The year 2020 marked the 25th year since Bonny Norton published her influential TESOL Quarterly article, ‘Social identity, investment, and language learning’ (Norton Peirce, Reference Norton Peirce1995) and the fifth year since we, Darvin and Norton (Reference Darvin and Norton2015), 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, Reference Darvin and Norton2015, 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, Reference Darvin2015), which may or may not align with those of learners. Relations of power between learners can also be unequal. As Norton and Toohey (Reference Norton and Toohey2011, 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.
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. Immigrants had to learn the official language of their host communities to find work, go to school, and be fully assimilated into society. During that time, motivation research was transitioning from its social-psychological period that was preoccupied with integrative and instrumental orientations (Gardner, Reference Gardner1985; Gardner & Lambert, Reference Gardner and Lambert1972; Gardner & MacIntyre, Reference Gardner and MacIntyre1992) into the cognitive-situated period (Dörnyei, Reference Dörnyei2005) that drew on cognitive theories in educational psychology to understand how motivation might be initiated or sustained. Responding to the changing sociopolitical landscape, Norton, on the other hand, drew on poststructuralist theories of subjectivity (Weedon, Reference Weedon1987) and power (Bourdieu, Reference Bourdieu1987, Reference Bourdieu, Thompson, Raymond and Adamson1991) ‘to capture the relationship of the language learner to the changing social world’ (Norton Peirce, Reference Norton Peirce1995, p. 17). While motivation is a psychological construct that focuses on conscious and unconscious factors, investment is primarily sociological and focuses on how histories, lived experiences and social practices shape language learning. By developing social theories that complemented cognitive theories in second language acquisition (SLA), Norton played a pivotal role in heralding the sociocultural turn in language education (Block, Reference Block2007), and investment emerged as a construct that provides ‘an important critical counterpoint to mainstream research on L2 motivation’ (Ushioda, Reference Ushioda2020, p. 28).
Because investment was conceptualized to address what was then a gap in motivation research, investment is frequently positioned alongside motivation in various monographs, handbooks and edited volumes. Chapter 7 of Hall's (Reference Hall2018) Essentials of SLA is entitled ‘L2 learning Is mediated by motivation, investment and agency’, while The Cambridge handbook of language learning (Schwieter & Benati, Reference Schwieter and Benati2019) lists our chapter on identity and investment (Darvin & Norton, Reference Darvin, Norton, Schwieter and Benati2019) alongside Ryan's (Reference Ryan, Schwieter and Benati2019) chapter on motivation. We have also contributed chapters to books on motivation to discuss the relationship between these two constructs. In Lamb, Csizer, Henry, and Ryan's (Reference Lamb, Csizer, Henry and Ryan2019) L2 motivation handbook, Darvin's (Reference Darvin, Lamb, Csizer, Henry and Ryan2019) chapter, ‘L2 motivation and investment’ draws on a case study to demonstrate how the constructs help pose different sets of research questions. Al-Hoorie and MacIntyre's (Reference Al-Hoorie and MacIntyre2019) homage to Robert Gardner includes Norton's chapter, ‘Motivation, identity and investment: A journey with Robert Gardner’, where she traces the historical development of the two constructs.
Earlier books in SLA, however, have positioned investment somewhat differently. In Ortega's (Reference Ortega2009) 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 also indexed by Atkinson's (Reference Atkinson2011) volume, Alternative approaches to second language acquisition, where Norton and McKinney (Reference Norton, McKinney and Atkinson2011) discuss investment in their chapter on identity and SLA. In the course of the conceptual imbrication of investment and motivation, there have also been occasions where these constructs have been conflated; for example, ‘motivational investment’ (Ushioda, Reference Ushioda2011, p. 202), ‘the motivational concept of ‘investment’’ (Dörnyei & Ushioda, Reference Dörnyei and Ushioda2009, p. 4), ‘conceptualization of motivation as investment’ (Lee, Reference Lee2014, p. 440), and ‘L2 motivation as an investment’ (Lamb et al., Reference Lamb, Csizer, Henry and Ryan2019, p. 8). This position paper addresses this conflation and asks the fundamental question ‘What's the difference between motivation and investment?’.
