Abstract
The year 2020 marked the 25th year since Bonny Norton published her influential TESOL Quarterly article, ‘Social identity, investment, and language learning’ (Norton Peirce, 1995) and the fifth year since we, Darvin and Norton (2015), co-authored ‘Identity and a model of investment in applied linguistics’ in the Annual Review of Applied Linguistics. From the time Norton's 1995 piece was published, investment and motivation have been conceptually imbricated and often collocated, as they hold up two different lenses to investigate the same reality: why learners choose to learn an additional language (L2). In our 2015 article, we made the case that while it is important to ask the question, ‘Are students motivated to learn a language?’ it is equally productive to ask, ‘Are students invested in the language practices of the classroom or community?’ (Darvin & Norton, 2015, p. 37). We recognize that the relationship between language teachers and learners is unequal, and that teachers hold the power to shape these practices in diverse ways. Teachers bring to the classroom not only their personal histories and knowledge, but also their own worldviews and assumptions (Darvin, 2015), which may or may not align with those of learners. Relations of power between learners can also be unequal. As Norton and Toohey (2011, p. 421) note: A language learner may be highly motivated, but may nevertheless have little investment in the language practices of a given classroom or community, which may, for example, be racist, sexist, elitist, anti-immigrant, or homophobic. Alternatively, the language learner's conception of good language teaching may not be consistent with that of the teacher, compromising the learner's investment in the language practices of the classroom. Thus, the language learner, despite being highly motivated, may not be invested in the language practices of a given classroom.
Highlights
Addressing these incongruities, investment was conceptualized in a period when issues of inequity and marginalization were emerging in multicultural societies transformed by rapid globalization and large-scale migration
In Ortega’s (2009) Understanding second language acquisition, while motivation is accorded its own chapter, identity and investment are subsumed in the chapter, ‘Social dimensions of L2 learning’
The emergent position of sociocultural theories in SLA research during that period is indexed by Atkinson’s (2011) volume, Alternative approaches to second language acquisition, where Norton and McKinney (2011) discuss investment in their chapter on identity and SLA
Summary
Answering the question of what makes these two constructs different, we need to look back to the historical moment when Norton conceptualized investment and shaped its trajectory as a ‘critical counterpoint’ (Ushioda, 2020) to motivation. Questions regarding the ‘social’ were tied to notions of culture or community and shared history, language or geographical region. In this context, L2 speakers were classified according to their membership in different social groups, and certain correlations or causal relations were made between these groups and certain qualities, behaviors or attitudes. L2 speakers were classified according to their membership in different social groups, and certain correlations or causal relations were made between these groups and certain qualities, behaviors or attitudes Learning another language meant being able to identify with the target L2 community and to take on aspects of their behavior (Gardner & Lambert, 1972). The individual learner was often assumed to possess binary characteristics, such as introverted or extroverted, inhibited or uninhibited, motivated or unmotivated
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