2.1 Linguistic identity: contradictions in identity research

Blackledge & Creese identify and deal productively with a common dilemma in language and identity research. While they recognize that language is a social construct and that linguistic resources need not be understood as bounded, discrete ‘languages’, their ethnographic approach reveals that for many people, language and identity are inexorably linked and languages are salient dimensions of their selves. There is a tension between the conceptualizations of language and identity held by the researchers and those held by the participants. However, the authors reconcile this tension through an understanding that language ideology (beliefs, values and attitudes) is both ‘shaped by, as well as shaping of’ language practice (access and use) (p. 17). For this reason Blackledge & Creese are particularly interested in the language ideologies espoused by their participants as demonstrated both explicitly in interviews and implicitly in language practice at home and at their complementary schools. In addition, the authors take a critical and nuanced view that recognizes not only how heritage language students may embrace their ‘heritage’ multilingual talents as valued components of their identities, but also how they may resist the imposition of a language and heritage with which they do not claim to identify. Just like the identities associated with learning a dominant language, the identities associated with learning heritage languages are variously imposed, negotiated, resisted and transformed. Where there are contradictions between language ideologies and language practice – between what people say and what people do – Blackledge & Creese take a productive approach and look at the interrelationship between the two data sources. While this approach is insightful, the comparison of data draws attention to the fact that its treatment often differs, depending on its source. Whereas utterances transcribed from recorded observations are ‘language practice’ and are understood to be socially constructed negotiation of the various subject positions available, utterances transcribed from interviews are presented as reflections of the participants’ ‘language ideology’. Identity negotiations and language practices observed in interviews are not as thoroughly examined as those that occur outside the formal interview setting. In addition, whereas the data from classroom observation is given in the form of detailed transcription that allows the reader to examine the interactional construction of the utterances and the shifts between languages (including those of teachers, students and researchers), data from interviews is more often offered in decontextualized quotes that remove them from their interactional context, including the researcher's/interviewer's voice. Applying a social practice lens (Talmy Reference Talmy2010) to the interview data may provide further insights consistent with their theoretical approach.

In contrast, by providing at least partial transcripts of the interaction between researcher and participant, Kramsch is able to extend the theoretical framework she applies to classroom observation and narrative accounts to the interview data. As is clear in her subtitle, Kramsch focuses on ‘what foreign language learners say about their experiences’ and then provides an innovative theoretical framework drawing on literary theory and philosophy to show ‘why it matters’. In Kramsch's words, ‘how do we gain access to subjective aspects of language acquisition that, by definition, elude objective observation?’ (p. 5). Her answer is to explore published language memoirs in which subjective truths are accessed through alternative modes of inquiry that embrace the metaphoric and literary nature of spoken and written data from language learners themselves (such as learner's journals, discourse completion surveys, oral interviews and essays on what it means to be multilingual). The data is analyzed like sociolinguistic data, taking into account the co-construction of self between writer and reader or interviewer and interviewee. Kramsch in effect argues that language learners' essentialized stereotypes of the subjective qualities of the target language and target language speakers – while not representing any objective Truth – have significant emotional functions for the learners as they make sense of their identities in the new symbolic system. In keeping with this social practice approach, Kramsch further suggests that the process of ‘identification’, or the various ways that people attach themselves to the world, may be of more relevance in today's society than ‘identity’ (p. 94). This subtle insight helps us make sense of the essentialists’ notions of identity that our participants themselves may variously draw upon.

