Includes bibliographical references and an index; also includes an introduction and an afterword by Claire Kramsch.

Introduction Revisiting Identity and Language Learning -- Relevance of Identity Research to Language Learning -- Poststructuralist Theories of Identity -- Identity and Investment -- Imagined Communities and Imagined Identities -- Identity Categories and Language Learning -- Methods and Analysis of Research -- Identity and Language Teaching -- Emerging Themes and Future Directions -- Structure of the Book

1. Fact and Fiction in Language Learning
Saliha and the SLA Canon -- Identity and Language Learning -- Power and Identity -- Motivation and Investment -- Ethnicity, Gender and Class -- Rethinking Language and Communicative Competence

2. Researching Identity and Language Learning
Methodological Framework -- Central Questions -- The Researcher and the Researched -- The Project -- Data Organization -- Comment

3. The World of Adult Immigrant Language Learners
The International Context -- The Canadian World of Immigrant Women -- Biography, Identity and Language Learning -- Comment

4. Eva and Mai: Old Heads on Young Shoulders
Eva -- Mai

5. Mothers, Migration and Language Learning
Katarina -- Martina -- Felicia -- Comment

6. Second Language Acquisition Theory Revisited
Natural Language Learning -- Alberto and The Acculturation Model of SLA -- The Affective Filter -- Reconceptualizing Identity -- Language Learning as a Social Practice -- Comment

7. Claiming the Right to Speak in Classrooms and Communities
Formal Language Learning and Adult Immigrants -- Beyond Communicative Language Teaching -- Rethinking Multiculturalism -- The Diary Study as a Pedagogy of Possibility -- Transforming Monday Morning -- Concluding Comment

Afterword: Claire Kramsch
Why the Interest in Social and Cultural Identity in SLA? -- Three Influential Concepts -- The Future of the "Right to Speak" -- Discussion -- Conclusion

References

Index

''Identity and Language Learning draws on a longitudinal case study of immigrant women in Canada to develop new ideas about identity, investment, and imagined communities in the field of language learning and teaching. Bonny Norton demonstrates that a poststructuralist conception of identity as multiple, a site of struggle, and subject to change across time and place is highly productive for understanding language learning. Her sociological construct of investment is an important complement to psychological theories of motivation. The implications for language teaching and teacher education are profound. Now including a new, comprehensive Introduction as well as an Afterword by Claire Kramsch, this second edition addresses the following central questions:
Under what conditions do language learners speak, listen, read and write? -- How are relations of power implicated in the negotiation of identity? -- How can teachers address the investments and imagined identities of learners? -- The book integrates research, theory, and classroom practice, and is essential reading for students, teachers and researchers in the fields of language learning and teaching, TESOL, applied linguistics and literacy.'' (Book Cover)