THE IDENTITY CONSTRUCTION PROCESS OF LANGUAGE TEACHERS IN LATE MODERNITY

Abstract

This essay intends to discuss, from a discoursive perspective point of view, the identity construction process of language teachers, bringing, as an analytical device, the discoursive materiality produced by undergraduate teachers during interview sections. As a theoretical basis, we are going to use some contributions from psychoanalysis studies, such as desire, need, and the different registers (real, imaginary and symbolic), as well as some concepts from Foucault’s philosophy, for example, assemblage and technologies of the self. From Sociology, we are going to discuss the notion of identity as an ongoing construction process. Considering that the constitution of the subjectivity is conditioned by History and

by power relations produced by people, objects and techniques, it is possible to search for some identity traces which might be found in these undergraduate teachers’ speech. For this purpose, we are going to analyze part of our corpus formed by discoursive segments selected from their testimonials regarding their experience in foreign language learning, looking for some common imaginary representations concerning language, learning and teaching itself. These representations can reveal some aspects from the teacher’s identity produced by the pos-modern context, which is also described as late or liquid modernity, emphasizing the continuous movement of today’s identity processes.