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Motivation has been a major research topic within SLA for over four decades,
yet has endured a marginalized position within the field, remaining somewhat
isolated from its more mainstream linguistic traditions. The analysis of motivation and its role in SLA has largely been at the level of global learning outcomes,
and research has had little to say about how motivational factors relate to the interim processes of linguistic development. Thus while motivation is recognized
as a prerequisite for successful SLA, the relevance of motivation research to
understanding the finer detail of how SLA happens has been unclear. This paper
discusses some studies that have attempted to integrate the analysis of motivation with more linguistic approaches in SLA. It proposes an agenda for bridging
the gap between motivation and mainstream SLA research, and suggests how
motivation research may contribute to the development of major lines of thinking within the field.
Ema Ushioda
the 1970s, the history of motivation research in SLA has been a rich and vibrant
one, spearheaded by the pioneering work of Robert Gardner and his colleagues
in Canada (e.g. Gardner 1985; Gardner and Lalonde 1983; Gardner and Lambert
1972), who drew attention to the significant role of attitudinal-motivational variables in second language learning and established motivation as a major research
topic in SLA. Over the past four decades, L2 motivation research has developed
and evolved through different traditions of inquiry, and has generated and continues to generate a substantial body of theoretical and empirical literature (for a
recent overview, see Drnyei and Ushioda 2010).
However, within the field of SLA itself, motivation research has endured a
rather odd, marginalized position, remaining somewhat isolated from the more
mainstream cognitive linguistic traditions that prevail. Thus, while textbooks and
handbooks on SLA consistently include reference to motivation as an important
language learner variable, treatment of the topic tends to be self-contained in a
relatively small section. For example, as Drnyei (2003: 21) points out, Ellis (1994)
devotes fewer than ten pages (out of nearly 700) to discussing motivation in his
book-length survey of SLA research, even though he acknowledges that it is a key
factor in L2 learning (p. 508). Similarly, in Doughty and Longs (2005) Handbook
of Second Language Acquisition spanning some 900 pages, discussion of motivation is confined to around ten pages in a chapter on individual differences. In
the more recent second edition of Elliss book-length survey of SLA published in
2008 (now spanning over 1000 pages), motivation still does not merit a chapter
in itself but is largely confined to a 15-page section within an 80-page chapter on
individual learner differences. Moreover, in contextualizing his survey of motivation research, Ellis explicitly makes the critical observation that the study of L2
motivation research continues to lie outside mainstream SLA (p. 690).
In short, while all of us might acknowledge the truth of Corders famous
pronouncement about the importance of motivation in SLA, it seems that this
importance does not translate into making the analysis of motivation a central
dimension of SLA research. The analysis of motivation seems to be a concern only
for those who, like myself, are specifically interested in issues of motivation in
SLA, while the degree of interaction between L2 motivation research and the rest
of the SLA field seems on the whole rather minimal. We motivation researchers
do not seem to have much to offer to mainstream SLA, and issues of motivation
feature only rather tangentially in the linguistic and psycholinguistic traditions
that dominate the SLA field. In effect, there is something of a gap between motivation research and mainstream SLA, and it is the purpose of this paper to explore
(a) why such a gap exists, and (b) what can be done to bridge the gap that is,
what kinds of research inquiry might be pursued in the area of motivation which
would usefully contribute to the development of major lines of thinking in SLA.
2010. John Benjamins Publishing Company
All rights reserved
Ema Ushioda
However, the second point to be made about the work of Gardner and his
colleagues is that it influenced the development of associated social psychological
theories of second language acquisition and communication in situations of intergroup contact in multilingual settings. Such social psychological theories include,
for example, the early work of Schumann (1978) on acculturation theory and
linguistic fossilization, the work of Meisel (1977) on elaborative versus restrictive linguistic simplification in the speech of immigrant workers, and the work
of Giles and Byrne (1982) on intergroup relations and linguistic accommodation.
While the construct of motivation is not the primary focus in these associated social psychological perspectives on SLA, this important body of work does clearly
point to a more fine-grained analysis of how attitudinal-motivational factors associated with ethnolinguistic identity and social identification may shape processes
of linguistic development or non-development, and help explain the extent to
which particular target-like features of the majority language are acquired or not.
However, this more linguistically-focused angle of inquiry has not been a central
preoccupation of motivation researchers in SLA, for whom the rather broader
focus on global learning, achievement and behavioural outcomes has tended to
prevail. I will come back to this point about issues of motivation, identity and linguistic development later when I discuss ways forward to bridge the gap between
motivation research and mainstream SLA.
