Why Class Matters

Identity Construction and Privilege in Second Language Acquisition

Sandra Bruce, MA Student University of New Mexico May 6, 2014 Advisor: Dr. Pisarn Bee Chamcharatsri

DRAFT

1

Abstract: Comparing ten published studies of immigrants in North America and study-abroad students traveling

elsewhere to learn a language, this paper argues that social class plays a significant role in one’s identity formation

and greatly impacts how and if one will acquire an L2 based on their socioeconomic status. I look at how class

impacts classroom participation and access to communities of practice, and how imagined communities and possible

selves impact the language learning process. I provide an overview of social identities and social class. I highlight

how linguistic features such as accent and code-switching mark our social class and contribute to an inability to

move beyond this social marker. Based on my findings, I conclude that social class privilege – or the lack of it –

impacts the learning practices of students, impairs or enhances affective factors such as confidence, and determines

whether one can afford L2 classes and/or the transportation and childcare costs involved. I call for three things: 1)

L2 educators need to pay attention to social class as an identity marker; 2) L2 educators must cultivate an awareness

around their own social class positioning and how their roles in this world impact others; and 3) More SLA research

should focus on social class as it relates to identity, with particular attention placed on the Hispanic population found

in the US.

Keywords: Social Class, Second Language Acquisition, SLA, L2 Acquisition, Identity Construction, Privilege in

SLA

We not only produce our identities through the practices we engage in, but we also define

ourselves through the practices we do not engage in. Our identities are constituted not only by

what we are but also by what we are not. To the extent that we can come in contact with other

ways of being, what we are not can even become a large part of how we define ourselves.

(Wenger, 1998, p. 164)

Within transnationalism there is inequality and there is little doubt that the experiences of

unskilled labour migrants differ markedly from the experiences of middle class migrants.

(Block, 2007a, p. 188)

Introduction

Seven years ago, second language acquisition (SLA) scholar David Block (2007b) called

for further research to include social class when addressing issues of identity and language

learning practices. Gao (2011) more recently argued that, “Since the ability to study English

abroad is often a function of income, the issue of social class ought to be one of the central

concerns of second language learning scholars, but in fact it has been seldom discussed either in

second language learning literature or in study abroad literature” (p. 65). And Collins (2006),

while presenting at the University of Pennsylvania, implored that a broader incorporation of what

he called the “proverbial elephant in the room” (p. 4), social class, should be included in identity

construction and language learning analysis. Class, he argued, fundamentally impacts our social

2

connections, our perceptions of ourselves, how we relate to the world, and the access we do or

don’t have to societal resources. Furthermore, class impacts how we view our future possibilities

(Norton & McKinney, 2011), imagined communities (Anderson, 1991), and possible selves

(Markus & Nurius, 1987). Language learners that already have economic, social, and cultural

capital (Bourdieu, 1986) in their first language (L1) are at a greater advantage to acquire a

second language (L2) than those that are displaced, impoverished, illiterate in their L1, or

otherwise don’t have access to the capital that offers them the resources and opportunities to

develop an L2.

Class also plays a role around the issue of language stigma in SLA. For instance, Urciuoli

(1996) and Collins (2006) recognize that within low- and working-class social contexts,

particularly as it relates to immigrant populations, L2 learning is viewed as a problem, and there

is often shame, or at least a subtle discomfort, when moving between languages. Urciuoli (1996)

demonstrates this amongst the working-class Puerto Rican community she interacts with, where

social power dynamics are a fundamental part of the way these bilinguals move through the

world. When these community members are interacting with each other, the Spanish-English

code boundaries fade into a familiar, comfortable mix, but when they are interacting with or

amongst lawyers, doctors, teachers, or bosses, they take the responsibility of keeping their

English “orderly” (free of code-switching) and their Spanish out of earshot (p. 77). However, in

middle- and upper- class milieus, bilingualism is considered a mark of distinction, reflecting a

high level of intelligence and serving as a ticket to a deeply cultured life.

Why is this the case? Why is it that a bilingual child learning an L2 from a European

nanny rather than from a community of native speakers while working, playing, learning, and

socializing in a multi-generational context is considered superior to the lingual abilities of an

3

immigrant? What does the role of class and access have to do with this perspective? What are the

messages that these two very different but equally bilingual speakers receive from the

communities, societies, and institutions they interact with on a daily basis? Class status and

cultural positioning and prejudices play a significant role in this perspective. As the global

economy takes an ever firmer grip on the twenty-first century, applied linguists and social

scientists need to consider these questions and the role class plays in identities in a serious way

in order to make sense of the social realities on today’s world.

This paper compares studies of both immigrants coming to North America and study-

abroad students traveling elsewhere to learn a language to explore the role of class conditions

and class identities in language learning practices. I will look at how class impacts classroom

participation and access to communities of practice (Wenger, 1998), and how imagined

communities and possible selves impact the language learning process. I will begin with an

overview of social identities and social class. It is my hope that this paper will help contribute to

the dearth of literature in SLA that incorporates class as a viable part of identity construction,

and will open up the possibilities for further research in this area.

Social Identities in Language Learning: An Overview

As I noted in an earlier work (Bruce, n.d., unpublished), throughout the twentieth

century, linguists took the position that SLA relied heavily on cognitive factors, mental

processes, and general learning mechanisms using memory and knowledge of the first language.

We saw a shift take place in the 1990s within SLA theoretical circles whereby applied linguists

(Cummins, 1994; Norton Peirce, 1995; Wenger, 1998) began to posit that sociocultural factors

such as social interaction and context were crucial factors in SLA. Social constructivists

(Cummins, 1994, 2001, 2007; Kinginger, 2004; Norton & McKinney, 2011; Norton and

4

Pavlenko, 2007; Pavlenko, 1997; Pavlenko & Blackledge, 2004; Ricento, 2005; Wenger, 1998)

also argued that situations and communities are the most prevalent way second language learning

can develop efficiently and confidently. Ricento (2005) went so far as to boldly state that

“theories and research in SLA that do not take into full account the social aspect of language

learning and use cannot be taken seriously” (p. 899).

Today, within the framework of postructuralism, identity has found a home in SLA

theories, with some scholars (Block, 2006, 2007a, 2007b, 2012, 2014; Cummins, 1994, 2001,

2007; Kinginger, 2004; Norton & McKinney, 2011; Pavlenko, 1997, 2001; Pavlenko &

Blackledge, 2004; Ricento, 2005; Wenger, 1998) arguing that identity within the larger social

world plays a key role in not only how but also if a learner will acquire a language other than

their native tongue. This social perspective in SLA has resulted is burgeoning research and

literature positing that personal identity as it relates to social context cannot be ignored when

considering how a second language is acquired.

In her influential work on identity construction and SLA, Norton Peirce (1995), who is

viewed to have firmly placed social identity within the theoretical conversations of SLA,

proposed that language learning is highly contingent on the power relations that take place in

social interactions between language learners and target language speakers. She asserted that

“power relations play a crucial role in social interactions between language learners and target

language speakers” (p. 12). She argued that all people have complex social identities which

determine “how a person understands his or her relationship to the world, how that relationship is

constructed across time and space, and how the person understands possibilities about the future”

(Norton and McKinney, 2011, p. 73). Identities, she argued, are often situated in “inequitable

social structures which are reproduced in day-to-day social interaction” (Peirce, 1995, p. 13). She

5

goes on to state that it is through language that learners negotiate a sense of self and gain access

to (or are denied) the social networks that provide opportunities to speak and therefore develop

in their language skills. Personal identities include such aspects as gender, ethnicity, age, sexual

orientation, religion, and a myriad of other “selves” that individuals present to the world and use

as a foundation for social interaction. As the research of social identity within the field of SLA

has multiplied over the last two decades, the role of class, which is pervasive in how we move

through the world, is mysteriously missing in this literature. Why is class an important

consideration when assessing social identities, particularly when it comes to SLA?

