Hi everyone,

I am in the Education & Language Acquisition Department and am really excited to be working with all of you from such diverse backgrounds and different disciplines!  I feel like I will learn a lot this coming year!

I’m a linguist – a discourse analyst – as far as my “research identity.”  This does not translate into all of my “faculty identity” at LAGCC, since some things that I teach are in different areas.  I can share my love of language and linguistics with students when teaching ELL 101 (Intro. to Language), but since it is an overview course, I do not get to delve into interesting topics with students.  The ELL 220 (Intro. to Sociolinguistics) course allows me to encourage students to explore their own identity construction, constraints, and agency and I am looking forward to exploring language and identity with students looking at it through technology and considering other interesting things we discuss in our seminar.

A very recent example of identity construction that has made headlines is that of Rachel Dolezal.  Whatever stance you take on her stated identity as a black person, it is interesting from the constructionist perspective.  How has media and technology affected her identity construction?  How does it affect the way we all construct our identities online versus in other contexts?  What types of identity construction is considered ethical and unethical?

Looking forward to discussing these ideas and more….

-Rebekah