Emergent Target Language Identities Among Latino English Language Learners

ABSTRACT

During 2nd language acquisition, a learner’s identity is consigned, juxtaposed, coconstructed, and reified through various affective positions and mitigating linguistic behaviors. Our study of adult Latino ESL students in Dallas, Texas, shows how language socialization experiences are shaped by the learners’ affective stances toward the project of learning and using the English language. Students reflected on how their specific social barriers created conditions that impeded interaction with interlocutors who could potentially aid their socialization process in English.

KEYWORDS:

• Adult English language learners
• affect in language learning
• language socialization
• Latin American immigrant experience
• second language learner identity