Part 5: Summary and Discussion Questions
Hornberger, N. & McKay, S. (Eds.)(2010). Sociolinguistics and language education.
Toronto: Multilingual Matters Press.
Bonny Norton: Language and Identity
Norton starts with a set of definitions related to her topic: discourse, power (see
Foucault), structuralism (see Saussure), and post structuralism. She notes that
researchers in the field have recently drawn on such scholars as Bakhtin
(dialogicality), Bourdieu (cultural and linguistic capital), Hall (cultural studies and
race) and Weedon (post-structural feminism) in order to develop a greater
engagement with the social meanings and contexts associated with language
learning. In short: power relations, both within and outside of the classroom,
influence and constrain the activities and conditions under which language is used
and acquired. Research in this area has moved away from quantitative approaches
to those that are qualitative, drawing on the fields of critical ethnography, feminism,
linguistic anthropology and sociolinguistics. Norton highlights her own coining of
the term investment in language learning as a way of overcoming shortcomings in
the literature associated with linguistic motivation (See Schumann and R.C. Gardner).
Learners invest in a second language in order to acquire set of linguistically based
symbolic and material resources that are practiced within an imagined community
(Anderson) and in reference to communities of practice (Lave and Wegner).
Christiana Higgins: Gender Identities in Language Education
Through references to such scholars as Labov and Cameron, Higgins notes the way
in which the term gender has replaced that of sex in second language theory and
research. Gender avoids setting up binary relationships and emphasizes the social
aspect involved in how sexualized roles are formed. Current scholarship focuses on
how gender roles shape language use rather than focusing on sex as a cause of
linguistic variation. These concepts are closely related to Butler’s notion of
performance and de Beauvoir’s notion of posture. Research in this area examines the
discursive production of identity through such techniques as critical discourse
analysis, narrative inquiry, diary studies and autobiographies. Studies tend to center
on how gender restricts access to symbolic and material power in specific contexts.
Angela Reyes: Language and Ethnicity
Reyes notes the difficulty in defining the terms ethnicity and race in light of the fact
that both are socially constructed with only arbitrary and power-bound
relationships to biology or culture. Furthermore, she notes that various ethnicities
are multiple and without clearly defined boundaries. She notes that there are three
main models in SLE research related to ethnicity: the discredited deficit model
(language variations are deformed forms of standards); the difference model
(variations are simply different from one another) and the emergent model
(individuals draw from a wide range of variations according to need and context).
As shown in academic publishing and conference participation, identity is a very
popular term currently in second language education research and applied
linguistics.
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Why do you think that might be?
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Bourdieu’s concepts of cultural and linguistic capital are closely related to
human capital theory, NOT Marxism. Bourdieu famously declared that he was
NOT a Marxist.

Marx’s notion of alienation is based on his concern that under capitalism
humans have been reduced to mere representations of financial capital.

Do Bourdieu’s concepts do the same?
Scholars such as Monica Heller argue that learning a language should be more than
the honing of a particular set of skills.

This echoes Vygotsky’s contention that language is the basis for thought itself.

Is Norton’s notion of language investment actually more in keeping with skillbased language motivation than identity?
de Beauvoir’s notion of posture is closely related to that of the other (made famous
by Said in the context of colonialism). The masculine is taken as the norm and the
feminine as the diminutive other.

In the context of second language education, what are the relationships
between race, ethnicity, gender and social class?

Is social class somehow different from the others?
As we have seen in the Holmes text, language variation is complex.

If language variation is emergent, what is the place of language standards?

What do we teach?