To achieve this objective, we begin by discussing the conceptual differences that established investment as distinct from motivation, then proceed to examine how some ideas through the years have converged, blurring the lines that originally set these constructs apart. We then point out how despite some areas of convergence, theoretical interstices continue to emerge as research in these two areas evolve. Ultimately, what we want to demonstrate is that investment is not a substitute for motivation, nor is one subsumed by the other; these two constructs remain theoretically distinct and occupy separate epistemological terrains. There are clear differences between the questions they address, the methods they undertake to pursue these questions, and the language they use to articulate the answers. But while they offer two different perspectives, we also make the case that they are complementary rather than contradictory constructs and that together they offer a more comprehensive understanding of language learning and teaching.
1. Foundational differences
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, Reference Ushioda2020) to motivation. In the 1990s, cognitive and psychological orientations dominated the field of SLA, and constructs that examined learner differences such as aptitude, learner strategies, motivation, autonomy, anxiety and self-efficacy foregrounded how the thoughts, motives and behaviors of L2 speakers impacted their learning outcomes. 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.
Learning another language thus meant being able to identify with the target L2 community and to take on aspects of their behavior (Gardner & Lambert, Reference Gardner and Lambert1972). The ‘social’ often referred to identifying structural differences between the L2 learner group and the target language group, and the social distance between these groups determined the acculturation of L2 learners (Schumann, Reference Schumann1976). At that time, language learners were also usually interpreted as having fixed personalities, learning styles and motivations; notions that aligned with product-oriented methodological trends. Cognitive, conative and affective dimensions of learner differences were understood as independent variables, and strict and clear definitions of attributes helped measure and control research in a systematic manner. Following this premise, the individual learner was often assumed to possess binary characteristics, such as introverted or extroverted, inhibited or uninhibited, motivated or unmotivated.
1.1 Investment and identity
In her 1995 article, Norton challenged these binary notions of language learners together with the limitations of quantitatively measuring a learner's commitment to L2 learning and establishing causal relationships with other variables like performance and achievement. She argued that interpreting learners as selves that possessed an essential, fixed and coherent core did not capture the complexity of the language learner. Nor did these interpretations explain how highly motivated learners can choose to withdraw from opportunities to participate in learning contexts where they are marginalized.
We highlight these earlier gaps in research to draw attention to the significance of identity in understanding investment. When SLA research was predominantly concerned with categorizing learners and finding patterns in their behaviour, Norton drew on poststructuralist views to posit that an individual's identity is a site of struggle that is negotiated through language and social interaction. The complexity of identity and the interplay of different desires shape the investment of learners in different situations, and this situatedness accounts for why a learner may express ambivalence when it comes to learning and practicing a target language. Learners invest in an L2 because they hope it will provide a wider range of material and symbolic resources that increase the value of their cultural capital and social power (Darvin & Norton, Reference Darvin, Norton, McCarty and May2017). At the same time, if learners feel marginalized in a classroom or community because of their race, gender, ethnicity, social class or sexual orientation, they may not be invested in the language practices of these learning contexts, notwithstanding high levels of motivation.
We need to understand, therefore, how investment is always discussed alongside identity, not only because Norton theorized both these constructs concomitantly, but also because they are woven together by the same epistemological thread (Norton & Morgan, Reference Norton, Morgan and Chapelle2020). As an approach to language learning research, identity establishes the connections between the individual language learner and the wider society. While identity categories of race, ethnicity, gender, social class and sexual orientation provide us with the language to think about the learner and the subject positions she or he occupies, investment is the means through which we can dissect the social world where the learner performs multiple identities. Investment acknowledges that inequalities circumscribe the social world, and that learners need to negotiate their resources and assert their identities in order to invest in their learning. Investment therefore signals the tension between agency and structure, the freedom of learners to choose, and the limitations of the choices made available to them. To examine such limitations, we also need to understand the relationship between investment and power.
