliberal post-industrial work order may render traditional labels of ‘middle class’ and ‘working class’ defunct (Savage et al. Reference Savage2013), important investigative tasks remain on the research agenda, including an examination of what Vandrick (Reference Vandrick2011) has called ‘the global elite’. Work on this group of learners and their teachers promises to be significant because it highlights the material conditions of globalization and its structures of inequality, a component of neoliberal ideology.

Exemplar: While we appreciate the need for more research on the global elite, we are also committed to seeing more identity work done with learners from lower socioeconomic classes. Lemphane & Prinsloo (Reference Lemphane and Prinsloo2014), in particular, make a strong argument for researchers to examine how digital literacy practices are shaped by class identities. Set in two black Sotho-speaking homes in Cape Town, South Africa, they illustrate how unequal access to digital resources has a divergent impact on the literacy development of children from a suburban middle-class family, and an urban township family, respectively. While the former enjoyed broadband connectivity and access to a ‘2nd life’ teenage site (which ironically only contained white teenage avatars, further illustrating the intersectional nature of identity research), the latter had no computer access at all and were allowed only limited access to their parents’ mobile phones. As noted by Lemphane & Prinsloo, access to semiotic resources ultimately determined the level of interactive language learning opportunities available to both sets of children. Given the increasing role that technology plays in maintaining social inequalities (see 2.2.1), it would be useful to continue this line of research by including, for example, an investigation of the digital literacy practices of adult learners associated with different social classes. A broader and deeper understanding of how class impacts language learning might help us bridge the academic gap that exists between the ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’ in school and society.

2.2.1 Digital literacy and virtual spaces

The ability to construct functional selves through digital interaction is not uncommon in digital environments (Warriner Reference Warriner2007; Thorne & Black Reference Thorne, Black and Higgins2011; Lam & Warriner Reference Lam and Warriner2012; Darvin Reference Darvin and Preece2016). In their examination of the characteristics of vernacular literacies on Web 2.0, Barton & Lee (Reference Barton and Lee2012), for example, focused on the writing activities performed on the photo-sharing site Flickr.com by multilingual Spanish-speaking and Chinese-speaking users who drew on a wide range of semiotic resources to project new global identities. Darvin & Norton (Reference Darvin and Norton2014), in another example, describe the ways in which digital storytelling can expand the range of identities available to migrant language learners, creating a ThirdSpace that acknowledges and affirms multidimensional identities.

While research on digital literacy and digital identities has been informative, it is not without shortcomings (Warschauer & Matuchniak Reference Warschauer and Matuchniak2010). As Snyder & Prinsloo noted (Reference Snyder and Prinsloo2007), much of the digital research on language education has focused on research in wealthier regions of the world, and there is a great need for research in poorly resourced communities to impact global debates on new technologies, identity, and language learning. In this spirit, the work of Toohey, Dagenais & Schultze (Reference Toohey, Dagenais and Schulze2012), discussed next, is important and innovative. What is needed in this changing landscape are new tools to expedite future research on identity and digital literacy, which we anticipate will grow because of the increasingly central role that technology plays in language and literacy development. To ensure analytical rigor, identity researchers could adopt more sophisticated analytical tools (see Martinec & van Leeuwen Reference Martinec and van Leeuwen2009; Thorne Reference Thorne and Hawkins2013) to investigate how identities are mediated along multimodal and Internet-mediated lines, a theme to be discussed more fully in Section 3.

Exemplar: As noted in 2.1.3, attempts need to be made to bridge the gap between students with unequal access to technology and digital literacy. Given this concern, and the emerging interest in transnational identities (e.g., De Fina & Perrino Reference De Fina and Perrino2013), one exemplary study is Toohey, Dagenais & Schultze (Reference Toohey, Dagenais and Schulze2012). In a multi-country videomaking project with school children in India, Mexico, and Canada, Toohey et al. (Reference Toohey, Dagenais and Schulze2012) found that the making of videos offered language learners opportunities for meaning making that extended beyond their particular L2 capabilities. The authors argue that videomaking can enhance the participants’ awareness of audience, sequencing, and rhetoric, leading to ‘activities of critical reflection and agentive self and collective expression’ (Toohey et al. Reference Toohey, Dagenais and Schulze2012: 90). Similar studies involving students in different contexts ought to be conducted in order to examine ways to legitimize multilingual practices and to validate the identities of multilingual students. Crucially, such studies would constitute part of the wider plurilingual turn currently taking place in language education (Taylor & Snodden Reference Taylor and Snoddon2013) as well as the increasing interest in materialism and posthumanism (Pennycook Reference Pennycook2017; Smythe et al. Reference Smythe, Hill, MacDonald, Dagenais, Sinclair and Toohey2017).