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Ema Ushioda
generally takes the form of computational models of mental processes and learning behaviours and outcomes. In short, there is no ontological division between
motivation research on the one hand, and the cognitive orientation that prevails
in mainstream SLA on the other, and the view put forward by Doughty and Long
(2005) that SLA be seen as a branch of cognitive science would not go against the
grain of most motivation research in SLA.
Of course, recent years have seen a major debate in SLA about competing
ontological paradigms, or what Zuengler and Miller (2006) call the two parallel SLA worlds of cognitive and sociocultural perspectives, or the positivist and
relativist paradigms. To cut a long story short, there is now a considerable body
of opinion in the SLA field which suggests that we should view language learning
as a sociocultural and sociohistorically situated process, rather than as primarily
a cognitive psycholinguistic process (see, for example, Lafford 2007). A key argument here is that the traditional SLA focus on decontextualized interior processes
of language learning as distinct from social processes of language use limits our
understanding of how cognitive structures develop and evolve through engagement in social activity. Thus Kramsch (2002), for example, asks how can we separate the dancer from the dance, or acquisition from use, the cognitive from the
social, the individual from the environment?
In short, within the field of SLA in recent years, we have witnessed what
Block (2003) has called a social turn in second language acquisition, whereby
the traditional cognitive paradigm of SLA research has begun to be influenced
by or some may say challenged by a variety of more interactionist and sociocontextually grounded paradigms of inquiry. These alternative paradigms include, for example, Vygotskian sociocultural theory (Lantolf and Thorne, 2006),
language socialization (Watson-Gegeo 2004), ecological perspectives (van Lier
2004), sociocognitive theory (Atkinson 2002), poststructuralist perspectives
(Pavlenko 2002), and most recently dynamic systems and complexity theory approaches (Larsen-Freeman and Cameron 2008a).
Remarkably perhaps, despite its origins in social psychology, it is only very recently too that motivation research in SLA is beginning to embrace this social turn,
reflecting the influence of these wider ontological debates in the SLA field, as well
as a general Zeitgeist in mainstream motivational psychology where sociocultural
and situated perspectives integrating motivation and context have begun to break
ground (e.g. Volet and Jrvel 2001; McInerney and Van Etten 2004). As recently
argued (Ushioda 2009), the bulk of motivation research in SLA to date has tended
to focus on motivation as an individual psychological phenomenon, located in the
inner workings of the mind, and has tended to sustain the basic Cartesian dualism between the inner mental world of the individual, and the surrounding social
environment. Each learner interprets and reacts to her environment, but remains
2010. John Benjamins Publishing Company
All rights reserved
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Ema Ushioda
essentially distinct from it as Harr and Gillett (1994: 22) put it, hermetically
sealed in her own individual and self-contained subjectivity. However, current
thinking in motivation research in SLA is tuning in to the wider debates about the
organic relations between individual and context, about emergentism in SLA (Ellis
and Larsen-Freeman 2006), and about dynamic complex systems and non-linear
relations (e.g. Drnyei 2009a, 2009b; Ushioda 2009).
In short, in terms of my arguments in this paper, the conditions seem right
and the time seems ripe for a much closer synergy between motivation research
and mainstream SLA, given this shared pull towards dynamic and socio-contextually grounded analyses of the processes shaping SLA. Some will argue of course
that the sociocultural paradigm is not (yet?) mainstream SLA, and clearly the
debates are ongoing. Nevertheless, the position taken here is that new directions
in motivation research may contribute to pushing forward and developing major
lines of inquiry in SLA that cut across the sociocultural and cognitive paradigms.
The second part of this paper sketches some possible ways forward in this regard,
by drawing on some recent studies which may illustrate how this closer synergy
between motivation and mainstream SLA research can happen.
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Ema Ushioda
Takahashis research is illuminating, and paves the way for further research
on motivation and L2 pragmatic development, as well the analysis of whether
motivation may promote selective attention to different aspects of L2 input.
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Ema Ushioda
Concluding note
This paper set out to outline how motivation research may be better integrated
into mainstream SLA, and contribute to the development of major lines of thinking in the field. However, it is beyond the scope of the paper to elaborate possible research designs and methodologies in this regard. The dynamic systems
and complexity theory approach to SLA is still new and untried, and presents
significant challenges in terms of developing workable research designs and analytical tools to investigate complex systems in a coherent and systematic way (see,
for example, Larsen-Freeman and Cameron 2008b). But, to adapt that famous
pronouncement by Corder cited at the beginning of this paper, perhaps, given
motivation, it is inevitable that we SLA researchers will find a way forward.
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