Applied Linguistics Advance Access published December 1, 2014

Applied Linguistics 2014: 1–21 ß Oxford University Press 2014

doi:10.1093/applin/amu075

An Activity-Theoretic Study of Agency and

Identity in the Study Abroad Experiences of
a Lesbian Nontraditional Learner of Korean

LUCIEN BROWN
East Asian Languages and Literatures, University of Oregon
E-mail: lucien@uoregon.edu

This is an activity-theoretic study of agency and identity in the study abroad

experiences of a Korean learner named Julie—a 50-year-old lesbian, feminist,
and non-traditional student from the USA. During 6-weeks in Seoul, Julie
struggled to gain participation and to define her identity in a setting that was
hostile towards homosexuality. These struggles were exacerbated by her Korean
class, where she was positioned as an ‘older’ student and, therefore, consigned
to working with a ‘sexist’ and ‘narcissistic’ 65-year-old European male (‘Peter’).
Within this unfavourable socio-historical context, this study focuses on how
Julie exerted her agency to modulate her identity and redefine the social-
material conditions of her language learning. I argue that through exerting
her agency Julie was able to alter the ‘rules of interaction’ in the ‘activity
system’ that she was part of. As such, Julie’s story highlights the significance
of acts of ‘changing’ in defining language learning experiences and emphasizes
the role of agency in activity-theoretic approaches to language learning.

1. INTRODUCTION
This article uses narrative data to analyze the second language (L2) learning
experiences of Julie,1 a 50-year old lesbian, feminist, and nontraditional stu-
dent from the USA who spent 6 weeks in South Korea on a study abroad
program. I look at how Julie’s identity as a nontraditional student and the
(perceived) hostility toward homosexuality in this sociohistorical context con-
strained Julie’s capacity to participate. The focus will be on how Julie exercised
agency to stylize the presentation of ‘self’ and challenge the social-material
conditions of her language learning.
To analyze the appearance of agency and identity in Julie’s narrative, I
employ an activity-theoretic perspective (e.g. Leont’ev 1978; Engeström
1987; Lantolf and Thorne 2006). Activity theory views human development
as being achieved through object-related activity and mediated by social for-
mations and tools, including language. From this view, L2 learning ‘is about
developing, or failing to develop, new ways of mediating ourselves and our
relationships’ (Lantolf and Pavlenko 2001: 145). This includes new ways of
2 AGENCY AND IDENTITY

connecting with the world which are enabled by the L2 and new social for-
mations available in the L2 culture. Learning is also mediated through tools
and processes specific to the L2 classroom, such as textbooks, handouts, and
the tacit ‘rules of interaction’. From the activity-theoretic perspective, L2
learning is a struggle, not (only) to learn grammar and vocabulary, but to
gain participation in the context where the L2 is spoken. Since this struggle
is situated in the social-material world, it is not ‘neutral’ but is tied up with
relations of power (Lantolf and Genung 2003: 178).
In this article, emphasis is placed on how Julie employed agency to redefine
her language learning experiences and gain participation. Agency can be
loosely defined as ‘the socioculturally mediated capacity to act’ (Ahearn
2001: 112). It involves the application of initiative or self-regulation on the
part of the learner (or learner’s group) (van Lier 2008: 172). However, this
does not mean that agency ‘belongs’ to the individual, as in popular concep-
tions of agency as free will (Ahearn 2001: 114). Rather, agency is contextually
mediated and resides in activity: ‘it is something that learners do rather than
something that learner’s possess’ (van Lier 2008: 171). Lantolf and Pavlenko
(2001: 145) talk of agency as being a ‘relationship’ that the speaker has with
those around him/her, society as a whole, and even with imagined commu-
nities. Agency involves the individual defining the terms and conditions of
such relationships and assigning significance, relevance, or meanings to
things and events (Lantolf and Pavlenko 2001: 145).
Activity theory sees human behavior as arising from a need and being dir-
ected toward an object. This object is then projected to an anticipated outcome.
It is agency and motive that provide this projection from object to outcome
(Engeström 1987). Previous activity-theoretic studies of L2 learning show that
learner motives are fluid and are influenced by the tools and social formations
by which they are mediated. In another study looking at the learning experi-
ences of a nontraditional student, Lantolf and Genung (2003) show how ‘PG’
failed to learn Chinese during an intensive summer program. PG struggled
with the social-material conditions of the course, which relied on ‘audio-
lingual drill and kill’ methodology and the routine humiliation of students.
These unfamiliar social-material conditions led to PG abandoning her higher-
level motive of successfully learning Chinese. Instead, she focused on her
secondary and more superficial motive of simply completing the course and
earning credits. In a more positive story, Thorne (2003) describes how the
social-material change from e-mail to instant messenger led to increased
motivation in the online exchanges of Kirsten, an undergrad student in a
fourth-semester French grammar course.
If agency is the capacity to act, then it is action that in turn produces the
‘self’. Activity theory sees the self as formed not from biological urges, but from
participation in social structures and through appropriating social artifacts. The
self is ‘something that humans make of themselves, affirming their humaness’
(Leont’ev 1975/1983: 225, cited in Stetsenko and Arietvitch 2004: 489). It is
the individual’s contribution to the world and the individual’s life history
 L. BROWN 3