For Janks, adopting a dynamic view of identity allows educators and researchers to both acknowledge our students’ and participants’ identity investments while also avoiding the risk of essentialization. Janks draws on Thompson's (Reference Thompson1990) theory of ideology to show the relationship between language, power and domination and how conflicts within the field of signification are realized in texts. These five modes of operation of ideology, including unification and fragmentation, are provided in yet another useful chart in the text (p. 40), which outlines for students, teachers and researchers alike the tools needed to effectively deconstruct how power and identity are functioning in observable discourse. Her examples draw upon public discourse, including advertisements, as well as several of her recent classroom-based research projects. The five modes of operation of ideology, the key linguistic features of text analysis, the key visual features of image analysis, and the interdependent model of critical literacy outlined in the earlier chapters of the book all combine to allow Janks to analyze the data with insight. Because her primary audience is practicing teachers, her two units of analysis are those that matter most for pedagogy: the texts and the projects themselves. As a result, interview and observation data are rarely included in this particular instantiation of Janks' work; instead, the links between language and identity are made through the texts as instantiations of discourse.

Just as Blackledge & Creese take a critical view of ‘heritage’, Stein deconstructs the notion of ‘tradition’ as a social construct not necessarily in opposition to ‘modernity’ and not necessarily related to the actual history of a practice. Like ‘heritage’, ‘tradition’ is constructed in relation to political and national identities. So-called ‘traditional’ forms of art, such as oral story-telling, are not simply passed down authoritatively; Stein's analysis of children's lived performances of ‘traditional’ styles convincingly demonstrates the creativity and identity construction inherent in each telling. She links textual analysis to identity through the concept of ‘points of fixing’, each text being part of a continuous process of meaning-making whereby individuals and ‘cultural groupings’ use what is available to them to express their interests (p. 39). This allows for a very productive approach and validates a deep analysis of the texts produced by the child participants. In Stein's text, her emphasis on the importance of the identity work apparent in the multimodal texts means that there is less emphasis on the identity work that may have been demonstrated in either the interviews or focus groups mentioned in her methodology.

2.2 Embodied identity: multimodality in identity research

Blackledge & Creese occasionally mention multimodality, especially in quotes from other theorists, but rarely expound on the topic or draw upon multimodal forms of data collection or meaning-making because their focus is on the linguistic repertoires of their participants. Exceptions are made when physicality is strongly indicated in the data, such as when students are learning ‘heritage’ dances or performing folk tales. Here, the authors draw on multiliteracies to examine the range of identities performed in a given literacy event, such as the performance of a folk tale. Again, because the purpose of the book is to examine the language practices of these multilingual young people, the analysis of other modes is necessarily less developed. However, where other modalities are mentioned, there are windows into further insights that may be available beyond the linguistic mode. For example, when the Turkish boys resist and negotiate their subject positions and participation during a Turkish dance class, it seems that this is done through physical action as much as – or more than – spoken words. The transcription simplifies these actions as ‘[dancing]’, while the field notes hint at genre by indicating ‘the boys rap dance, make odd faces and produce funny noises’ (p. 138). What a more thorough multimodal analysis could have revealed is the movement vocabulary these boys are drawing upon in their identity negotiations.

Just as Blackledge & Creese's attention to language practices tends to draw the focus to the spoken word, Janks’ attention to literacy tends to focus her analysis on printed texts. As previously mentioned, one of the gifts of this book is its detailed and useful summary approaches to visual and linguistic text analysis. When applied to the data presented, these frameworks allow for deep insights into the meaning-making practices of print-text producers. Near the end of Language and power, Janks presents a pedagogic intervention from one of her research projects that focused on the embodied performances of students demonstrating their knowledge of fun and games. Whereas the visual and linguistic analysis in the text cohere well with the presented lists of ‘key features’ for analysis, the embodied mode stands out as being in need of more elaboration. Janks uses the power of description to acknowledge what may be considered the key features of the visual text, and this may provide a foundation for a framework of the ‘key features’ of embodied text analysis.

