Identity and a Model of Investment in Applied Linguistics

“Secondly, I see ideology as multiple and constantly contesting, multilayered construct; it should therefore be examined on more than one level “where ideational, behavioral, and institutional aspects interact and sometimes contract one another” (Darvin & Norton, 2015, pp. 43-44).”

“’ (Darvin & Norton, 2015, p. 37).”

“That is, although what learners desire can be shaped by structural constraints of the macro context, “it is through desire that learners are compelled to act and exercise their agency” (Darvin & Norton, 2015, p. 46).”

“…development as a dialogic process of self-authoring (Bakhtin, 1981; Vitanova, 2010), situating our work within recent conceptualizations of identity as complex, multiple, and dynamic (Darvin & Norton, 2015), and of teacher identity development as a process of becoming (De Costa & Norton, 2017).”

“In particular, investment research has primarily focused on socially disadvantaged and marginalised individual learners who need to claim their rights as legitimate speakers of a mainstream language, in this case English (Darvin & Norton, 2015).”

“…their students to develop diverse identities that adopt the variety in ethnicity, gender, thought, personality, culture, working, and lifestyles (Darvin and Norton 2015) to engage in intercultural conversations where they can fluently introduce their home-country culture via other languages…”

“Darvin and Norton (2015, 2016) recreated Norton’s initial investment model.”

“The construct of investment is one that I developed as early as 1995 (see Norton, 2013; Norton Peirce, 1995), and have developed further with my former student Ron Darvin (Darvin and Norton, 2015, 2023).”

“More recently, Darvin and Norton (2015) propose a more extensive model of investment, arguing that because systemic powers of control have become increasingly less visible, investment not only involves identity, but also intersects with macro power structures, such as ideology and capital, which,…”

“…in learning Chinese and English in various ways outside the formal classroom, Maria cast herself as a linguistic entrepreneur (De Costa et al., 2016) and negotiated an elite multilingual identity, which enhanced her self-worth and facilitated her upward social mobility (Darvin & Norton, 2015).”

“That these ideologies were not necessarily explicitly mentioned suggests that they may have been normalized by the communities that these instructors and students associate with (Darvin & Norton, 2015).”

“To address this paucity, I draw upon sociological construct of investment (Darvin and Norton 2015) and adopt a context-and time-sensitive approach to investigating a Syrian student – Charlie’s lived experiences of learning and using Chinese as an L2 in the classroom, everyday life and professional…”

“These processes are systemic patterns of control (Darvin and Norton 2015), which are weaved into bilinguals’ day-today experiences making power become invisible and experiences regarded as ‘normal’.”

“We build on existing research on mediation of language teacher development (e.g. Johnson & Golombek, 2020), language teacher identity (e.g. Darvin & Norton, 2015), agency (e.g. Miller et al., 2018) and emotions (e.g. Gkonou et al., 2020), and unite several concepts into one framework specific to…”

“These studies discuss how the students’ agentive practices foreground the process of “divestment” in such a situational context where learner “investment” has institutionally and socio-culturally been reified (Darvin and Norton 2015).”

“As such, invested students are more likely to find ways to act on their own benefit with new and broader discursive mechanisms and to resort to symbolic and material resources to acquire cultural capital (Escobar-Alméciga & Brutt-Griffler, 2022; Gee, 2011; Norton, 2015).”

“Their target spaces for mobility involve multiple imagined communities (Norton, 2001) which they aspire the language will allow them tomobilise to (Darvin & Norton, 2015).”

“Students construct dynamic identities from past experiences, available cultural resources, and possible future selves (Darvin & Norton, 2015; Norton, 2013), impacting their relationships with their peers, teachers, texts, themselves, and their learning.”

“Participants “invest” more in these learning communities as they expect to yield access to “a wider range of symbolic and material resources” (e.g., language, education, friendships, and/or money; Darvin & Norton, 2015).”

“…children’s ‘monolingual becoming’ is an articulation of their ‘ideological becoming’ (Bakhtin 1981, 341) as an individual’s linguistic practices and choices are often tied to how they view the languages and the world around them (Darvin and Norton 2015; Li et al. 2025; Rosa and Burdick 2017).”

“In short, classrooms are often considered as “site[s] of struggle” (Darvin & Norton, 2015, p. 36).”