Class as it Impacts Our Social Identity

To answer this question, we must first turn to the theoretical underpinnings of social class

as we’ve known it since the mid-1800s. It is nearly impossible to have a discussion about class

and classism without calling upon the work of the 19th

century philosophers Karl Marx and

Frederick Engels. In very simple terms, Marx and Engels believed that class structure, as

characterized through the lens of capitalism, has two main tenets: the bourgeoisie, or those that

own the means of production (land, material goods, factories, machinery, etc.), and the

proletariat, or the workers who must sell their own labor as a source of income (Marx & Engels,

1848, pp. 14-15). This division between those who labor and those who own, they argued, could

be seen in work conditions across the world and is so culturally entrenched that it is considered a

normal and civilized human condition:

In the earlier epochs of history, we find almost everywhere a complicated

arrangement of society into various orders, a manifold gradation of social rank.

In ancient Rome we have patricians, knights, plebeians, slaves; in the Middle

Ages, feudal lords, vassals, guild-masters, journeymen, apprentices, serfs; in

almost all of these classes, again, subordinate gradations. The modern bourgeois

society that has sprouted from the ruins of feudal society has not done away with

class antagonisms. It has but established new classes, new conditions of

6

oppression, new forms of struggle in place of the old ones.

(Marx & Engels, 1848, p. 14)

The social relationships that are born out of the dichotomy of those who control production and

those who produce have much influence on the everyday lives of all people. The workers rely on

those who control production and have access to resources for nearly all aspects of their survival:

an income to buy goods and services needed for physical sustenance; a place to feel productive

and carry on a meaningful life; and a community of coworkers to share the day-to-day successes

and struggles of life with. There is a lot at stake for the worker in this relationship, because those

in positions of power do not look to the workers to have the same needs met. Within this

economic structure of society, according to Marxism, social relationships and human action are

constrained at the same time that the condition for collective consciousness and identity is

generated (Mackintosh & Mooney, 2004).

Expanding on the work of Marx and Engels, sociologist Max Weber believed that there

was more responsibility to be placed on the individual. According to Mackintosh and Mooney

(2004), unlike Marxists, who argued that class relationships were born from exploitative

relations of those who controlled production, Weber saw the roots of class stratification being

born when individuals with common backgrounds, aims, or interests came together to

strategically position themselves for income-earning opportunities through work and trade.

These collective gatherings of like-minded people made individuals either more powerful or

more vulnerable, with the more powerful pooling their resources together to “enjoy better ‘life

chances’ . . . opportunities for education, health, housing, employment, and levels of income”

(Mackintosh and Mooney, 2004, p. 100). Weber also made distinctions between “class” and

“status,” claiming that the stratification of classes is based on the relationship of the production

and acquisition of goods, whereas the stratification of status signifies the consumption of goods

7

based on lifestyle choices that reflect prestige or honor. Status, or social standing, then, relies on

a subjective evaluation of social differences (p. 100).

The construction of class in America has, to be sure, changed over the centuries, and is

not necessarily a straightforward and immediately identifiable social marker. The decline of the

industrial revolution and the shepherding in of the twentieth century saw a rise in the merchant

class, where autonomy and access to middle-class incomes redistributed wealth to a certain

extent, thus stabilizing the myth that class did not exist. Today, material inequalities are

returning to the less balanced and more stratified state they were during the first half of the

twentieth century. Many Americans are uncomfortable with the reality that class privilege is

prevalent and powerful in its effects on people’s lives in its own right, and even more so when

working in conjunction with other social identities such as race, gender, and sexual orientation

(Vandrick, 2009). Hooks (2000) asserts, “Nowadays it is fashionable to talk about race or

gender; the uncool subject is class. . . . As a nation we are afraid to have a dialogue about class

even though the ever-widening gap between rich and poor has already set the stage for ongoing

and sustained class warfare” (p. vii). In a similar tone, Chordas (1992) points out that class is

glossed over in all classrooms, from elementary school through college. . . . This

blindness derives partly from our persistence in thinking of ourselves as a

classless society. The adjective has become a badge we wear with pride; it proves

the equalitarian, democratic nature of our society. . . . if everyone in the open

classroom is equal, then problems like class distinction and asymmetries in

distribution of wealth don’t exist; and if they aren’t present in the classroom, they

don’t need to be recognized and dealt with. (Chordas, 1992, pp. 217-18)

While the term “class” in the US may be almost exclusively associated with a national

socio-economic hierarchy, Britain has historically had a far more complex notion of social class,

whereby many aspects of a person’s life flags where they sit on the class spectrum: family

background, main source of income, cultural tastes, and political associations, to name a few

8

(Rampton et al., 2008, p. 72). As we saw above, this runs along the lines of Weber’s assessment

of “status” dating back to the late 1800s. Bourdieu (1986) suggests that class is inextricably

linked to capital. Capital is

accumulated labor (in its materialized form or its ‘incorporated,’ embodied form)

which, when appropriated on a private, i.e., exclusive, basis by agents or groups

of agents, enables them to appropriate social energy in the form of reified or

living labor. (Bourdieu, 1986, p. 241)

In other words, material goods such as cars, boats, homes, summer vacations (“materialized

forms”), or knowledge, skills, access to certain institutions or people (“incorporated, embodied

forms”) are the principles underlying the social world, and these things take time to accumulate.

Those with either material goods and/or knowledge and skills have unchallenged access to

resources (“appropriated social energy”). Bourdieu refers to such forms of capital as economic,

social, cultural and symbolic capital, and posits that the more capital one has the more one will

profit from it, and with profit comes reproduction of more or different kinds of capital. The

implication is that the accumulation of capital happens over time but only to those who already

have or can gain some small amount of capital to “get the ball rolling.” This explains Rampton et

al’s. (2008) suggestion that class incorporates more than just how much money you have or

make. As Gao (2011) astutely puts it, it’s a “combination of having the resources and knowing

how to use the resources to establish the social class identity” (p. 67).

The above explanation of class and capital helps us understand how class becomes a

fundamental part of our social identity: it involves how much money we have and have access to,

what we own in relationship to what our neighbors own, how much education we have and

where we acquired that education, and who we know and have access to knowing. It is not

unusual in the US when two strangers are introduced to each other that the first thing asked is

9

“What do you do?” This question offers an immediate reference point to a person’s occupation

and their identity, allowing us to categorize how much money the person makes (economic

capital), what type of colleagues they have (social capital), how much education they have

obtained (cultural capital), and how much recognition and honor they may have in their

community (symbolic capital).

Many argue that the late 20th

century ideology of class and class identity has deteriorated

in both the US and the UK is a great myth at best, and mental manipulation at worst (Collins,

2006; hooks, 2000; Mackintosh and Mooney, 2004; Rampton et al., 2008; Vandrick, 2009;

Block, 2012). Collins (2006) suggests that class is a process which can be changed over time.

This was certainly the case for bell hooks and many other working-class students who were

admitted into middle-class ranks through good grades and scholarships, earning PhDs and going

on to teach at affluent colleges and universities with tenured positions. From a poststructuralist

perspective, class is unfixed, dynamic, subjective, and temporary. But class as a social construct

gets positioned in relation to each of us through social practices and discourse (Kubota, 2003),

and we position and are positioned throughout society based on our class.