1.2 Investment and power
One assumption in earlier theorizations of language learning was that learners were always able to choose the conditions of interaction with their L2 community. Their success or failure could be attributed to their efforts and strategies rather than external factors (Dickinson, Reference Dickinson1995), and through self-determination (Deci & Ryan, Reference Deci and Ryan2000), they were able to act with a sense of choice. We observed, for example, how Gardner and MacIntyre (Reference Gardner and MacIntyre1992) understood motivation as ‘determining’ whether an individual would engage in social interaction, and that the ‘voluntary nature’ (p. 213) of participation is what characterizes informal contexts. This capacity to choose and execute ‘goal-directed behavior’ is also highlighted in Dörnyei and Otto's (Reference Dörnyei and Otto1998) process model of L2 motivation where learners are able to move in a sequence: from goal setting to action and evaluation. The success of the learner in navigating these phases depends on their capacity for self-determination.
It is at this juncture that investment most visibly diverges from motivation: we recognize that learners are not always able to choose the conditions of interaction and that participating in different social contexts is not simply a matter of choice. The social world in which learners negotiate their identities is circumscribed by power. As learners navigate different communicative contexts, relations of power continually shift, and learners do not always get to determine whether they can enter and participate in these spaces. Gatekeepers such as native speakers, employers or testmakers have the power to impose linguistic norms and conventions and to determine conditions of entry. While learners can speak from multiple positions and perform diverse identities, they can also be positioned by these powerful others in ways that can limit their opportunities to speak and be heard. Because of this dynamic, investment, for us, cannot occur in a sequence. It is a perpetually shifting site of struggle where some voices are amplified, while others are silenced. To invest in their learning, learners need to continually negotiate their identity across different spaces in order to claim their right to speak, read and write an L2.
1.3 Investment and the legitimate speaker
For Bourdieu (Reference Bourdieu1977), the right to speak is concomitant with ‘the power to impose reception’ (p. 75). We distinguish this right from MacIntyre, Clement, Dörnyei, and Noels’ (Reference MacIntyre, Clement, Dörnyei and Noels1998) ‘willingness to communicate,’ which is accompanied by self-confidence and interpersonal motivation and indicates ‘a readiness to enter into discourse’ (p. 547). Investment, on the other hand, recognizes that even though one can be ready and willing to participate in L2 contexts, one can be refused entry into these spaces or positioned as inadequate. Learners do not claim the right to speak in a vacuum: this right can only be claimed through a negotiation of power, a reciprocity where ‘those who speak regard those who listen as worthy to listen and that those who listen regard those who speak as worthy to speak’ (Norton, Reference Norton2000, p. 113). This condition of worthiness is based on notions of legitimacy, and for learners to assert their place in different communicative contexts, they need to recognize themselves and be recognized by powerful others as legitimate speakers of an L2 (Darvin, Reference Darvin, Lamb, Csizer, Henry and Ryan2019).
To assert their legitimate place in these contexts, not only do learners need to learn linguistic norms and conventions, but they also have to understand how ‘the rules of the game’ (Bourdieu, Reference Bourdieu1990) are often arbitrary and constructed by those in power. Even when learners possess communicative competence in an L2, they can be still be excluded by others, positioned as inadequate, unworthy or illegitimate. To challenge this hegemonic relationship, a critical awareness of these rules of use can enable L2 speakers to deconstruct notions of legitimacy, to resist positioning themselves as inadequate or unworthy, and ultimately to claim their right to speak.
