26.1174, Review: Applied Ling; Discourse Analysis; Socioling: Miller (2014)

Mon Mar 2 21:37:24 UTC 2015

LINGUIST List: Vol-26-1174. Mon Mar 02 2015. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 26.1174, Review: Applied Ling; Discourse Analysis; Socioling: Miller (2014)

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Date: Mon, 02 Mar 2015 16:37:08
From: Andrea Lypka [alypka at mail.usf.edu]
Subject: The Language of Adult Immigrants

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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/25/25-2642.html

AUTHOR: Elizabeth R Miller
TITLE: The Language of Adult Immigrants
SUBTITLE: Agency in the Making
SERIES TITLE: New Perspectives on Language and Education
PUBLISHER: Multilingual Matters
YEAR: 2014

REVIEWER: Andrea E Lypka, University of South Florida

Review's Editor: Helen Aristar-Dry

SUMMARY

>From a sociolinguistic perspective, in The Language of Adult Immigrants:
Agency in the Making, Elizabeth R. Miller promotes the idea that adult
immigrant English language learner agency and identity are mediated in mundane
discursive practices, such as interview talks. Macro discourses, such as the
legitimization of English as the official language and the “us versus them”
dichotomy between the linguistically homogenous English-speaking group and the
culturally and linguistically diverse immigrant group are reconstituted and
indexed in the micro context of interviews with 18 adult immigrant small
business owners (from Vietnam, China, Korea, Laos, Burma, Brazil, Greece,
France, and Italy).  Drawing on Butler’s perspective on agency as
performatively constituted (1997, 2010), in this interview study, Miller
interprets the performatively constituted agency of language learner on a
micro-level (via discourse analysis) by examining subject-predicate
constructs, evaluative stance, and reported speech in individual interviews
and on a macro-level by revealing discursive patterns across interviews.  

The eight chapters offer an in-depth interdisciplinary discussion of key
concepts of agency and language learning, agency in discourse, stance and
subjectivity, agency and reported speech, and ideology production. In Chapter
1, Miller reviews previous studies on language learner agency, situates the
study within the relational theoretical framework, and describes the
organization of the book. In Chapter 2, inspired by Vygotsky’s perspective on
human agency, Bakhtin’s dialogic Self, and Butler’s notions of performativity,
the author conceptualizes agency in language learning as  a “social,
ideologically constrained and interactionally contingent” (Miller, 2014, p. 9)
construct and as “the development of linguistic and communicative know-how but
also the desire to learn a language and the valuing of such activity” (p. 18).
Chapter 3 provides an overview of  methodology, drawing on the theories of
agency (Ahearn, 2010) and Pavlenko’s perspective on narrative as ‘discursive
construction’(2007) that views discourse as a tool for socially constructing
meaning constrained by a system of norms which are embedded in language. In
particular, Miller contextualizes the interview as relational space in which
the agencies and identities of the interviewer and interviewee as well as
ideologies get (re)constituted. The author also presents the discourse
analytical framework for the analysis of the linguistic constructs of
subject-verb structures, evaluative stance, and reported speech utterance in
individual interviews and across the interview corpus, constructs that have
not been previously analyzed in tandem. Chapters 4, 5, and 6 entail
microanalyses of select stretches of talk focusing on specific linguistic
constructs and identifying patterns across interviews to reveal agentive or
inagentive positioning of participants related to their early and ongoing
language learning experiences at their workplace. Using a mixed method
approach, in Chapter 4, Miller examines discursive agency in subject-predicate
configurations and modal verb utterances. The line-by-line analysis from
interview excerpts reveals that participants predominantly positioned
themselves as active and responsible agents in their past effort to learn
English. For example, a Chinese restaurant owner, Hannah picked an American
friend who also spoke Chinese to be her English teacher and Jin, the
proprietor of a facial salon searched for word meanings online. The focus of
the analysis in Chapter 5 is evaluative stancetaking, defined as “discursive
acts that position interviewees as they evaluate aspects of their language
learning Selves as moral entities in the world” (Miller, 2014, p. 75). In
Chapter 6, the analysis of reported speech constructs in interview talks help
provide credibility to the narrated events.  Chapter 7 explores how wider
discourses on immigration, national identity, official language, and language
learning intersect with the concepts of learner agency and responsibility. The
final chapter discusses the intersections of the emergent linguistic
constructs identified in interviews and provides implications for future
research that treats interviews as socially mediated texts that are
performatively negotiated between interactants against the backdrop of social
ideologies. An appendix with transcription conventions, list of references,
author, and subject indexes to the text are also included. 