Kramsch acknowledges that ‘subjectivation is always mediated through symbolic systems’ and includes ‘verbal, musical, or visual’ (p. 16). In her chapter on the virtual self, she includes typographic non-linguistic elements (such as emoticons) in her transcription. Finally, she identifies multimodality as a goal of teaching the multilingual subject in order to engage students in semiotic transpositions. She works against the SLA tradition that has ‘separated learners' minds, bodies, and social behaviors into separate domains of inquiry’ (p. 2) and is interested in investigating the affective resonances that multiple languages have for speakers and listeners, and the subjective responses they draw from them, by examining the ‘embodied self’. For example, she notes the physicality that many learners bring to the metaphors they use to express their subjective experiences of learning and speaking a new language. Kramsch draws on neuroscientific and somatic theory that posits the self as the relation of body to mind (p. 66) and ecological theories of self that relate the self to various ways of knowing. Kramsch adds to this somatic and ecological view of the self the idea of the narratorial self that is crucial to understanding how learners narrate their experiences as the voice of ‘poetic verisimilitude, myth, and aesthetic practice’ (p. 74). It is this theorizing of the self that allows the researcher to read the significance, or the ‘why it matters’, in the words of language learners' narrated experiences.

Stein also focuses on the body, arguing that multimodality is ‘inseparable from bodies’ because the semiotic modes are related to the sensory possibilities of the body; just as the body makes sense of its reality in a multisensory way, meaning is made multimodally (p. 151). The brain is able to translate across senses just as designers are able to translate across modes. Bodies are ‘repositories of knowledge’, but this knowledge is ‘not always knowable in and through language’ (p. 151). For Stein, multimodal pedagogies play with representations, rights and resources in critical ways, as she views language and literacy classrooms as sites of transformation. She questions the dominant and valued representational resources of a traditional classroom. Echoing Janks’ access paradox, Stein emphatically maintains that valuing diversity is not about denying access to dominant discourses of power, but rather is about valuing and building on students’ complete array of representational resources. Stein's research is seen as positioning children as active transformers of culture as they assert their identities and demonstrate their ‘rights to be acknowledged as resourceful makers of meaning across different languages and in different modes’ (p. 42). Whereas multimodal research frequently involves examining digital texts, Stein's work is a refreshing reminder that all texts are multimodal and that a multimodal perspective is necessary and revealing for understanding not only digital movie making but also the process through which a child constructs a doll from a recycled pop bottle. Her work provides much-needed approaches to analyzing multimodal texts that go beyond linguistic and visual analysis.

2.3 Researcher identity: reflexivity in identity research

Because research on language and identity centers on the social constructedness of texts, a reflexive examination of researcher identity is both relevant and potentially insightful about the social constructedness of identity research texts. Blackledge & Creese, in particular, use reflexivity productively. They provide a chapter on the reflexive approach to team research, including an examination of the ways they were able to negotiate their identities as researchers within the team and engaging explicitly with how they understand themselves as researchers and how they understand their relationships to the people with whom they worked. Their own language ideologies, linguistic resources, and researcher identities are acknowledged as significant at various stages of the research process, from initial site access to ongoing data interpretation. This demystification of the research process is rare and, as the authors argue, makes a unique contribution to multilingualism research methods.

Stein also takes the notion of reflexivity seriously, viewing her own study as a social sign that in turn reflects her own history and interests. She contextualizes and reflects upon her privileged position as a white middle-class female researcher amongst mostly black students and teachers in the post-apartheid world. Stein acknowledges that, as an English speaker, she was also positioned as a linguistic outsider and this affected the linguistic practices of the participants, as multilingual translation became the norm. Stein calls into question the research practice of making others vulnerable through their revelations while keeping the researcher invulnerable and revealing nothing of themselves, especially with regards to video data. Although this suggests researchers should consider recording themselves on film along with their participants, Stein does not make this move and instead leaves it as an unspoken, unrealized possibility for future video ethnographers to consider. In terms of reflexive methodology, Stein acknowledges the ethical and practical limitations of reporting on multimodal work. She deals with these dilemmas by making abundant use of still images captured from what were once rich, live multimodal performances and adding her own eloquent annotations, to attempt to regain in language what was lost in movement. While these attempts can only ever be partial, Stein's process represents a methodological advance for future research.

