Liu and Tannacito (2013) Resistance by L2 Writers The Role of Racial and Language

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Journal of Second Language Writing 22 (2013) 355–373
Resistance by L2 writers: The role of racial and language

ideology in imagined community and identity investment
Pei-Hsun Emma Liu a,*, Dan J. Tannacito b
a
Kainan University, Taiwan
b
Indiana University of Pennsylvania, United States
Abstract
In the contexts of global English language learning, the ability to use Standard Written English usually symbolizes affluence,
good education, and high social class—important social capital (Bourdieu, 1991). As a result, in these contexts language learners
desire to acquire such a powerful discourse. This desire to belong to an imagined community (Norton, 2001) of prestige usually
encourages L2 students to invest in forms of writing in a second language that reconstruct their identities in the pursuit of symbolic
value in U.S. classrooms. The purpose of this study is to show how certain forms of racial and language ideology (i.e., English
language privilege and White Prestige Ideology) among Taiwanese students influence their way of learning academic English
writing. Adopting a qualitative research paradigm, we share data collected through classroom observations, qualitative interviews
with students and teachers, and an examination of student papers from two Taiwanese ESL writers (drawn from a larger study in Liu,
2010) in an intensive English program in the U.S.
Results of this qualitative research indicate that multilingual writers in this study exhibit agency through resistance to the
practices of the American writing classroom. These strategic choices often involve identity investment with ideological
implications about ethnicity, race, and class. This article argues that certain writing practices might be in danger of perpetuating
racial ideologies and inferiority if teachers of second language writing ignore the intricate relationship often hidden within the
taken-for-granted ideologies student writers bring to the classroom and the impact or reaction the classroom process promotes in the
construction of their identities, especially when it creates an identity of inferiority among student writers. It concludes that L2
writing professionals need to be proactive and raise critical language and race awareness with students in both Taiwanese and U.S.
writing classrooms.
# 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Second language writing; Identity investment; White Prestige Ideology; Imagined community; Race; Resistance
Introduction
The desire to belong to the imagined community of North American academic culture usually encourages second
language (L2) students to invest in forms of writing in a second language that reconstruct their identities in the pursuit
of symbolic value in U.S. classrooms in order to acquire important social capital (Bourdieu, 1991). If the first language
and culture become devalued while gaining social and symbolic capital in learning the L2, the danger is that learning to
* Corresponding author at: Department of Applied English, Kainan University, No. 1 Kainan Road, Luzhu, Taoyuan County 33857, Taiwan.
Tel.: +886 972604926.
E-mail addresses: liu.phe@gmail.com, emmaliu926@yahoo.com (P.-H. Liu).
1060-3743/$ – see front matter # 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jslw.2013.05.001
356 P.-H. Liu, D.J. Tannacito / Journal of Second Language Writing 22 (2013) 355–373
write in English as a second language can reproduce the inequality that characterizes the language and cultural
globalization of English.
In this study of Taiwanese students learning to write in English at a language institute in the U.S., we find that a
particular disposition, defined as White Prestige Ideology (WPI), mediates their efforts to learn to write in a second
language. Furthermore, these multilingual writers1 show their agency through resistance to pedagogical practices in
the American writing classroom, although this agency is penetrated by various forms of self-destructive ideology.
Our purpose is to understand how a particular collective of multilingual writers engage in a particular L2 writing
context and in that way see the role the past plays in their writing in the present. More specifically, this article offers an
analysis of how sociopolitical factors, such as White Prestige Ideology and identity investment, mediate the efforts of
multilingual writers to learn to write in a second language.
Theoretical framework
We adopt a critical, postmodernist, and poststructuralist view of language and teaching, one that accepts challenges
to unequal power relations. The benefit of critical theory is that it questions the unequal power relations of dominant
sites and unravels racial, social, cultural, and political factors manipulating the status quo. Applying a sociopolitical
viewpoint to the L2 writing classroom, we take a critical stance that views language and discourse as means of
constructing and manipulating knowledge, meaning, and identity as allies to student agency.
Cultural capital and habitus
Exploring sociopolitical factors of multilingual writers who are learning to write in English is important because the
learning and teaching of English literacy in Taiwan often involves identity construction with ideological implications.
Bourdieu’s (1991) constructs of cultural capital and habitus are particularly useful for understanding Taiwanese students’
formation of ideology and identity and how such sociopolitical factors play roles in their learning of English in the U.S.
Bourdieu (1994) took a critical approach to language and viewed the resource of language as connected to capital
and power. People make choices to use certain languages that would help them gain resources or capital. Gaining
cultural capital is considered as obtaining what Bourdieu called the ‘‘legitimacy’’ of being a language user. What we
deem as capital is developed from dispositions that constitute habitus. According to Bourdieu, habitus is an inculcation
of culture; people create a set of values and dispositions through education, family, and religion. Bourdieu (1990)
elaborated the process of forming habitus:
The conditionings associated with a particular class of conditions of existence produce habitus, systems of
durable, transposable dispositions, structured structures, that is, as principles which generate and organize
practices and representations. (p. 53)
Bourdieu argued that dispositions often vary along class lines, which translates into power. In other words, people
try to acquire certain dispositions of a certain class as cultural capital to become associated with the prestige shared in
that higher social class.
As we shall see, students’ choices in their L2 writing practices reflect their habitus and their positioning in an
imagined social hierarchy. As Zacher (2008) pointed out, individual’s literacy practices are always about habitus and
identity; students’ identity choices are mediated by their habitus and ideology of what is considered valuable and
prestigious. By examining their habitus and the ideologies carried by students into their writing classrooms in a new
site, we can appreciate L2 students’ experience when their historical and cultural practices and ideas encounter forces
that either perpetuate or deny the way they chose to play out their identities when confronted with new literacy
practices. This study attempts to explore how such ideologies and identity claims influence multilingual writers’
maneuvers in literacy events to gain cultural capital.
1
The term ‘‘multilingual writers’’ is used in this study to mean those whom others have called ESL (English as a second language), ELL (English
language learners), and NNES (non-native English speaker) writers in order to take a positive view of L2 students’ linguistic resources, rather than
seeing them as characterized by ‘‘deficient’’ or subordinate English proficiency. However, we use this term with caution, recognizing that the
counterparts of multilingual users (i.e., U.S. Americans, native-speakers of English, etc.) are not necessarily monolingual English speakers (see
Matsuda & Duran, in press).
P.-H. Liu, D.J. Tannacito / Journal of Second Language Writing 22 (2013) 355–373 357
White Prestige Ideology (WPI)
While recent research has paid considerable attention to how ideologies (i.e., English language ideology, native-
speaker ideology) play roles in literacy education, issues of race are often left out in the discussion of English language
teaching (Motha, 2006). Motha argued that racialization is inevitably salient in ELT ‘‘because the spread of the English
language across the globe was historically connected to the international political power of white people, [thus,]
English and whiteness are thornily intertwined’’ (p. 496). Similarly, Kubota and Lin (2006) and Ruecker (2011)
encouraged us to theorize race in applied linguistics. This notion also reflects the findings of Piller and Takahashi
(2006), who found that the desire for learning English by their Japanese female participants could be intersected with
whiteness because it is their desire for whiteness that often had positive effect on their agency to seek for opportunities
to practice English. Hence, in this study we highlight how White Prestige Ideology, which we define as racialized
ideology that fantasizes whiteness, intertwined with other ideologies influences students’ literacy practices. We coined
the term WPI because it focuses on the importance of racial and not just linguistic ideas in the purported superiority of
NESs. We prefer the term because it is more specific than native-speakerism and inclusive of the neglected role race
plays in the dialectic integrating past experiences with the ‘‘matrix of perceptions, appreciations, and actions’’
(Bourdieu, 1977, p. 83).
The concept of habitus helps us understand how White Prestige Ideology is formed in Taiwan, where the
participants were born and raised. According to Tetrault (2003), in Taiwan, accents and racial distinctions play an
important role in the promotion of English as a form of what Bourdieu (1991) referred to as cultural capital. Tetrault
observed that the English language represents a highly valued form of symbolic capital. For example, English in
Taiwan is usually perceived as a means of raising social status and identity and empowering the self, rather than as the
tongue of the oppressor. A more recent study confirms that English language proficiency continues to play a significant
role in advancing socioeconomic status in Taiwan (Tsai, 2010). Researching status attainment among 1338 survey
respondents, Tsai (2010) found that ‘‘nowadays people in Taiwan may advance their socioeconomic status more with
fluency in a global language such as English than with fluency in Mandarin as the dominant code of Chinese-speaking
societies’’ (p. 238).
Furthermore, it is important to note that the prestige of English is often interrelated to habitual racial prejudices.
Chen (2006) observed a racial hierarchy in Taiwanese society where white people are at the top of the social hierarchy.
Chen (2006) interviewed ten Taiwanese in her study and pointed out that the narratives of the West or American
fascination include: its cool to be able to communicate with white people on streets; higher level of English proficiency
is the ticket to a better job, higher social status, and personal pride. Thus, it seems that English language and whiteness
are seen as important cultural capital for Taiwanese people. Of course the construction of whiteness and English
supremacy are connected to global ideologies since these discourses are also international discourses.
The question of the legitimacy of language use and users is also connected to the issue of race. According to Motha
(2006):
Just as White teachers are assumed to be more legitimate than English teachers of color, teachers who speak