Vandrick (2009), for example, discusses a situation she observed where class markers

influenced the faculty and administrators of an institution of higher education to not hire an

applicant who, in the eyes of Vandrick, was the most qualified, but appeared not to fit into the

culture of the institution. Vandrick’s reading of the situation was that class was the misfit, and

she regretfully admits, “I believe this type of decision occurs more often than we would like to

think” (p. 9). This shows that, even in an institution where people are educated and consciously

pay attention to social constructs such as class, race, and gender, social class identities are

reinforced from context to context and people are never totally free of the identity positioning

10

that takes place. This is particularly true in the context of SLA. I will now turn to the power of

imagined communities and possible selves and how these can impact the trajectory of our lives.

SLA Theoretical Frameworks:

Imagined Communities, Possible Selves, and Communities of Practice

As we have seen from the above discussion, it is not necessarily impossible to rise out of

the class position we inherited at birth, and one way of doing this is through the power of

imagination. As Norton and McKinney (2011) remind us, in real and tangible ways, we connect

with different people in different communities every day (at work, in the neighborhood, in

religious organizations, in school, etc.), and these communities inform and shape our personal

identity. In his seminal work on nation-states and nationalism, Anderson’s (1991) concept of

imagined communities draws on the notion that what we think of as nations are communities we

view ourselves connected to, whether we actually know members of this community in an

immediately accessible way or not. An example by which he explains this is through the advent

of the printing press: the outreach of the printed word, which was now capable of traveling far

distances and impacting people different communities, allowed people to connect with each

other even though these people had never met. This, he argued, was how nation-states were able

to form and become strong entities: people in remote areas within national boundaries were able

to “commune” with each other and develop a sense of belonging. (For a look at how membership

in imagined communities impacts languages and identities in the linguistic marketplace, see

Norton and Pavlenko, 2007.)

Wenger (1998) took this perspective further by developing a framework that included

imagination and situated learning. He claimed that we also have the potential to connect with

people we want to be connected to, or we imagine we could be connected to, which results in

11

imagining new possibilities for self-hood, our identity, and our futures. Language learning

requires people to listen to and speak with, and Wenger argues that all learning requires

communities of practice in order to develop any given skill. To be sure, one cannot learn a

language without a responsive community of speakers that provides supportive opportunities of

engagement. But membership into these communities of practice requires us to first imagining

that we are, or at some foreseeable point will be, part of these communities. As Wenger puts it,

one must use imagination to develop a picture of broader social connections: “Imagination in this

sense is looking at an apple seed and seeing a tree” (p. 176).

This is similar to the theoretical work of Markus and Nurius (1986), who refer to this

imagining as “possible selves.” According to this theory, possible selves are the ideas people

have about “what they might become, what they would like to become, and what they are afraid

of becoming” (p. 954). Dörnyei (2009) highlights the concept of the “ideal self,” which refers to

“attributes that one would ideally like to possess (i.e. representation of personal hopes,

aspirations or wishes)” (p.13). Ushioda and Dörnyei (2009) bring this to the context of language

learning by explaining,

A basic hypothesis is that if proficiency in the target language is part and parcel

of one’s ideal or ought-to self, this will serve as a powerful motivator to learn the

language because of our psychological desire to reduce the discrepancy between

our current and possible future selves.

(Ushioda and Dörnyei’s, 2009, p. 4)

This imagined sense of self, then, is necessary for the reinvention or the evolution of the self.

Imagining future connections or relationships is a key element in language learning, because it

serves as a source of motivation to develop the social capital needed to gain access to language

communities that will help us develop in acquisition, transform our personal identity, and expand

12

our future possibilities. The following study, then, is anchored in the theoretical concepts of

imagined communities, possible selves, and communities of practice.

The Methodology of Ethnography

As social scientists, how does one go about measuring something as intimate, complex,

and ever-changing as identity? This was indeed a legitimate question in the early days of

research as applied linguists started to take the study of SLA in new directions to include

identity, power dynamics, and social relations. Because there is no particular moment in time

when identity is fixed, and personal experience is at times difficult to make sense of, data

collection must be approached taking this into consideration. Since the early 1990s, social

scientists in general have embraced qualitative research designs that allow scholars to investigate

social relationships. It is now the accepted norm to approach SLA research that looks at language

learners and the context in which learning takes place through methodologies that include

personal narrative, ethnography, autobiography, and fieldwork. In fact, Pavlenko (2001) asserts,

“It is possible that only personal narratives provide a glimpse into areas so private, personal, and

intimate that they are rarely – if ever – breached in the study of SLA, and at the same time are at

the heart and soul of the second language socialization process” (p. 167). This type of data

collection requires researchers to construct, share, analyze, and interpret personal information,

embodying the inner thoughts, emotions, ideas, attitudes, and expectations in the immediate

psychological context of the participants while considering an arrangement of variables. It also

demands reflection, introspection, and interrogation. Through these investigative methods,

researchers can gain an understanding of the language learning and socialization process.

Qualitative research on SLA and identity, however, is not without its pitfalls. Kinginger

(2004) reminds us that only two decades ago, personal stories in language learning research were

13

received as suspicious, incomplete, biased, and unreliable, yielding results that can defy

generalizations. Norton and McKinney (2011) agree that ethnographic or personal narratives can

emerge as “messy” collections of data that do not fit neatly into theoretical paradigms or abstract

analysis (p. 83). Furthermore, they caution that researchers need to view with skepticism such

deeply held categories as gender, class, race, ethnicity, identity, community, power, and

knowledge, as such categories are contingent on what point of view is being projected. No

research can claim to be objective or unbiased, and the responsible researcher is always aware of

their own experience and knowledge as they draw up conclusions on sets of data. Spack (1997)

points out that “when teachers and researchers exercise the power to identify, we actually may be

imposing an ethnocentric ideology and inadvertently supporting the essentializing discourse that

represents cultural groups as stable or homogenous entities” (cited in Ricento, 2005, p. 905). In

addition, as Ricento (2005) astutely points out, methods such as questionnaires, surveys,

observations, and interviews are typically a one-time occurrence, which captures a participant in

one moment in time. This defies the notion that identity is dynamic and never frozen in time for

inspection, and does not offer a composite picture of the whole experience.

To complicate matters further, some SLA researchers are working with a low- or mid-

level of proficiency in their participant’s L1, such as Urciuoli (1996) as she conducts research on

a Puerto Rican community in New York City. With regard to her Spanish, which she began

acquiring as a college graduate in Puerto Rico, she remarks that, some years later while

conducting her research for the present book, one of her participants quipped, “Say it in English.

I didn’t understand a word you said” (p. 74). She also tells of another participant making “a point

of correcting my errors and exhorting me to practice” (p. 74). This raises the question of

14

linguistic accuracy and sociocultural nuance that may be missed, ignored, or too subtle to access

for lower-level users of the participant’s L1.

Some researchers work around this issue by employing an interpreter, as is the case with

Goldstein (2001). Multiple layers of complexity present themselves when using an interpreter.

For example, Goldstein, as referring to the work of Kouritzin’s (2000), points out that

interpreters can create participant distance in an interview, issues of trust and privacy can be

diminished in an interview, and affective dimensions of speech may be eliminated (p. 81).

