Shifting timescales in peer group interactions: a multilingual classroom perspective

Abstract

ABSTRACTIn his model of classroom social identification and learning, Wortham (2006. Learning Identity. New York: Cambridge University Press) conceptualizes identity processes as enveloped within multiple timescales unfolding simultaneously in varying paces. For Wortham (2008. “Shifting Identities in the Classroom.” In Identity Trouble: Critical Discourse and Contested Identities, edited by C. Caldas-Coulthard, and R. Iedema, 205–228. New York: Palgrave Macmillan), identities are locally constructed and mediated within and across shorter timescales, but shifts in identity take place across longer timescales. Wortham (2006. Learning Identity. New York: Cambridge University Press; 2008. “Shifting Identities in the Classroom.” In Identity Trouble: Critical Discourse and Contested Identities, edited by C. Caldas-Coulthard, and R. Iedema, 205–228. New York: Palgrave Macmillan) does not necessarily problematize shifts in identity within and across shorter timescales of micro-level discourse. Meanwhile, research in second language classroom settings has considerably focused on identity as constructed in and through language at the micro-level (Norton 2013), depicting an array of linguistic practices involving shifts in timescales. The purpose of this paper is to shed light on these shifts within the micro-level discourses of classroom peer interactions. Through focusing on language events in a multilingual ninth-grade German classroom, I demonstrate how shifts in locally constructed social identification processes are constructed, which identity practices they index, and which linguistic practices are involved.