Chapter 2. Identity, learning, and interaction

In recent years, identity has come to be recognised as complex and multilayered, fluid, and in constant flux (Block, 2007/2014; Bucholtz & Hall, 2005; Norton, 2000/2013; Norton Peirce, 1995; Norton & Toohey, 2011). Individuals are seen to perform and negotiate identities through actions and language, in multiple modes and in diverse times and spaces. Stemming from the social sciences and sparked by societal changes of ‘globalisation’, performative orientations to identity have fed into studies of language teaching and learning. These approaches challenge the assumptions which characterised the structuralist conceptualisations of language, culture, and identity that have characterised foreign language teaching (Firth & Wagner, 1997) and also intercultural education (Dervin, 2013; Dooly & Vallejo Rubinstein, 2017; Phipps, 2014; Piller, 2017).