I do not disagree with any of these cautionary points. However, in a discipline where we

are addressing the very issues of power, identity negotiation, and language development, it seems

appropriate that we consider the approach we take in data collection, and I echo Ricoeur’s (1998)

question, “‘Who’ is to tell the story of a life?” (cited in Pavlenko and Blackledge, 2004, p. 19). I

acknowledge that researchers can never know exactly what a participant feels, experiences, or

perceives, and it is even true that, given the complex inner workings of the psyche, perhaps even

a participant may not know exactly what he or she is feeling, experiencing, or perceiving. I am

convinced, though, that first person narratives and a collaborative relationship between

researcher and participant continue to offer the richest and most authentic sources of data, which

helps us begin to tease apart the complexity of social interactions, identity negotiation, and SLA.

The role of a linguistic and cultural interpreter allows us access to the necessary background

knowledge of participant’s experiences (Goldstein, 2000). Many participants who agree to a

research study are excited to have themselves be heard. If we do not get into the minds of those

who are most affected by power relations and identity development through interviewing

techniques, then we cannot tell their stories authentically and are only making assumptions and

15

hypotheses, which remain in the realm of theory. Therefore, the case studies that I highlight

below all take an ethnographic approach in their data collection and analysis.

Social Class Identities in Study-Abroad Students

According to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), in

2009 almost 3.7 million students worldwide were enrolled in colleges or universities outside

their country of citizenship. Responding to trends as a direct result of globalization and

international free markets, study-abroad programs within colleges and universities around the

world have become highly desirable to both students and higher education institutions. For

students, honing academic language skills, gaining exposure to a different culture, and having a

leg up in global mobility are all reasons that studying abroad is an attractive component to their

college education (Vandrick, 2011). For higher education institutions, bringing international

students to their campuses increases their prestige as a diverse and well-respected place for

study. As Jenkins (2013) critically observes, the high-fee-paying international student is seen as

a sort of cash cow to the ever-increasing market-driven and commodification mindset of the

higher education industry (p. 3). This point is relevant when looking at the intersection of study-

abroad students, language learning, and social class.

In a four-year longitudinal study on a working-class American woman studying abroad in

France, Kinginger (2004) recounts the experiences of “Alice,” who found both creative and

destructive ways to negotiate her identity while living in abroad. Growing up in a lower-class

household with an immigrant single mother, Alice had a transient childhood and at the age of

sixteen graduated from a homeschool program. She went on to a regional college but the next

three years of her life were chaotic, and at the age of nineteen, she found herself pregnant. She

gave her child up for adoption, enrolled in college full time to major in French, and gained a

16

study-abroad position. But even in France, she could not disappear from her status as a “low-

class” student.

The students in her study-abroad cohort were mostly affluent monolinguals and had little

motivation to actually learn French. Alice had been imagining the French language as a future

profession, and French culture as a way out of her unworldly upbringing. She eventually became

frustrated with the program and dropped out of university. Working and socializing outside of

university allowed her to finally start acquiring the French language and culture she imagined for

herself, and periodically she was able to “forget” her life as a poor, uneducated immigrant’s

daughter. Alice’s foreign language learning experience challenged her class identity on every

turn: from the affluent cohort that she did not identify with, to her highly cultured French

interlocutors, to the cafés, pubs and museums she frequented. She had imagined a future self and

multiplied her cultural capital. When she dropped out of university she took charge in developing

her communities. She left France after two years fluent, empowered, and ready to take her next

step in life. She had moved beyond her working-class identity.

In another study-abroad investigation regarding class, Gao (2011) looks at how Chinese

learners expressed and negotiated their social class identities in ESL study-abroad programs in

Britain. Gao followed six Chinese students over the course of nine months in order to understand

how these ESL learners indentified themselves in terms of social class, and how this

identification shaped their discourse inside and outside the classroom context. All of Gao’s

participants came from affluent backgrounds in China. Drawing on the data she gathered and the

analysis provided, Gao concluded that studying English in a British university affirms the social

standing of upper-middle-class students. For example, upon their arrival to Britain, her

participants began paying more attention to the clothes they wore and the brands they purchased

17

when shopping. Furthermore, after observing middle- and high-class behaviors and attitudes,

they tended to adopt these attributes as a way of marking their own class status. And of most

importance with regard to speaking opportunities and language acquisition, they only took

advantage of language speaking opportunities with interlocutors they knew would affirm their

thoughts, beliefs, and social class status, greatly limiting their communities of practice and

classroom participation.

Breeching the silence about class identity in the ESL classroom, Vandrick (1995, 2009,

2011) began writing about her classroom observations of the privileged international students at

her small private university in California. She was struck by how unselfconsciously they would

write of “their parents in high positions, of summer homes, of expensive overseas vacations, of

servants, of parties at exclusive hotels and clubs, and of upscale cars given them on their

sixteenth birthdays” (Vandrick, 1995, p. 375). In a later publication, she referred to these

affluents as students of the new global elite, or SONGEs (Vandrick, 2011, p. 160): students who

have lived in at least three countries throughout their life and had a working knowledge of at

least three languages. Vandrick’s study concluded that SONGEs are comfortable with wealth and

world-travel, and a major aspect of their identity is their social class privilege. They have a

complacent and uncritical stance on their privilege, as if it’s the “natural order of the universe”

(p. 166), and they do not question why some have economic and cultural access while others

don’t. They see the world as their home, and understand that mobility will be a permanent part of

both their lives and the lives of their future children.

To be sure, there are students who are admitted into study-abroad programs based on

merit who are from less advantaged social class positions, and these students are often able to

cover the high-cost international student fees with government scholarships, family savings, and

18

other community funds from their native country. Once these students arrive in their host

country, some of them scramble to find paid employment to alleviate the financial stress that

often comes with living in a western country, where food, clothing, and transportation are often

higher than what they’re used to. These international students differ from SONGEs in that they

have often never traveled or lived overseas, and don’t necessarily possess the confidence and

security based on their class privilege that SONGEs posses. As Vandrick (2011) points out,

SONGEs “feel comfortable and connected almost everywhere, because they carry their privilege

with them” (p. 163). Norton Peirce (1995) understands this demographic to have a high

investment in their social class identity because they understand the symbolic and material

resources afforded to them when they claim this part of their identity.

As we have seen from the discussion above, many students participating in study-abroad

programs have the economic means to pay the high fees that are charged to international

students, which have become an instrumental part of keeping the balance sheets of higher

education institutions out of the red. These students are unfettered in their classroom

participation, often silencing other, less socially confident ESL learners. Positioning such

students as affluent becomes an inherent part of their identity construction, and these high-class

world travelers take on an attitude of entitlement and lack of critical thinking that suggests they

will enter the world of work taking on positions of power, influence, and wealth that will only

uphold the current status quo of class inequality. Some study-abroad students, however, don’t

come from places of wealth, cultural and social capital, or power. Class, nonetheless, remains an

important identity marker in these student’s lives, as it informs and shapes what kind of

language-learning experiences they will have, how much confidence they exude when navigating

the country they are living in with regard to perceived and real acts of discrimination and

19

judgment, and the amount of mobility and social options they have in this new context. These

studies confirm that class is indeed an important social construction that informs how we move

about in the world, and should be a serious consideration when understanding language learning

opportunities for study abroad students.

Social Class Identities in Immigrant Students

If 3.7 million people across the globe enrolled in study-abroad programs in 2009, we

must consider how many people migrated to permanent or semi-permanent locations world-wide

around the same time. According to a joint report published in 2013 by the United Nations and

the OECD, in 2010 over 220 million people migrated from one location to another. In 2013, just

three years later, this figure increased by over 11 million (see reference list for retrieval

information). Based on current trends, the staggering number of people that move across

linguistic and cultural boundaries does not show signs of slowing down anytime in the near

future. For these reasons, as language educators, we must continue to understand how immigrant

language students adjust to their new surroundings and pursue learning new languages.

