Among a variety of influences from outside the direct learning environment, the previous chapter revealed the strong presence of ways in which learners ‘bring themselves’ into the classroom. How then do students’ ideas of self evolve and interact within the context of the foreign language classroom and influence their motivation? Dörnyei’s (2009a) conceptualisation of the L2 Motivational Self System is comprised of the ideal L2 self and ought-to L2 self – self aspects – and the L2 learning experience – influences from the environment. Complex systems theory encouraged me to notice in the data the integrally interactive nature of these elements of the L2 Motivational Self System: the here-and-now environment adapts the self of class members, just as the self of these same class members adapts the environment. There is co-adaptation, whereby the self and environment interact over time with mutual causality – change in one system fosters change in other, connected systems, which also feeds back to co-influence the original system (Larsen-Freeman & Cameron, 2008a: 233). In this chapter I draw on the complex systems theory concept of a ‘state space’ to examine how these self and environmental aspects co-adapted as a system in the context of this study.

A state space is a metaphor visualising all the possible states in which a system could be at any point in time (Larsen-Freeman & Cameron, 2008a: 46). Within this space, there are usually certain states or areas which might be relatively more stable ‘attractor states’ or unstable ‘repeller states’ (Thelen & Smith, 1994). In my study, I applied a definition of motivation as referring to ‘a cumulative arousal, or want, that we are aware of’ (Dörnyei, 2009b: 209). Motivation is by definition valenced, or ‘directional’. By revisiting the data, I became aware that there were dimensions of participant writing which reflected such ‘want’ connected to some areas of the state space. Participant writing returned to these areas of the state space frequently over the particular span of time involved in this study.