1.4 Social constructivist methods and language
Because investment draws attention to the socially constructed nature of language learning, a process contingent on the negotiation of identity, power and legitimacy, research in this area has been mostly carried out through qualitative approaches: case studies, narrative inquiry, ethnography and discourse analysis (Duff, Reference Duff2014; Norton & De Costa, Reference Norton and De Costa2018; Darvin, Reference Darvin, Phakiti, De Costa, Plonsky and Starfield2018). In contrast to motivation research, which has largely been conducted through quantitative methods involving surveys, questionnaires, large sample sizes and statistical interpretation, our research on investment pays particular attention to the utterances of participants as they describe their personal histories, language practices and imagined identities. Subscribing to the poststructuralist view that identity is constructed through language, we are primarily interested in interpreting how our participants articulate their lived experiences through narratives and interviews, and how they negotiate different relations of power. Following this paradigm, interviews tend to be semi-structured rather than fixed, and the questions posed in investment research are often open-ended. Rather than identifying and measuring ‘factors’ and ‘variables’ that determine a commitment to language learning, researchers of investment examine ‘conditions’ that foreground the situatedness of a communicative event. In addition to asking ‘what’, investment researchers ask ‘how’, ‘why’ and ‘to what extent’ certain conditions ‘shape’ the investment of an individual learner. This language signals how conditions shift across time and place, and how investment is dynamic and always a site of struggle. It is perhaps not incidental that in operationalizing these two constructs, researchers are more likely to say ‘motivated to learn’ and ‘invests in learning’. Motivation refers to an internal state that enables an action (‘to learn’) and involves understanding the factors that cause this state. Investment, on the other hand, refers to a choice to participate in a social practice (‘learning’) and involves understanding the material and symbolic context in which this choice is made.
2. Convergent ideas
In 1995, when Norton conceptualized investment as a response to cognitive and social psychological theorizations of motivation, L2 learning was often viewed as crucial to integration in target language communities. Moving from a country of origin, migrants needed to develop competence in speaking the official language in their country of settlement, and this movement across geographical boundaries was often regarded as unidirectional. In the 21st century, as globalization and technology accelerated the flow of goods, people, ideas and resources, conceptions of mobility have become more fluid, dynamic and multidirectional. Immigrant learners are recognized as transnationals (Lam & Warriner, Reference Lam and Warriner2012; Lam, Reference Lam2014) who are able to maintain ties with their country of origin and participate in multiple imagined communities. Ownership of the target language no longer rests with a specific community of ‘native speakers’, prompting a rethinking of the integrative notions of language learning. Motivation research also moved from cognitive perspectives to a greater focus on the contextual and dynamic aspects of motivation (Boo, Dörnyei, & Ryan, Reference Boo, Dörnyei and Ryan2015), and with this shift, it expanded into conceptual fields shared with investment. While there are various areas of convergence, we highlight three: identity, context and complexity.
2.1 Identity
In their edited volume, Motivation, language identity and the L2 self, Dörnyei and Ushioda (Reference Dörnyei and Ushioda2009) noted that L2 motivation was ‘in the process of being radically reconceptualised and retheorised in the context of contemporary notions of self and identity’ (p. 1). This paradigmatic shift was signalled by Dörnyei (Reference Dörnyei2005), several years before this volume, when he introduced the idea of possible selves as a component of the L2 Motivational Self System (L2MSS). In this framework, the ought-to L2 self refers to attributes one believes one should possess, while the ideal L2 self refers to attributes one would like to possess (Dörnyei, Reference Dörnyei2005). It is the latter, with its indication of hopes and aspirations, that is akin to Norton's (Reference Norton and Breen2001) ‘imagined identities’. The difference we would point out, however, is that while the ideal self is linked to the learner's imagination of self as a proficient user of the L2, imagined identities refers to a wider range of identity options (e.g. as a citizen, as a professional, as a writer, etc.) that are part of different ‘imagined communities’ (Kanno & Norton, Reference Kanno and Norton2003; Norton & Pavlenko, Reference Norton, Pavlenko and Gao2019).
