The ideology of learner agency and the neoliberal self

Abstract

This paper compares how the neoliberal self and the agentive language learner self have been conceptualized in the scholarly literature. It shows that both selves are construed as self‐regulating and free to choose, but that they are treated very differently in terms of origin or essence. In discussing the apparent contradiction between the neoliberal self as an ideological effect and the agentive self as naturally agentive, the paper proposes a radically social, relational view of learner agency. It illustrates this perspective using narrative analysis to explore the life history account of an Indonesian immigrant to the US and also positions this individual account in its (neoliberal) historical context. It calls for second language scholars to conceptualize agency as always exercised at articulation points within a nexus of practice.