mainstream English, with its silent inextricability from Whiteness, are perceived to be more legitimate than
speakers of English that is not mainstream, including English spoken by non-native English speakers. (p. 499)
Grant and Wong (2008) concurred that ‘‘the ‘ideal speaker-listener’ has historically been defined as White,
European, or North America’’ (p. 164).
In addition, White Prestige Ideology, which expresses a personal fantasy toward the white languages/people/
cultures, sustains unequal relations for this particular population. White Prestige Ideology ‘‘can be viewed as both
discourse and social practice which construct and perpetuate unequal relations of power,’’ through the process of
inferiorization, the Other is rendered inferior to the Self (Kubota & Lin, 2009, p. 6). This process is also referred to by
Kumaravadivelu (2006) as self-marginalization, which applies equally to the experiences of L2 students in this study
as to non-native speakers:
The practice of self-marginalization refers to how members of the dominated group, knowingly or unknowingly,
legitimize the characteristics of inferiority attributed to them by the dominating group. In the context of global
English language teaching (ELT), this practice is manifested, not only in the widespread acceptance of the
superiority of Western methods over local practices, but also in the carefully cultivated belief that, when it comes
to teaching English as a second/foreign language, somehow, native speakers are far superior to nonnative
speakers, in spite of the latter’s expertise and experience in learning and teaching the English language (p. 219).
The linkages between native-speakerism, Americanism, the hegemony of English as a global language, and the
superiority of whiteness position the L2 student writing in English as an Other, an outsider to the community.
Americanism is a term with several sides and many senses, to be sure. By this term we mean an ideological
conviction which gives special and superior importance to the culture, nation, values, or political system of the U.S.
Evans and Imai’s (2011) study illustrated the concept of Americanism. Reporting a perception survey of 101 Japanese
college students, Evans and Imai (2011) found that English is commonly associated with America and that U.S.
English is often described as ‘‘authentic,’’ ‘‘most correct,’’ or ‘‘standard.’’ This is consistent with one way the term has
been used historically by political leaders (e.g., T. Roosevelt) and distinguished figures such as John Witherspoon,
former Princeton College president who coined it, and by those who use it to mean its opposite, anti-Americanism. It
remains in current use in popular culture as is attested by the title of a track written by Mike Herrera for the music
album Teenage Politics. It is commonly said in American English that ‘immigrants are often Americanized once they
have lived in the U.S. for some years.’ Hence, we take it to be a significant ideological component of acculturation.
Investment in the imagined community
In Taiwan, as in many other places around the world, to be a legitimate user of the English language, to write like a
native, is important social capital that potentially earns the skilled user affluence, success in education, and
improvement in social class. Understandably, L2 students desiring to learn such a powerful discourse invest in
constructing imagined identities of possibility and hope. We intend to show how the White Prestige Ideology of
Taiwanese students influences their desires to learn academic English writing through their investment in an imagined
community.
Investment is a key notion in this relationship between ideology, identity, and language learning. This term,
introduced by Peirce (1995), is based on a critique of the concept of motivation. The thrust of her critique was that
motivation is too often conceptualized as a unitary, fixed, and ahistorical personality trait of a language learner,
insulated from social process and reality, and thus cannot account for the complex, contingent, and dynamic socio-
cognitive relationships between language learners, learning, identity, ideology, and power. In contrast to motivation,
the notion of investment assumes that a language learner is a social being who has a socially and historically
constructed relationship to the target language. Additionally, language learners usually have multiple and often
ambivalent desires. Based on this conceptualization of investment, change in learners’ investment in language learning
influences their identities and vice versa.
In addition, Peirce (1995) explained investment by using the term cultural capital from the study by Bourdieu and
Passeron (as cited in Peirce, 1995) to mean ‘‘the knowledge and modes of thought that characterize different classes
and groups in relation to specific sets of social forms’’ (p. 17). She argued that language learners invest in the target
language in order to obtain symbolic and material resources that will raise the value of their cultural capital. In the
process of making their investment, students participate in the community they imagine (Norton, 2001). Imagined
communities, Norton and McKinney (2011) pointed out, ‘‘refer to groups of people, not immediately tangible and
accessible, with whom we connect through the power of imagination’’ (p. 76). Drawing on their habitus and
ideologies, students invest their identities during their literacy practices in the community they imagine they want to
participate in. This community of imagination is rooted in Wenger’s (1998) discussion on three modes of belonging:
engagement, imagination, and alignment. Norton (2001) employed the concept of imagination, claiming,
This mode of belonging [. . .] is a creative process of producing new images of possibility and new ways of
understanding one’s relation to the world that transcend more immediate acts of engagement [. . .] Thus although
these learners were engaged in classroom practices, the realm of their community extended to the imagined
world outside the classroom—their imagined community. (pp. 163–164)
The notion of imagined community (Norton, 2001) is utilized to interpret our data as a way of illustrating our
participants’ investment in their identity and imagined community.
Furthermore, we take White Prestige Ideology as well as imagined communities to be Bourdieu’s ‘‘structured
structures’’ very similar to what Carroll, Motha, and Price (2008) refer to as regimes of truth (Foucault, 1980) or ‘‘the
hegemonic force of larger structures’’ (p. 166). We argue that these regimes of truth are involved in the construction of
imagined communities in the individual agencies of L2 users. In other words, while we understand that the desire of L2
students to belong to certain imagined communities often drives their learning, it is important for teachers to also
ponder questions such as ‘‘are they actually being socialized into compliance with dominant norms? Can some
imagined communities (conceived as hopeful and constructive) come to unwittingly and silently behave as regimes of
truth’’ (Carroll et al., 2008, p. 168)? Thus, while investigating how participants’ investment in their identity and
imagined community are interrelated with their L2 literacy practices, we are also evaluating whether the unquestioned
and normalized ‘‘regimes of truth’’ positively or negatively influence such practices.
Student negotiation in literacy practices
The concept of agency helps one understand the strategies students use to negotiate in and with English literacy
learning. More than mere cognitive processing machines in English literacy learning, multilingual writers ‘‘actually
engage in constructing the terms and conditions of their own learning’’ (Lantolf & Pavlenko, 2001, p. 145). In this
article, student negotiation through resistance refers to individual agency with oppositional tendency that is
manifested in students’ behaviors in classrooms and their English writing assignments. This study sees students as
active agents who are capable of negotiation, departing from the narrow way of treating these students as passive and
problematic.
Some scholars have begun to explore negotiation strategies of students in L2 literacy practices. Canagarajah has
shown the role of local agency in the writing of L2 students (Canagarajah, 1999, 2004, 2006). His basic argument is
that instead of blindly accepting whatever English instructors teach them, multilingual writers are their own agents
who bring their native cultures and languages into language classrooms and negotiate with the dominant
(competing) discourses. Our study of multilingual students’ strategies and negotiation techniques extends this
viewpoint.
In addition, ELT researchers have gone further to link students’ negotiation strategies to identity construction (e.g.,
Canagarajah, 1993; Norton, 2001). For example, Canagarajah (1993) reported on the influence of identity construction
through the resistance to English usage by students in a Sri Lankan classroom in which he was teaching ESL/EFL. He
indicated that since the English language has a positive, or even privileged status in Sri Lanka, using English is
considered as flaunting a knowledge of English, abandoning one’s local rural identity, and becoming an ‘‘Anglicized
bourgeois’’ (p. 161). Those who use English violate Tamil in-group solidarity. Therefore, the Tamil students favor
grammar-based and product-oriented learning to avoid using English actively in class and to continue the cultural
opposition. Likewise, Norton (2001) interpreted students’ non-participation in an English language course as a form of
resistance to their teacher’s marginalization of them as members of their imagined communities. That is, student
resistance can be interpreted as a desire to join or deny certain membership of the imagined community. As Block
(2003) points out ‘‘Non-participation. . . might be a process of active resistance. . . or a passive process of
acceptance. . .’’ (pp. 109–11).
While resistance is a powerful strategy for L2 students to challenge dominant ideologies and to negotiate identities,
not every student adopts the same strategy. Lippi-Green (2004) stated that L2 learners choose to accommodate because
their language identities in the target language are devalued and assimilation to L2 might bring them success:
People are told that the language that marks them is ugly, unacceptable, incoherent, illogical. . . The things being
said about their home languages, about family and community make them uncomfortable and unhappy. The
promises they hear about the rewards of assimilation may be very seductive: money, success, recognition. (pp.
296–297)
And, this kind of accommodation creates the sense of inferiority discussed by Kubota and Lin (2009) and reflects
what Carroll et al. (2008) claim are the oppressive regimes of truth reinscribed in the imagined communities of L2
users.
In line with the above scholarship, Ivanič (1998) made a strong argument in saying that achieving conventional
academic standards is not a literacy issue per se. Rather, it is how students struggle in the academic community—how
they negotiate the hegemonic beliefs and practices of their disciplines—that accomplishes what they gain or lose. That
is, taking on voices in writing is related to compliance with or resistance to dominant ideologies instead of acquiring
literacy. As a result, students’ responses to writing assignments manifest their habitus and identities while learning
academic writing. The present study is conducted on the premise that multilingual writers negotiate identities in their
academic writing practices, some of whom resist dominant ideologies with individual differences as structural variants
(different trajectories and positioning) of a similar group habitus. At the heart of this process, then, we intend to show
that:
L2 writers exhibit agency resisting practices in writing classrooms in the U.S.