Using an ethnographic approach, Norton (2000) looks at immigrant women from various

backgrounds and nationalities residing in Canada to highlight how social identity and affective

factors impact their language learning opportunities. This study helps us understand how notions

of class and professional status impacted at least three of her participants who came to Canada in

mid-life and left behind professional middle-class careers. Katarina was a school teacher in

Poland and wanted to learn English to the extent that it would allow her “to do skilled work done

by people who are highly educated . . . to find employment that would give her a good income,

an intellectual challenge and access to social networks of educated Canadians” (p. 91). She

imagined creating for herself a professional life in Canada, but she settled for work as a

20

dishwasher and kitchen help. Her professional and class status in Poland was a significant part of

her identity. Similarly, Martina had a professional degree and worked as a surveyor in her native

Czechoslovakia, and upon arriving to Canada began working as a server and kitchen help in a

fast food restaurant. She imagined herself one day having a professional job in Canada. Her low-

paying work, lack of social networks in Canadian society, and low proficiency in English meant

that her family had to secure housing in an immigrant community that was deemed “cheap” (p.

95). Her sense of social status as it related to her living conditions and her paid work forced her

to constantly negotiate her standing in Canadian society.

Felicia, who was married to a successful business man, lived in the most affluent part of

town, owned a beach house, travelled extensively, and had her children educated in private

schools all while living in Peru. Her status, self-esteem, and material prosperity informed who

she was in the world. Upon their arrival to Canada, Felicia’s husband was not able to secure a

well-paying job, and their lifestyle changed dramatically. She was viewed in the Canadian social

context as a lowly immigrant that did not speak English, and this label served as an affective

filter in her inability to acquire English because it prevented her from practicing and thus

developing in the language.

These three participants in Norton’s study found it difficult to situate their former lives

into their new context, and, at least initially, found it challenging to insert themselves into

communities of practice that they felt comfortable in, and this impacted their ability to take hold

of the English language.

In her study of working-class Puerto Ricans learning English in New York City, Urciuoli

(1996) looks through the lens of Bourdieu’s symbolic capital to understand the politics of

inclusion and exclusion and how the English that this demographic acquires is the social marker

21

that prevents them from escaping racial and class stereotyping. The Puerto Ricans that Urciuoli

studies are told that if only they use “correct” English will they get better jobs and experience

upward mobility: “Correctness means the ability to negotiate the language required by status-

oriented interaction with metacommunicative success,” (p. 133). In other words, no code-

switching, no broken grammar, and no accent. She reminds us of the difference between ethnic

Puerto Ricans and racialized Puerto Ricans. Ethnic Puerto Ricans learn English through school

instruction in private or parochial settings and generally live middle-class lives. Racialized

Puerto Ricans, on the other hand, learn English while working low-paid service and light-

manufacturing jobs in urban centers throughout the US. As Urciuoli puts it,

Marked Americans either succeed as good ethnics or fail as members of a raced

underclass. In either case, the goal, never quite achievable, is to be unmarked. . . .

When people use languages other than English in public and in ways that are not

tightly scripted or framed by an unequivocally middle-class presentation, they are

seen as dangerously out of order. (Urciuoli, 1996, p. 38)

This means that within the US Puerto Rican community there is intense stratification, and a class

identity is inherently a part of every Puerto Ricans’ sense of self. What Urciuoli unveils,

however, is that both aspects of identification, race and class, work to exclude Puerto Ricans

from middle-class milieus that would allow them to learn this “correct” English. They do not

have the social or cultural capital to access communities of practice that would allow them to

acquire “standard” English and transcend their lower-class status.

One of the few applied linguists who is actively pursuing research around the issue of

social class and SLA is David Block. In his 2012 paper, which is micro study of a larger body of

work on language learners in London titled Multilingual Identities in a Global City (2006),

Block places class at the center of his participant’s identity cluster. Carlos, who is a middle-class

Colombian residing in London with his wife, sits in the epicenter of middle-class life: he owns

22

two properties in central London that he uses as rental properties and vacations in European

cities as an “elite tourist”: one who studies his traveling destination before arrival and takes

special precautions to only mingle with the local people and avoid other tourists as much as

possible (Block, 2012, p. 200). Furthermore, Carlos subscribes to highbrow literature and

philosophy and possesses a PhD from a Colombian University. All of these attributes contribute

to his symbolic, social, cultural, and economic capital, and help shape how he views the world

and how he interacts with it. What makes his English language acquisition complex is this

inherent part of his identity. Because of his low proficiency in English, in spite of his educational

credentials, Carlos works as a porter at a large building in central London. All of his coworkers

are working-class men who speak the Cockney dialect of British English and engage in

conversations that mark them as working-class: stories of football, joking and bantering about

this and that, work-related gossip, and the like. These class distinctions create limits in how and

to what extent Carlos can relate to his workmates, thus limiting his level of engagement,

investment, and acquisition. Carlos spends most of his downtime with middle-class Spanish-

speaking migrants, so that his community of practice is indeed very limited. The central

argument here is that class greatly impacts Carlos’ identity, thus impacting his (in)ability to

effectively acquire English.

Similarly, Goldstein (2001) looks at Portuguese immigrants living in Canada who

struggle to advance in English. Her study analyzes twenty-seven women working on a factory

production line, and how their class identities are intimately related to their (lack of) SLA in two

fundamental ways. First, language choice served two purposes for these women: to find and

maintain group membership with their mostly Portuguese-speaking coworkers, and to disrupt

their social roles as subordinate workers in the context of company management. Using their

23

lunch breaks to take company-sponsored ESL classes, these women often mocked the ESL

teachers who knew very little about the culture on the production floor: the language and

sociocultural context was Portuguese, not English or Canadian. This choice in language is what

Goldstein refers to as “a metaphorical message about social roles and relationships” (p. 82):

Portuguese helped maintain a community of inclusion on the production floor while establishing

a message of exclusion to factory management. This was a way to exercise power in a situation

where the workers had very little power. They found empowerment in not assuming an English-

speaking identity or in associating in the language of economic dominance at work, staying in

alignment with their working-class identity. For these reasons outlined, the participants in this

study stuck to speaking Portuguese, inhibiting them from entering communities of practice and

advancing in English.

In an even more tangible way, the social class identity of these factory workers prohibited

them from advancing in English through the use of ESL classes. While at the time of this study

there were several Canadian government-sponsored ESL programs available to immigrants at no

charge, access to these classes proved to be complicated in the lives of these working women.

First, nearly all of the women surveyed stated that they came to Canada for work: their number

one priority was to earn money and maintain a stable income. To work all day and then shuttle

off to ESL class at night was deemed an extravagance. Goldstein reports one participant’s

perspective: “Needing to work outside the home all day, Olga could not emotionally or

physically afford the time away from her family to attend night school even though it did not

cost any money to attend” (p. 88). Furthermore, paying for public transportation and a babysitter

to get to the classes was a financial burden that most of the immigrants interviewed could not

justify. Following Grillo’s (1989) line of argumentation, Goldstein points out that when

24

immigrants come together and don’t speak the official language of their host country, immigrant

language speakers will occupy a subordinate social, cultural, economic, and political position

within their new society. That said, just because some immigrants advance to a high level of

English, as some of Goldstein’s participants did, does not mean that they will necessarily

advance to a higher socioeconomic level. Many of the immigrants in Goldstein’s study had

working-class identities in their home country, and many of them dropped out of school after

only four years of elementary school. As Goldstein puts it, “Acquiring ‘good’ to ‘excellent’

English and a grade 12 education was beyond the means of possibility for most – if not all – of

the women whose access to educational opportunities was limited to two hours of work-place

English language instruction a week” (p. 90). Social class was a deeply entrenched part of the

identities of these women, and greatly impacted their access to economic, social, and cultural

capital, entering into communities of practice, and acquiring a second language.

