Performativity theory and language learning: Sedimentating, appropriating, and constituting language and subjectivity

This article examines several “language practice” interactions among adult immigrant students in an ESL classroom in the U.S. from the perspective of performativity theory. In drawing on performativity theory, it conceptualizes such classroom interactions, along with the research practices used to investigate them, as constitutive actions. That is, it considers such practices as producing the social realities (such as language) and particular subjectivities (such as language learner) which are the concern of second language researchers. Using microethnographic methods, it explores two metaphoric processes at play in the classroom talk, those of sedimentation and appropriation, and analyzes them as performative and ideological activity. It concludes by discussing how performativity theory can enable second language researchers to carefully consider and seek to understand the performative effects of using normative social constructs (such as language and language learner) to explore classroom language learning.

► Application of performativity theory to ESL classroom practice. ► Analyzes ideological effects of sedimentation and appropriation of language usages. ► Posits that learners reconstitute and renew rather than master languages. ► Contends that researchers co-constitute their researchable categories.