The desire to belong to an imagined community drives their participation.
Race and language ideologies are intertwined with investment in L2 writing.
Their identity of inferiority results from subscribing to White Prestige Ideology.
Methodology
This article offers an analysis of how sociopolitical factors, such as White Prestige Ideology and identity
investment, affect multilingual writers’ resistance toward writing instruction. This study reports on the process and
findings based on the following research questions:
1. How do Taiwanese L2 writers negotiate their identity in imagined communities in the context of U.S. ESL writing
classes?
2. What roles do racial and language ideologies play in their disposition toward writing instruction?
As such, a qualitative research paradigm is most compatible with the goals and questions raised.
Research participants
The research participants are two female Taiwanese ESL learners in an intensive English program in a mid-sized
U.S. university. They are exchange students from a college in Taiwan, aged 19–20, from different majors. We use the
term exchange students in this paper to refer to this particular group of students, and use international students to refer
to students from all over the world in general. Finally, the population was a self-selected group of students who elected
to study in the United States. As a self-selected group, they may have adopted the same ideologies before coming to the
United States perhaps even more than the typical population of Taiwanese. Table 1 shows the level placement of the
participants. The names (Gloria and Monica) were pseudonyms but chosen by the researchers to be like the American
names adopted by the students themselves in their educational experiences in Taiwan, a common practice reflecting,
we argue, the presence of Americanism in Taiwanese culture.
Research settings
Before the participants came to the U.S. as exchange students, they studied in a university in northern Taiwan for
two years. All students are required to go abroad in their junior year.
The research site, an English language institute in a university in the United States, serves students from all
over the world. The language institute offers an intensive ESL program of non-credit courses. Courses are offered
each fall, spring, and summer semester. When international students do not meet the language proficiency
requirement to enter the university, they study language in the program for one or two semesters before they enter
a full time degree program at the university. There are usually four or five levels of classes in the language
institute, and students are assigned to different levels according to their English language proficiency (i.e.,
TOEFL score). A split placement based on a writing sample and teacher feedback is possible (as in Monica’s
case).
The writing courses offered in the intensive language program were designed to introduce multiple genres of
writing in English in progressive bands of difficulty, from self/immediate situation oriented courses (beginner
level) such as Write from the Start to other/abstraction oriented courses (advanced level) such as Writing
for TOEFL. The following descriptions of each writing course briefly introduce each instructor, teaching
philosophy, and goals for the individual courses. These courses are non-credit, pre-university, preparatory writing
courses.
Table 1
Level placement of the participants.
Name U.S. English language institute placement Writing course enrolled
Gloria Advanced Writing for TOEFL
Monica Low intermediate Write from the Start with Photography
Writing for TOEFL

This elective course was designed for advanced ESL students who were preparing for an admission test for
undergraduate or graduate programs. As the instructor of the course, Anna, a Non-Native English Speaking Teacher
(NNEST) from Russia, whose main goal was to prepare students for TOEFL writing and academic writing in U.S.
universities, wanted to familiarize ESL students with American academic writing styles (i.e., five-paragraph essays)
and give them the idea of standard academic writing. In addition to organization, Anna also paid attention to grammar,
spelling, and transition. She hoped that students could write not only for TOEFL essays, but also academic papers
required by college professors across the curriculum. She had students work on peer editing and encouraged them to go
to the Writing Center where tutors could check students’ writing in terms of organization, contents, grammar, and
mechanics.
Write from the Start with Photography

