Another important historical development that has influenced the view of agency in SLA is poststructuralism along with the array of critical theories that followed. As part of movements from structuralist (including the complete denial of human agency, e.g., Levi‐Strauss) to poststructuralist perspectives (e.g., featuring the power of discourses), humanist approaches to research centering on sovereign individuals were attacked. Meanwhile, social theorists such as Bourdieu (1977) and Giddens (1984), who attempted to find the connection between structure and agency, influenced the understanding of agency in SLA. Although human beings are not free agents because they are constrained by social structures and forces, neither are they entirely controlled by forces beyond their purview. Humans can make changes to structures. Along these lines, the influence of critical theories, including British cultural studies, postcolonial, and feminist theories crept into SLA approaches to agency. Here, the attention was on sociopolitical situations and discourses that produce inequalities among individuals. Thus research in SLA informed by a variety of poststructuralist and critical theories now examines power relations embedded in the sociopolitical contexts in which people learn an L2 as well as the agency they exercise in overcoming the challenges they face in that learning.
Theoretical Perspectives on Agency in SLA
In the following sections, the conceptual development of agency from (a) sociocultural and (b) poststructuralist and critical perspectives within the field of SLA will be examined in greater detail. These two perspectives, which originated in completely different theoretical settings, both influenced the social turn in SLA research. Unlike psychological research, which focuses on learner characteristics, including motivation, in which agency is regarded as an individual property or attribute that affects human behavior (Oxford, 2003), agency is viewed as socially structured and embedded in social contexts.
Agency From Sociocultural Perspectives
The goal of sociocultural analysis is to understand how human cognition is related to cultural, institutional, and historical contexts (Wertsch, 1991). To account for agency from sociocultural perspectives, the Vygotskyan theory of mediation, the internalization of self‐regulation, and, more broadly, activity theory as well as the notion of community of practice are taken up in this section.
According to Vygotsky (1997), all forms of higher mental functions are derived from interpersonal interactions mediated by culturally constructed auxiliary tools, whether physical or symbolic, with language as an example of the latter. While physical tools such as a hammer or scissors “extend the reach and power of our bodies” resulting in “a change in the object toward which they are directed” (Lantolf & Thorne, 2006, p. 60), linguistic artifacts are inwardly directed, with the goal of self‐regulation. At first, children are dependent on assistance from adults when they perform certain tasks, often with linguistically mediated support. Through dialogic interactions with others, children learn to self‐regulate their physical and mental activities using mediational devices, and they gradually become independent of adult guidance. This process enhances the child's agency. In this sense, agency refers to internalized self‐regulation, or “the socioculturally mediated capacity to act” (Ahearn, 2001, p. 112). Further, as Newman and Holzman (1993) argue, uniquely human activity mediated by culturally created tools is transformative as well as creative as humans constantly make changes in emerging activities. In this sense, agency refers to the mediated capacity of humans to create and make changes.
Extending these perspectives to L2 learning, SLA researchers often examine L2‐mediated private speech (externalized inner speech) as well as dialogic interactions between L2 learners and teachers in order to understand the process of how learners learn to self‐regulate their second language use and how they mediate their thoughts through a second language by, for example, using concepts learned in the L2.
Activity theory is a framework that permits the study of human practices as developmental processes (Lantolf & Thorne, 2006). From this perspective, activity is seen as social practice that provides conditions for psychological development. In everyday situations, human beings respond to tensions, contradictions, and problems that to some extent change the conceptual, social, and material conditions of their lives. In this sense, tensions, contradictions, and problems create opportunities for human development, often through the creation of new artifacts. While Vygotsky created a model of individual goal‐oriented, mediated activity that generates higher mental functions, later theorists such as Leont'ev (1981) stressed the roles community, rules, and labor‐sharing play in structuring this activity. Lantolf and Pavlenko (2001) argue for the importance of using the activity theory framework in discussing agency in SLA. They stress that second language acquisition as activity is “more than the acquisition of forms”; rather, it is about developing “new ways of mediating ourselves and our relationships” (p. 145) with the world. This perspective requires us to respect learners' agency in “constructing the terms and conditions of their own learning” (p. 145) within the social context in which they are placed.
In Lave and Wenger's (1991) theory, learning is regarded as a situated activity amounting to legitimately participating in a “community of practice” in which an individual is mediated not only by material and symbolic tools but also by the formation of social relationships that are emergent and contingent. Learning thus involves changing relationships as well as transforming identities within one's social world.
Agency from the sociocultural perspective is “never a ‘property’ of a particular individual: rather, it is a relationship that is constantly co‐constructed and renegotiated with those around the individual and with the society at large” (Lantolf & Pavlenko, 2001, p. 148). In this sense, agency is a “culturally (in)formed attribute whose development is shaped by participation in specific communities of practice” (Lantolf & Thorne, 2006, p. 239).
Agency From Poststructuralist and Critical Perspectives
The relationship between social structure and human agency has long been debated within social theories. While phenomenology and ethnomethodology focus on the subjective world of humans and privilege the actor, functionalism and structuralism stress the power of the structure and systems of meaning to control agency. Bourdieu's (1997) and Giddens's (1984) theories offer concepts that bridge agency and structure, or the gap between the micro and macro perspectives (Smith, 2001). Bourdieu's concept of “habitus” helps us analyze how the reproduction of social structures is interconnected with individuals' subjective experiences embedded in day‐to‐day practices and manifested in embodied behaviors and tendencies to act in specific ways as well as in their tastes and emotions, among other factors. In Giddens's structuration theory, on the other hand, structure and agency are mutually constitutive within social practice. Giddens suggests that humans act by using internalized skills and knowledge in every day practice, while cultural patterns are reproduced as humans use their skills and knowledge in social practice. Thus not only is structure the medium for human actions, but it is reproduced as a result of these actions. In Giddens's view, humans continuously have reflexive moments in which they monitor the consequences of their actions while engaging in day‐to‐day practices. Through this reflexivity, humans have agency in that they can make choices and enact changes to their environment.
Both Bourdieu's and Giddens's theories thus provide a framework for viewing agency in L2 learners by focusing on the dialectic of social structure and agentive actions. Meanwhile, critical theories such as postcolonial theories and feminist theories (e.g., Weedon, 1987; Butler, 1990) supply lenses through which to examine sociopolitical discourses that produce power differences. Within the framework of SLA informed by poststructuralist and critical theories, studies have been conducted focusing on L2 learning by immigrants or those who are forced into certain subject positions in society, demonstrating their struggles in appropriating the new language while fighting social constraints and negotiating an identity (e.g., Norton, 2000; Pavlenko & Blackledge, 2004; Block, 2007). Researchers also focus on individuals'
