Abstract:
The study explores the motivational role of the personal constructions of Italian
identity (Italianità) of five learners of Italian descent studying their heritage language by
means of traditional foreign language courses in Wellington, New Zealand. By adopting
a social constructivist perspective on both language learning and the motivational
processes underlying it, and by applying such concepts as investment (Norton, 2000),
ideal L2 self (Dörnyei, 2009) and language learning as identity reconstruction (Pavlenko
& Lantolf, 2000), the study aims to further our understanding of heritage language
learning motivation as a socially mediated process (Ushioda, 2003).
Qualitative data was collected through waves of semi-structured interviews from five
case-study participants over the course of several months of learning. Responses were
used to map the influence that the participants’ constructions of their own Italianità
exerted on three aspects of their language learning motivation: their reasons for learning
the language, the decision to embark on the study of it, and the maintenance of their
interest and learning efforts throughout the learning process. Detailed observations of
learning sites, classes and materials, and interviews with teachers provided rich
contextual data concerning key episodes identified by the students as relating to different
aspects of motivation.
The findings suggest that Italianità is heavily implicated in the initial stages of
motivation, but that its influence is mediated by the learners’ personal constructions of a
multitude of internal and external factors, through which they come to personalise and
prioritise their own objectives and identity ambitions in ways that guide their
motivational arousal, their decision to pursue the language and their creation and
visualisation of learning goals. Italianità is also found to have an influence on the
maintenance and shifts in the participants’ motivational states throughout their learning,
supporting a socially mediated view of L2 motivation in which motivational fluctuations
are explained as the result of the learners’ own processing of and reaction to elements of
their context, including critical events inside and outside the classroom, exchanges with
teachers, peers and speakers of Italian, and ongoing developments of opportunities and
challenges for the achievement of the personal goals and identity ambitions driving their
learning.