This introductory writing course was designed for high beginners who have low English proficiency. A student who
placed generally at the higher (low intermediate) level but whose writing score was lower was placed into a lower level
writing course. Cat, who taught the course, was a female white American. Her main goals in the writing class were to
help students to be more comfortable speaking and writing in English. The course centered on taking photos outside of
the classroom and writing about the pictures. She wanted students to take pictures they liked and asked them to write
one to two sentences for each photo according to their feelings and creativity. Also, Cat invited six American graduate
students to the class as conversation partners. The class was usually broken down into small groups lead by one
American conversation partner who would assist students in English writing as well as oral practice.
Research design
Data collection took place over the course of a 14-week semester. Qualitative methods used in this study included
classroom observations, interviews with students and teachers, and examination of student papers. We analyzed the data
collected from the three sources provided by twelve Taiwanese students. Based on the larger study (Liu, 2010), two cases
about resistance have been selected for presentation in this article. While two cases are not a basis for broad generalization
to all students in this social/cultural category, the patterns revealed in this data were encountered with a number of other
participants not included in this article. Therefore, we believe that the cases are representative of at least some students.
Classroom observation allowed access to participants’ learning practices, attitudes, and reactions. Hence, one of the
authors conducted 5 class observations for each participant during a 14-week semester. Also, during the class
observation, field notes and member checking of observations were done through informal conversations with
students. The fact that one of the researchers is also Taiwanese helped built rapport and communication with the
participants and tended to increase trustworthiness in subsequent individual interviews.
One of the data gathering instruments in this study was a one-to-one, individual qualitative interview with each
Taiwanese participant. Patton (1990) pointed out that direct quotation from interviewees shows their emotions,
thoughts, and perspectives in depth. We examined participants’ viewpoints regarding their perceptions and affective
responses to race, language, and learning within the L2 writing context. Patton’s model was adopted to conduct
interviews, asking (1) behavior or experience questions, (2) opinion or value questions, (3) feeling questions, (4)
knowledge questions, (5) sensory questions, and (6) background/demographic questions. During the 14-week
semester, three semi-structured interviews were conducted with each student. The first interview collected
biographical information and educational experiences focusing on prior and current English literacy learning as well
as perceptions of racial categories, English language, and the participants’ native language. The second interview
discussed mainly the students’ written texts. The third interview inquired about identity, resistance, and
accommodation.
In addition, all student written assignments which were requested by the writing instructors were collected and
photocopied. We compared the student written assignments with observations of the students in class and combined
these two sources of data, which led to the interviews with the participants. Our tentative conclusions or
interpretations drawn from those two sources could be further validated and explained by the subsequent individual
interviews.
Finally, to analyze data, we followed the procedure found in Erlandson, Harris, Skipper, and Allen (1993) of
analyzing data: (1) unitizing the data, (2) designating emergent category, and (3) analyzing negative cases. To ensure
the reliability of the coding, both authors conducted the coding separately and compared and reviewed the two sets of
coding until agreement was reached.
Findings
The findings show that multilingual writers in this study strategically resist English writing instruction for complex
reasons. This resistance is rooted in White Prestige Ideology, native-speakerism (Holliday, 2005; Ruecker, 2011),
Americanism, as well as language and cultural inferiority (Kubota & Lin, 2009) that condition their identity
investment and participation in community (Norton, 2001) in second language writing. The identity factors included
the desire to be identified with the white academy (Piller & Takahashi, 2006) and to gain higher social status (Tetrault,
2003), while the ideological factors included English language privilege, native-speaker ideology, Americanism, and/
or White Prestige Ideology.
To gain cultural capital as legitimate English language users, Taiwanese L2 writers on exchange draw upon their
language and racial beliefs to support their investment in a community they imagine whether or not it is consistent with
the new, target site, ESL writing classes in the U.S. If it is not, they resist new pedagogical practices they deem
inconsistent with their desires and imagined life goals.
It is important to note that the negotiation strategies observed in this study emerge contingently and
dynamically, especially as experiences change over time. The Taiwanese students in this study did not adopt a
single strategy in their writing classes for the duration of the semester. We are not able to present such data of
contingencies due to space limitations. In fact, they each took on different strategies at different times, responding
to different teaching approaches, writing genres, and activities. In this sense, their strategy choices were
dynamic.
In what follows, we explore two of the individual cases in this study, focusing on how participants negotiated their
identity in an imagined community as well as how racial and language ideologies play roles in their negotiation. Our
observation of these and other students attending an elective, non-credit language program within a study abroad
program is that they generally wish to actively accommodate (at least initially) to the new linguistic and cultural
environment. Hence, we assume a minimal level of accommodation, which includes elements of social passivity such
as the stereotypical respect for authority (i.e. teachers), etc. The two cases represent how students resist ESL writing
instruction to accommodate dominant ideologies; but such negotiation strategies are nonetheless contingent, moments
in each individual’s development.
The teacher should teach us how to compose like American—Gloria’s story
Gloria actively constructed her American identity and she desired to learn and do things in ‘‘American ways.’’ Her
ideology included native-speakerism (Grant & Lee, 2009; Holliday, 2005; Ruecker, 2011), Americanism, and WPI—a
view of whiteness (Chen, 2006; Kubota & Lin, 2009; Motha, 2006) that influenced her attitudes and behaviors in
learning the English language. Gloria had a strong investment in American culture, language, and ways of doing things
in daily life as well as in the academic arena. She adopted a strategy of resistance in her ESL writing class when she
decided that she was not learning ‘‘American ways of writing.’’ While American ways of writing cannot represent
academic English writing, Gloria conflated American ways of writing to academic English writing based on her
generalizing of American and English language.
Gloria’s preference for American people and their way of life which we call Americanism and her native-
speakerism started before attending the language institute during her first visit to the U.S. Both factors influenced her
perspectives and values about everyday life and subsequently her negotiation strategies in ESL writing class. Her
strong investment in American language and culture is illustrated in the following excerpt:
I went to Los Angeles for a half month when I was a senior high. It was just for fun. Because I like American
culture and want to study abroad, I don’t want to go back to Taiwan. I don’t like Taiwanese culture. I think that
American people are more open and better. My impressions about American people are that they are passionate
and open-minded. Plus lao-wai (foreigners/Westerners) are good-looking. (Gloria, Interview 1)
Gloria’s positive attitudes toward ‘‘American culture’’ and ‘‘lao-wai’’ reflect her Americanism. She expressed her
desire to construct an American identity by desiring to stay in the United States. Her underappreciation of her native
cultural heritage implies the inferiority of Taiwanese people who are not ‘‘open’’ and ‘‘good-looking’’ as she
constructs ‘‘lao-wai.’’ Thus, Gloria was happy with the American identity she had constructed for herself. Gloria’s
Americanism stems from her White Prestige Ideology.
G: Once I went to a night club and saw three lao-wai. Because lao-wai are usually handsome, so many girls were
excited to see them. But if Africans go to a night club, I think no one would want to talk to them. I would prefer to
talk to foreigners [Americans], not people with black skin from other countries.
E: Why?
G: Race. I think I still have some sort of discrimination (laugh). (Gloria, Interview 1)
Gloria’s desire to be American with all that that implies confirms the findings of Chen (2006) and Tetrault (2003)
that white people are regarded by many Taiwanese as being at the top of the social hierarchy in Taiwan.
Gloria’s mention of ‘‘lao-wai’’ led to a further exchange. In Taiwan, people call Westerners ‘‘wai guo ren’’ or ‘‘lao-
wai’’ which literally means ‘‘foreigners.’’ But it is important to note how Gloria used the term ‘‘lao-wai’’ to refer only
to Americans.
E: You mentioned lao-wai. Who are you referring to?

G: Usually I mean Americans.
E: American or European.
G: Not European. I like American, lao-wai. When I say lao-wai, I’m referring only to Americans. (Gloria,
Interview 1)
In this dialog, Gloria shows her preference for Americans. It was this American identity that she desired to invest in
and the imagined American community in which she wanted to participate. Gloria’s passion for American life is
similar to the Japanese participants in Piller and Takahashi’s (2006) study; in both cases, the participants’ admiration
for the West and whiteness has been romanticized and is strongly related to their investment in identity construction
and English language learning.
Investment in an American identity often translated to Gloria’s writing practices and her construction of writer
identity. Interview transcript of Gloria indicated that her desire for an American identity and belief in the superiority of
native-speakers often influenced her participation in writing class. The following excerpt shows Gloria’s bias against
NNESTs based on their nationalities as well as their accent which deviates from how she stereotypes North American
ways of speaking:
E: Would you please describe your experience in freshman English writing class in Taiwan?
G: The writing teacher was really awful. The teacher is not from America or Canada; he got his degree in Russia
and thus had really weird accent. . . Students didn’t quite understand what he was saying. . . Actually the class
wasn’t really helpful.
E: Do you remember what the writing teacher taught?
G: No. I didn’t attend the class often because he didn’t teach much and because Taiwanese teachers usually can’t
attract students’ attention. That is, because what he taught was boring and because his English is poor, students
didn’t want to attend his class. (Gloria, Interview 1, emphasis mine)
Gloria implies that people from the U.S. or Canada are legitimate speakers of English. Her teacher’s ‘‘weird
accent’’ which Gloria claims is incomprehensible, delegitimizes him as an appropriate English teacher, thus validating
her absences from class.
Constructing her American identity as she imagines it, Gloria also desired to learn, in her words, the ‘‘American
way of composing’’ which she imagined based on her exposure to American writing. When she studied in the U.S. as
an exchange student, she was not satisfied with her ESL writing class because the teacher was not teaching what she
expected. Gloria expected to learn ‘‘American ways of academic English Writing.’’ Ironically, she complained that the
writing formats provided by her American writing teacher would not help her write like a native.
E: Do you think there are any unnecessary things in class or things that are lacking?
G: At the beginning the teacher talked about how to compose, like how to write an introduction or conclusion. She
gave us some sample writings. But I think the teacher should talk more about like. . . normal articles that don’t
follow patterns in the sample writings. . . she should teach us how to make our English writings more lively, rather
than English writings written in Taiwan. She should tell us ways to write more American-like; instead of an
unnatural style of writing. . . the teacher should teach us how to compose like American. (Gloria, Interview 3;
emphasis mine)
Gloria resists her American teacher’s way of teaching writing because of what she imagines is the American style of
writing. She feels that American writing is ‘‘lively.’’ In contrast, both her Taiwanese teachers’ emphasis on
memorization, formula and her American writing teacher’s focus on organization and elaboration are deemed
‘‘unnatural.’’ Because she dichotomizes writing culturally, for internal consistency Gloria must position herself with
Americanism. Ironically, she resists her American teacher’s choice of teaching methodology because of its
resemblance to the way of writing formulaically from memory associated with school. Gloria thus overlays her racial
distinction on the cultural/pedagogic dichotomy she feels she experiences.
E: What do you mean by unnatural?

