WHO ARE YOU?
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When you heard this question, what is the first thing that comes to your mind?
Let me guess, you may talk about something related to your social identity like your nationality, ethnicity, personality, Has it ever occurred to you that you might have digital identities too?
Introduction
The role of identity construction and negotiation in language learning has gained significant attention in recent decades, particularly in digitally mediated contexts. In the article “The evolution of identity research in CALL”, which reviewed how identity research on computer-assisted language learning (CALL) has evolved over time, Klimanova (2021) introduced the following three critical constructs in computer-mediated communication (CMC):
● Identity
Identity was primarily understood as a fixed set of social categories. However, it has been endowed with new meanings in the digital age. Deriving from the poststructuralist theories, the concept of identity in CALL refers to how language learners construct, perform, and negotiate their identities through interacting with others in contexts constrained by unequal power differentials.
● Agency
Agency refers to the learners’ power to control their situation, make choices, and act against social constraints and power differentials. It is about taking an active role in one’s learning and having the power to control one’s situation rather than being a passive recipient of instruction.
● Self-concept
Self-concept refers to learners’ self-descriptions of their competence and evaluative feelings about themselves as L2 learners and users. A learner’s self-concept can affect their behaviour and positioning strategies, given the central role of language in CMC.
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In a nutshell, learners’ identity, agency, and self-concept are interrelated and shape their language learning experiences.
Significance
● CMC context helps learners gain strong identities.
A social-networking space is more conducive to relieving anxiety and providing more learning resources and opportunities than face-to-face communication (Klimanova, 2021). With the help of new technology, learners can gain a level of control and agency when they browse what they like, create content and express themselves freely. Being confident and safe in who they are, language learners are strong in their identity and less likely to worry about others’ opinions.
● Identity research helps learners better merge into the digital world.
Focusing on the relationship between language learners’ subject positions and language users in CMC contexts, the research on identity can provide orientation for users to take advantage of their subject positions, adjust their practices and better fit into the digital world.
For example, when learners get involved in activities in CMC media platforms, it would be better for them to negotiate their multiple identities and transform them into multi-competent language users. Some activities that users are expected to do on various CMC media platforms are also underlying in some research like French learners are expected to demonstrate “Frenchness” by actively participating in cultural practices and interacting with other participants in a French forum (Hanna & de Nooy, 2003).
● Self-concept shapes learners’ participation in language learning.
Self-concept can have critical pedagogical implications because it can shape how learners approach and engage with language learning. For example, if a learner has a negative self-concept as a language learner, they may be less likely to take risks in their language use and may be more easily discouraged by setbacks or failures. On the other hand, a learner with a positive self-concept may be more confident and motivated, more willing to take risks, and more persistent in the face of obstacles.
Teachers and educational materials can play a role in shaping learners’ self-concept. For example, teachers can provide positive feedback and encouragement, create opportunities for success, and foster a supportive learning environment. Materials can also be designed to promote positive self-concept by including diverse representations of language learners and highlighting successful language use.
Drawback
● Individuals may have identity crises under the CMC context.
The feeling of being in or invading someone else’s digital space has been found to affect language learners’ desire to communicate in a second language (Klimanova, 2021). In a place where the primary language of communication is not their native language, people may be more aware of their deficiency in L2 and may not want to express themselves, being marginalized and unable to find a sense of belonging. It can be distressing if people’s basic understanding of self is clouded by confusion when they try to fit into or adapt to different communities, situations, or relationships.
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● Research on Identity positioning in a specific context is scarce.
There has not been enough research on how language learners use their multilingual identities and position themselves using language and semiotic resources in non-institutional digital spaces, including established and emergent digital gaming environments (Klimanova, 2021, p. 196). Therefore, there are no concrete guidelines that language learners can draw upon to harness linguistic and semiotic tools to exploit multilingual identities and establish themselves in the online landscape.
Discussion Questions
- How do you understand the relationship between yourself and your digital self?
- From your experience, how do you think language learning in the CMC context has affected your identity construction?
- What challenges and opportunities do digital identity construction present for language teaching and learning, and how can educators best prepare learners for the complex and rapidly evolving digital landscape?
(Edited by Bree, Sophia, Hedy, Danny)
1. My digital self and I have something in common and something different. The digital self forms a part of myself because it is created by me. But this kind of creativity could result in nuance. It may carry out some unknown amount of myself.
2. With the relaxing environment of the CMC context, learning a language can be enjoyable for me; in that case, it can stimulate the best part and position of myself.
3. Opportunities coexist with challenges. We can have more digital space; meanwhile, we also have the risk of exposing privacy. What we can do is prepare ourselves mentally. We should be ready for the risk and challenges.
Sounds interesting！Would you like to elaborate a bit more on the unknown part of your digital self? I’m curious about this point.