(‘ontogenesis’—Vygotsky 1978) that define the identity of the individual as

his/her ‘self’ (Stetsenko and Arievitch 2004: 494).
Although identity is recognized as an important factor in socially oriented
SLA, previous research has tended to adopt a more generic poststructuralist
view of identity rather than an activity-theoretic perspective (Block 2007;
Higgins 2011; Duff 2013). The fundamental assumption in activity theory that
the self is produced rather than biologically determined is shared by the SLA
identity research. What makes the activity-theoretic view of identity different is
the focus on activity as the unit through which identity is formed and the idea
that identity emerges from an individual’s ontogenesis. This contrasts with the
generic poststructuralist view, where identity tends to be analyzed as emerging
through discourse in an on-line fashion (Block 2007: 11–45).
In L2 contexts, identity formation influences the level of participation that
the individual is able to achieve in the L2 culture. Gaining full participation in
culture-specific social activities requires that the L2 learner creates an identity
that passes as a ‘legitimate speaker’ of the L2 (Lave and Wenger 1991). Being
‘legitimate’ does not necessarily mean being exactly like a native speaker (and
we should remember that native speakers do not all share the same homo-
genous identity). Rather, legitimacy entails that the learner displays adequate
qualities to be deemed by the local community as someone who is ‘worthy to
speak’ (Norton 2000: 8), in other words, who has the capacity to participate.
The judgment of who is legitimate can be linked to relations of power. Norton
(2000) analyzed the experiences of five immigrant women in Canada. At
work, they were given the most menial and solitary jobs and found that
their coworkers were slow to engage with them. Here, the lack of legitimacy
that resulted from their low levels of English was exacerbated by their rela-
tively powerless social positions as immigrants and as women.
Norton’s finding that the enactment of gender identities is crucial in explain-
ing language learning trajectories in migrant settings is mirrored in the study
abroad literature. Of relevance to the current study, Western women studying
in non-Western countries struggle to translate their preexisting subjectivities
into ‘legitimate’ gender identities during sojourns in Russia (Polanyi 1995),
Tanzania (Higgins 2011), Japan (Siegal 1994), Korea (Brown 2011), and
beyond. Siegal (1994) found that Western women may reject Japanese-style
female identities since they perceived such identities as excessively humble,
subservient, and therefore demeaning. Instead, they continued to perform
Western-style female identities, even though such identities were not always
legitimate in the Japanese social context.
Against this backdrop, the current study aims to make three contributions to
the activity-theoretic literature on agency and identity. The first aim is to shed
further light on the role of agency in L2 learning. The experiences of Kirsten
and PG (see above) show how the social-material context influences learner
agency and shapes learning experiences. Agency may drive learners to engage
in the L2 culture (Kirsten), or alternatively to reduce or withdraw their par-
ticipation (PG). But as argued by Ahearn (2001: 130), agency is a complex and
4 AGENCY AND IDENTITY

varied phenomenon. One form of agency is ‘oppositional agency’, where those

in positions of suppression challenge the status quo. The story of PG features
an oppositional agency of sorts. PG objected to the ‘rules of interaction’ of her
Chinese class and raised some of her concerns with the program director.
However, instead of further challenging the status quo, she decided that she
would ‘rather switch than fight’ and gave up her higher-level motive of suc-
cessfully learning Chinese. Lantolf and Genung (2003: 191) conclude that the
material circumstances of the classroom changed PG’s motives and even phys-
ical behavior.
The current account of Julie’s learning experiences will capture a more suc-
cessful example of oppositional agency. As we shall see, rather than being
perpetually subject to the social-material context, Julie successfully challenged
the context and initiated a change in the activity system. These ‘changing’
events, I will argue, play an important role in defining learner agency and
shaping learning trajectories. As a matter of fact, activity theory sees learning,
activity, and agency as emerging from tensions, disturbances and contradic-
tions, and the transformations that develop out of them. Engeström (1987)
attaches particular significance to situations in which the individual encoun-
ters an intense and painful contradiction between two alternatives, which he
refers to as a ‘double bind’. It is through the mediated struggle with contra-
diction that the activity system transforms and development emerges.
The second and more general aim of the article is to demonstrate how ac-
tivity theory can provide a useful perspective for the analysis of ‘self’ and
‘identity’ in socially oriented SLA. As noted above, identity research in SLA
has to date largely been pursued separate from activity theory. Symptomatic of
this, neither Block’s (2007) book-length treatment of L2 identity nor Duff’s
(2013) handbook chapter on identity and agency even mention activity/socio-
cultural theory. It is not my purpose to claim that activity theory is necessarily
the best or only way to approach identity in SLA. However, this article will
show how activity-theoretic units of analysis (such as ‘activity system’, ‘onto-
genesis’, and ‘agency’) are enlightening and fruitful categories in explicating
the experiences of Julie and other L2 learners.
Third and finally, through analyzing the experiences of a 50-year-old lesbian
nontraditional student, the article provides a rare analysis of a nonmainstream
identity in the socially oriented SLA literature. To the best of my knowledge,
the experiences of homosexual learners have yet to be explored at all in the
study abroad context. Indeed, discussions of sexuality (and particularly les-
bianism) in the wider SLA literature are still at a nascent stage, with only
very few studies considering how L2 queer identities are negotiated.
Interestingly, previous studies hint that learning English may represent an
avenue for gay Asian men to express their sexual identities within cultures
that are traditionally hostile to homosexuality (Ellwood 2006; King 2008).
However, to date, no research has looked at the opposite side of the
coin: the experiences of homosexual L2 learners from English-speaking coun-
tries who study abroad in locations where homosexuality is more suppressed.
 L. BROWN 5