G: When I was preparing for TOEFL writing in Taiwan, the Taiwanese [teacher] in the cram school told me to
memorize formulae provided by her. For example, there are certain sentences I need to include in the introduction; I
have to write something like ‘‘in conclusion’’ when concluding, so that I could get higher scores. I think the teacher
should teach me how to write without being formulaic. The teacher should teach us how to write essays like
American.
E: So you want to write like American?
G: Yeah, not the formulaic style such as four-paragraph essays or using formula to write. I don’t think Americans
would write like that. When I read novels or news articles, they don’t write like that, not like writing as an
assignment. (Gloria, Interview 3; emphasis mine)
Gloria wants to dissociate from writing with patterns, rules, formulas and associate with the American way of
writing she imagines, derived from her limited contact with creative and journalistic writing, novels, and news articles
to which she has some exposure. Gloria took the ‘‘Writing for TOEFL’’ course in order to better prepare herself for the
exit test. Her dissatisfaction manifested through her resistance stems, as we have seen, mainly from her own ideology
and imagined expectations about the teacher (a NNEST) and her way of teaching writing. No doubt learning to write
patterned essays and editing grammar in one’s writing did not meet Gloria’s imagined view of what an American
writing style is. Yet, both techniques are legitimate pedagogical aspects of a course aimed at successfully
accomplishing a timed writing task, such as the TOEFL essay.
Thus, both Americanism and native-speakerism influenced Gloria’s identity construction as well as her perception
of learning to write in English. She sought to make her identity and English writing ‘‘American-like’’ and ‘‘lively’’ and
discard her Taiwanese style of writing as ‘‘unnatural.’’ To be ‘‘normal’’ and ‘‘lively’’ in the academy meant to Gloria to
do things the American way. In this context, Gloria’s preference for an ‘‘American way of writing’’ over those Chinese
ones she knows was strongly connected to her racial ideologies. Her WPI influenced her perspectives and thus her
attitudes toward the teaching practices she experienced. She held negative attitudes toward non-American culture and
writing due to her perspective on English language and Americanism and her desire to be identified with the American
academy.
Gloria’s construction of Americanism and native-speakerism also played a role, as we observed and her teacher
concurred, in her resistant behavior in her writing class. For example, peer editing was a boring and unhelpful activity for
Gloria because she was not getting direct feedback from her ‘‘American’’ teacher who was a valid and better-qualified
‘‘corrector.’’ We noticed her indifferent attitude and resistant behaviors during the period of peer editing in the ESL
writing class. Instead of following the instructions, Gloria was browsing on the Internet, reading Yahoo news, while other
students were reading and marking their peers’ writings. Sometimes she chatted with her Taiwanese classmates in
Chinese, and sometimes she joked with her other classmates. After her classmate returned her edited essay, Gloria placed
both arms on the table, rested her head on her left arm, and gazed at nothing in particular with glazed eyes. In one of our
interviews, Gloria was asked to comment on peer editing, about which she said,
G: . . . I haven’t tried [peer editing] before, so at first I thought I could learn something from editing other students’
papers. But later on I felt it was a bit boring.
E: How would your peers’ editing help your English writing?
G: Because we were all international students, maybe my peers couldn’t see my grammatical errors, but foreigners
[Americans] can. My papers edited by my classmates were only. . . I felt that actually they didn’t dare to correct my
sentences and teach me how to write because they were not certain. They would think maybe my ways were right.
Therefore, my classmates usually checked ‘‘S’’ (plural form) or verb tenses, and they wouldn’t tell me how to
write a sentence. They only checked these kinds of small aspects, so I think it was not really a big help. (Gloria,
Interview 2)
Gloria disagreed that peer editing was a useful way to learn to write in English, based on her assumption about who
the better editors were. Gloria’s bias toward the fluent English of NESs reinforces her tacit view that race is an
important indicator of language proficiency. Hence, she preferred to get feedback from her writing teacher rather than
her international classmates. Ironically, her writing teacher was actually neither an American citizen nor a NEST, but
rather a visiting graduate student from Russia, an international student like herself. Gloria assumed the teacher was a
white American based on her perception of her ‘‘whiteness.’’ This double assumption, that white people are American
and that her teacher was a NES American, allowed Gloria to construe her teacher as a native speaker of English and
therefore a ‘‘legitimate’’ editor of English writing.
One consequence of this false ideology was that she resisted the peer editing activity in her ESL writing class since
her essays were reviewed by, in her eyes, unreliable international students instead of valid American (i.e. native-
speaker) editors. The peer-editing activity, in Gloria’s eyes, was not worthy of her investment because it did not help
her obtain cultural capital nor the legitimacy of being a language user (Bourdieu, 1994). This finding supports the
claims made in previous studies that the legitimacy of language users may be connected to the issue of race (Motha,
2006) and that white people are often perceived as ideal speaker-listeners (Grant & Wong, 2008), or in this case as
writing peer editors or teachers.
In brief, classroom observations and interviews with Gloria and her teacher suggest that her resistance behaviors
were influenced by her WPI, especially her construction of Americanism and native-speakerism during the process in
which she sought to engage in her imagined community of prestige.
Sometimes I feel that white people have better race—Monica’s story
Like Gloria, Monica imagined and exaggerated the superiority of what she construed as white American culture. In
this, Monica saw English as social capital that she would use in the future. Although Gloria and Monica were at
different level writing classes in the U.S., they were both dissatisfied with their writing classes because their teachers
did not meet their need to join the white academy in the way they imagined it to be. As a result, Monica manifested
resistance behaviors similar to Gloria’s. Monica tended not to follow the teacher’s instructions but rather used her own
means to fulfill her desires.
To begin with, Monica’s White Prestige Ideology preceded her participation in her ESL writing class and originates
in her view of English as social capital (Bourdieu, 1991). For example, Monica talked about how she felt her native
country—Taiwan—had lower status than Western countries:
E: In your opinion, what advantages/disadvantages do white people have?

M: I feel that white people are richer. Foreigners (white people) have a feeling of wealth. And their race is better.
Sometimes I feel that white people have better race.
E: Why do you think that way?
M: Maybe it’s because their countries are superior, like the whole countries are stronger. Also, America is rich with
wide range of spaces, right? And Taiwan is a little, tiny country, ha, yeah.
E: What are disadvantages do you think white people have?
M: . . . Disadvantages . . . I’ve never thought about this aspect. I’ve always thought about their positive aspects.
(Monica, Interview 1)
This conversation shows Monica’s perception of her inferior status to white people. She believes the white race is
superior, white people are wealthy, and white America [her construction] an expansive territory (as contrasted in the
widely used epithet: ‘‘Chinese place; American space’’). Moreover, her awareness that Taiwan is a small place made
Monica feel even more inferior, and elevated her attraction to what she constructed as American white culture.
Monica’s WPI is clearly associated with English language prestige and native-speaker privilege in the
following exchange:
E: What do you know about white people?

