Identity is intrinsically embedded in the social
hierarchy of our postmodern world particularly since
technological globalization has facilitated contact
between people, cultures, and languages, thus
shortening distances, removing boundaries, and fueling
the notion of the world as a global village (Bauman,
1999). Social relations have indeed become more
complex as identities tend to be less coherent and stable
entities. This is to say that the more diverse and
complex human encounters and relationships are, the
more multifaceted and plural the roles they assume in
individual and in social practices will be.
Yet identities may be the product of social, cultural, or
institution instantiation (Weedon,2004) and
subjectivities are constituted by the discourses
generated by institutional, social, and cultural practices
within historical contexts. Identities are always
relational and negotiable (Norton, 2000). Language,
seen as more than a linguistic system of signs with
regularities and applicability, is a social practice that
engages subjects into meaningful exchanges where
identities are negotiated and constructed. When social
practice is seen in relation to language use and
education, particularly in the case of foreign language
teachers, their lived experiences, beliefs, and
knowledge help them build their identity transforming
their practices.
Identity “reflects the social, historical and political
context of an individual’s lived experiences” (Hall,
2002, p. 31); it is not a sole identity, but identities,
related to different traditional demographic categories
such as ethnicity, race, nationality, migration, gender,
social class, and language.
https://www.redalyc.org/journal/3057/305762630004/html
For the foreign language teachers,