2. RESEARCH DESIGN
2.1 Subject
This article focuses on Julie: a 50-year-old Caucasian American. Julie had lived
from age 30 in Eugene, Oregon, a city of 150,000 with a reputation for pro-
gressive politics and acceptance of homosexuality. Julie was a PhD student in
linguistics, who had begun studying Korean primarily from linguistic interest.
Prior to study abroad, she had completed 1 year of formal Korean study and
her proficiency was estimated at novice high.2
Julie self-identified as a lesbian. She was open with her sexuality and actively
produced her sexual identity through wearing short hair and what she described
as ‘androgynous clothes’ (pants, T-shirts, sweaters). This sent out a message that
she was (in her own words) ‘a dyke’. Julie was also a practicing Buddhist.
Julie spent six weeks in Korea: five weeks attending an intensive summer
course (150 hours) at a university in Seoul and one week for personal travel.

2.2 Data collection

The main body of data was collected through a language learning diary, which
was solicited by the researcher and submitted via e-mail. Julie contributed 18
journal entries during the five-week course (about one entry every two days)
and then one entry summarizing her week of personal travel. The total length
of the diary was 10,409 words, equating to 547 words per entry. She was not
given any specific instructions regarding the content of the diary, except that
she should write about her language learning and social experiences inside and
outside of class.
The legitimacy and the importance of using diary studies and narrative in-
quiry in SLA research have been argued extensively (Pavlenko and Lantolf
2000; Dörnyei 2007; Duff 2013). From the activity-theoretic perspective, nar-
ratives ‘bring to the surface aspects of human activity [. . .] that cannot be
captured in the more traditional approach to research’ (Pavlenko and Lantolf
2000: 159). Narratives also capture the ways in which the learner assigns
relevance or significance to certain actions and rationalizes them in relation
to his/her ontogenesis.
Julie also participated in seven audio-recorded interviews (5.12 hours in
total). This included in-person pre-study abroad and post-study abroad inter-
views and five in situ interviews conducted via Skype. These interviews were
included as a way of filling ‘gaps’ in journal entries and eliciting extra con-
textual information (Dörnyei 2007: 156).

2.3 Data analysis

Analysis of the data involved two stages.
First, I modeled the activity systems that emerged in the data according to
the model devised by Engeström’s (1987) and applied in various subsequent
6 AGENCY AND IDENTITY

Figure 1: Structure of the activity system

SLA studies (e.g. Thorne 1999; Charles Nelson and Kim 2001; Lantolf and
Genung 2003). According to this model, represented in iconic triangular
form in Figure 1, an activity system has the following components:
1 Subject: the individual/group whose viewpoint is adopted
2 Community: participants who share the same object
3 Object: the ‘problem space’ at which the activity is directed
4 Outcome: the result achieved from the object
5 Instruments: artifacts used to achieve expected outcomes
6 Division of labor: division of tasks/roles among members of the community
7 Rules: Written and tacit rules that regulate action

Secondly, to model the temporal progression and emergence of contradic-

tions in the activity system, I analyzed the data according to the following
developmental stages (Engeström 1987).
1 Need state: The subject faces competing alternatives
2 Double bind: The contradiction crystalizes into an unbearable dilemma
between two messages that negate each other
3 Motive formation: The need becomes objectified—it finds its motive
4 Transformation: The motive translates into action and an outcome is reached
I used this framework to explore how identity and agency were constructed
through activity, mediated through social formations and tools, and reflected
the ‘histories’ of Julie and the other actors.

3. DATA PRESENTATION
I model the activity systems in Section 3.1 and describe the temporal progres-
sion of these systems in Section 3.2.

3.1 The activity systems

I identified three interlocking activity systems: (i) the language classroom, (ii)
the dormitory, and (iii) the wider practice of Julie being a study abroad student
 L. BROWN 7

Figure 2: The language classroom

in Korea. The inclusion of different activity systems in one analysis is consist-

ent with recent developments in activity theory, where activity systems are
seen as multiple, dynamic, and interconnected (Lantolf and Thorne 2006: 11).

3.1.1 The language classroom

Julie’s Korean class had a basic activity structure typical of the L2 classroom, as
illustrated in Figure 2.
Two points about the structure of the classroom prove crucial to the subse-
quent analysis (Section 3.2). First, one important unwritten rule of interaction
was that students sat in the same seats for all classes and thus all pair activities
were mediated by the same partners. Although this was not mandated by the
teachers, there was little encouragement for students to move seats. Students
would never sit at a table alone, largely because the classroom contained only
four large desks to seat the 12 students.
Secondly, the community of students featured three distinct sub-commu-
nities who occupied different positions according to the tacit ‘division of
labor’. These three subcommunities were younger heritage learners (three stu-
dents), younger non-heritage learners (six), and older non-heritage learners
(six). The younger heritage learners led a clique of what Julie referred to as
the ‘cool kids’. They had a certain comfort level in Korean language and culture,
and this afforded them a special status in the classroom. The teachers relied on
them to volunteer answers when the non-heritage students were struggling.
They were at times inattentive or even disruptive, but teachers turned a blind
eye. In contrast, the older non-heritage learners occupied more peripheral
8 AGENCY AND IDENTITY

Figure 3: The dormitory

positions. In addition to Julie, there was a European man named Peter who was
65 years old and a European woman named Nicole who was 30 years old. In
class, they were slower to provide answers and were less likely to be called on by
the teachers. Out of class, they only occasionally participated in social activities.