Like Stein, Janks acknowledges how her own history and identity investments, particularly as a white woman in South Africa and her ‘shame in the face of racialised injustices of apartheid’ (p. 206) have led to her involvement in critical literacy projects. This self-reflexivity lends strength to her call for teachers to respond to their students’ identity investments and use subjectivity – their own and that of their students – as a productive resource for critical literacy. Furthermore, in a book on critical literacy, Janks frequently turns a critical eye on her own work, including questioning how the nominalization of access, domination, diversity and design obscures the actors and actions involved. This self-reflexive criticality is refreshing and strengthens the validity of the overall work.

In her acknowledgement section, Kramsch briefly acknowledges that the impetus for the book came from her ‘own biography’ as well as the experiences of her sons, who have each ‘lived the multilingual experience to the full’ (p. viii). This is not expanded upon, and in a text that focuses on the value of linguistic autobiography, her own linguistic autobiography is notably absent. Her experiences emigrating to America and teaching German as a foreign language would be enriching in this context. Her concern that ‘the difficulty of writing objectively about an experience that I had lived through myself as a foreign language learner and the fear of being misunderstood’ (p. vii) would have benefitted from elaboration, as it seems counter-intuitive to demand objectivity of herself in a text that embraces and values subjectivity in research. This silencing of the subjectivity that lies just below the surface of her impassioned words suggests that there is still more that can be done to fully embrace subjectivity in language and literacy work; perhaps as future researchers read and are inspired by her profound work, they will expand their understanding of what can be said in the research field and will add their own subjective voice to their future works on language and identity. In addition, though her work piques the reader's interest in the affective experience of our subjective relationship to given languages, Kramsch's identity as a German speaker is not fully explored. While Kramsch notes that her own linguistic resources and her belief in the significance of subtle word choice lead her to select texts in the European languages she is most familiar with, what is not acknowledged here is how her own affective responses to these multilingual pieces are implicated in her selection, interpretation and analysis: her theoretical frame declares that it matters. Like many researchers who seem to struggle with the contingency of interpretive analysis, Kramsch seems to be placing an objective frame over a delicate subjective process. While she draws analytic attention to the use of the ‘I’, even finding three selves indexed by three utterances of the pronoun in the space of a short paragraph of narration (p. 98), she does not draw reflexive attention to her own use of the first person pronoun throughout the text. In general, the pronoun is used frequently in the introduction and reappears at the beginning of each subsequent chapter as the authorial self describes her intentions for each chapter. It is notably absent in the analysis portions of the text, where it is replaced by the first person plural ‘we’, such as ‘we can say’ (p. 111) and ‘we can clearly see’ (p. 121), in ways that follow conventions in the field but may not be in complete congruence with the overall theoretical framework proposed. Finally, although she acknowledges that the linguistic biography work that was completed as an assignment could have been written ‘for the instructor’ even though ‘several authors insisted they had written them primarily for themselves, with no particular addressee’ (p. 128), as a reader I was curious about how language choice may have been affected by the linguistic repertoires of Kramsch as instructor.

In following this tradition, it is important that I consider how my own identity affects this review. As a monolingual speaker of English for the formative years of my life who over time gained access to Japanese and French linguistic resources that I rarely use in practice, I am one of those who benefit from the high symbolic capital of standard English in many global discourses. I further benefit from having much of the publishing world dominated by English monolingual texts: as I publish in my fluent native language, its symbolic capital can be understood to strengthen both my right to speak and my power to impose reception. At the same time, it limits my choice of comprehensible texts. In fact, though they are about multilingualism and multimodality, and strive to change the current hegemony of English print literacy, all of the texts selected for this review are in fact monolingual English print texts. This is partly due to the dominance of English in the field; but it is also due to my own linguistic limitations: one of the texts considered for this review was eventually set aside partly because half of it was written in a language I do not know. At the same time, working with multilingual and multimodally-competent young people has led me to devote a great deal of attention to the field of critical multilingualism and further shapes the selection of the texts reviewed here and my understanding of their significance. Readers of this review will need to decide if they accept such admissions of subjectivity as an affordance or a limitation.