ABSTRACT
Language identity among students has been thoroughly investigated in the applied linguistics and composition studies literature, particularly as it pertains to so-called “second language” students. This chapter seeks to extend the discussions by exploring student identity in terms of what it means to have, perform, or to develop, a translingual or transnational language identity. It provides frameworks that resist the conceptions, problematized in C. Leung et al. that all students assigned the identity of “second-language” or “English language” learners must be “social and linguistic outsider[s],” and that so-called native speakers of English cannot and do not belong to racial or ethnic minorities. Beyond focusing on “acts” of identity, language identity scholars such as S. J. Nero and B. Norton have incorporated the conception of identity described in C. West into their approaches. Since identity is something that is constructed by being performed and/or assigned, it is also something that changes over time and space.