3.1.2 The dormitory

The second activity system was the dormitory (Figure 3), which housed the
students on Julie’s program, other overseas students and Korean students, all
in twin same-sex rooms. For overseas students, the dorm provided a venue for
extracurricular study, accessing the assistance of those with higher linguistic
proficiency, and forming multicultural friendships.
The dorm had both written and unwritten rules of interaction. Among the
written rules was a midnight curfew, although this was not strictly enforced.
One unwritten rule was that overseas students and Korean students were
invariably housed separately, with Julie’s roommate being a Filipina MA stu-
dent in her 20s (Cristina). There was a division of labor between older and
younger students, similar to the language classroom.

3.1.3 Study abroad in Korea

The third activity system—the general practice of Julie being a study abroad
student in Korea—encapsulated Julie’s higher-level motives (Figure 4). These
included an ultimate aim to use her language skills to pursue research in
Korean phonetics for her PhD.
This activity system also included motives related to Julie’s sexual identity.
Julie was concerned about how she could present her sexuality in a context she
 L. BROWN 9

Figure 4: Study abroad in Korea

perceived as hostile to homosexuals. ‘I’ve heard [homosexuality] is not some-

thing that anyone talks about [in South Korea]’, explained Julie.3 She was es-
pecially worried that her appearance may be ‘challenging’ or ‘confusing’ for
Korean people. She was aware that Korean women (and even men) tended
to dress and behave in more feminine ways than in the USA (‘even Korean
guys are pretty femmy too in terms of their appearance’) and that her ‘andro-
gynous’ way of dressing would not be recognized.4 She was motivated to pre-
sent herself in a way that would not ‘offend’ and to dress in a way that would not
result in her being mistaken for a man. But she also wanted to ‘feel myself’.
These study abroad objects were mediated through Julie’s out-of-class rela-
tionships with Koreans. These included her relationships with Professor Jun (a
phonetician who had previously visited Julie’s home institution) and her lan-
guage exchange partner Miran (a female student in her 20s). Another mediating
relationship was with the imagined Korean community and its perceived socio-
cultural history of hostility to homosexuals. Julie mediated her position vis-à-vis
this community and their supposed homophobia through artifacts such as her
clothing and the cultural practice of ‘coming out’ (see Section 3.2.1).

3.2 Temporal development of the activity system

3.2.1 Need state
During the opening phase of her stay in Korea, Julie was faced with ‘need
states’ (i.e. situations which featured competing alternatives) that spanned the
10 AGENCY AND IDENTITY

activity systems described above. These need states comprise three main
contradictions.
The first contradiction involved Julie’s relationship with her roommate
Cristina and other acquaintances who were more proficient in Korean. She
relied on them for help with fulfilling rudimentary activities (ordering food at
restaurants, buying a cell phone, etc.) and was thankful to them for this.
However, she saw this reliance as limiting her own chances to speak Korean
or even receiving comprehensible input. Koreans would inevitably only
engage with the more proficient friend, with Julie noting in her diary ‘I
pretty much only said ‘‘thank you’’ today in Korean’. Julie thus felt a need
to draw away from Korean-speaking friends and acquaintances, particularly
Cristina. Julie also struggled to adjust to the physical setting of her shared dorm
room. On day 1, Julie complained that the room was full of Cristina’s posses-
sions. ‘She had her stuff everywhere’, wrote Julie. ‘I had no shelves for my
shoes or in the bathroom or in the shower [. . .] I don’t want to live with a
twenty year-old college student’.
The second contradiction involved Julie’s struggle to define her ‘self’ in re-
lation to the younger student population in her class and dorm. As noted
above, the class contained a clique of ‘cool kids’, who made Julie feel particu-
larly isolated. Julie reported that ‘the energy is very high and focused. on
looking good and socializing and fitting in and being cool’. Julie started to
feel like the outsider: ‘They all go out partying and I actually feel left out’.
The contradiction here was that Julie expressed aversion to actually joining the
partying (‘I don’t want to stay up all night drinking’) and reported that she
enjoyed the fact that as the older student she could easily opt out of extra-
curricular socializing.
The third contradiction is actually not just one single dilemma, but a series of
conflicts that involved Julie’s sexuality. Before arriving in Seoul, Julie made
the decision to feminize her appearance by wearing more feminine-looking
clothes and by shaving her legs. However, Julie immediately perceived that
these attempts were only partially successful. ‘My appearance is challenging
for the folks here, regardless of the lengths I went to look more feminine’, she
wrote on day 1. ‘No one can figure out my gender’, she continued, ‘it is the
shoes and the hair and the pants and the attitude and the posture [. . .] I am
just different than any of these people’. Julie started to experiment with her
appearance. On cooler days, she abandoned the more feminine clothes for her
‘androgynous’ jeans and sweater. Although she ‘actually felt in my body’, she
reported getting more hostile looks and overhearing people seemingly asking
each other ‘is that a man or a woman?’ It seemed to Julie that she was unable
to fit into any socially legitimized female identity, unlike in the USA where
‘there are people who look like me and they are dykes’.
Julie made the decision not to come out to any Korean people, although she
was open about her sexuality with other international students. Concealing
her sexuality caused Julie discomfort in her interactions with Koreans, how-
ever. One such example was her relationship with Miran. As they grew closer,
 L. BROWN 11