McKay and Wong (1996) help us understand the role of education and class status as it

relates to SLA. Looking at Chinese-speaking immigrants living in affluent communities in

California and how their class identities, in combination with “model-minority discourse” (p.

586) contribute to the language acquisition of these non-native speakers. All four participants

arrived in the US with families that had high levels of economic, cultural, and/or social capital in

their native China by way of high-earning incomes, high levels of education from prestigious

Chinese institutions, and professions that allowed them access to people and hobbies (such as

sports and musical skills) that informed their identities as “cultured” immigrants. All four

adolescents fell under what is a stereotypical and racialized framework – the model-minority

discourse – that assumes Asians to be economically savvy, hardworking, disciplined, and

academically inclined (p. 586). It is believed that, at least in the 1990s, Asian immigrants

25

embraced this discourse as it reinforced their cultural pride, political conservatism, and emphasis

on academic achievement. McKay and Wong underscore that, while a high socioeconomic status

(SES) is not necessarily equated with model-minority status, it is often a result of and a way of

indexing the high levels of conformity and achievement that is seen in especially Chinese

immigrants. As Chao (2013) points out, middle-class immigrant adolescents tend to have greater

access to school- and community-based resources that allow them social integration, tools for

successful learning, habits in critical thinking, and cultural norms and values that help them plug

in to, develop, and expand their L2 communities of practice. Furthermore, middle-class families

can more readily afford such extracurricular activities as sports, musical lessons, and student

choir that help them develop intellectually and socially. It is significant to note that of McKay

and Wong’s four participants, the one who entered the project with the lowest SES, and whose

parents experienced downward mobility when arriving in the US, had the most difficulty in L2

acquisition. At the end of his first year in the US, with a severe drop in his disposition and

increased resistance to his ESL teachers, this participant left junior high.

Chao (2013) assesses two Chinese families that relocated to the US, pointing to the social

status markers that helped their children integrate into their new settings and acquire English.

Using the framework of Bourdieu’s class habitus, she demonstrates that a strong parental

educational background, access to economic resources, a strong commitment to their child’s

education and personal development, and their own English language skills all contributed to the

smooth and successful adjustment of their adolescent children into the American public school

system. In both situations, the children’s parents were highly invested in their children’s success:

they hired tutors when they saw their children struggling with English, they very early on

established relationships with their children’s teachers, and they networked within the school and

26

larger community to provide social and linguistic opportunities for their children. Citing a

number of SLA scholars, Chao points out that middle-class parents who monitor their children’s

education, understand how to digest instructional materials to assist with homework, build

relationships with school officials and teachers, and understand the importance of an L2 in social

status mobility contribute to their children outperforming lower-class students (p. 60) and

minimize community marginalization (p. 70). As we can see from these two studies on

adolescent class identity and language acquisition, in the words of Collins (2006), “Class is

expressed in children’s play as well as parental desires, in the organization of friendship as well

as the organization of school” (p. 5).

As we have seen from all the studies above, social class as an identity marker impacted

nearly all instances where students were learning an L2. For a contradictory look at the situation,

I turn to one short but interesting study that suggests that SES does not impact how interlocutors

from different classes mark themselves when interacting with each other in English. Evazzade

and Katal (2012) looked at different ways and under what circumstances working-class and

upper-class students provided compliments to each other when conducting themselves in both

English and Persian. Looking at forty female participants, their study found that social distance

and social class played no significant role in the representation of a compliment in English. This

is striking in several ways. First, when we consider the ways in which pragmatics enters social

norms and behavior, social class is a key factor in how we determine where one sits on the social

continuum. The way in which a compliment is delivered, or if a compliment is withheld when

one is due can, indeed, be a marker of class. Second, as was noted in this study, in Iran the

practice of complimenting is complex. If one expresses admiration of an object that someone

possesses, an obligation is imposed on the addressee to give the object to the complimentor (p.

27

502). For example, if I compliment you by telling you I like the color of your cell phone, you are

obligated under Iranian etiquette to pass over your cell phone to me as a gift. The word for this

type of interaction is ta’rof, and is quite hefty in its class and status implications. It often causes

misunderstandings between both parties and is a source of awkward situations in social settings.

This study found that, while class status was more evident in Persian when giving compliments,

SES was normalized in English. While there are several shortcomings to this study (i.e.,

participants were of a single gender, lack of clarity on the English proficiency of the participants,

and intonation and body language were not taken into account), the investigation of the

acquisition of pragmatics in an L2 is important as it carries significant weight once learners

begin to fully develop in an L2. Britain, with its long history of class divisions and language use,

provides endless examples of English language pragmatics, and the misuse of pragmatics in

some social situations can be painfully embarrassing ways to properly acquire an L2.

Discussion

My review of published qualitative studies that look at the intersection of identity and

SLA as it relates to social class has allowed me to make the connections about this important

identity marker in L2 learners abroad and in North America. When class was an obvious benefit

or hindrance to SLA and was not incorporated into the study as a relevant identity marker, I took

the liberty to insert it and project my own analysis. One affective factor that several of the studies

cited in this project elude to, but do not expand on, is the issue of confidence, and I think it’s

relevant to pay tribute to the role that confidence plays in social positioning, and therefore in

language acquisition. Vandrick (2011) talks of two students that she labeled SONGEs who

experienced overt and covert racism as they traveled across the world. One was a Korean student

living in Russia and one was Taiwanese student deciding on American universities to attend. In

28

the case of the Korean student, he was refused service in a small market in Russia, the

shopkeeper citing, “We don’t sell to Asian people” (p. 162). In the case of the Taiwanese student

who had been accepted to several elite universities in the US, when she asked her friends already

studying in the US their opinions of this list of institutions, several of her friends commented on

the level of discrimination they had experienced. This Taiwanese student was able to select a

private university in an affluent west coast city, avoiding the discriminatory problems her friends

faced on the east coast. These two students were not particularly impacted by these instances of

racism because, as Vandrick states,

they were secure in their own sense of being part of a privileged class, and did

not much value the opinions of those who thought otherwise. . . . These students’

privilege . . . gave them a comfort level with various places in the world, . . .

[allowing] them the luxury of having an array of available options from which to

choose. There is always another store to patronize, another university to attend.

(Vandrick, 2011, p. 162-3)

Chao (2013) also speaks of immigrant teenagers who had cohesive upper-middle-class family

status before and after arriving into the US, and this greatly contributed to their confidence in

conquering the language and navigating their new world. And Block (2012) reminds us by way

of his middle-class participant who held a PhD and owned property throughout London that this

social status positioned him in a way that impacted his behavior and the perception and

positioning others placed on him, giving him confidence to be who he is in this world with no

hindrance.

But what of the case of the student who is only accepted to one university, the one with

the highest reputation for discrimination? Or of the student who can’t afford the application fees

to apply to more than one university? Or the international student or displaced immigrant who

has never left home and has internalized racism, sexism, and classism to mean they are inferior

29

and don’t deserve access to communities of practice to develop their language skills? With

economic, cultural, and social capital comes confidence, and confidence is a key component to

navigating the unknown. I think we can safely say that class matters.

