Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-l7hp2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T19:07:51.689Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Intersecting scapes and new millennium identities in language learning

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2014

Christina Higgins
Christina Higgins*
Affiliation:
University of Hawai’i at Mā[email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper examines how flows of people, media, money, technology, and ideologies move through the world, with attention to how these scapes (Appadurai 1990, 1996, 2013) shape identity construction among language learners, both in and out of classrooms. After illustrating intersecting scapes in sociolinguistic terms, I explore the relevance of these ideas to identity formation among language learners, using three case studies. First, I examine the mediascape of hip hop in the ideoscape of education in Hong Kong, where an ELT Rap curriculum was designed for working class students in a low-banded secondary school. Next, I discuss how the confluence of transnationals and cosmopolitan urban residents in Tanzania provides a range of identity options for learners of Swahili that challenge nation-state-based associations of language. Finally, I consider how learners’ engagement in anime and manga from the mediascape is taken up in an introductory university-level Japanese language classroom in Hawai’i. These examples demonstrate how individuals are increasingly learning and using additional languages in the contexts of cultural mélange and new identity zones.

Type
Plenary Speech
Information
Language Teaching , Volume 48 , Issue 3 , July 2015 , pp. 373 - 389
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Alim, H. S. (2004). Hip hop nation language. In Finegan, E. & Rickford, J. R. (eds.), Language in the USA: Themes for the twenty-first century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 387–409.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Allen, D. (2011). Integration through the accueil program: Language and belonging among newcomer adolescents in Quebec. In C. Higgins (ed.), 49–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Appadurai, A. (1990). Disjuncture and difference in the global cultural economy. Theory, Culture, and Society 2.2, 1–24.Google Scholar
Appadurai, A. (1996). Modernity at large: Cultural dimensions of globalization. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Appadurai, A. (2013). The future as cultural fact: Essays on the global condition. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Black, R. W. (2008). Adolescents and online fan fiction. New York: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Blackledge, A. & Creese, A. (2010). Multilingualism: A critical perspective. London: Continuum.Google Scholar
Bourdieu, P. (1977). Outline of a theory of practice (trans. Nice, R.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Byram, M. (2008). The intercultural speaker: Acting interculturally or being bicultural. In Byram, M. (ed.), From foreign language education to education for intercultural citizenship: Essays and reflections. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters, 57–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Canagarajah, S. (2002). Reconstructing local knowledge. Journal of Language, Identity & Education 1.4, 243–259.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chouliaraki, L. & Fairclough, N. (1999). Discourse in late modernity: Rethinking critical discourse analysis. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar
Cook, H. (2008). Socializing identities through speech style: Learners of Japanese as a foreign language. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cook, V. (ed.) (2002). Portraits of the L2 user. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
García, O. (2007). Foreward. In Makoni, S. & Pennycook, A. (eds.), Disinventing and reconstituting languages. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters, xi–xv.Google Scholar
Higgins, C. (2007). Shifting tactics of intersubjectivity to align indexicalities: A case of joking around in Swahinglish. Language in Society 36.1, 1–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Higgins, C. (2009). English as a local language: Post-colonial identities and multilingual practices. Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Higgins, C. (ed.) (2011a). Identity formation in globalizing contexts: Language learning in the new millennium. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Higgins, C. (2011b). ‘You’re a real Swahili!’: Western women's resistance to identity slippage in Tanzania. In C. Higgins (ed.), 147–168.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Holliday, A. (2006). Native speakerism. ELT Journal 60.4, 385–387.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kramsch, C. (1993). Context and culture in language teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Lam, E. (2000). Second language literacy and the design of the self: A case study of a teenager writing on the internet. TESOL Quarterly 34.3, 457–483.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lam, E. (2004). Second language socialization in a bilingual chat room: Global and local considerations. Language Learning and Technology 8.3, 44–65.Google Scholar
Lin, A. (1999). Doing-English-lessons in the reproduction or transformation of social worlds? TESOL Quarterly 33.3, 393–412.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lin, A. & Man, E. (2011). Doing-hip-hop in the transformation of youth identities: Social class, habitus, and cultural capital. In Higgins, C. (ed.), 201–219. Berlin: Mouton.Google Scholar
Menard-Warwick, J. (2009). Gendered identities and immigrant language learning. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Menard-Warwick, J. (2011). L1 and L2 reading practices in the lives of Latina immigrant women studying English: School literacies, home literacies, and literacies that construct identities. In C. Higgins (ed.), 99–118.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ohara, Y. (2011). Identity theft or revealing one's true self?: The media and construction of identity in Japanese as a foreign language. In C. Higgins (ed.), 239–256.Google Scholar
Park, S. & Abelmann, N. (2004). Class and cosmopolitan striving: Mothers’ management of English education in South Korea. Anthropological Quarterly 77.4, 645–672.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pennycook, A. (2007). Global English and transcultural flows. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Sánchez, P. (2007). Cultural authenticity and transnational Latina youth: Constructing a meta-narrative across borders. Linguistics and Education 18.3/4, 258–282.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sayer, P. (2010). Using the linguistic landscape as a pedagogical resource. ELT Journal 64.2, 143–154.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Seo, M. (2008). Novice language teachers’ development in a Japanese immersion camp. Unpublished M.A. thesis, University of Hawai’i at Manoa.Google Scholar
Siegal, M. & Okamoto, S. (2003). Toward reconceptualizing the teaching and learning of gendered speech styles in Japanese as a foreign language. Japanese Language and Literature 37.1, 49–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Song, J. (2012). Imagined communities and language socialization practices in transnational space: A case study of two Korean ‘study abroad’ families in the United States. The Modern Language Journal 96.4, 507–524.CrossRefGoogle Scholar