Because in my opinion the image of my digital self is controlled by myself. And I will choose what image I will show according to the people I’m going to interact with on different digital platforms.
1. I think digital age provides me with opportunities to present different identities, such as I can be a critic of a particular movie or I can be an expert in a particular kind of experience. I will show my positive image in social media to construct interactive relationship with my students or colleagues so “digital me” is really diverse, which depends on the platform it is presented.
2. I think learning a second language in CMC context provides me with more opportunities to communicate with native speakers or learners from other countries. I can also become an expert of Chinese helping learners from other countries in learning Chinese. It is an interactive and interesting experience.
3. One of the concerns would be that although learners may be more motivated to learn a second language in the digital wilds, the language there is usually informal or sometimes problematic. This might influence the learning of academic language. Thus, I think educators should help learners identify the differences.
I agree with you on this idea: CMC context provides us with more opportunities to communicate with native speakers and learners from other countries. Actually, it could be an opportunity but also a challenge. Because for those who have weak learner agency, they may be a passive recipient of so called native-speakerism, which means that while communicating with native speakers, they may put themselves in a weak position and feel that they are incorrect when their expression is different from that of native speakers.
So this is going to be what the teachers should do: (1) help students build a strong learner agency; (2) tell students that language varieties are relatively equal in this world of globalization, so ESL/EFL learners are not inferior to native speakers.
In addition, I feel like positive self-concept and strong learner agency will attribute to the construction of digital identity, so as to improve learners’ language learning experiences in CMC contexts, and vice versa.
@Sophia – this seems really interesting. I am wondering what kinds of things the teacher can do in order to promote strong learner agency?
1. In this digital age, I can show different aspects of myself， which means I can show different identities on the Internet. And each of them is just one part of me.
2. I think in the CMC context, we are much braver and opener. Maybe in a formal language class, I’m very shy to show my opinions but in the CMC context, I can do this without any concerns.
3. One of the concerns would be that it might cause leakage of personal information. Also, students may immerse the Digital Self of themselves and forget the real self in the material world.
Actually, students’ immersion in digital identity and forgiveness of real identity is a reflection of the lack of learner agency, which means they didn’t have the ability to control themselves and cope with the downsides of digital learning. That’s also what teachers can do—to help students develop good agency to support their learning.
For example, teachers can provide students with the opportunity to make choices in circumstances where their decisions will be able to be accepted and let them know what they can and cannot do; Also tell them some threats in digital world like scams and remind them of protecting personal information.
1. I think my digital identity is more diversified than myself, because in cyberspace, I have more opportunities and content to learn, and I can establish different identities to learn and share my own views freely.
2. In the CMC context, with more learning resources and opportunities, and in a freer space of expression, I can gain a sense of identity and security as a learner when I am free to express myself.
3. I believe that digital identity construction presents more of an opportunity for language learning because learners can use their diverse digital identities to learn, to express and share freely. Also, they can gain perspectives different from their own from a wider range of digitally identified learners.
1. I agree that in the CMC context, the identity of the digital me is more diverse. The digital me may present a different representation than the real me. But the digital me is part of me. But maybe it’s a part of me that I’m usually shy about expressing. I think the digital age gives us more opportunities to express ourselves.
2. In the CMC context, I will be more brave to participate in language learning. For example, in a real situation, I might use a foreign language less because I’m worried about grammatical mistakes. But in a digital environment, I would be braver and more outgoing.
3. The challenge is that students are easily addicted to information that has nothing to do with language learning, resulting in teaching effects that are inconsistent with expectations. As a teacher, we need to carefully guide students to use the Internet to learn the language.
Yeah, I agree that students may likely indulge in something that is irrelevant to language learning at all. In addition, some of them lack abilities to recognize fake information and therefore may be lured into deception. Therefore, it is necessary for techers to equip our students with critical digital literacy.
I think in a traditional language classroom, I’m more like a consumer who passively learn the knowledge. But in the digital context, I can construct roles of both consumer and producer which means I can engage with multiple media to collaboratively create multimodal texts and share them with whoever I like.
1. As a kind of blogger who often comments on food and make-up products on an app called Redbook, I think my digital self is more diverse and confident than my actual one, as I can share my real thoughts and honest emotions without being bothered by whether I would be recognized in the real life. The digital self is like a mask protecting me.
2. In the CMC context, as I feel secure commenting anonymously, I would be braver at expressing my opinions without caring about my syntactic mistakes.
3. The opportunities, of course, are that students can express and present themselves in a more free way. But one of the challenges is that students would hurt others’ feelings when they comment on others’ posts, like cyberbullying. What we teachers should do is guide the students to care for others’ emotions in the CMC context.
Wow! What an interesting digital identity! If you are brave to leave your account here, maybe some of us can follow you~ Also I think you can display a diverse digital identity is because you are a versatile person in the real world and you just choose some of your skills to show online.
