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Part of
Foreign Language Education in Multilingual Classrooms
Edited by Andreas Bonnet and Peter Siemund
[Hamburg Studies on Linguistic Diversity 7] 2018
► pp. 237–252

Identity and investment in multilingual classrooms

| University of British Columbia, Canada

This chapter examines the trajectory of Bonny Norton’s research on identity and language learning, highlighting her construct of investment, developed as a sociological complement to the psychological construct of motivation (Norton 2013). An important focus of the chapter is the expanded 2015 model of identity and investment (Darvin & Norton 2015), which responds to the changing communicative landscape of an increasingly digital world, and locates investment at the intersection of identity, capital, and ideology. Norton exemplifies her theories with data drawn from her collaborative research on language learning in Uganda and Iran. She concludes that the challenge for language teachers internationally is to promote learner investment in the language and literacy practices of classrooms by increasing the range of identities available to language learners.

Keywords: capital, education, identity, investment, multilingualism
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Theoretical influences on contemporary identity research
  • 3.Identity, investment, and imagined communities: A vignette
  • 4.An expanded model of investment
  • 5.Language learners across global sites
    • 5.1Adolescent English language learners in Uganda
    • 5.2Adolescent and adult English language learners in Iran
  • 6.Identity, investment, and multilingual classroom practice
  • 7.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 24 October 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/hsld.7.11nor
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