Between ‘becoming Like-natives’ And ‘multilingual’: A Poststructuralist Orientation To Imagined Iden-tity And Agency

Do learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) develop imagined identities in target language learning? Are their identities affected by their use of other languages? How does relations of power foster the complexity and multiplicity of the developed identities in language learning? To explore...

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Main Author: Souad Smaili
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: University of Bejaia Abderrahmane Mira 2021-01-01
Series:The Journal of Studies in Language, Culture and Society
Subjects:
Online Access:https://univ-bejaia.dz/revue/jslcs/article/view/299
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author Souad Smaili
author_facet Souad Smaili
author_sort Souad Smaili
collection DOAJ
description Do learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) develop imagined identities in target language learning? Are their identities affected by their use of other languages? How does relations of power foster the complexity and multiplicity of the developed identities in language learning? To explore these questions, an interactive theatre course was carried out at a university in Algeria. The students who took part in this course were undergraduates aged between 19 and 31 years old. The participants have a rich linguistic repertoire as they are multilingual, who make use of Berber as their mother tongue; Arabic as their first language; French and English as foreign languages. This study aims at promoting change in the way students learn English through introducing innovative tasks to the EFL classroom. The study adopted a poststructuralist framework, which is highly grounded in Norton’s perspective on identity (Norton, 2000) and Bourdieu’s concept of power relations in language use (Bordieu, 1991). I applied interpretive phenomenology as a research design, where in-depth interviews were conducted with the participants. Their scripts written in the three languages: English, French, and Arabic were considered in the analysis. The findings of this study revealed the effectiveness of using narratives and drama tasks in the EFL classroom. The findings also revealed that the proposed method involved the participants in an interactive and imagined space where they empowered themselves, constructed their agency, and developed new self-understandings which covered their multiple and imagined identities.
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publisher University of Bejaia Abderrahmane Mira
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spelling doaj-art-ecf422bad51149088b14633b35da2be92025-08-20T02:47:13ZengUniversity of Bejaia Abderrahmane MiraThe Journal of Studies in Language, Culture and Society2716-91892676-17502021-01-0133Between ‘becoming Like-natives’ And ‘multilingual’: A Poststructuralist Orientation To Imagined Iden-tity And AgencySouad Smaili0School of Arts and Humanities, University of Northampton Do learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) develop imagined identities in target language learning? Are their identities affected by their use of other languages? How does relations of power foster the complexity and multiplicity of the developed identities in language learning? To explore these questions, an interactive theatre course was carried out at a university in Algeria. The students who took part in this course were undergraduates aged between 19 and 31 years old. The participants have a rich linguistic repertoire as they are multilingual, who make use of Berber as their mother tongue; Arabic as their first language; French and English as foreign languages. This study aims at promoting change in the way students learn English through introducing innovative tasks to the EFL classroom. The study adopted a poststructuralist framework, which is highly grounded in Norton’s perspective on identity (Norton, 2000) and Bourdieu’s concept of power relations in language use (Bordieu, 1991). I applied interpretive phenomenology as a research design, where in-depth interviews were conducted with the participants. Their scripts written in the three languages: English, French, and Arabic were considered in the analysis. The findings of this study revealed the effectiveness of using narratives and drama tasks in the EFL classroom. The findings also revealed that the proposed method involved the participants in an interactive and imagined space where they empowered themselves, constructed their agency, and developed new self-understandings which covered their multiple and imagined identities. https://univ-bejaia.dz/revue/jslcs/article/view/299Imagined identitiesmultilingualismpower relationspoststructuralism
spellingShingle Souad Smaili
Between ‘becoming Like-natives’ And ‘multilingual’: A Poststructuralist Orientation To Imagined Iden-tity And Agency
The Journal of Studies in Language, Culture and Society
Imagined identities
multilingualism
power relations
poststructuralism
title Between ‘becoming Like-natives’ And ‘multilingual’: A Poststructuralist Orientation To Imagined Iden-tity And Agency
title_full Between ‘becoming Like-natives’ And ‘multilingual’: A Poststructuralist Orientation To Imagined Iden-tity And Agency
title_fullStr Between ‘becoming Like-natives’ And ‘multilingual’: A Poststructuralist Orientation To Imagined Iden-tity And Agency
title_full_unstemmed Between ‘becoming Like-natives’ And ‘multilingual’: A Poststructuralist Orientation To Imagined Iden-tity And Agency
title_short Between ‘becoming Like-natives’ And ‘multilingual’: A Poststructuralist Orientation To Imagined Iden-tity And Agency
title_sort between becoming like natives and multilingual a poststructuralist orientation to imagined iden tity and agency
topic Imagined identities
multilingualism
power relations
poststructuralism
url https://univ-bejaia.dz/revue/jslcs/article/view/299
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