2.2.2 Indigenous, postcolonial, and diaspora sites

In keeping with the enduring interest by linguistic anthropologists such as Hornberger in indigenous identity (Hornberger Reference Hornberger2014), identity researchers are examining how indigenous youth who remain in local communities (e.g., Norton et al. Reference Norton, Jones and Ahimbisibwe2011; Wyman, McCarty & Nicholas Reference Wyman, McCarty and Nicholas2014) negotiate dynamic cultural worlds that are shifting as a consequence of globalization. One area of interest is the investigation of identity negotiation by children left behind by parents who leave their communities in search of work abroad. A study that stands out is King & Haboud's (Reference King, Haboud and McCarty2011) poignant analysis of the impact of international migration on Quechuan-speaking youth in the Ecuadorian Andes whose lives were transformed by new technology such as cellphones as a result of money remitted home by their overseas parents. A 2014 special issue of the Journal of Language, Identity, and Education (May Reference May2014) with the title, ‘Deconstructing the urban-rural dichotomy in sociolinguistics: Indigenous perspectives’ seeks to complement the focus on urban multilingualism, characteristic of much current identity research, by highlighting the diverse ways in which indigenous peoples are affected by the conditions of late modernity. The article by Hornberger (Reference Hornberger2014), for example, examines the life history of one Quechua-speaking bilingual educator as a teacher, teacher educator, researcher, and advocate, illustrating the complex ways in which Indigenous identity is co-constructed across rural–urban divides. We believe that more identity research on indigenous peoples is needed in light of the widening gap between rural and urban populations.

There is also increasing research in diaspora and postcolonial sites where multilingualism is the norm (e.g., Barton & Lee Reference Barton and Lee2012; Harissi, Otsuji & Pennycook Reference Harissi, Otsuji and Pennycook2012; Erling & Seargeant Reference Erling and Seargeant2013; Kerfoot & Bello-Nonjengele Reference Kerfoot and Bello-Nonjengele2014). Such research responds to calls to restore agency and professionalism in periphery communities (e.g., Bamgbose Reference Bamgbose2014) and gives due recognition to local vernacular modes of learning and teaching. A special issue of the Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development (Norton Reference Norton2014), titled ‘Multilingual literacy and social change in African communities’, grapples with the ways in which language learners and teachers in African communities are navigating complex identities in changing times. Two particularly active sites of research are South Africa and Uganda, where researchers are undertaking exciting research in both homes (Lemphane & Prinsloo Reference Lemphane and Prinsloo2014; Namazzi & Kendrick Reference Namazzi and Kendrick2014) and schools (Early & Norton Reference Early and Norton2014; Makoe & McKinney Reference Makoe and McKinney2014). Future research on identity in language learning and teaching will continue this important trajectory.

Exemplar: Canagarajah's (Reference Canagarajah2008) study of language shift within Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora families located in Toronto (Canada), London (UK), and Lancaster (USA) provides fascinating insights into the ways such families negotiate the tensions between valuing cultural identity and heritage language proficiency (see 2.3.3). Researchers can adopt and modify Canagarajah's practice of (a) administering a questionnaire on language attitudes and choice, (b) conducting individual, family, and focus group interviews, and (c) taking field notes of observations in order to learn about the issues and challenges involved in the intergenerational language acquisition of a heritage language. Also of interest in this study, given recent calls to engage in reflexivity (Kramsch & Whiteside Reference Kramsch and Whiteside2007; De Costa Reference De Costa2014), is Canagarajah's discussion and account of his own research positionality as he moved between being an insider and outsider of the Tamil communities he studied. As Norton & Early (Reference Norton and Early2011) have argued, identity researchers are encouraged to examine their own identities in relation to their participants and their research sites.