So what to do with this information from the perspective of the second language

educator? With regard to upper-crust students who enter foreign countries with high levels of

confidence, attitudes of entitlement, and are unfettered in their classroom participation, often

silencing other, less socially confident ESL learners, I agree with Vandrick’s (1995, 2009, 2011)

call which places at least some of the responsibility on the role of the ESL teacher. She argues

that part of the ESL instructor’s job is to teach language skills that will allow students to flourish,

but also to “become critical thinkers and responsible world citizens” (p. 380). In other words, we

need to help these students locate themselves within the social class system and then engage

them to channel their privilege to disrupt and dismantle the social inequalities that are prevalent

in every society. But the role is not entirely on the shoulders of the L2 instructor. We need to

remain open to our own class positioning in society, understand where we sit on the continuum,

and encourage others to investigate how and why they are positioned where they are. With

immigrant learners or less financially advantaged students, we need to remain sensitive to their

needs for communities of practice, and provide as many opportunities we can in developing

language learners. As responsible citizens, we can help language learners on their journey by

encouraging them to have conversations with us, inviting them into our social circles, pointing

them to volunteer opportunities and conversation groups, thus expanding their communities of

practice. This study has pointed to many different types of L2 learners, and by engaging them all

in our own way, we can positively affect their experiences in a foreign country and help them

accomplish their language goals.

30

There are two important points that I would like to highlight with regard to the studies

presented in this paper. First, given the vast amount of research done on the role of identity

construction and SLA (by way of journal articles, online publications, book reviews, and

graduate student theses and dissertations), only fifty percent of the studies cited above are less

than three years old. This brings my point home, as mentioned in my introduction, that we need

more, and more recent, research conducted in the field of SLA and identity construction that

incorporates class as an identity construct that informs who we are and how we make our way

through our lives. Block (2007a, 2007b, 2012, 2014) has been encouraging this for some time

now:

In the socioeconomically stratified world in which we all live, there is a need to

bring class to the fore in studies of second language learning as an identity

inscription, alongside other identity inscriptions which have been the focus of a

good deal of research, such as gender, ethnicity and national identity.

(Block, 2012, p. 189)

Particularly if the world continues on the trajectory that it is on now, where the global economy

pushes more people to the margins and fewer to the center, we need to have a deep

understanding of how economic and social resources shape our lives. And in the realm of SLA, it

becomes increasingly important because the world is becoming more globalized: more people

are moving around, being forced to learn new languages, gaining exposure to different cultures,

and becoming composites of their life experiences in far more complex ways than even just a

few decades ago. It is now more than ever that we need to have a comprehensive understanding

as to how people are impacted by their multiple, often colliding, identities, including social class.

Secondly, the studies above expose some glaring gaps in the research of SLA and identity

construction, particularly as it relates to class. With the exception of one study cited in this paper

(Kininger, 2004), all people learning English came to North America or the UK from the

31

following countries: Korea, Taiwan, Indonesia, China, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Peru, Puerto

Rico, Colombia, Portugal, and Iran. According to a report generated by the United Nations

(2013), the United States has the largest amount of immigrants residing inside its borders. While

the mainstream media has recently reported that Asians now surpass Hispanics in terms of

numbers of immigrants in the US (Barrera, 2013), 31 percent of the immigrant population in

2013 was of Hispanic origin (Barrera, 2013). Given this relatively high number, I find it puzzling

that I could not get my hands on a single study that reflected the demographic that makes up

Mexico and Central America. While this may be a short fall on my part when I initially cast my

research net, I suspect it is a reflection of the narrow scope of research and its failure to

incorporate this ethnic group in its investigation of class issues and SLA. Or is it a reflection of

classism within the study of social class? Perhaps there is an assumption that all Latinos heading

north are poor, or working-class at best, and anyway we already know their story so well that

they don’t need our research energies. But this population is complex, and struggles with the

same identity construction issues that all immigrant populations struggle with. I put this call out

to begin studying this large and complex group with diligence, as they are America’s present and

future, and their values and cultural norms will be the values and cultural norms of America. We

need to understand what their immigrant identities are made up of.

Conclusion

In this paper I have attempted to argue that social class plays a significant role in one’s

identity formation and greatly impacts not only how but if one will acquire an L2 based on their

SES. While one’s social class identity acts in tandem with other identities such as gender,

ethnicity, race, nationality, and L1 knowledge, I assert that social class needs to be taken into

consideration not only in the study of language learning practices, but also from the vantage

32

point of the L2 instructor, who needs to understand the dynamics that play out between L2 users

within her classroom. I provided an overview of the most prevalent literature in second language

learning that addresses identity construction, as well as a historical view of the framework of

contemporary social class as it has developed since the mid-1800s. Using the theoretical

underpinnings of Bourdieu’s (1986) social and cultural capital, Anderson’s (1991) concept of

imagined communities, Markus and Nurius’s (1986) notion of possible selves, and Wenger’s

(1998) framework of communities of practice, I have looked at ten ethnographic studies that

either overtly or covertly highlight social class as a support or a barrier to acquiring an L2. I

broke these studies down into two categories: Study-abroad L2 learners, and immigrant learners.

Within these categories, I looked at both highly privileged and underprivileged learners. Based

on my research, I have concluded that social class privilege – or the lack of it – impacts the

learning practices of students, impairs or enhances affective factors such as confidence, and

informs how much – or little – parents are involved in their child’s education and the results of

this involvement, and impacts whether one can afford L2 classes and/or the transportation and

childcare costs that incur while attending an L2 class. I have also concluded that linguistic

features such as accent and code-switching mark our social class, and contribute to the

suppression of moving out of that marked social class. I have called for L2 educators to pay

attention to social class as an identity marker, particularly as it relates to high-privilege students.

In an ironic twist, it is they that need the focused attention of educators so that they are taught

and encouraged to use their privilege responsibly and make adjustments to their attitudes of

entitlement as they enter adulthood and the world of work. Their future positions of power

enable them to make great changes in the world, or wreak havoc on the socially less fortunate.

Additionally, I call for all of us to cultivate an awareness around our own social class positioning

33

and how our roles in this world impact others. Finally, I call for more identity construction

research to focus on the issue of social class as it relates to SLA. Block (2014) suggests that in

the flurry of research and literature on identity as it relates to SLA, somehow sociolinguists have

rendered social class invisible, something to be disregarded. He refers to this process as erasure,

and argues that social class should in fact be a key component in identity construction (p. ix-x).

As mentioned in the “Discussion” section of my paper, the research that does exist at the

intersection of SLA and social class is missing an important demographic: those of Hispanic

descent residing in North America, and specifically in the southwestern United States.

Considering this population makes up a significant portion of the US population, this omission is

glaring, and studies need to be developed that focus on this population. As noted in the second

quote at the onset of this paper, one can be assured that poor and working-class migrant workers

have very different and perhaps more complex issues with identity, class, and language

acquisition than middle-class émigrés who move by choice and not by economic or political

necessity. This research should also capture the experiences of refugees and asylum seekers.

With regard to socially privileged L2 learners, much still needs to be explored. For example,

what lies just below the surface of a perceived high-level of confidence, self-worth, entitlement,

and security in the world? If some of these “globe trotters” feel comfortable anywhere in the

world, how does that impact their sense of “home” or “nativeness?” What affective factors have

gotten in the way of their language acquisition, and what intense feelings do they experience

with their access and privilege that they have been taught to hide or repress? Are they as

confident in their language and cultural skills as is projected? These questions are important

because if these issues can be dislodged, they may help educators steer privileged language

learners away from holding positions of power that repress others and perpetuate economic and

34

social divides. This information would serve as a tool for educators and a source of interpersonal

insight for the students.