Miran began to approach Julie for relationship advice and asked several ques-
tions about (heterosexual) dating culture in the USA (such as ‘how many men
do women date before getting married?’). Unable to answer Miran’s questions
properly, Julie still kept her sexuality under wraps.
Being ‘in the closet’ for Koreans, but ‘out of the closet’ for non-Koreans
entailed some specific contradictions. Julie came out to her American and
European classmates, whose response was ‘accepting’ but ‘reserved’. She
also revealed her sexuality to her Filipina roommate and a Cambodian
female friend from the dorm, both of whom reacted with considerable shock
and discomfort. Julie was aware of the contradiction inherent to her decision
to come out to a ‘small town girl’ from Cambodia, when at the same time she
was hiding her sexuality from a number of Koreans ‘who are probably a lot
more sophisticated [. . .] and who might have understood’. The discomfort was
exacerbated in the language classroom by what Julie perceived as the heavily
sexualized and heteronormative nature of the teaching materials. The text-
book featured a character called Simon who is portrayed as ‘coming on to all
the girls’. In one class, students answered questions such as ‘who do you want
to have a date with?’ and ‘who do you want to travel with?’ Unable to answer
the questions honestly in front of the Korean teacher, she jokily answered
every question by referring to Simon—‘I want to date Simon’ and ‘I want to
travel with Simon’. Although this ‘really helped and everybody laughed’, Julie
qualified this by saying ‘that kind of stuff, when it goes on and on and on, I just
want to leave the room’.
At this stage, we see that Julie was already engaged in some agentive moves to
change her language learning situation, such as modulating the presentation of
her sexuality through the feminization of her appearance and through not
coming out to the Koreans. The way that she assigned relevance to the ‘looks’
she received from Korean people and their perceived homophobia also repre-
sents a form of agency. However, the agency that Julie was exhibiting at this
phase was not one that would challenge the status quo or lead to a renegotiation
of her own sense of self. It did not release Julie from the general sense of dis-
orientation and lack of direction that she felt at this point. ‘I often feel like I will
never get the hang of this language’, she wrote on day 10. She began to wonder
whether she was wasting her time being in Korea, away from her partner, home
life, and the usual modalities by which she expressed her identity.

3.2.2 Double bind

Julie’s ‘need state’ was intensified and transformed by an unexpected factor:
the difficult relationship she had with her 65-year-old classmate Peter. The
difficulties that developed with Peter worked to crystalize the various forms of
conflict, disorientation, and unfocused desire that Julie encountered in the
‘need state’ into an acutely painful dilemma—the ‘double bind’.
Peter was rejected by the other students in Julie’s class for being a ‘dirty old
man’ who was ‘creepy’ and ‘evil’ and who sexualized female classmates. He
12 AGENCY AND IDENTITY

upset female students by taking ‘personal’ photographs during a project work

session. Then, a French–Korean classmate accused Peter of sexual harassment
after he commented on how she was dressed. From this point, all other stu-
dents in the class distanced themselves from Peter and refused to sit at the
same table as him.
Although Julie was appalled by ‘Peter’s disgusting sexualization of every
young woman in the class’, she decided to sit next to him from that point.
Although this was a decision that Julie made of her own volition, the decision
should be understood against Julie’s ontogenesis and the social-material dy-
namics of the classroom. Julie had a history of helping those who were mar-
ginalized. This went back to elementary school, when she had given a
valentine’s card to a boy who was ‘overweight, picked his nose and smelled
bad’. In addition, since Julie and Peter were the two students in the class of
senior age, all parties (Julie, Peter, the younger students, the teacher) seemed
to view dealing with Peter as being Julie’s logical role in the activity system of
the classroom. It was a solution to the Peter situation which suited her class-
mates, who were protected from Peter’s harassment. It also suited the teachers
and administration, who could avoid dealing with the issues directly.5 Finally,
the design of the classroom seemed to preclude sharing responsibility for deal-
ing with Peter between different classmates or letting him sit alone. As noted
above, students sat in the same seats each class and the classroom design made
it difficult for one student to sit alone.
Julie quickly became exasperated with Peter and started to question her
decision to sit with him. Peter engaged in habitual self-talk, repeating pronun-
ciations out loud to a volume level that made it difficult for Julie to study. He
would read over Julie’s notes and correct her. When Julie disagreed with his
corrections, he would become obnoxious and involve the teacher in the dis-
pute. ‘He has no concept of personal space and boundaries and politeness’,
complained Julie. Worst of all, Julie discovered that Peter perceived the accus-
ations of sexual harassment as ‘oversensitivity’ on the part of the students
involved. Julie saw this as part of a wider tendency for him to turn episodes
back on himself (‘everything comes back around to him’) and blame others for
not understanding him.
The situation with Peter had become a ‘double bind’. On the one hand, Julie
felt that she had to continue to sit with Peter as this was her ‘fate’: something
that was dictated by her identity, personality, and past. To move to another
seat would be ‘abandon[ing] your own personality’. On the other hand, she
knew that she had to distance herself from Peter in order to rescue her study
abroad experience. To continue sitting with Peter would be ‘like sacrificing this
opportunity that I created for myself . . . I didn’t do this to learn more about the
psyche of old white guys’. This was an intense dilemma for Julie, particularly
as it encapsulated questions of gender/sexuality, which she was already con-
fronting during her study abroad experience. As a lesbian and feminist strug-
gling to express her sexuality on arrival in Korea, it was painful and also
bitterly ironic that she now found herself helping a Western man to confront
 L. BROWN 13

his own misogyny. And it was also difficult that her conspicuous identity as the
‘older’ student—an identity she was not entirely comfortable with—was cru-
cial to her being assigned this role. Finding a resolution to this ‘double bind’
was therefore not just a choice that would define her relationship with Peter,
but one that would shape her study abroad experience.