2.3.1 Teacher identities

An area of identity research that is gaining momentum is that of language teacher identity (e.g., Clarke Reference Clarke2008; Kanno & Stuart Reference Kanno and Stuart2011; Varghese Reference Varghese, Hult and King2011; Sayer Reference Sayer2012; Dagenais Reference Dagenais2012; Menard-Warwick Reference Menard-Warwick2013; Cheung, Said & Park Reference Chueng, Said and Park2015). Recently, Kumaravadivelu (Reference Kumaravadivelu2012) called for a rethinking of teacher identities in this globalized world. Specifically, he invoked an epistemic break in the dependency on western knowledge of production and center-based methods. Such challenges are being taken up by emerging scholars such as Andema (Reference Andema2014) from Uganda and Carazzai (Reference Carazzai2013) and Sanches Silva (Reference Sanches Silva2013) from Brazil, who are exploring ways in which globalization is impacting language teacher identity in tertiary language education programs. The call to decenter and decolonize teaching is relevant in a neoliberal era that emphasizes accountability and adherence to common standards. Barkhuizen (Reference Barkhuizen2017) as well as two journal special issues on teacher identity, one in the TESOL Quarterly (Varghese et al. Reference Varghese, Motha, Trent, Park and Reeves2016) and another in Modern Language Journal (De Costa & Norton Reference De Costa, Norton and Preece2016) will contribute much to contemporary debates on identity research, and the ways in which teacher identities have evolved in the wake of globalization and neoliberal impulses.

While the call to decenter and decolonize teaching is relevant in a neoliberal era, it is equally important that we do not ignore policies that directly impact teachers’ daily practice. In this spirit, researchers need to examine how teachers negotiate language policies in schools (e.g., Menken & García Reference Menken and García2010) and how teacher identities are subsequently transformed. One way researchers have approached this topic is to conduct an ethnography of language policy (e.g., Johnson Reference Johnson and Tollefson2013). Further, in line with the universal implementation of standards in most countries, researchers are beginning to explore how policy documents and curriculum guidelines such as the Common Core State Standards in the USA (e.g., Kibler, Valdes & Walqui Reference Kibler, Valdes and Walqui2014) impact teacher identities. The investigation of teacher identities is part of an upward trend to bridge SLA and language policy research, as evidenced by a recent conference at Lund University in Sweden (http://konferens.ht.lu.se/lpp-symposium).

Exemplar : Given that the development of teacher identities and pedagogical practices do not exist in a vacuum but are shaped in response to policies, we direct researchers to a study by Abiria, Early & Kendrick (Reference Abiria, Early and Kendrick2013). Based in northern Uganda, their study investigated how five Primary 4 teachers adopted a dynamic plurilingual approach in the face of pressures to prepare students for the national examination in English, and limited resources and large class sizes in their school. Following Abiria et al., we recommend that an array of qualitative research methods – observations and reflections, photographs, post-lesson reflections/interviews, focus group discussions, document analysis, questionnaires and artifacts – be used to gain a holistic understanding of how teachers create a conducive learning environment through their creative mobilization of linguistic, multimodal, and cultural resources.

2.3.2 Lingua franca speakers

Lingua franca speakers are another population of interest to future identity researchers. Many aspiring lingua franca languages compete for legitimacy in the global arena, and there is growing interest in lingua franca languages (Jenkins Reference Jenkins2006; McGroarty Reference McGroarty2006). In line with this interest is a greater exploration of non-native-speaker identities (see also 2.1.2 above). For example, Cogo & Dewey (Reference Cogo and Dewey2012), De Costa (Reference De Costa2012), Liang (Reference Liang2012), and H. Park (Reference Park2012) have started to examine how non-native language learners develop and enact identities from an English as a lingua franca (ELF) perspective. As observed by Clark (Reference Clark2013), in contrast to the teaching of English as a foreign language (EFL) or English as a second language (ESL), which positions English language learners as different from and/or deficient compared to speakers of ‘standard’ English, ELF does not differentiate between native and non-native speakers of English, and views code-switching as a bilingual pragmatic resource. Further, given the explosive growth of contexts where English and other major languages such as Spanish, Arabic, and Chinese are used as a lingua franca, identity researchers are beginning to explore how enacting lingua franca identities enables learners and teachers in periphery communities to assert their agency (Duff Reference Duff, Gass and Mackey2012). Overall, an investigation of lingua franca identities is timely and is set to grow, in view of the emergence of several major lingua franca languages whose growth has been bolstered by globalization and technology.

Exemplar: Increasingly, English is used as a lingua franca for online communication. Taking this reality into consideration, Jenks (Reference Jenks2012) analyzed the interactional features of participants in a Skypecast chat room and illustrated how, contrary to general expectation that ELF interactants are mutually supportive, reprehensible talk existed among chat room users. In line with Jenks, we suggest that identity researchers analyze online interaction involving ELF users because chat rooms offer accessible but naturalistic data to examine the construction of ELF identities. Jenks's use of conversation analysis (see 3.2) is also recommended because it allows researchers to examine how such identities can change on a turn-by-turn basis. While online data are readily available for analysis, we urge researchers to take steps to preserve the anonymity of the chat users in light of the ethical turn in applied linguistics (De Costa Reference De Costa2014). While Skype no longer supports its chat room function, one site that can contribute to our understanding of ELF identity construction is the World of War Craft live chat room which brings together over 10 million global subscribers. Findings from such an ELF-based study might also add useful insights to a growing interest in gaming and digital literacy development (e.g., Gee Reference Gee2011, Reference Gee2013) [see 2.2.1].

