Abstract
In Racialized Identities in Second Language Learning, Anya argues that intersections of racial, ethnic, gender, sexual and social-class identities impact students’ investment and participation in language learning experiences. From the start, Anya makes explicit her critical antiracist and feminist position as she seeks to promote multilingualism for African American students, a population underrepresented in both foreign language classrooms in the United States and in second language acquisition (SLA) research. Believing such research holds the potential to ameliorate these inequities, the author advocates for African American students by convincingly demonstrating how language skills and affirmed black identities are mutually constitutive. Her analysis of video-recorded student interactions in class, field notes, weekly student journals, writing assignments from student coursework and interviews contributes to pedagogical concerns in second language learning and teaching discourse, as well as to broader sociopolitical concerns of inclusivity and diversity.
Anya presents in-depth case studies of the individual experiences of language learning and discursive identity construction of four African American university students – Nina, Didier, Leti, and Rose – during a 10-week intensive study abroad programme in Portuguese in Salvador da Bahia, a majority black city in north-east Brazil. Her analysis has three main goals. First, Anya argues that language learning is ‘transformative socialization’, that is to say, learners co-construct and negotiate multiple identities in their new discourse communities through social and linguistic interaction with interlocutors. Second, racialized identities mediate African American students’ language learning by shaping participation and access to opportunities to communicate in the classroom and local communities. Finally, African American students’ investments in these various communities determine their actual and perceived success in language learning. Anya takes a critical approach to language research, examining the relationship between sociohistorical factors and language practices as they relate to the four student participants through a thematic discourse analysis of student interviews, journals, and writings as well as conversation analysis of classroom interactions in which the participants speak and become new selves. The researcher plays an active role as both observer and confidant of the students during the entire study abroad programme, and considers herself the fifth participant in the study, an intimacy that facilitates the fine-grained and comprehensive analysis.
Following an introductory chapter, Anya presents the theoretical foundations and methodology of the book, which aims to bridge the worlds of theory and reality by uniting bottom-up and top-down approaches (Chapters 2–3). Anya views language learning as becoming, and employs the theoretical frameworks of languaging and translanguaging to analyse how learning a new language enacts new subjectivities and identities. Norton’s (2013) concept of investment and imagined communities is used to argue that identities influence investment, and therefore language learning outcomes. Subsequently, the book devotes one chapter to each of the four primary participants of the study. While each case requires different conceptual foci and particular theoretical underpinnings, the methodology and overarching theory remain constant throughout, providing a coherent and balanced analysis. As she describes each case study, the author incorporates various theories and concepts that speak to the data, such as stance, authenticity, sociolinguistic competence and code-meshing. With each participant, a different intersection of identities is examined to demonstrate the diversity among the participants and the various ways in which particular identities and investment impacted student success.
In Nina’s story, her ethno-racial affiliation with afro-Brazilian hip hop music positively affects her investment in learning Portuguese even before her departure. Once in Salvador, however, her shifting racialized identity creates friction in the classroom, leading to decreased investment and lower outcomes. Didier, the only male participant, desires to authentically translanguage both his ethno-racial Creole identity and his gender and sexual orientation into Brazilian Portuguese, leading to high investment in language learning. Leti did not choose Salvador specifically for its racial makeup, but soon after arrival feels her racial identity affirmed by being in a majority black city. Her Dominican heritage serves as a frame for understanding blackness, but through interactions in Salvador, she comes to take pride in calling herself ‘pretinha’ (black) and achieves the most positive outcomes of all the participants. Finally, Rose comes from a socioeconomically disadvantaged background and has thus not been socialised into the same academic practices as some of the other students, leading to poor outcomes in the classroom; however, her strong affiliation with the female afro-Brazilian community affords her a translanguaging space in which her newly constructed identities and language skills flourish.
Each case study weaves together personal histories, sociocultural practices and language use to provide a rich, multilayered picture of the relationship among identity, participation, investment and language learning. Anya’s frank and intimate writing style make Chapters 4–7 read like narratives, allowing the reader to holistically understand each participant. Such depth is only possible thanks to the author’s personal relationship with participants and a multilayered data triangulation; readers will feel they know the author intimately, as she does not shy away from inserting herself into the interactions at hand. Thanks to her own multiple identities as an African American female with experience living in Brazil, Anya is able to identify the meaning behind social and linguistic markers of identity such as black hair styles or conflicting concepts of race in the participants’ particular space that might be impossible for an outsider.
As perhaps the first single-authored monograph on second language learning focused primarily on African American students, this book makes a significant contribution; Anya’s thorough work will undoubtedly serve as a template for future longitudinal ethnographic studies of language learners’ multiple intersectional identities whose findings generate both pedagogical and sociopolitical implications. Primary among these implications is the need for institutions to recognize race as a central feature of African American students’ experiences in language learning and study abroad. As the participants became increasingly immersed in Afro-Brazilian culture, their ethno-racialized interests strongly impacted their investment in classroom and community activities as well as their learning outcomes. Second language instructors and study abroad facilitators will benefit from this work by applying its findings to classroom practices, materials development, and service-learning activities in order to better support and retain African American students who currently participate in study abroad and advanced academic language programs at alarmingly low rates. Critical discourse analysts, in turn, will be interested in the way Anya connects students’ socialization into a new language community, their use of racial terms in English, Spanish and Portuguese to identify themselves, and their reimagining of (or resistance to) American and Brazilian racialized power structures. Finally, Anya’s book expands the notion of translanguaging, in particular translanguaging spaces, and demonstrates the importance of promoting a new multilingual paradigm both in language classrooms and in study abroad.