3.2.3 Motive formation

Between day 20 and day 26, Julie struggled to find a resolution to the Peter
situation. Conversations with her partner and father reiterated to Julie that it
was her personality and her role to be the ‘peacekeeper’. She made attempts to
engage Peter, to be more upfront with him, and to treat him with affection.
However, Julie was unable to escape the feeling that sitting with Peter was
detrimental to her language learning.
Then on day 26, an incident occurred that became the catalyst for Julie to
move away from Peter and, in doing so, challenge the social-material condi-
tions of her language learning context. As part of a class outing, the students
were drinking makkoli (fermented rice wine) in a drinking establishment
mostly frequented by older Korean males. At first, interacting with these
men was a positive experience as it represented a rare opportunity for Julie
to engage with Koreans. However, when one of the men displayed open sexual
interest toward Julie, this led her to seriously reconsider the way that she had
been presenting herself in Korea and, in particular, the course of action she
had taken with Peter:
There was another gentleman that I talked to a little. He gave me
some iced coffee. But when we left and were saying goodbye, he did
a suggestive thing with my hand when I shook his [he scratched
Julie’s palm—a signal of sexual interest]. It was weird. And, in
combination with Peter’s constant hitting on younger women, it
just put me over the top. I realized that I just wasn’t taking care
of myself in the class situation and it made me feel that much more
vulnerable in this strange culture.
The incident underlined to Julie that sexual identity was being mediated in
ways that were unfamiliar to her. ‘In our culture’, explained Julie, ‘I know
when men are thinking of me sexually – I know the obvious cultural signs of
that and it’s different here’. She was also unable to put out signals about her
own sexuality as ‘the whole dyke message is not received here’. As a conse-
quence, she was left feeling vulnerable and with a sense that she had not been
doing enough to protect her own interests. This motivated Julie to take initia-
tive in the Peter situation.

3.2.4 Transformation
The very next morning, Julie ‘made the break’ and sat at another table to
Peter. The ‘break’ would have been particularly conspicuous to the teacher
14 AGENCY AND IDENTITY

and classmates. Julie was late for class and the only free seat was next to Peter.
Julie moved the chair to another table, leaving Peter to sit alone.
Moving the chair and sitting apart from Peter was an exertion of agency
that redefined the activity within the classroom. With Peter sat alone, the
responsibility for dealing with him became mediated by the group (the tea-
chers and other students) and by new material means. Different teachers
began using different ways to assign partners to Peter, including one tea-
cher’s ingenious use of a computer program that randomly assigned pairs.
Although younger students who were paired with Peter openly expressed
their frustration or disgust, they ultimately accepted it and were able to
‘take care of themselves’. As for Peter, Julie was able to rationalize her treat-
ment of him by admitting that her efforts were unrealistic and doomed to
failure: ‘He obviously is really suffering, but I can’t change that in a couple of
weeks and probably not ever’.
The action of moving away from Peter also played a crucial role in redefining
Julie’s sense of self, as well as her learning trajectory. Within the class, she
ceased to be the ‘older’ student who was consigned to looking after Peter.
Instead, she became the ‘cool old person’ (as one younger peer described
her) and a parent-like figure to ‘certain kids who you can see really need
their mom’. She also became recognized as someone who was knowledgeable
about Buddhism, particularly after she gave a classroom presentation on the
topic. When the class visited a Buddhist temple, Julie helped translate conver-
sations with the monks. Julie reported that having her expertise acknowledged
in this way made her ‘feel very good’.
Furthermore, Julie established a level of self-regulation with the presenta-
tion of her lesbian identity. She perfected a way of dressing that was not too
overtly feminine, but which also attracted less attention: T-shirts with fem-
inine necklines and tighter-fitting shorts or jeans. She let her hair grow
longer and kept it that way on returning to the USA. During the post-
study abroad interview, she remarked that she now felt comfortable with
having longer hair and no longer felt such a strong need to keep it short
as a marker of her lesbian identity. Furthermore, she began to restructure her
preconceived idea that there was no room in the Korean culture for lesbian-
ism or for other alternative identities. Through travelling around Seoul with
fellow classmates, she realized that other foreigners also received attention
due to their appearance: ‘It helped me to wander round with other students
and people who were different in different ways and see that they got just as
many stares’. Julie also came to recognize that the general homophobia in
the Korean society did not necessarily justify her blanket decision to conceal
her sexuality from all Koreans. At the end of term, Julie came out to one of
her Korean teachers, who was someone that Julie perceived as ‘rebellious’
and ‘outside the box’.
Julie’s motivation for her Korean language studies gained new objective.
During the time when she was sat with Peter, her motivation often became
reduced to ‘lower cognitive motives’ (Lantolf and Genung 2003). Frequently
 L. BROWN 15

distracted by Peter’s loud self-talk and unhelpful corrections, Julie became

consumed with the everyday motivations of learning vocabulary, preparing
for quizzes, or simply understanding classroom discourse. Now that she was
away from Peter, she could absorb more in class and became interested again
in expressing herself in Korean and using Korean for her own higher-end
means. Buddhism became one object of these higher cognitive motives, as
mentioned above. In addition, Julie reconnected with her research-related
motives for pursuing Korean. She met up with Professor Jun, and discussed
potential research topics and was invited to attend a seminar for graduate
students. Julie reported that ‘between the English technical terminology and
the formal speech style and my interest in the subject, I managed to piece
together much of the conversation’. Professor Jun and the students made ef-
forts to include her in the discussion ‘not so much as to take away from the
flow of the discourse or to make me uncomfortable, but enough to make me
feel seen and respected’. From this, she took inspiration ‘like I could maybe do
this thing’.

