Learners’ identifies at stake: Digital identity texts in the ELF classroom

Abstract

This paper focuses on the study of identity in digital identity texts produced by English as a foreign language (EFL) learners within a specific subject of the Teacher in Primary Education (English) degree at a Spanish university. To this end, 51 digital identity texts were analysed following a “positioning perspective”, which views identity in terms of “reflexive” and “interactive” positions (Davies & Harré 1990). Results show that learners constructed non-unitary identities whose subject positions were often contradictory. They also associated certain positions with silencing identities, transition identities and identities of competence within the reflexive and interactive categories (cf. Norton & Toohey 2011, Manyak 2004), while ascribing others to their viewers interactively. In general, students discursively presented themselves as competent actors through diverse semiotic and linguistic resources they deployed in an affective narrative style characteristic of some forms of digital communication (Jones & Hafner 2012, Page 2012).