While the self is regarded as a psychological entity in SLA, the integration of identity in motivation research is most evident in Ushioda's conceptualization of a ‘person-in-context relational view of emergent motivation’ (p. 215). She points out how motivation emerges from ‘relations between real persons, with particular social identities’ (Ushioda, Reference Ushioda, Dörnyei and Ushioda2009, p. 215) as they interact within specific cultural contexts. Not only does this view align closely with our own understanding of identity, but Ushioda also acknowledges that because of asymmetrical relations of power, identities ‘can become contested, resisted or denied’ (Ushioda, Reference Ushioda2011, p. 202), and that this dynamic can affect participation in the L2 setting. In recognizing the importance of identity, MacIntyre, MacKinnon, and Clément (Reference MacIntyre, MacKinnon, Clément, Dörnyei and Ushioda2009) called for an expanded study of motivation that includes ‘rich qualitative descriptions of learners’ interpretations of experience’ (p. 45), signaling an interest in more qualitative approaches to researching the motivation of ‘real persons’.
2.2 Context
Ushioda and Dörnyei (Reference Ushioda, Dörnyei, Gass and Mackey2012) noted that one shortcoming of the earlier process model of L2 motivation (Dörnyei & Otto, Reference Dörnyei and Otto1998) is the premise that the preactional, actional and postactional phases occurred in relative isolation. Since then, however, contextual paradigms have been introduced to analyze motivation, with Ushioda's (Reference Ushioda, Dörnyei and Ushioda2009) ‘person-in-context’ view of motivation underscoring the mutually constituted nature of individual and context. Dörnyei's (Reference Dörnyei2005) conceptualization of the L2MSS introduced the notion of the ‘L2 learning experience,’ which references the immediate learning environment and involves the impact of teachers, peer groups and curricula (Dörnyei, Reference Dörnyei, Dörnyei and Ushioda2009). The view that the learning experience involves both situated motives and attitudes towards classroom processes (Csizér, Reference Csizér, Lamb, Csizer, Henry and Ryan2019) aligns with our view that learners respond to the specific language and literacy practices of a classroom. Although for us context includes the meso-level of institutions and communities and the macro-level of ideological structures, motivation research acknowledged the importance of the L2 learning experience. Through the L2MSS, motivation research extended to understandings of differences in metropolitan, urban and rural settings (Lamb, Reference Lamb2012), socioeconomic factors (Kormos & Kiddle, Reference Kormos and Kiddle2013), and the impact of parents and teachers (Csizér & Galántai, Reference Csizér, Galántai and Németh2012), all of which align with our understanding of context.
2.3 Complexity
While earlier research in motivation had assumed that individual differences are relatively stable, Dörnyei's (Reference Dörnyei, Dörnyei and Ushioda2009) conception of motivational currents in language learning recognized that these differences fluctuate and are subject to contextual temporal variation, that is, in the same way that Norton (Reference Norton2000) understood that investment shifts ‘across space and time.’ By paying attention to these shifts, the complex dynamics systems approach (Dörnyei, MacIntyre, & Henry, Reference Dörnyei, MacIntyre and Henry2015) positions motivation as ‘less a trait than a fluid play’ (Ellis & Larsen-Freeman, Reference Ellis and Larsen-Freeman2006, p. 563) and a process that ‘illuminate[s] changes in L2 learners as they adapt to an ever-changing environment (Dörnyei et al., Reference Dörnyei, MacIntyre and Henry2015, p. 288). Recognizing that motivation involves continuous adaptation aligns with Norton's (Reference Norton2013) assertion that investment is ‘complex, contradictory and in a state of flux’ (p. 51).
By integrating notions of identity, context and complexity, motivation research demonstrated how its central construct was no longer the stable trait or personal attribute characteristic of the 1990s, but a situationally dependent process and a state that is transitory and temporary (Dörnyei, Reference Dörnyei2020). In acknowledging this situatedness, motivation shares with investment researchers a recognition of the plurality and complexity of today's world. Concomitant with this shift, we have also seen an increasing interest in qualitative approaches to researching identity and the self, a trend noted by Kostoulas and Mercer (Reference Kostoulas and Mercer2016). In a survey of 15 years of research on self and identity in the journal System, beginning in the year Norton's (Reference Norton2000) book was published, the authors noted how this ‘increasing openness to qualitative work’ (p. 130) complements the move towards a more complex and dynamic view of these constructs.