I got different digital identities on different social media. These different digital selves compose my complete self in reality. Different digital selves may be endowed with different personalities and language habits, which provide me with corresponding digital spaces for different moods, emotions, feelings, or even thoughts.
From my experiences, language learning in the CMC context makes me more confident. As an EFL learner, I don’t have too many opportunities to communicate with people in English. Even as an English-major student, I only use English in class-related activities. The lack of practice made me anxious about my mistakes. However, the CMC context gave me access to other English users, where I found that even some native speakers may make mistakes when writing, which comforts me to some extent.
1.My online identity is not the same as your real-world identity because the characteristics I represent online differ from the characteristics you represent in the physical world. For example, I don’t often chat with others online but I do a lot in the real world through face to face.
2.language learning in the CMC context has given me more opportunities to interact with native speakers and I have gained more identity construction that I am a sociable person.
3.Some challenges also exist. For example, learners might be distracted with the variety of information which are irrelevant to their learning on the Internet. Also, They might learn some informal languages or even swearing words.
I quite agree with your opinion of the first question, some people indeed show different identities in the real world and cyberspace. Just like myself, I also prefer to communicate with others face to face rather than only chatting online. So compared to my identity offline, I feel like I am more silent and introverted in the digital world.
When the topic of digital identity construction comes up, I instantly associate it with my accounts on different social media. In fact, I have an account on Weibo with 70,000 followers. I created this account in 2015 and have been posting content since 2017. Most of my Weibo content is about a Chinese celebrity, so it’s an account in a fan community. In the early days, my Weibo output was only about my beloved celebrity. In recent years, however, I have started posting content about my life on my account, including some selfies and travel vlogs, which reflects a change in my perception of myself and my digital identity. I am becoming more and more convinced that I am who I am, and I don’t intend to separate my real life self from my online self. Certainly, it is dangerous to expose yourself completely on the Internet. So I keep my important information to myself and protect myself by controlling the audience of the content (like setting view limits for my Weibo content).
People’s image in social media can be very different from their reality. I think teachers need to properly guide students about their digital identity to prevent them from falling into the trap of vanity. If teachers want to promote students’ language learning in this way, it is also their responsibility to guide them in the proper perception of identity and values.
1. From my perspective, The person I present myself to on social media is usually the person I want to be, while the person I present myself to in real life is more authentic. Some people maintain one or more online identities that are distinct from their real-world selves.
2. On the one hand, CMC lead to a lack of authenticity in online activities. However, on the other hand, it allows for more interactions under different language and cultural backgrounds which can potentially broaden my sense of identity.
3. The digital landscape indeed provides more opportunities for language learners to connect with their intended speakers in a more real-life context. But there are still some challenges such as online safety and privacy concerns. To best prepare learners for the complex digital landscape, language educators have the obligation to introduce digital literacy and relevant digital citizenship skills in the language course. For example, this includes how to guide students effectively using digital tools for language learning.
The real me and the digital me may not be consistent. For example, I may be a language learner or a language teacher in real life, but I may have more identities on the Internet. For example, I am a star girl. In addition, my personality may also be different. As a language teacher in daily life, I need to have a rigorous working attitude, but I can release my cheerful side more freely on the Internet.
Digital self is me but not quite me; it is a hidden expression of a part of my inner passion. In digital place, I have many identities, I am more open to expression, and I am keen to find like-minded people. It is difficult for me to define the relationship between myself and digital-self. My understanding is that digital-self is also myself.
For me, the context of CMC not only enriches my language ability, but also makes my language learning more cautious. I gravitate toward different styles of language in different networking situations, ranging from the more academic to the more casual. And the most important thing is that I also need to be responsible for all my speeches on the Internet. I will pay more attention to my language expression when talking with netizens I don’t know, especially foreign friends. As a medium, the Internet allows us to get acquainted through the same hobbies as gathering points. However, language itself has both the power to impress and destroy people. We cannot directly observe the expressions or emotions of people on the other side of the screen, so we must be more careful in language learning and use.
I feel that today’s digital world offers each and every one of us a brand-new opportunity to re-recognize as well as reconstruct our self-identities. For example, I can present myself as a fan identity, movie lover, language learner, language user, etc. These different identities can be shown by my digital avatar, profile, texts I post, links I share, and people I follow, and they may sometimes be hidden in the real world for not to be judged by relatives or colleagues.
I think the Internet allows me to become someone more creative and fun. For example, I like to make videos about the games I played, share them on Bilibili, and make friends with those who have common hobbies. But in real life, I am shy and kind of boring.
To prepare students for the digital wild, I think it’s important to teach them how to find the online communities/platforms/forums they are interested in initially, which took me plenty of time before. And then, learners should understand how to adapt to different communities/situations/relationships and consciously acquire knowledge in a relaxing way.