5. DISCUSSION
Julie’s narrative demonstrates the ways that agency and ‘self’ emerge during
the activity of language learning. In the initial ‘need state’, the social-material
context constrained Julie’s capacity to act. Power structures within the class-
room limited her agency in that she was positioned as an older student who
had different roles and responsibilities than the younger students. She was also
limited in her capability to express her sexual orientation due to the hetero-
normativity of the language classroom and imagined Korean community. As
Julie’s objectless and powerless disorientation crystalized into ‘double bind’,
she ultimately succeeded in challenging the status quo of the language class-
room. Her position within this activity system became mediated in different
ways, she gained the capability to regulate the production of her ‘self’, and she
emerged from the study abroad experience with her high-level motives for
studying Korean reinvigorated.
In the analysis, I focused on the way that oppositional forms of agency
worked to redefine the context and trajectory of Julie’s language learning.
By exerting oppositional agency, Julie resolved (to various extents) the contra-
dictions and dilemmas that she had previously been subject to. Julie’s story
therefore demonstrates the importance of contradiction—and the agentive
resolution of it—for defining language learning trajectories. It was not the
presence of contradiction itself that enabled development. Rather, as previ-
ously noted by Charles Nelson (2002: 34), the decisive factor is ‘whether or not
[the contradictions] are acknowledged and resolved’. The way that Julie con-
fronted these contradictions and was able to resolve them contrasts with the
less successful learning experience of nontraditional student PG (Lantolf and
Genung 2003). Admittedly, Julie’s Korean classroom did not feature the same
imbalance of power as PG’s Chinese class. However, the important point here
16 AGENCY AND IDENTITY

is that Lantolf and Genung (2003) and other previous studies of agency in L2
learning (e.g. Thorne 2003) tend to emphasize the ways in which learner
motives are shaped by the social-material context. In contrast to this, the cur-
rent article shows how learners may successfully redesign the social-material
fabric of their language learning and play active roles in defining their
experiences.
Although Julie’s oppositional agency ultimately redefined the trajectory of
her language learning, this is not to say that her agency appeared in a linear or
consistent fashion. To the contrary, her agency emerged in multiple forms, not
all of which were oriented toward resistance. In the earlier stages of her study
abroad experiences, Julie feminized her appearance, concealed her sexuality,
and accepted the Peter situation as her ‘fate’. Thus, Julie’s story confirms that
oppositional agency requires a nuanced understanding that goes beyond ‘pure
resistance’ (Ahearn 2001: 116). MacLeod (1992, cited in Ahearn 2001: 116)
observes that subordinate players take ‘an active part that goes beyond the
dichotomy of victimization/acceptance’ and that they perform an ambiguous
agency in which they ‘accept, accommodate, ignore, resist, or protest—
sometimes all at the same time’.
Analysis of Julie’s narrative from the viewpoint of activity theory has
allowed important insights into the nature of identity development in study
abroad contexts. First, the activity-theoretic perspective has demonstrated
how the self is defined not by what it ‘is’ but by what actions it ‘does’
(Stetsenko and Arievitch 2004: 494). Julie negotiated her identity not through
any abstract notion of ‘being’, but through the activities that she participated
in and the concrete actions that she performed. These activities and actions
included studying in class (which defined her as a student), modulating her
clothing (which mediated the presentation of her sexual identity), and sitting
next to Peter (which made her the helper and peacemaker). In particular, the
agentive decision to make the break from Peter was crucial in redefining Julie’s
‘self’. From this ‘changing’ moment, she emerged as the ‘cool old person’ who
was knowledgeable about Buddhism and who could pursue her professional
motivations to study Korean. Stetsenko and Arievitch (2004: 494) note that
the self is ‘oriented towards real-life practical tasks and pursuits of changing
something in and about the world (including in oneself as part of the world)’
(Stetsenko and Arievitch 2004: 494). This is exactly what Julie did through
sitting apart from Peter.
Secondly, the emphasis on historicity provided by the activity-theoretic
perspective was enlightening in explicating Julie’s learning experiences. It
was Julie’s history as the helper and as the peacemaker which drew her to
sit with Peter. Similarly, it was her history as a lesbian who dressed in an-
drogynous clothes which was a barrier to participation in Korean society,
although it also served as a motive for resolving the Peter situation. From
an activity-theoretic perspective, Julie’s struggles to negotiate her identity
can be seen as the conflicts that arise when adult border crossers attempt
to ‘bring their pasts into the present’ (Pavlenko and Lantolf 2000: 172). As
 L. BROWN 17

