Investments and identity processes of UEMS language students

Contemporary research on the subject of the identity of English language learners is increasingly appearing in national and international literature as an extensive field of investigation, stemming from the studies of Norton Peirce (1995), Bauman (2005), among other post-structuralist authors. These authors base their studies on Hall (2006), in which identity is seen as under construction, fragmented; and on investments, by Norton Peirce (1995). In this way, this study sought to understand how the experiences in relation to the language had an impact on the participants’ identity processes, and what investments they had made in order to achieve the imagined communities they wished to obtain in the target language. Analysing the data made it possible to study and understand the English learners’ identification process, based on their accounts, as well as the investments they made in order to appropriate the language.