Church-based ESL program as a figured world: Immigrant adult learners, language, identity, power

Drawing on the theoretical perspectives of figured worlds (Holland, Lachicotte, Skinner, & Cain, 1998), dialogic discourse (Bakhtin, 1981), and a poststructuralist approach to language, this three-year ethnographic study explores the ways in which artifacts and classroom discourse of a church-based ESL program in a Southeastern U.S. city facilitate or constrain the immigrant adult learners' participation. This study indicates that the church-based ESL program is a Christian figured world that is not natural but nurtured and naturalized. This program serves as a linguistic, cultural, and community broker to help the adult learners with learning English and socialization, whereas Christian principles, norms, and values are imposed on the adult learners. This can lead to some learners' resistance or non-participation. The church-based ESL program is therefore a missionary tool to proselytize. Learning English in this Christian figured world is a process of being, self-assigned or other-assigned identity transformation.