This book explores discourses of foreign language education in Ireland through an ethnographic lens. Taking a critical approach to SLA, it locates students' language ideologies within wider discourses of language learning, such as discourses of gender and language learning and discourses of elite multilingualism. It also examines the role of the imagined identity in language learning investment in a world where English and a limited number of other 'global' languages dominate the foreign language learning experience. The ethnographic approach provides a unique insight into the way in which dominant discourses of identity, gender, and foreign language learning are both constructed and resisted in the institutional context, shaping our understanding of what it means to be a gendered being and what it means to be a language learner in a globalised world. This book will be of interest to postgraduate students and researchers in the fields of SLA and sociolinguistics, as well as language teachers and language policymakers.

This volume presents a collection of the latest scholarly research on language, migration and identity. In a globalised world where migratory patterns are in constant flux, the traditional notion of the 'immigrant' has shifted to include more fluid perspectives of the migrant as a transnational and the language learner as a complex individual possessing a range of dynamic social and contextual identities. This book presents a variety of studies of transnational speakers and communities. It includes research conducted within both established and emerging methodological traditions and frameworks and explores a wide range of contexts and geographical locations, from the multilingual language classroom to the migrant experience, and from Ireland to Eritrea. This book was published with the generous support of the National University of Ireland Publications Scheme.