M: White people seem to be more superior. Also, white people usually speak English, which is great. (Monica,
Interview 1)
Monica judged native-speaker status based on the color of a person’s skin, and overgeneralized that all Caucasians
were native-speakers of English. For Monica, learning English is thus important to be able to be associated with her
imagined white community. This finding confirmed that of the previous studies that the prestige of English is often
interrelated to habitual racial prejudices (Chen, 2006; Piller & Takahashi, 2006; Tetrault, 2003). As Motha (2006) and
Ruecker (2011) pointed out, racialization is inevitably salient in ELT and discussion on native-speakerism should
include issues of race as we have done in this study.
By learning English abroad in the United States, Monica was constructing a confident and superior identity in the
imagined community of prestige discussed earlier. The following excerpt indicates her positive attitudes toward
English as well as her desire to be engaged in the imagined community of prestige:
E: What does better English mean to you?

M: I’d feel that I’m marvelous, imagining people saying, ‘‘Oh, your English is so good.’’ For example, my previous
high school classmates who knew I went abroad said to me, ‘‘Now your English must be very fluent’’ or something
like that. Yeah, it seems that if my English is good, I’d be more superior to others. (Monica, Interview 1)
Learning English makes Monica feel superior to other Taiwanese. Monica’s friends in Taiwan positioned
her as a fluent English speaker because she was studying in the United States. Monica enjoyed her superior
identity as a fluent English speaker in her imagined community of prestige. She viewed English as social
capital and desired to advance her social status. This strengthened her investment in learning English to a
considerable extent.
Monica also desired to write well in English. She thought her English writing was simplistic, without much
variation. She wanted to learn and improve her English writing skills, as she says:
M: I think I need to learn more sentence patterns to be able to write beautiful sentences. I want my sentence patterns
to have more variation, and don’t just write simple sentences with subject and verb and begin sentences with I or
she. Yeah, I want to learn something different. (Monica, Interview 3, emphasis mine)
Monica’s lack of confidence in her own English writing was illustrated in the excerpt. Recognizing her own writing
as needing sentence variation, Monica had a clear goal she wanted to achieve, which was to write like an American:
E: Throughout the semester, what have you learned?

M: I practiced and learned to write longer essays. Now I can think faster when I write.
E: How did this course help improve your writing?
M: The course itself didn’t help much because I want to learn how to write more standard, prettier, longer. . . and
more advanced. . . like Americans. (Interview 3, emphasis mine)
Monica imagined American writing to be ‘‘beautiful’’ and ‘‘longer’’ and her own writing as problematic and
lacking variation. Consequently, she constructed an inferior identity, believing that her goal was achieving the
American-like, beautiful, long, and advanced writing style.
In the following excerpt, Monica first constructs her idea of white prestige in writing (i.e., setting a goal to improve
her English writing to be like American), which was reinforced by her parents and then associates it with her
socialization into higher status:
E: What do you think about your own English writings?