3. Evolving distinctions
While investment and motivation researchers today may share more convergent perspectives of identity, context and complexity, we contend that their epistemological lenses remain distinct. Motivation focuses on cognition and affect to understand learner differences, while investment focuses on issues of identity and power; for motivation researchers, the focus of the gaze is thinking and feeling—the inner world of the learner; for investment researchers, it is being and relating—the learner who is in the social world.
Because their vantage points and foci are different, investment and motivation researchers use not only different methodological tools, but also different language to describe the realities these tools reveal. In 2015, when we developed our model of investment (see Figure 1), what we saw was a social world transformed by advancements in technology (Darvin & Norton, Reference Darvin and Norton2015). The convergence of speech and writing and the constant evolution of multimodal affordances on apps and platforms have necessitated the development of continually evolving digital literacies. Through the affordances of social media and high-speed connectivity, learners move seamlessly across online and offline spaces, engaging with diverse people and practices. To participate agentively in these spaces, learners draw on their linguistic and semiotic repertoires to communicate in new, creative ways and to perform an even wider range of identities. As they move across these unbounded spaces with greater fluidity, learners need to develop a communicative competence that enables them to negotiate diverse sets of communicative norms and conventions (Blommaert, Reference Blommaert2013).
Figure 1. Darvin and Norton's (Reference Darvin and Norton2015) model of identity and investment. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, Cambridge University Press
In online spaces governed by competing and colluding value systems, learners engage with human and non-human interactants and are positioned in new and often invisible ways (Pennycook, Reference Pennycook2018; Toohey, Reference Toohey2019). Access to devices, paywalls, online gatekeepers and social media influencers determine entry into online communities and corresponding conditions of participation. The designs, sociotechnical structures and algorithms of digital platforms also have the capacity to program sociality (Bucher, Reference Bucher2018), construct filter bubbles (Pariser, Reference Pariser2011) and determine new modes of exclusion (Darvin, Reference Darvin2017, Reference Darvin, Lamb, Csizer, Henry and Ryan2019). These constraints highlight the paradox of the discourses of globalization and technology, that is, that despite increased mobility and connectivity, new forms of control and social fragmentation have emerged (Duchêne, Moyer, & Roberts, Reference Duchêne, Moyer and Roberts2013), and the world has become increasingly polarized. We contend that the notion of fluidity, represented by metaphors of flows and currents, can in fact conceal inequalities. As online and offline worlds continue to merge, we need the tools to examine the mechanisms of power that reproduce these inequalities and that operate in more invisible ways (Jones, Reference Jones2017, Reference Jones2019). It is precisely this impetus that drove us to locate investment at the nexus of identity, capital and ideology. We argue that it is capital and ideology that capture the foundational difference between investment and motivation, and that while current motivation research does address identity, the ways in which identity is understood and operationalized by these two research areas are still distinct.
3.1 Capital
Capital is power, and it is precisely this focus on power that we argue still incontrovertibly distinguishes investment from motivation. By examining how power operates in contexts of language learning, investment as a sociological construct aligns itself with critical theory and recognizes not only learner ‘differences’, but also learner ‘inequalities’. Drawing on Bourdieu (Reference Bourdieu1990), we use capital to recognize that power exists in different forms: from the economic to the cultural and social. What we own, what we know and who we know—all these are resources that constitute our position in the social world. How these resources are perceived and recognized as legitimate and valuable by those in power is what makes them symbolic capital (Bourdieu, Reference Bourdieu1987). To communicate and learn an L2, learners need to draw on their linguistic, semiotic, cultural, social and material resources, and the extent to which teachers are able to recognize, value and mobilize these resources is what empowers learners (Darvin, Reference Darvin2015). In this case, power/capital is understood not as exclusive to a particular group of people but as something distributed across the social world, although in uneven ways. It structures the world, but also enables agentive opportunities. While some learners may not possess the economic resources to gain access to elite learning institutions or high-cost digital devices, they can still draw on their linguistic and semiotic resources to participate in online spaces and expand their social networks. As they negotiate their resources, learners invest in L2 learning not only for instrumental gain (i.e. to find meaningful employment, to get good grades), but to realize the identities, relationships and communities they have imagined and desired for themselves.
