Negotiating a “Scholar” Identity: The Case of a Designer Immigrant ESL (English as a Second Language) Learner

• In Event: Roundtable Session 59
  In Roundtable Session: Exploring Language and Social Processes in Linguistically Diverse Settings

Abstract

While narrative-oriented identity research (e.g., Norton, 2000, Rymes, 2003) has contributed much to our understanding of how languages are learned, the potential of narratives to investigate the impact of ideologies and learner positioning on learning outcomes remains under-explored. This paper examines how positioning and ideology influenced the acquisition of English by an Indonesian student, Daphne, in an English-medium Singapore school. Successful students such as Daphne were offered prestigious government scholarships and were subsequently referred to as ‘scholars’ within the Singaporean education system. In view of this reification as ‘scholars’, she and her immigrant peers encountered a different set of challenges from the learners identified in other ESL immigrant research (e.g., Harklau, 2000; Talmy, 2008), who are constructed in deficit terms.

Author

• Peter Ignatius De Costa, Monterey Institute of International Studies