2.3.3 Heritage language learners

Another population of increasing interest to identity researchers is heritage language learners (see Creese & Blackledge Reference Creese and Blackledge2010; Leeman, Rabin & Román-Mendoza Reference Leeman, Rabin and Román-Mendoza2011; Duff Reference Duff, Gass and Mackey2012; Kagan & Dillon Reference Kagan, Dillon, Gass and Mackey2012; He Reference He and Wiley2014; Manosuthikit & De Costa Reference Manosuthikit and De Costa2016; Maloney & De Costa Reference Maloney and De Costa2017). Common in such research is a commitment to reclaim the local by venerating the languages spoken in students’ home communities. For example, Creese & Blackledge (Reference Creese and Blackledge2010) describe a program in complementary schools in the UK that sought to build young heritage language speakers’ language awareness of Gujarati and Mandarin. In their comprehensive review of L2 identity, Miller & Kubota (Reference Miller, Kubota, Herschensohn and Young-Scholten2013) note, however, that the term ‘heritage’ remains slippery and contested, and needs greater clarification, especially given the growing enrolment of heritage language learners in schools and universities. Further, Miller & Kubota (Reference Miller, Kubota, Herschensohn and Young-Scholten2013) make the case that researchers and teachers cannot underestimate a learner's agency with respect to whether and how learners identify as heritage language learners.

Exemplar: In line with Miller & Kubota's (Reference Miller, Kubota, Herschensohn and Young-Scholten2013) call to investigate agency as exercised by heritage learners, we recommend research that investigates how heritage learners reclaim while also reconstruct heritage identities. One good example is Leeman, Rabin & Román-Mendoza (Reference Leeman, Rabin and Román-Mendoza2011) who describe a critical service-learning university program that sought to build heritage language speakers’ language awareness through community-based opportunities to enact and strengthen their identities as language experts. In this vein, future heritage identity research should take into consideration curricular efforts that involve various stakeholders such as families and community organizations. While much of the heritage learner research has focused on younger learners, few studies have explored how older (i.e. beyond university-age) learners attempt to revitalize the learning of their heritage language later in life. We recommend that researchers investigate how mature learners negotiate their own identities as they elect to (re)learn heritage languages. One way to do this is to couple this approach with tracing learner trajectories and examining sedimented experiences, as has been emphasized throughout this article. Such learners may decide later in life to learn their heritage languages following a visit to the country of their ancestors upon retirement. Importantly, a focus on mature learners is part of a recent shift toward studying the language learning experiences of older language learners (e.g., Swain Reference Swain2013).

2.3.4 Study abroad learners

In addition to investigating the identities of heritage language learners, another promising research context is study abroad, especially given the growing number of such programs offered by universities (see Kinginger Reference Kinginger and Higgins2011; Magnan & Lafford Reference Magnan, Lafford, Gass and Mackey2012; Benson et al. Reference Benson, Barkhuizen, Bodycott and Brown2013; Wernicke Reference Wernicke2014; De Costa, Rawal & Zaykovskaya Reference De Costa, Rawal and Zaykovska2017). According to Magnan & Lafford (Reference Magnan, Lafford, Gass and Mackey2012), to facilitate student linguistic success abroad, candidates ought to engage in social computing networks with their future host families before arrival on site, receive extensive departure training about the target culture, live in interactive home stay situations, and participate in service learning and internships to practice the target language. Following these observations, one way in which study abroad identity research can be developed is through tracing a learner's identity transformation across the different contexts identified by Magnan & Lafford. As discussed, such a longitudinal approach would also enhance our understanding of how identities change over time and space.

Exemplar : Kinginger (Reference Kinginger2008) investigated the L2 experiences of 24 undergraduate study abroad students from a US university during their one-semester sojourn in France. What is noteworthy about this mixed methods study is that while she collected quantitative data (a standardized French proficiency test, speech samples from role plays, language awareness interviews) from all 24 participants, qualitative data (in-country logs, journals, oral interviews before and after their sojourn, and on-site observations) were also collected from 6 focal participants to study their identities as L2 learners and users. Following Kinginger's research design, we recommend that additional social media data (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr posts) also be conducted for a better understanding of students’ own investments in their SLA experiences and identities as L2 users. Another suggestion is that the study be conducted over a longer period of time (i.e. more than one semester) to gain a better understanding of the students’ identity development.