3.2 Ideology
In a chapter in Lamb et al.'s (Reference Lamb, Csizer, Henry and Ryan2019) recent handbook on motivation, Yim, Clément, and MacIntyre (Reference Yim, Clément, MacIntyre, Lamb, Csizer, Henry and Ryan2019) refer to national and language ideologies that impact state language policies and practices of language integration or assimilation. Our conception of ideologies as a component of investment is not limited, however, to the parameters of language or governance, that is, ‘pluralism ideology’ or ‘assimilation ideology’. For us, ideologies are ways of thinking that dominate particular social groups or entities and that constitute their practices. By identifying how practices should be regarded or undertaken, ideologies can organize and stabilize groups and entities, but also determine modes of inclusion and exclusion. Racist ideologies, for instance, are what unites white supremacist groups and shapes prejudiced behaviour (Anya, Reference Anya2017). Neoliberal ideologies that value the logic of the market and the self as entrepreneur (Foucault, Reference Foucault and Burchell2008) shape the way businesses, governments and educational institutions are managed. Embedded in the sociotechnical structures and the algorithms of social media platforms designed by software engineers are ideologies of quantification and proceduralization. This broader understanding of ideologies is critical to the construct of investment because it recognizes that as L2 learners navigate different social spaces, there are dominant ways of thinking that circumscribe these spaces and that shape the way learners and their resources are positioned. These ideologies shape not only language and literacy practices, but broader social practices that can privilege or marginalize learners and impact their capacity to speak and be heard. Recognizing these power dynamics, we examine ideology not only in terms of how power dynamics determine language policies or curricula, but how social practices in different learning contexts are indexical of particular ideologies.
3.3 Identity
As we discussed earlier, while motivation research has integrated self/identity perspectives and advanced a ‘person-in-context’ view (Ushioda, Reference Ushioda, Dörnyei and Ushioda2009), we would argue that two critical differences remain in the way we operationalize identity as a component of investment.
First, we examine identity particularly to understand how inscriptions of identity such as race, ethnicity, gender, social class and sexual orientation shape the way learners and their resources/capital are positioned in different social spaces. In this regard, our goal is not to explain these categories as factors or to find patterns of behaviour within categories, nor do we attempt to establish causal relations between social groups and learning outcomes. Instead, we attempt to understand the way these inscriptions of identity can shape how learners navigate diverse social contexts, relations and practices, and how learners can be privileged or marginalized by virtue of their identity; for example, as Black, Latinx, woman, working class, gay or straight. These notions extend to our own understanding of language teaching as identity work and draw attention to how teachers bring their own linguistic and personal histories to the classroom. As they negotiate their identities in institutional contexts, teachers themselves can be positioned as ‘native speakers’ or ‘non-native speakers’, occupying different levels of legitimacy (De Costa & Norton, Reference De Costa and Norton2017; Norton & De Costa, Reference Norton and De Costa2018).
Second, we view identity as not only person-in-context, but also history-in-person (or context-in-person), in the spirit of Bourdieu's (Reference Bourdieu1984) notion of habitus, which recognizes how our perceptions of who we are and how to behave are ‘socially acquired’ (p. 17). In this sense, by growing up in specific contexts and being exposed to specific ideologies and practices, learners and teachers internalize these ways of thinking and doing, thereby forming specific dispositions that frame the way they make sense of the world (Darvin, Reference Darvin2017). This notion has some resonance with Dörnyei's (Reference Dörnyei, Dörnyei and Ushioda2009) conception of ‘ought-to self,’ which recognizes one's sense of duty, in the same way that this disposition can ‘predispose’ a learner to conform with perceived norms or expectations. We highlight disposition here as ways of thinking that are sedimented through time and become ‘common sense’. Disposition may shape a learner's imagination, but at the same time, it can be challenged by imagination. It is because of this dynamic that identity remains a site of struggle and that investment serves as a theoretical arena where researchers can examine the conflict between structure and agency.
