Data-Driven Education Insights

SLA is the determination of the linguistic systems of learners and how it evolves over time. One of the youngest and probably the most pervasive add-ons on Second language research, identity has now been a prominent field of research in its own right. Identity theorists believe that language is intricately associated with one’s being (both physical and imagined realities and identities), and they seek to identify how one’s race, gender, class, sexual orientation, and culture impact one’s language learning and teaching journey (Norton, 2013). Identity theorists directly draw on Bourdieu’s notion of the symbolic power relation between the people that take part in communication of any form. Any successful communication, as Bourdieu puts, follows an unspoken agreement that the person who speaks is worthy of speaking and the person who listens is worthy of listening. In addition, the person who dictates how the conversation goes, what to be said and discussed always have higher social ca

Variation in language, as can be perceived, means the distinction in speaking or writing a language among the people of same language based on their places of living or demographic, individual, social or other characteristics. The study of language variation tells an important story about a language and its change over time. Primarily the distinction was associated with the regions (regional variation), but afterward, researchers discovered that the variation does not only exists between places but within them as well. They sought to decipher the subtle differences based on peoples’ social and cultural background, age, gender, race, occupation, and loyalty to a group, which is popularly known as social variation in language (Wardhaugh,. & Fuller, 2015). One of the most pioneers is William Labov, who is famous for his prominent voices in American sociolinguistics since 1960s. He spent much of his time devising an approach to investigating the relationship between language and s