This highly readable volume covers the past, present, and future directions of the study of identity in second language learning contexts. The reader is engaged by Block’s accessible prose and examples throughout and emerges with a fairly nuanced understanding of the importance and complexity of the ways in which identity is both individual and social and why this matters in SLA.

The author briefly discusses three stages in the history of identity as a heuristic, from the Western European enlightenment through the concept of the self that emerges in the 19th and 20th centuries (ushered in by Freud, increasing secularization of the industrializing world, and human rights advances) to the postmodern age of globalization. Chapter 2 covers identity as a topic in the social sciences and connects SLA to a larger current of intellectual thought. This chapter broadly explains determinism and social structuralism before arriving at poststructuralism and a nice discussion of Weedon’s subjectivities and Butler’s gender work. The concept of positioning is elucidated with a reader-friendly example of what would be appropriate speech acts from a linguistics professor at work versus at a dinner party. There is a condensed discussion of ambivalence and hybridity as well as Mathews’ (2000) argument that the cultural supermarket is not totally free because individuals are constrained by social structures like governments, peer groups, and educational systems. After highlighting that negotiation is a key element in ongoing identity construction, Block arrives at seven main factors in identity formation: ethnicity, race, nation, migrant status, gender, social class, and language.

The next chapter deftly reviews the Lambert-Guiroa-Schumann triad of early SLA precursors to modern studies of identity and offers the reasonable critique that these researchers were products of their time and thus dependent on questionnaires and controlled experiments. The diary studies of the 1980s are also described, again with very judicious use of quotes to give the reader a flavor of the original research. Table 3.2 offers a useful visual summary of these sociopsychological models and the limitations of each one. What becomes very clear is that second and foreign language contexts are profoundly different from each other.

Chapters 4–6 review modern work on identity in SLA research with adults in three different contexts: migrant naturalistic contexts, foreign language classrooms, and study-abroad programs. Special focus on Norton’s (Reference Norton2000) work with five women immigrants to Canada is well deserved in chapter 4, although reasonable criticisms are also offered. It would be impossible to come away from this chapter unconvinced that identity and social positioning play a critical role in second language development in naturalistic contexts, which underscores that these contexts are indeed very different from foreign language contexts. Study abroad is a fascinating area for identity research because it is usually voluntary, stressful, and sometimes profoundly transformative. Unfortunately, the majority of the work in this area seems to be gender focused; Block is not alone in wishing for an expansion of study-abroad research. He concludes the volume with suggested future directions for research on second language identities.

Missing from the volume (and acknowledged by the author) is the case of child migrants, for which Block provides several references for the interested reader. However, also missing is any mention of the large and increasing number of heritage language learners who, whether in foreign language classrooms, heritage language classrooms, or study-abroad programs, usually represent a very different linguistic and affective profile from second or foreign language learners and whose identity repertoires are often connected to both a minority and a majority culture. Work on identity among heritage speakers is in its infancy (Alba, Logan, Lutz, & Stults, Reference Alba, Logan, Lutz and Stults2002; He, Reference He2004; Potowski, Reference Potowski2007) but will undoubtedly grow in the near future. Block’s text is highly accessible for graduate students and even advanced undergraduates and would be a good auxiliary text in a qualitative SLA research methods course.