M: I think. . . very little variation. I mean I need to improve more.
E: What do you need such improvement for?
M: I want to keep making progress. I. . . [sigh]. . . sometimes it’s for my parents. . . My parents think that going
abroad to study can make their child better [than those who don’t go abroad]. So sometimes I do this to meet their
expectation. (Monica, Interview 3)
According to Monica, her parents believed that going abroad, to a white country to study would cause Monica to
learn better English and get a better education. As a consequence, Monica had a strong investment to improve her
English writing so that she could become ‘‘better’’ in the eyes of her friends and parents.
Nevertheless, the ESL writing teacher failed to fulfill Monica’s desire to gain social capital and engage in the
white academy as well as in her imagined community of prestige. The teacher’s goal was for student writers to
better express themselves and gain confidence in writing English with the aid of photography. Therefore, neither
writing quantity nor English writing conventions were emphasized. Hoping to learn sophisticated academic writing
skills, in the interviews Monica expressed negative attitudes toward the writing class. She thought the class was too
easy and not useful. The following conversation illustrated her dissatisfaction with the photography activity in the
writing class:
E: So you thought these things were too basic and you wanted something more advanced.
M: Yes. This photo thing was really too. . . Yeah. . . I didn’t think [the ESL writing class] could be called a
WRITING course. She just asked us to write two sentences at random. In my opinion, a course should be teaching
students that will make them improve. (Monica, Interview 3)
As a result, Monica developed a stance of oppositional resistance in her ESL writing class because she thought it
was not helping her learn how to compose ‘‘good’’ essays. Because Monica thought the class was too simple, she was
reluctant to go to class. Sometimes late, she also sometimes skipped the class. The following example shows her
reasoning behind her resistance:
E: You said that sometimes you were late to class and that sometimes you were reluctant to attend class. Why was
that?
M: Because I was tired of it. Sometimes I thought that what the teacher taught was not what I wanted. Also,
sometimes I felt that courses here were too simple. Yeah, I’ve learned those in Taiwan. They taught even more in
Taiwan. (Monica, Interview 3)
Another example of her resistant behavior was apparent when Monica wrote longer essays for homework and
neglected the teacher’s instruction to include photos.
E: What did you do to change the status quo when the course didn’t meet your expectations or when you thought it
was not helpful? Like the photo thing.
M: That’s why I wrote more [than required]. . . When I worked on the [final] project, I just wrote a lot. We were
supposed to have a topic with four or five photos, followed by one paragraph, then more pictures, and then one more
paragraph. But when I worked on it, I just wrote paragraphs without including photos. So [in the class the teacher]
asked, ‘‘How come you didn’t insert any pictures?’’ She also said, ‘‘You wrote really long paragraphs,’’ and then she
left. She didn’t comment on anything because I did not complete the assignment. Yeah, I wrote pretty long essays.
(Monica, Interview 3)
Monica resisted the teacher’s instructions by writing longer essays. Thus, she practiced writing more in English,
and, at the same time, she showed her teacher that she could write more than required. Monica constructed her identity
as an advanced writer because she could write more than the few required sentences. In this way, Monica did not follow
the teacher’s instruction and used her own way to achieve her goal of being identified with the imagined white
academic community.
Moreover, Monica felt that there was no need to ask for the teacher’s feedback. Since the writing teacher was not
explicitly teaching academic English writing standards, Monica made identification with the norm of white prestige
English her principle goal and resisted the teacher’s attempt to subvert that goal. She tended to write in her own way
without getting the teacher’s feedback.
E: Has your teacher ever given you any feedback, like how you can write or change things in your papers?
M: I didn’t have much interaction with my teacher because I usually wrote by myself. I didn’t think there was
necessity to ask her anything. Yeah. (Monica, Interview 3)
Monica did seek feedback on her writing but only from a tutor her writing teacher brought to class to lead small
group discussions and help with English speaking and writing. Monica liked to interact with this tutor because she is
American, a more legitimate user of English in Monica’s view, than those non-native writing experts she was assigned
in the Writing Center, as indicated in the following excerpt:
E: You wanted to learn English, but you didn’t get help from your teacher. How could you improve?
M: Sometimes I just practiced on my own. If I didn’t learn anything, I’d ask my tutor or go to the Writing Center. . .
But I preferred to talk with Amy (her tutor) since tutors in the Writing Center were not always American. (Monica,
Interview 3)
In the following excerpt, Monica reiterates how she thought her American tutor, Amy, could help improve
especially her writing ability where she perceives a gap:
E: Does this course meet your expectation? Have you learned anything?
M: I had fun chatting in class with my American tutor. I’ve learned a lot from my tutor, Amy, instead. I could
practice my English speaking with her. She is American you know. I was happy to be able to chat with her.
Sometimes I asked her questions about my writing because Americans’ writings are better. (Interview 3, emphasis
mine)
Monica got the impression that Americans write longer and better work, and thus worked hard to bring her essays
closer to the norms she imagined. Since Monica could not benefit from this writing class, she was pretty much on her
own trying to improve her English writing skills by writing longer essays without following the teacher’s instructions.
She was not afraid of disobeying the teacher; instead, she thought that she could prove to her teacher that she was a
competent English writer who could write longer essays like Americans do. Monica’s academic desires are further
evidence of her WPI. Although writing longer essays does not necessarily mean better ones, Monica’s resistance to
writing assignments makes her believe she is accomplishing her goal of joining the white community while learning
academic writing.
Monica’s resistance to learning to write in ‘‘Write from the Start with Photography’’ is primarily due to her
unfulfilled expectations about what writing in the academy is like. The aim of the course (taught by a NEST) was to
introduce a type of multi-media writing which focused on the personal, familiar, and here and now for beginning
language users. Monica’s writing ability tested at the same level as her peers who generally enjoyed and benefited from
this course, although her oral proficiency allowed her to take some higher level courses as well. According to one of
Monica’s classmates, ‘‘my writing teacher gives me enough space to write what I want to write about so that I am able
to try to understand what English writing really is.’’ (Angela, Interview 1)
In summary, the two cases presented here and the larger study illustrate how resistance behavior was strategically
adopted by the Taiwanese participants in L2 writing classes in the U.S. Their strategic choices often involve identity
investment and ideological implications, ethnicity, race, and class. In other words, students’ language ideologies seem
to be interrelated with their identity construction and their investment in the process of language learning, which in
turn affects them as multilingual writers’ negotiating practices in their ESL writing classes. The results of this
qualitative research clearly link students’ literacy practices in ESL writing class to sociopolitical factors including
investment, identity, and White Prestige Ideology.
Discussion
Fortunately, a few scholars have recently argued the importance of taking the issue of race into account in English
language teaching (Curtis & Romney, 2006; Kubota & Lin, 2009; Motha, 2006; Ruecker, 2011). This study delves
further into examining the interrelationship between student racial ideologies and resistance in L2 writing practices.
The two cases show that multilingual writers make investment in learning to write in a second language that is
intertwined in complex ways with habitual racial and language prejudices. Viewing English as a form of social,
academic, and symbolic capital, this study confirmed previous research (Chen, 2006; Tetrault, 2003; Tsai, 2010) that
many Taiwanese students invest in achieving a high level of English proficiency and constructing imagined identities
of possibility and hope (Norton, 2001). The promotion of English language and whiteness in Taiwan caused many
Taiwanese students to view English as cultural capital (Bourdieu, 1991). Such language habitus and identity
construction are often related to literacy practices as argued by Ivanič (1998) and Zacher (2008). Our findings show
that students’ engagement in the classroom was interrelated with their investment in learning ESL literacy. The
participants in the study had a strong investment (Peirce, 1995) in learning to write better in English; they resisted
teaching instruction that was unable to provide the means to gain admittance to the academic community, perceived as
a privilege white preserve.
Previous studies linked L2 students’ literacy practices to issues of identity construction and/or language ideology
(Canagarajah, 1993, 2004, 2006; Lippi-Green, 2004; Norton, 2001). This study shows how ideologies of several kinds,
and most prominently the sociopolitical construct of race, play through the struggle to write in an L2. Sometimes the
White Prestige Ideology of Taiwanese students can influence their desires to learn academic English writing. Thus,
students’ literacy practices (resistance, in this case) may result from the fact that WPI and native-speaker prestige
ideology are commonly accepted in Taiwanese society (Tetrault, 2003).
We chose to investigate how multilingual writers respond to teaching authority in writing classes because we feel
students’ behaviors of accommodation or resistance are often misinterpreted. When students fail to conform to
teaching instruction, their non-participation or resistance tend to be categorized from the teachers’ point of view as
‘‘problematic,’’ sometimes mythologized (Kumaravadivelu, 2008) and their writing is viewed as ‘‘deficient.’’ The
purpose of the research is to better understand how the pattern of resistance or accommodation can be explained in
terms of students’ identity claims and the WPI of ESL writing teachers and students.
Norton (2001) and Block (2003) argued that students’ non-participation or resistance can be interpreted as active
agency negotiated to join or deny certain membership in an imagined community. In this study, both Gloria and
Monica resisted the teaching practices that did not fulfill their needs. Their ideology-infused resistance shaped their
agency and led to successful participation in their imagined communities of prestige. Such negotiation strategies
support Lantolf and Pavlenko’s (2001) argument that multilingual writers are capable of negotiation, rather than those
who argue that resistance is passive and problematic.
Nonetheless, the discursive negotiation practices of L2 writers learning to write can be dangerous because they
construct their own identity as inferior and reinforce unequal power relations (Carroll et al., 2008). Gloria and Monica
resisted writing instruction in order to be assimilated to an imagined, prestigious white academy, yet this positioned
them in an inferior status. For example, showing her desire for English and whiteness, Gloria resisted and disassociated
herself with the ‘‘unnatural’’—non-native accents, peer-reviewed text by international students, and other Taiwanese
ways of composing. Similarly, because Monica wanted to acquire English as social capital, she sought to become a
part of the white academy. Since her teacher did not in Monica’s eyes support this need, she tried her best to achieve her
goals by resisting the teacher’s instruction to write short paragraphs with photos; instead, she wrote longer essays
without photos, hoping to join the imagined community of prestige. Through their resistance, both Monica and Gloria
showed their desire to join an imagined white community. However, their accommodation to the dominant ideologies
of white prestige and native-speaker privilege created a sense of inferiority in that they positioned themselves as
inferior to the white speakers of English.
This finding that Taiwanese students sometimes construct an identity of inferiority when they were learning to
write in English illustrates Kubota and Lin’s (2009) claim that unequal power relations are perpetuated through the
process of inferiorization. Gloria and Monica are examples of writers who constructed an identity of inferiority
through resistance. Both Gloria and Monica adored everything about being white and resisted any writing
instruction that did not help them become a part of the imagined community of prestige. Engaging in such imagined
community, their confidence was a result of their successful assimilation into English academic writing practices as
they imagined them to be. In this study, these discursive practices of learning to write in English sometimes
reproduced WPI and reinforced Taiwanese students’ identity of inferiority. The writers who believed in native-
speakerism, English language global dominance, and white superiority in effect achieved self-marginalization
(Kumaravadivelu, 2006) as they became assimilated. Instead of empowering them, it led to their devaluation of
their L1 heritage.
This argument highlights Grant and Lee’s (2009) statement about the danger of unjust ideologies accompanying the
promotion of English language. They contend that the spread of English has social and ideological implications that
marginalize heritage languages and cultures:
The crafting of English as economic and cultural commodity means that hegemonic constructions of identity
around language often situate people of color in competing, and frequently hostile, positions relative to one
another. . . As a result, the evolving hegemonic notions of race and language continue to subjugate [and]
marginalize. . . varieties of English, and indigenous and heritage languages. (p. 45)
As we have seen, learning to write in English is embedded in social and political contexts. In this study, the
Taiwanese students brought White Prestige Ideology when they entered L2 writing classrooms and worked hard to
invest in the community of prestige through resistance. The students viewed things American or whiteness as superior
to their own, and they treated their own way of doing things (e.g., writing) as inferior and problematic. While the
origin of identities of inferiority clearly were formed through socialization in the home country (see Miller, Wang,
Sandel, & Cho, 2002), these students used their new American environment to validate and confirm their ideology as
they continued to write in their L2. The learning of English writing for these multilingual writers did not empower
them; instead, their inferior identity constructed before and reinforced through literacy practices in these writing
classrooms resulted in their subscription to their WPI. In turn, these discursive practices perpetuated the unequal
power relations in learning ESL writing. This cycle is clear and demonstrates how social and political factors such as
race, identity, investment, and ideology are intertwined with students’ literacy practices, which reproduces
inequality. We derived a model of how this operates. Fig. 1 illustrates the circle of assimilation that reinforces unequal
power relations.
Fig. 1. Model of assimilation: reinforcing unequal power relations.

