Investment and language learning: The intersection of identity, capital, and ideology

Abstract:
What does it mean to invest in language learning? Research has shown that while learners may be motivated to learn an L2 like English, they may not necessarily be invested in the language and literacy practices of a classroom or community because of the way they are positioned or the extent to which their resources and lived experiences are valued. Conceptualized as a counterpart to the psychological construct of motivation, investment (Norton, 1995) is a sociological construct that focuses on the contexts, practices, and relations of power that shape language learning. It recognizes that our relationship with language is historically and socially constructed and always negotiated with others. To address the realities of an increasingly globalized and technologized world, Darvin and Norton (2015) theorized a model of investment that locates investment at the intersection of identity, capital, and ideology. It recognizes that as learners move across online and offline spaces, they perform multiple identities and can be positioned by others because of their race, ethnicity, gender, social class, and sexual orientation. They negotiate their capital—material, cultural, social, linguistic, and semiotic resources—that can be valued in unequal ways because of colluding or competing ideologies and dominant ways of thinking that shape norms, conventions, and dispositions. In this Invited Lecture, Ron Darvin discusses how the model of investment has been used as a framework for multiple studies of language learning and how it can be a generative theoretical tool for understanding issues surrounding translanguaging, mother tongue-based multilingual education, decolonization, and culturally sustaining pedagogies.

Ron Darvin is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Language and Literacy Education of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. His research examines issues of language learning identity and investment, digital literacies, materiality, and critical pedagogy, and his work has been published in journals such as the Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, Language Teaching,  Language Learning and Technology, and TESOL Quarterly. He is the recipient of the 2020 Dissertation Award of the American Association of Applied Linguistics (AAAL) and the 2017 Emerging Scholar Award of the American Educational Research Association (AERA) LSP SIG. https://lled.educ.ubc.ca/ron-darvin/

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