Directed Motivational Currents and Language Education. Christine Muir
hours in a car travelling multiple times weekly to be able to attend language lessons in a different city, cf. Safdari & Maftoon, 2017). However, within the context of a DMC, such tasks function as an integral cog within an overarching goal pathway and, as such, are experienced in a remarkably positive manner. Positive emotionality does not emerge from engagement with each discrete activity – as in flow – but instead from the fact that each task is taking an individual forwards towards a highly desired and personally significant end goal. The anticipated emotion linked with the achievement of the end goal is projected back throughout the entire journey. As Baumgartner et al. describe, anticipated emotions:
do not involve any uncertainty because they are based on the assumption, through mental simulation, that the future event has already happened or will not happen. The person imagines how good or bad it would feel to experience certain outcomes, given that the imagined future event has actually occurred. (Baumgartner et al., 2008: 686)
Regardless of the nature of the activity itself, within a DMC each step taken or activity completed in pursuit of the final goal is imbued with the highly positive anticipated emotion associated with ultimate goal achievement.
Learning a language is a considerable commitment, which requires us to understand broader motivational processes underpinning long-term learning behaviours, significantly, as they unfold over time. Theories such as the L2MSS have been successful in ‘creating a holistic, future-oriented perspective’ (Dörnyei et al., 2016: 32), yet they have been able to contribute little to furthering understanding with regards ongoing interactions between motivation and subsequent behavioural engagement. Indeed, even looking to the mainstream motivation literature, there is no theory which has yet striven to link, over time, goal-related dispositions with specific behavioural occurrences. As we concluded in 2016:
the temporal emphasis of the two self-image components of the L2 Motivational Self System (i.e., the ideal and the ought-to L2 selves) was not matched by a similar temporal perspective of the third component, the L2 learning experience, which has typically been operationalized in a very general and unchanging form as the sum of a learner’s attitudes toward L2 learning. (Dörnyei et al., 2016: 32; see also Dörnyei, 2019a)
By contrast, DMCs offer ‘a motivation construct which handles goals and goal-related behaviors together in an experiential form within a concrete learning context’ (Dörnyei et al., 2016: 33). Their significance stems from the belief that the motivational basis of DMCs is comprised of the same building blocks as the motivational basis energising long-term behaviours more generally: DMCs thus represent an optimal form of engagement with extended projects (Dörnyei et al., 2016). (As I introduce in Chapter 3, in the context of L2 classrooms, we have understood DMCs as emerging via intensive group projects.) DMCs capture the power of a final vision and transfer it through a unique structure into sustained engagement, in so doing prolonging an initial vision-led surge and enabling individuals to function consistently at levels over and above what they might normally be capable of. We can understand DMCs as representing the perfect match between a vision and an accompanying action plan, which amplifies rather than absorbs energy: DMCs are thus unique within the field of L2 motivation research.
It is of relevance here to return briefly to the flow literature, and its recognition that flow can be experienced to varying degrees of intensity. The distinction has been made between ‘deep-flow’ or ‘macro-flow’ experiences and ‘micro-flow’ experiences. Examples of micro-flow experiences include ‘daydreaming, smoking, talking to people without an expressed purpose, or more clearly defined activities like listening to music, watching television, or reading a book’ (Csikszentmihalyi, 1975/2000: 141). That is, seemingly ‘unnecessary’ behaviours, yet those which, if omitted from our daily lives, have the potential to cause considerable negative physical and psychological effects (see Csikszentmihalyi’s, 1975/2000, fascinating chapter titled ‘Effects of flow deprivation’). As Csikszentmihalyi reflected: ‘microflow activities may be as intrinsically rewarding as deep-flow activities, depending on a person’s like situation. In fact, the flow model suggests that flow exists on a continuum from extremely low to extremely high complexity’ (1975/2000: 141). In a later publication, Csikszentmihalyi and LeFevre went on to suggest that ‘extremely intense and complex flow experiences probably occur at best only a few times in a lifetime’ (Csikszentmihalyi & LeFevre, 1989: 818).
Returning to the current discussion, we might also think of ‘DMCs’ and ‘partial realisations of DMCs’ or ‘partial DMCs’. Partial DMCs may occur when elements are slightly misaligned, yet in instances that are nevertheless characterised by the same sense of ‘effortless effort’ (that is, not when momentum is maintained by resilience or will power) and where individuals are moving towards rather than away from a desired target (i.e. characteristic of approach motivation). It is important to note, therefore, that not all instances of highly motivated, long-term behaviours can be characterised as DMCs or as partial DMCs (see also Henry & Davydenko, 2020).
In considering the pedagogical implications of DMC theory, discussion of such partial realisations may be highly relevant. We will never be able to rely on the sure emergence of (group) DMCs in L2 classrooms as a result of the introduction of a motivational group project (even one ‘with DMC potential’, see Chapter 3). Yet, owing to the fact that the motivational basis of DMCs and of long-term behaviour more generally is comprised of the same building blocks, even partial realisations may nevertheless manifest as relatively potent, positive motivational experiences.
Conclusion
In this chapter, I have overviewed several key threads currently dominant within the field of L2 motivation research, each of which is able to offer an important contribution in terms of situating DMCs, understanding their emergence and explaining their significance. I began by detailing the relevance of the broad adoption of a complexity perspective throughout the field of SLA and its implications with regards to our approaches to research. I then went on to overview several key findings rooted in our understanding of self, language learner self-concept, emotions, and several areas of group-level investigation. I concluded by highlighting the significance of DMCs, both for the field of L2 motivation research and more widely (the challenge of incorporating the element of time into theoretical perspectives, for example, is certainly not limited solely to the study of motivation in SLA).
In the following chapters, I further develop this foundation. First, in Chapter 2, I introduce five key elements of the DMC framework in full. In Chapter 3, I then go on to consider in more detail the related notion of group DMCs, and consider which types of intensive group project – ‘with DMC potential’ – might be capable of facilitating their emergence in L2 classrooms.
2 What Exactly is a DMC? Key Definitions and Core Characteristics
Although DMCs have only recently been explored theoretically, there is compelling evidence to suggest that they have never been far from the consciousness of those who have seen or experienced them. Not only anecdotally, but in the research literature, too, prior to the first publications on DMCs we can find descriptions of episodes highly reminiscent of DMC-like experiences. Lepp-Kaethler and Dörnyei (2013) explored the experiences of translators of religious texts and the extraordinary levels of sustained motivation they exhibited, remarkable both in terms of its intensity and longevity. They described it as a ‘jet stream’, in which ‘learners are caught up in a powerful inner current’ (Lepp-Kaethler & Dörnyei, 2013: 186), and similar motivational experiences have also been seen elsewhere described as a ‘fast track’ (Harber et al., 2003: 262). Fascinating foreshadows can also be found looking back further still to Peter Adler’s (1981) book Momentum: A Theory of Social Action. Adler describes momentum as ‘the charged flow of people acting at their peaks or nadirs’ (Adler, 1981: 14), and many aspects of his initial description bear a striking resemblance to our understanding and conceptualisation of DMCs, including a clear goal, performance over and above what an individual would usually expect of themselves, and accompanying positive emotionality.
In Dörnyei et al. (2016) we noted that the concepts of DMCs