Conclusion
We have known for many years that L2 writing is embedded in both cognitive processes and in a sociocultural and
political context. Second language writing has been shown to be intricately related to various factors, such as learners’
multiple identities, ideologies, audiences, genres of writing, and in this article the interplay of race and other
ideologies, all of which are inseparable from the particular sociopolitical and cultural contexts in which it occurred. In
these ways, literacy practices are always historically, socially, and culturally constructed processes.
While identifying sociopolitical factors, we need to recognize that the writing strategies of our students are
contingent and change over time and space. We were not able to explicate these contingencies of the students’
rhetorical and behavioral patterns here, but we found that participants’ white prestige and native-speaker ideologies
were often reinforced by the ESL teaching practices adopted in specific contexts. When teachers fail to recognize what
lies behind students’ accommodation or resistance, they may very well reinforce WPI through unreflective teaching
practices. In other words, writing teachers need to be aware that when students engage in a community of prestige,
their cultural heritage becomes devalued and they may feel inferior to the imagined white American community of
prestige they aspire to join through their choices about writing in L2.
Because race is implicated in L2 discourse and behavior, it is important for L2 writing professionals to be aware of
students’ construction of whiteness in literacy practices. This may be as basic as discussing and discerning tendencies
from stereotypes (e.g. ‘Chinese are often passive in writing class’). In addition, racial issues among Taiwanese learners
in the Taiwanese writing context can be understood as a pedagogic opportunity for discussion and writing, similar to
the way sexual diversity has been framed as a pedagogic resource (Nelson, 2009, pp. 205–218).
It is equally significant to attempt to transform students’ viewpoints and empower them. For pedagogical
implication, we thus suggest L2 teachers introduce critical race and language awareness of L2 writers in their second
language writing curriculum. Addressing the consequences of the spread of English language, many researchers point
out that instead of blindly learning a language, language learners should maintain their subjectivity and appreciate
their own cultural heritage (e.g., Canagarajah, 1999; Holliday, 2005). In other words, English language learners cannot
ignore the underlying ideologies and power relations; neither can they lose their own subjectivity in the process of
learning English. The globalization of English and the superiority of the native speaker are too infrequently recognized
as raced. The social production of indifference takes place in the writing classroom as well as elsewhere in education.
As a pedagogical tool, Critical Language Awareness (CLA) makes explicit the ideologies and power relations in
everyday language; it helps language learners become sensitive to and question the role that language plays in every
usage including school life (Fairclough, 1992). Moreover, writing pedagogy can open up the differences between
Taiwan and the U.S. in terms of how racialized we are as individuals and as regimes (Knowles, 2010).
One of the goals of CLA is to provide a method for L2 teachers to increase students’ critical awareness, deconstruct
ideologies, challenge the taken-for-granted views, and finally take social actions to change the status-quo. Students
can undergo the process of repositioning themselves in writing by revising how they see themselves in the terms
discussed or seeing the world through the eyes of those who are impacted by racial and language prejudices. In some
cases, this may lead some students to write effectively against ideological and institutional processes in Taiwan and the
U.S. which reproduce hurtful conditions experienced and witnessed.
In those ways, ESL writing students’ L1 will be viewed as an important resource rather than a hindrance, and they
will be encouraged to appreciate their own cultures and languages, redress the unequal power relations of languages,
and raise their awareness of the operation of language hierarchy. Students should be empowered to better appreciate
their own culture and language and be encouraged to express themselves freely, bringing their own non-false identities
into their writing. They should grow their critical awareness of the connections between their past and their present,
between what has structured them and what they choose to structure as they move forward in the accomplishment of
their desires.
Finally, neither the teaching nor the learning of English is neutral. In this article, we argue that both teachers and L2
writers need to understand the purposes and ideological implications of their practices so that they can eliminate
essentialist ideas and minimize the reproduction of false ideology through unequal power relations. It is important for
L2 writing professionals to take a critical approach in TESOL (Pennycook, 2000) and promote racial and language
equality. By recognizing the impact of inequalities of power relations between western and local countries in second
language writing, the call is sharpened for more research on race, ideological implications in language education, and
power inequities that drive social phenomena in writing.
Acknowledgements
We thank our research participants for their time and cooperation. This project would not have been possible
without their help. We also appreciate the reviewers’ insightful feedback. During the period of this study, one
researcher received financial support from Taiwan (NSC-1000010883).
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Dr. Pei-Hsun Emma Liu is Assistant Professor of Applied English at Kainan University where she teaches EFL literacy and graduate courses. She
received her Ph.D. from Indiana University of Pennsylvania. She was awarded Innovative Researcher in TESOL in the Department of English
Composition & TESOL. Dr. Liu has extensive teaching and research background working with ESL/EFL students from all over the world in the areas
of World Englishes, intercultural rhetoric, and critical pedagogy. Her research interests center on second language writing and language in social
contexts. Her recent publication appears in TESOL Journal and British Journal of Educational Technology.
Dr. Dan J. Tannacito recently retired as Professor of English Composition & TESOL at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. He has taught English
for more than forty years, the last 30 at IUP where he recently received the Distinguished Faculty Award in Teaching. He was the founder and director
of the American Language Institute while teaching graduate students in Composition & TESOL since 1980. His specialties are second language
writing, intensive English program administration, and discourse analysis. His books include works on ESL writing and discourse analysis. He
served as a Senior Fulbright Scholar in Turkey in the 1990s. His current work focuses on the methodology of narrative approaches to language
learning and teaching.

Liu and Tannacito (2013) Resistance by L2 Writers The Role of Racial and Language

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Liu and Tannacito (2013) Resistance by L2 Writers The Role of Racial and Language

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Journal of Second Language Writing 22 (2013) 355–373

Resistance by L2 writers: The role of racial and language

Cultural capital and habitus

White Prestige Ideology (WPI)

Investment in the imagined community

Student negotiation in literacy practices

L2 writers exhibit agency resisting practices in writing classrooms in the U.S.

Writing for TOEFL

Write from the Start with Photography

The teacher should teach us how to compose like American—Gloria’s story

E: You mentioned lao-wai. Who are you referring to?

E: What do you mean by unnatural?

Sometimes I feel that white people have better race—Monica’s story

E: In your opinion, what advantages/disadvantages do white people have?

E: What do you know about white people?

E: What does better English mean to you?

E: Throughout the semester, what have you learned?

E: What do you think about your own English writings?

Fig. 1. Model of assimilation: reinforcing unequal power relations.

You might also like

Liu and Tannacito (2013) Resistance by L2 Writers The Role of Racial and Language

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Liu and Tannacito (2013) Resistance by L2 Writers The Role of Racial and Language

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Available online at www.sciencedirect.

Journal of Second Language Writing 22 (2013) 355–373

Resistance by L2 writers: The role of racial and language

Cultural capital and habitus

White Prestige Ideology (WPI)

Investment in the imagined community

Student negotiation in literacy practices

 L2 writers exhibit agency resisting practices in writing classrooms in the U.S.

Writing for TOEFL

Write from the Start with Photography

The teacher should teach us how to compose like American—Gloria’s story

E: You mentioned lao-wai. Who are you referring to?

E: What do you mean by unnatural?

Sometimes I feel that white people have better race—Monica’s story

E: In your opinion, what advantages/disadvantages do white people have?

E: What do you know about white people?

E: What does better English mean to you?

E: Throughout the semester, what have you learned?

E: What do you think about your own English writings?

Fig. 1. Model of assimilation: reinforcing unequal power relations.

You might also like

L2 writers exhibit agency resisting practices in writing classrooms in the U.S.