The role of self and identity in motivating learners of Mandarin Chinese as a foreign language in Ireland Ph.D. Thesis Chung Kam Kwok University of Dublin, Trinity College School of Linguistic, Speech and Communication Sciences 2017 Declaration_____________________________ I declare that this thesis has not been submitted as an exercise for a degree at this or any other University, and that it is entirely my own work. ___________________ Chung Kam Kwok October 2017 Permission to lend and/or copy ______________ I agree to deposit this thesis in the University’s open access institutional repository or allow the Library to do so on my behalf, subject to Irish Copyright Legislation and Trinity College Library conditions of use and acknowledgement. Chung Kam Kwok October 2017 Summary This thesis investigates the role of self and identity in the Chinese language learning motivation. It proposes an approach where equal weight is given to social context and psychological factors in the inquiry of the relation between self-identity and motivation. In particular, SLA researchers either focus on the cognitive aspects of motivation, which often see self-identity and motivation are relatively stable variables, or accentuated the process in which language learners deploy their agency to negotiate with their learning environment. While these two approaches to motivation are very different, these researchers are both interested in how learners’ perception of themselves is related to second/foreign language learning. Recently, some researchers in the field began to bring together some seemingly incompatible concepts in order to better understand the association between self- identity and motivation. Some other researchers also encourage socio-cultural oriented scholars to give more emphasis of psychological factors in their research, and vice versa. This project is one of such attempts, which draws on different theories to tease in what way the interplay among social and psychological factors, as well as human agency influence language learning motivation. Nonetheless, since many theories that see self-identity as a crucial factor for language learning motivation were in fact built upon the data collected from the learning English as a second/foreign language context. Therefore, this study chose to investigate an emerging non-English language, Mandarin Chinese, to examine if self and identity is equally critical when the learners’ target language is different (i.e., non- English). In chapter 1, I will present the rationale and aims of this study, as well as the outline of the theoretical framework of the current study. research questions and the methodology used in the current study respectively will also be outlined to give readers an overview of the thesis. In chapter 2, I will review the literature on some of the most important motivational theories in SLA over the past few decades, then, I will discuss how self and identity became the centres of many research projects and the challenges of using the concepts of self and identity in motivation research. I will then introduce a theory proposed by Mercer (2015, 2016) that can potentially bridge the gap between the very different understanding and approaches to self and identity in SLA. At the end of Chapter 2, I present the theoretical framework used for the analyses of the qualitative data. Chapter 3 details the objective, design, methodology, data collection procedures and analytical tools used in the current study. A rarely used statistical technique, cluster analysis, is also introduced in this chapter. The purpose of it is to let readers have rough idea about the technique before proceeding to chapter 4, where the findings of the questionnaire survey is presented. i Chapter 4 presents the data and the findings of the questionnaire survey. The first half of the chapter involves the findings yielded using descriptive and inferential statistics, whereas the second half of this chapter focuses on the output of the cluster analysis. Chapter 5 presents the data and findings of the longitudinal case studies. This part conceptualises self and identity as a complex system characterised as the interplay among social context, psychological structure and agency. I also highlight the importance of capital, the form and amount of resources that one can draw on to change their surrounding, in the development of the Ideal L2 self. Chapter 6 is the concluding chapter of this thesis. I will first recapitulate the essence of the research findings in this study. Then, I will turn to the contribution and limitations of this study. Lastly, I will suggest some future directions of research based on the findings of this study. ii Acknowledgements I would like to extend my sincere and warmest thanks to my supervisor Dr Lorna Carson for her guidance, insights, patience and encouragement; all the volunteer participants involved in this project and those who have provided assistance over the past few years. I would also like to thank friends and colleagues at the Centre for Language and Communication Studies, Trinity College Dublin, for their support and interest in my work. I would also like to express my gratitude to CLCS for providing me with the funding to take on this research. I would also like to express my gratitude to my former supervisor, Dr Heath Rose, who believed in my ability to start this journey. I am thankful to his guidance at the first stage of my PhD journey. I feel really lucky to have been under his supervision. I want to take this opportunity to wish him the best of luck in his academic endeavours at Oxford University. iii Table of contents Contents Table of contents ......................................................................................................................... iv Chapter 1: Introduction .............................................................................................................. 1 1.1 The rationale and aims of the study ...................................................................................... 1 1.1.1 The dominance of English .............................................................................................. 1 1.1.2 Theoretical challenges ................................................................................................... 2 1.2 Previous literature on Chinese learning motivation................................................................ 3 1.3 Theoretical overview ........................................................................................................... 5 1.4 Research questions .............................................................................................................. 6 1.5 Methodological approach .................................................................................................... 7 1.6 The arrangement of this thesis ............................................................................................. 7 Chapter 2: Motivation and Self-identity in second language acquisition (SLA)........................... 9 2.1 Introduction ........................................................................................................................ 9 2.2 The four stages of theoretical development in Second Language Acquisition motivation ....... 10 2.2.1. The social psychological period (1959-1990) ................................................................ 10 2.2.2. Cognitive psychological period .................................................................................... 12 2.2.3. Process-Oriented Period ............................................................................................. 13 2.3 The self and Identity in SLA motivational research ............................................................... 14 2.3.1 A Poststructuralist approach to identity and SLA motivation .......................................... 15 2.3.2 L2 Motivational Self System: The self and identity in mainstream SLA motivation research .......................................................................................................................................... 18 2.3.3 The Poststructuralist approach to identity and L2 Motivational Self System: Some common ground ................................................................................................................................ 20 2.4 Challenges of the self and identity facing motivation researchers in SLA and the solutions being put forward ............................................................................................................................ 23 2.4.1 Terminological challenge ............................................................................................. 23 2.4.2 Conceptual challenge .................................................................................................. 24 2.4.3 Integrating different components of self: Conceptualising self as a dynamic system........ 26 2.4.4 Reconciliation of different views on agency .................................................................. 28 2.4.5 Identity negotiation and capital: weaving agency, mental process and social contexts together ............................................................................................................................. 29 2.5 The theoretical approach of this study .......................................................................... 30 2.5.1 An overview of the theoretical approach to this study ...........................................