with the subjects in Pavlenko and Lantolf (2000: 172), Julie had constructed
her identity ‘in a time and place constrained by conventions that differ from
conventions of their present time and place’. To forge a new identity was not
just a matter of presenting herself in a new way in the present time, but a
struggle to align her previous life story with her present situation. This strug-
gle involved crafting her current actions so that they were consistent with
her life history, and more importantly renegotiating her previous life story
(and the sense of ‘self’ that came with it) so that it matched her present.
This renegotiation was something that Julie attempted to avoid in the
early stages of her sojourn. She changed the superficial layers of her appear-
ance in an attempt to temporarily disconnect her ‘past’ from her ‘present’.
But by the end of her study abroad experience, there was evidence that she
was starting to restructure something about her ‘self’. In particular, the de-
cision to keep her hair longer on returning to the USA displayed a renego-
tiation of the previous ways in which she had mediated her identity as a
lesbian.
Finally, how do we interpret the findings of this article in regards to ques-
tions of sexuality in SLA? As noted in the introduction, previous research on
L2 English has shown that language learning can be empowering for homo-
sexuals. However, the current study suggests that such feelings of empower-
ment are specific to non-Westerners learning English (or potentially other
European languages). When homosexual Westerners study abroad in non-
Western countries, their sexuality may in fact complicate their capacity to
negotiate a legitimate L2 identity, as was the case with Julie. Despite this,
Julie’s story is not wholly a negative one. Although she felt compelled to
modulate her appearance, she managed to discover a way to do this that did
not result in abandoning her own identity outright. By wearing her hair
slightly longer and her clothes slightly tighter, she escaped unwanted attention
but still remained ‘herself’. Indeed, this experience made Julie reassess the
need to keep her hair short as an expression of her lesbian identity. In addition,
by coming out to her Korean teacher, Julie went some way to challenging her
preconceived idea that Korea was an environment where homosexuality is
‘not something that anyone talks about’.

6. CONCLUSION
The current study advances the literature on activity-theoretic perspectives to
L2 acquisition in a number of ways.
First, the article underlines the need for more attention to be paid to agency.
In actual fact, the importance of agency is not a new claim. Pavlenko and
Lantolf (2000: 169–170) argue that ‘ultimate achievement in a second lan-
guage learning relies on one’s agency’. They point out that achieving partici-
pation in the L2 culture is a long, painful, and inexhaustive process, but also
one which is usually optional. After all, even long-term immigrants frequently
choose not to fully participate or to negotiate their identities at all, instead
18 AGENCY AND IDENTITY

staying within closed communities where their native languages are spoken.
Successful L2 learning (here understood as gaining participation in the L2
culture) thus relies on learners making positive agentive decisions that involve
the renegotiation of their subject positions and challenging the status quo,
where appropriate. It is fair to say that subsequent research has yet to fully
establish agency as the crux on which L2 depends, as Pavlenko and Lantolf
(2000) saw it. Future research will also need to consider how the L2 classroom
can empower language learners to adopt agency in their language learning
and to challenge the way they might be positioned in the language classroom
and/or in the local community. Although the question of how this can be done
lies outside the remit of this article, the idea that language learning should
empower learners in this way is fundamental to the multiliteracies approach
(The New London Group 1996).
Secondly, the article has established an outline for how agency and identity
can be modeled within an activity-theoretic analysis of language learner nar-
ratives. The analysis relied on two models provided by Engeström (1987): (i)
the activity theory ‘triangle’ and (ii) the recognition of four stages—need state,
double bind, motive formation, and transformation. Although the former has
been widely applied, the latter has not been extensively used in the activity-
theoretic SLA literature. However, it was this latter model which was able to
capture in fine detail how the activity systems pertaining to Julie’s language
learning developed during study abroad and how her agency and identity
negotiation emerged from the contradictions and tensions inherent to these
systems.
Thirdly, Julie’s story reveals a need for activity theory, SLA research, and
language education more broadly to be more inclusive to students of different
ages, gender identities, and, in particular, sexualities. The near absence of
previous research on homosexuality in the SLA literature and the heteronor-
mativity that Julie noted in classroom materials are indicative of a wider pat-
tern in language education where ‘classroom cohorts and curricula tend to be
constructed as domains in which straight people are interacting exclusively
with other straight people’ (Nelson 2006: 1). Researchers and language edu-
cators need to reconceptualize the language classroom as a multi-sexual space
and to embrace the various socio-sexual meanings that infuse language
(Cynthia Nelson 2006: 4).
I conclude by recognizing that the current article on its own contains some
limitations. The analysis relies exclusively on Julie’s narrative with no recourse
to the stories of the Korean instructors and other students, notably Peter.
Needless to say, future research should strive to include the perspectives of
as many subjects as possible in order to provide a better understanding of
activity systems. In addition, Julie belonged to a highly specialized population
and it is unclear how her experiences relate to those of other study abroad
students, even other homosexual learners in Korea. Despite these shortcom-
ings, this article lays the groundwork for more extensive activity-theoretic
studies of identity and agency in study abroad.

NOTES
1 Julie insisted that I use her real name in
my research. All other names are
pseudonyms.
2 I had known Julie for 6 months prior to
the research. At the time of the research,
I was a professor in the same institution
but in a different department. Julie had
taken one of my classes, and we had also
met periodically to discuss Julie’s re-
search interests. I am an L2 speaker of
Korean and have experience of living in
Korea for extended periods.
3 Julie’s observation is backed up by
previous academic studies on homo-
sexuality in Korea. Fylling (2012)
found that homosexuality is often
viewed as ‘a disease, a mental disorder
or a sin’ and as ‘a foreign and un-
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 L. BROWN 21

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTOR
Lucien Brown is Assistant Professor of Korean Linguistics at the University of Oregon.
His research interests include socio-pragmatics, politeness, and identity in second lan-
guage learning. He is the author of Korean Honorifics and Politeness in Language Learning
and the co-author of Korean: A Comprehensive Grammar. Address for correspondence: Lucien
Brown, East Asian Languages and Literatures, University of Oregon, 425 Friendly Hall,
Eugene, OR. <lucien@uoregon.edu>