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Identity: What is It? Douglas Fleming University of Ottawa • “Identity would seem to be the garment with which one covers the nakedness of the self; in which case, it is best that the garment be loose, a little like the robes of the desert, through which one's nakedness can always be felt, and, sometimes, discerned” James Baldwin (1976) • Lynd once observed that, "the search for identity has become as strategic in our time as the study of sexuality in Freud’s" (1958, 14). • The importance of identity theory has been increasingly felt in social science research generally (Mathews, 2000), in overall education research (Cummins, 1996; Bernstein, 1996), and second language education (SLE) more particularly (Block, 2007; Davison, 2001). • so, what does the word identity mean? • the word identity was "first used to mean personal identity by the empiricist philosophers Locke and Hume, who used the word identity to cast doubt on the unity of the self" (Langbaum, 1977; p. 25); • It is important to note the individual self has not always been a significant preoccupation in European cultural history (Tuchman,1978). • Sociological concepts like identity are in great contrast to related terms in psychology, such as motivation. • Dilthey: the essence of being human can only be grasped historically; experience is a collection of events that have a unity of meaning; identity is the human quality that which unifies this experience across time for individuals. • Durkheim: social control mechanisms are as much mental (ritual) as physical; these help create collective representations and solidarity, shape personality, identities and behaviors. • • • • • • • • • George Mead: generalized other Cooley: looking glass self Dewey: the regulatory function of imagined reaction Bourdieu: cultural capital Giddens: identity as narrative Said: the ‘other’ in political discourse Althussar: Ideology Friere: pedagogical tasks and activist critiques of civil society Foucault: governmentality and micro-processes of power • In contrast, psychology places an emphasis on the importance of the integrated and autonomous self. Motivation is central to this. • Motivation is quite clearly a psychological term, influenced by Freud's conception of the mind into id, ego and superego, Piaget's constructivist conception of personality development and Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. • R.C. Gardner’s concept of integrative motivation: the desire to learn the target language based on positive feelings for the community to which that language belongs. • J.H. Schumann's acculturation model outlines the factors involved in whether or not groups of learners, principally ethnic minorities, have a propensity (social distance and psychological distance) to learn the language of the majority population. • social distance and psychological distance is influenced by: • attitudes toward social dominance/ resistance; • desires for assimilation/ preservation; • enclosure (isolation); • cohesiveness of the minority group; size of the minority group; • and individual factors such as intended length of residence. • As Norton (2000) points out, the barriers erected by dominant language and cultural groups are not taken into account in Schumann’s model. • In SLE, Norton uses the term identity "to reference how a person understands his or her relationship to the world, how that relationship is constructed over time and space, and how the person understands possibilities for the future" (2000, 5). • Norton contrasts the concept of identity to that of motivation and develops the notion of investment. • Investment, which draws on Bourdieu's concept of cultural capital, "signals the socially and historically constructed relationship of learners to the target language, and their often ambivalent desire to learn and practice it" (p.10). • Learners make a decision as to whether or not the target language is worth investing time and effort in acquiring. By committing themselves to learning the target language, " they do so with the understanding that that they will acquire a wider range of symbolic and material resources" (p.10). • The identities of language learners are not static or onedimensional. They often contain contradictions, change over time and space, and most importantly, show the impact of power relations. For teachers, this means that one must remember that students of English have complex attitudes towards acquiring the language and that this learning process is integral to their formation of identity and their sense of ethnicity.