35

References

Anderson, B. (1991). Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism

(Rev. ed.). New York: Verso.

Barrera, J. (2013/6/15). Asian immigrants surpass Hispanics as biggest immigrant wave to

U.S. Huffington Post. Retrieved from: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/15/asian-

immigrants-surpass-hispanics_n_3446441.html

Block, D. (2006). Multilingual identities in a global city: London stories. London: Routledge.

Block, D. (2007a). Second language identities. London: Continuum.

Block, D. (2007b). The rise of identity in SLA research, post Firth and Wagner. The Modern

Language Journal, 91, pp. 863-876.

Block, D. (2012). Class and SLA: Making connections. Language Teaching Research, 16(2), pp.

188-205.

Block, D. (2014). Social class in applied linguistics. New York: Routledge.

Bourdieu, P. (1986). The forms of capital. In J. Richardson (Ed.), Handbook of theory and

research for the sociology of education (pp. 241-258). New York: Greenwood.

Bruce, S. (n.d.). ‘We became strangers to ourselves’: The destabilization of identity in second

language development. Unpublished manuscript. Department of Language, Literacy and

Sociocultural Studies, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM.

Chordas, N. (1992).Classrooms, pedagogies, and the rhetoric of equality. College Composition

and Communication, 43, pp. 214-224.

Chao, X. (2013). Class habitus: Middle-class Chinese immigrant parents’ investment in their

newcomer adolescents’ L2 acquisition and social integration. Anthropology & Education

Quarterly, 44(1), pp. 58-74.

36

Collins, J. (2006). Where’s class in second language learning? Working Papers in Urban

Language and Literacies, 41. London: King’s College London.

Cummins, J. (1994). Knowledge, power and identity in teaching English as a second language.

In F. Genesee (Ed.), Educating second language children: The whole child, the whole

curriculum, the whole community (pp. 33-58). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Cummins, J. (2001). Negotiating identities: Education for empowerment in a diverse society. Los

Angeles: California Association for Bilingual Education.

Cummins, J. (2007). Bilingual education: An introductory reader. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual

Matters.

Dörnyei, Z. (2009). The L2 motivational self system. In Z. Dörnyei & E. Ushioda (Eds.),

Motivation, language identity and the L2 self (pp. 9-42). Buffalo, NY: Multilingual

Matters.

Dörnyei, Z. & Ushioda, E. (2009). Motivation, language identity and the L2 self. Buffalo, NY:

Multilingual Matters.

Evazzade, S. & Katal, A. (2012). We are all upper class in L2: Complimenting in L1 vs. L2.

International Journal of Linguistics, 4(3), pp. 492-508.

Gao, F. (2011). Exploring the reconstruction of Chinese learners' national identities in their

English-language-learning journeys in Britain. Journal of Language, Identity &

Education, 10(5), pp. 287-305.

Goldstein, T. (2001). Researching women’s language practices in multilingual workplaces. In A.

Pavlenko, A. Blackledge. I. Pillar, & M. Teutsch-Dwyer (Eds.), Multilingualism, Second

Language Learning, and Gender (pp. 77-101). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

hooks, b. (2000). Where we stand: Class matters. New York: Routledge.

37

Jenkins, J. (2014). English as a lingua franca in the international university: The politics of

academic English language policy. Abingdon, England: Routledge.

Kinginger, C. (2004). Alice doesn’t live here anymore: Foreign language learning and identity

construction. In A. Pavlenko & A. Blackledge (Eds.), Negotiation of identities in

multilingual contexts (pp. 219-242). Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters.

Kubota, R. (2003). New approaches to gender, class, and race in second language writing.

Journal of Second Language Writing, 12, pp. 31-47.

Mackintosh, M. & Mooney, G. (2004). Identity, inequality and social class. In Kath Woodward

(Ed.), Questioning identity: gender, class, ethnicity. London: Routledge.

Markus, H. & Nurius, P. (1986). Possible selves. American Psychologist, 42, pp. 954-969.

Marx, K. & Weber, F. (1848). Manifesto of the Communist party. In Marx/Engels Selected

Works, Volume One (pp. 98-137). Moscow, Russia: Progress Publishers,. Retrieved from:

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/Manifesto.pdf

McKay, S. & Wong, S. (1996). Multiple discourses, multiple identities: Investment and agency

in second-language learning among Chinese adolescent immigrant students. Harvard

Educational Review, 66(3), pp. 577-608.

Norton, B. (2000). Identity and language learning: Gender, ethnicity and educational change.

Harlow, UK: Longman/Pearson.

Norton, B. & McKinney, C. (2011). An identity approach to second language acquisition. In D.

Atkinson (Ed.), Alternative choices to second language acquisition (pp. 73-94). OX:

Routledge.

38

Norton, B. & Pavlenko, A. (2007). Imagined communities, identity, and English language

learning. In J. Cummins & C. Davison (Eds.), International handbook of English

language teaching, part II. New York: Springer.

Norton Peirce, B. (1995). Social identity, investment, and language learning. TESOL Quarterly,

29(1), pp. 9-31.

Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (2014). Retrieved from:

http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/eag_highlights-2011-

en/01/10/index.html?itemId=/content/chapter/eag_highlights-2011-12-en

Pavlenko, A. (1997). “To speak a foreign language is to depart from yourself”: Late bilingualism

as (re)construction of identity. In Bilingual communities and individuals (pp. 80-88).

Vigo, Spain: Servizo de Publicacions da Universidade de Vigo.

Pavlenko, A. (2001). “How am I to become a woman in an American vein?”: Transformations of

gender performance in second language learning. In A. Pavlenko, A. Blackledge, I. Pillar,

& M. Teutsch-Dwyer (Eds.), Multilingualism, second language learning, and gender (pp.

133-174). New York: Mouton de Gruyter.

Pavlenko, A. & Blackledge, A. (Eds.), (2004). Negotiation of identities in multilingual contexts.

Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters.

Rampton, B., Harris, R., Collins, J., & Blommaert, J. (2006). Language, class and education. In

N. Hornberger & S. May (Eds.), Encyclopedia of Language and Education, 2nd Edition,

Volume 1 (pp. 71-81). Heidelberg: Kluwer.

Ricento, T. (2005). Considerations of identity in L2 learning. In E. Hinkel (Ed.), Handbook of

research on second language teaching and learning (pp. 895-911). Mahwah, NJ:

Erlbaum.

39

United Nations & Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (2013). World

migration in figures: A joint contribution by UN-DESA and the OECD to the United

Nations high-level dialogue on migration and development, 3-4 October 2013.

Retrieved from: http://www.oecd.org/els/mig/World-Migration-in-Figures.pdf

United Nations (2013). Trends in international migrant stock: The 2013 revision. Retrieved

from: http://esa.un.org/unmigration/TIMSA2013/migrantstocks2013.htm?mtotals#

Urciuoli, B. (1996). Exposing prejudice: Puerto Rican experiences of language, race, and class.

Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

Vandrick, S. (1995). Privileged ESL university students. TESOL Quarterly, 29(2), pp. 375-381.

Vandrick, S. (2009). Interrogating Privilege: Reflections of a Second Language Educator.

Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press/ELT.

Vandrick, S. (2011). Students of the new global elite. TESOL Quarterly, 45(1), pp. 160-169.

Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice: Learning, meaning, and identity. Cambridge, UK:

Cambridge University Press.