EVALUATION

Though many SLA scholars have explored the construction of learner identity in
language learning, predominantly in classroom environments, Miller posits that
agency and language learning in non-classroom contexts remain marginalized in
SLA. Bringing together interdisciplinary research,and performativity theory,
and using  a discourse analytic approach, Miller’s study challenges the notion
of language learning as constrained to formal classroom contexts and
celebrates the performance of continuous learning in  an everyday context. 
The author provides evidence that “discourse is not static language” and
“performativity is not a mere action, but a way of understanding and
constituting the world” (Miller, p. 145). Via close reading of linguistic
features, such as subject-predicate constructs, evaluative stance, and
reported speech, she argues that these linguistic features can be analyzed
together to reveal “agency in the making” and at the same time act as
“index[es] of social meanings” (p. 81). Miller proposes shifting our thinking
about agency as an ongoing performance as opposed to a fixed and simple
individualistic entity. In this sense, the author demonstrates that learner
agency is socially and discursively constituted and transformed in discourse.
Agency is relational, emergent, and constrained by unequal power structures,
ideological, social, and historical contexts.  It also encourages us to
reflect on how everyday narrative accounts are spaces for agentive
performance. 

After providing a comprehensive literature review on seminal interdisciplinary
studies from the fields of sociology, anthropology, communication, and applied
linguistics and on the constructs that inform this study, Miller adopts
performativity as the theoretical framework, a theory that has been less
applied in SLA, to examine how learner agency is constituted in the second
language learning processes, using a mixed approach to analysis. By doing so,
the author shifts the research focus from linguistic constructions and
cognitive approaches to SLA and agency to a broader yet more complex,
relational approach to study this phenomenon.

Miller provides rich descriptions of the study development, including the
theoretical and analytical approaches and the analytical framework. The
theoretical framework of this study is informed by the discursive framing of
agency and Bakhtin’s notion of addressivity that views agency as relationship.
Though these theories have been thoroughly explored in this book, positioning
theory that views subject positions and larger discourses as embedded in
linguistic forms (Davies and Harré, 1990) could have been discussed in more
detail within the theoretical frameworks that inform the study. 

Through the microanalysis of a combination of linguistic structures, the
author makes a strong case for using a discourse analytic approach for
examining agency in co-constructed interview talks, arguing that the
microanalysis of certain linguistic features within individual interviews as
well as the patterns across the interview corpus allows for a more nuanced
analysis of patterns that may remain overlooked otherwise. Specifically, the
discussion on Miller’s evolving interest in this topic, researcher
positioning, selection of the semi-structured interview as main data source,
participant selection, and transcription procedures are thoroughly documented.
However, the researcher’s ethical reasons for  patronizing  her participants’
businesses and for making selection choices of stretches of talk for the
analysis could have been more transparent. 

A more holistic portrait of the study participants could have enriched the
study. In Chapter 3, the author provides minimal description of the
participants’ sociocultural backgrounds; the participants’ portrait is
predominantly revealed through a micro-level analysis of their own interviews.
The examples of interview talks as well as visual representation of data
demonstrate how agency is constituted in discourse. A more in-depth analysis
of their social and psychological aspects of learning English, including a
discussion about their literacy practices in their first languages and
language learning experiences, could have enriched the analysis and provided 
a more complex and dynamic profile of the adult immigrant English language
learner.

Contextualized in the current US sociopolitical context on immigration and
language learning, Miller extends the conversation in the research community
to better understand immigrant language learner agency from an
interdisciplinary stance. Detailed discussion of the selection of participants
and other decisions reveal the transparency of methods and analysis. The
thorough description of the analytical framework and methodology, including
the data collection techniques and micro-analytical approach to data analysis
provide credibility to the study and can inspire graduate students and
researchers interested in learning about discourse analysis to adopt this
analytical framework in future studies. The interdisciplinary perspective on
immigrants’ English language learning make this book valuable for a varied
audience, including scholars in other fields of study as well as teachers
working with English language learners, policy makers, and others interested
in practice and research in this context. 

REFERENCES

Ahearn, L. M. (2010). Agency and language. In J. Jasper, J. Vershueren and J.
Östman (eds). Society and Language Use (pp. 28-48). Amsterdam: John Benjamins
Publishing.

Butler, J. (1997). Excitable speech: A politics of the performative. New York,
NY: Routledge.
Butler, J. (2010). Performative agency. Journal of Cultural Economy, 3(2),
147-161.

Davies, B., and Harré, R. (1990). Positioning: The discursive production of
selves. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 20(1), 43-63.

Miller, E. R.  (2014). The language of adult immigrants: Agency in the making.
Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters.

Pavlenko, A. (2007). Autobiographic narratives as data in applied linguistics.
Applied Linguistics, 28(2), 163-188.

ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Andrea Lypka is a fourth year PhD student in the Second Language Acquisition
and Instructional Technology (SLA/IT) program at the University of South
Florida (USF). Her research interests include motivation, immigrant learner
identity, and digital storytelling.

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