4. Towards the future
In operationalizing the terms ‘investment’ and ‘capital’, we have seen how it can sometimes be misinterpreted in ways that reduce these ideas to the transactional; for example, ‘cost-benefit assessment’ or ‘return on investment.’ By portraying learners as ‘entrepreneurs’ who only invest in learning to ‘gain profit’, this reductive usage, however, indexes a neoliberal logic that runs contrary to the theoretical underpinnings of investment in language learning. While Bourdieu (Reference Bourdieu1977) himself discusses ‘the economics of linguistic exchanges’ and ‘the linguistic market’, it is important to note that the goal of using these constructs is to draw attention to how language operates within a political economy and how communication is circumscribed by power. Hence, the intention is not to assume that the laws of economics or the dynamics of demand and supply are what motivates learners to learn a language. Rather, the term ‘investment’ accentuates how in the social world learners with diverse identities and unequal access to resources are positioned in different ways. It is for this reason that we invite teachers to reflect critically on their own worldviews and the extent to which they recognize the diverse resources and the unequal lived realities of learners (Darvin, Reference Darvin2015). By acknowledging their privileged position in the classroom, we invite teachers to think about the extent to which they are ready to renegotiate their power and to construct a space that encourages investment in the learning practices of their classrooms (Darvin, Reference Darvin2020).
Indeed, for learners to claim a legitimate place in different learning contexts, they may need to reframe their identities and their resources so that they can claim the right to speak and be heard. Inscribed by critical theory, investment not only describes diverse contexts and learner differences, but seeks to make visible the inequality that lies beneath the mantle of diversity and difference (cf. Bhabha, Reference Bhabha2004). Learners, by virtue of their race, ethnicity, gender, social class, sexual orientation and other inscriptions of identity, experience the world in unequal ways. Aligned with the goals of critical applied linguistics, investment is a tool that enables us to probe these inequalities and to challenge the dominant ideologies that perpetuate these inequalities. Herein lies perhaps the main distinction between investment and motivation.
By tracing the paths of convergence and divergence of investment and motivation, it is evident that these constructs are conceptually distinct and that they offer different, but complementary answers to the question of why individuals commit to learning an L2. While they are conceptually imbricated and have sometimes been conflated, we assert that they are not substitutes for each other and neither is one subsumed by the other. They are two different lenses that focus on the same phenomenon, and together, they provide a bifocality that enables us to draw conclusions about the cognitive, psychological and sociocultural processes of language learning. As investment and motivation research continues to unfold in new and exciting ways, these two constructs continue to complement and enrich each other (Clément & Norton, Reference Clément and Norton2021). The call for greater transdisciplinarity (Douglas Fir Group, 2016) challenges us to think further of opportunities to integrate these lenses in more comprehensive theoretical frameworks. Learners are complex beings shaped by dispositions and desires, performing diverse selves and identities, while negotiating differences and inequalities. Investment and motivation offer different pieces to the complex puzzle that is the language learner, and while the picture is never static, these two constructs enable us to gain a broader understanding of what it means to learn languages in a changing social world.
Ron Darvin is an Assistant Professor in Applied Linguistics at The Chinese University of Hong Kong SAR, China. His research on language learning focuses on issues of identity, investment and technology, and he is the recipient of the 2017 Emerging Scholar Award of the Language and Social Processes SIG of the American Educational Research Association (AERA).
Bonny Norton (FRSC) is a University Killam Professor in the Department of Language and Literacy Education, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada. Her current research interests are identity, language learning and open technology. She leads the Global Storybooks project (https://globalstorybooks.net/) and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and the American Educational Research Association.
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