“Informed by notions of identity and imagined community, investment and language ideology (Darvin & Norton, 2015), the study has explored the interplay between three MBA students’ identity construction and their second language and cultural investment during SA in the U.S. Congruent with previous…”

“Darvin and Norton (2015) de fi ne ideology from a broad perspective as ‘ dominant ways of thinking that organise and stabilise societies while simultaneously determining modes of inclusion and exclusion and the privileging and marginalisation of ideas, people, and relations ’ (44).”

“Darvin and Norton (2015) emphasize the importance of considering the opportunities that are available to individuals in certain positions, recognizing that not all individuals receive the same offers.”

“Meanwhile, language negotiation experiences in various linguistic environments can contribute to students’ investment in language learning (Darvin and Norton 2015).”

“Darvin and Norton (2015) argue that the political relationships and ideologies are determined by the linguistic shifts as Language shapes and modifies social interactions, power dynamics, and the construction of identities.”

“…discourse, where learners are expected to be passive recipients of knowledge, this propels you into the real world where you are able to ‘ act as if you ’ re actually talking ’ where you are an active participant in the generation of knowledge with the ‘ right to speak ’ (Darvin and Norton 2015).”

“More importantly, instead of using Blommaert (2010)’s original notion of scale , we have adopted Canagarajah (2013)’s alternate view on a more ‘open-ended’ interpretation of translocal scale , which we believe is better suited to complement Darvin and Norton (2015)’s expanded model of investment .”

“Informed by decades of scholarship, language learner identity is understood as a means of self-expression and social a ffi liation, constructed and negotiated through the transformative process of language learning (Darvin and Norton 2015, 2022).”

“Norton’s investment metaphor (Norton 2000; Norton Peirce 1995), later developed by Darvin and Norton (2015), provides a useful lens for exploring the wider social factors and anticipated outcomes that shape learners engagement with their L2.”

“The value of these forms of capital is decided by ideological structures – for example, by the ideologies re fl ected in a community ’ s policies – and is not stable but continuously negotiated (Darvin and Norton 2015).”

“Learners may not fully invest in the language practice (Norton, 2015) since the practice might “position them as inadequate, incapable, or unworthy” (Darvin, 2019, p. 245) and the investment in a target language is “contingent on the negotiation of power” (Darvin & Norton, 2015, p.37).”

“An increasing number of SLA studies have investigated how immigrant learners construct their identities in the process of acquiring an L2 and socializing with host communities (e.g., Darvin & Norton, 2015; Gearing & Roger, 2018; Giroir, 2014; Gu, 2011; Morita, 2004; Peirce, 1995).”

“Furthermore, our use of widely available mobile devices with video capacity helps students to gain entry into “legitimate participation” (Darvin & Norton, 2015, p. 50) through an empowering mediating artifact, and thereby bolster confidence.”

“Based on Darvin and Norton ’ s (2015) reconceptualisation of identity theory, Donehue (2017), for instance, highlights the recursive relationship between identity, capital and ideology in the context of refugees.”

“…a multimodal platform that provides users with a certain level of agency, freedom, and power to negotiate their identities through language choices (Darvin and Norton 2015); although with the caveat that, as with any social space, there are still restrictions and limitations both technological and…”

“Darvin and Norton (2015) as together with Kanno and Stuart (2011) strongly advocated school institutions to be responsive and supportive for the further development of EFL teachers’ identity construction by investing more intimate rapports, intensive identity practices, and critical self-reflection…”

“Informed by the concept of multilingualism, the research employs Norton ’ s theory of identity and investment (Darvin and Norton 2015; Norton 2013) as an analytical frame.”

“In social spheres, the value of symbolic capital is continuously being negotiated by individuals in competition with each other (Darvin & Norton, 2015).”

“…on language acquisition has been investigated within the personal investment framework both in quantitative (Ushioda and Dörnyei 2012) and qualitative terms (Darvin and Norton 2015; Norton 2013; Norton Peirce 1995), identifying relationships between goal types, learning strategies, and fluency.”

“The model of investment conceptualised by Darvin and Norton (2015, 2016) underscores that investment is situated at the intersection of ideology, identity and capital.”

“…ideology is also related to the construct of investment in second language learning, first put forward by Norton in the 1990s and later expanded by Darvin and Norton (2015) to include “the demands of a more mobile and digital world, in which language learners move in and out of online and offline…”

“…particularly cultural capital, to draw attention to the socio-historically constructed relationship of learners to the object (in her case, the language the learner is learning) of their learning and their sometimes-ambivalent desire to engage with it (Darvin & Norton, 2015; Norton Peirce, 1995).”