Directed Motivational Currents and Language Education. Christine Muir
it is fair to say that the focus of research on emotions in this context has largely been restricted to the investigation of negative emotions (Dewaele & MacIntyre, 2014), and the resurgence of interest in recent years has been rooted in a drive to investigate their positive counterparts (a broadening focus that is likewise identifiable across other disciplines). Positive psychology centres on understanding the significance of positive emotions and their effect on the way we live and work (Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi, 2000): it is ‘the empirical study of how people thrive and flourish’ (MacIntyre & Mercer, 2014: 153).
This broadened research focus has also brought with it critical conceptual clarification. Indeed, MacIntyre and Gregersen (2012) argue that a foremost finding to date has been the recognition that positive and negative emotions are not opposite ends of a single, dichotomous continuum. The absence of one does not indicate the presence of the other (Dewaele & MacIntyre, 2014). For example, the lifting of an affective filter (a barrier to effective learning often experienced when highly anxious; Krashen, 1981), does not equate to the presence of positive emotion (MacIntyre & Mercer, 2014).
Fredrickson’s broaden-and-build theory (1998, 2001, 2003, 2006) posits that some positive emotions – for example joy, interest or pride – ‘share the ability to broaden people’s momentary thought-action repertoires and build their enduring personal resources, ranging from physical and intellectual resources to social and psychological resources’ (Fredrickson, 2001: 219). For example, whereas a negative emotion can limit our thought-action repertoire (for example manifested as a fight or flight instinct), certain positive emotions can actually serve to broaden it. As Fredrickson describes:
Joy, for instance, broadens by creating the urge to play, push the limits, and be creative. … Interest, a phenomenologically distinct positive emotion, broadens by creating the urge to explore, take in new information and experiences, and expand the self in the process. (Fredrickson, 2001: 220)
It is significant that one citation Fredrickson draws on with reference to interest is Csikszentmihalyi’s (1975/2000; Csikszentmihalyi & Csikszentmihalyi, 1988) work on flow. Flow is characterised by focused concentration on and through the enjoyment of an activity during which people lose track of time and other elements of the human experience. Archetypical examples of flow include an artist working on a painting, a rock climber scaling a demanding rock face, a surgeon completing a challenging procedure or a dancer lost in experiencing the movement of their body (for flow research in the context of SLA see Egbert, 2003; Piniel & Albert, 2019). This experiential element is clearly reminiscent of the experience of DMCs, and I return to expand on this further later in this chapter.
There are clear links between the study of emotion and that of possible selves and visualisation (introduced in previous sections). As MacIntyre and Gregersen (2012: 194) describe: ‘Imagination works best when it activates emotion’: it transforms the former from existing as cold cognition and imbues possible selves with their potential potency (MacIntyre et al., 2009). Indeed, links between possible selves and emotions were highlighted as far back as Markus and Nurius’ initial paper in 1986, which stated that in relating motivation and self-cognition, by proxy possible selves concurrently relate ‘self-cognitions and self-feelings or affect’ (Markus & Nurius, 1986: 958).
Historically, sufficient attention to the emotional dimension of classroom language learning has been lacking (Dewaele, 2015), yet involving student emotions can be a highly effective means by which to garner student engagement. As Arnold describes: ‘To get the necessary attention for learning to occur, the brain needs to connect to meaningful experience. One way to do this is through emotions: they engage meaning’ (Arnold, 2011: 13). It is important to note that attention to affect does not negate a focus on other cognitive processes (a common criticism of humanistic approaches to language teaching; see, for example, Arnold, 1999, for discussion). To this end, Arnold (2011) highlights both Forgas’s (2008) and Bless and Fiedler’s (2006) work investigating the key role of affect and emotion in cognitive development, and she also foregrounds additional neurobiological research further exploring their interdependency (cf. Storbeck & Clore, 2007).
The current research climate is primed for further investigation into areas of positive psychology (MacIntyre & Mercer, 2014). The ‘complexity turn’ described at the outset of this chapter has laid the groundwork, so facilitating investigation of such complex phenomena, as has the widening of our methodological toolkit particularly with respect to the greater prominence of qualitative approaches and the more situated approach adopted by the field as a whole. I return to this discussion, and the ‘potentially powerful effects’ (MacIntyre & Gregersen, 2012: 198) of positive emotions as yet so little studied in the field of SLA, in foregrounding the significance of DMCs at the end of this chapter.
Group-level Investigation: Motivation, Agency, Affect and Flow
At the turn of the century, Dörnyei (2001b: 49) noted that a ‘feature of task motivation which makes it a particularly intriguing research domain is the fact that the motivation of task participants is not independent of each other … task motivation is co-constructed by the participants’ (see also Dörnyei, 2002). This taps into a fascinating aspect of L2 motivation research that has been, and which continues to be, the focus of remarkably little investigation (for exceptions see, for example, Murphey et al., 2012; Sampson, 2015, 2016). Yet, concurrently to the changes within the field documented already throughout this chapter, a further development has been a drive away from prominently individualistic approaches to L2 motivation research.
In their 2012 chapter, Murphey et al. foreground the relevance of groups and the importance of social learning, a fundamental tenet of ‘one of the most significant theories of learning of the twentieth century, Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Theory’ (Murphey et al., 2012: 221). They foreground the significance of socio-cognitive approaches (e.g. Atkinson, 2010), which integrate sociocultural ideas (Lantolf & Thorne, 2006; Vygotsky, 1981) with more traditional theories of learning focusing on individual cognition. Atkinson’s work introduced the ideas of extended and embodied cognition. The former understands an individual’s ‘mind/ brain to be inextricably tied to the external environment’ (Atkinson, 2010: 599), i.e. investigation into the mind of an individual learner simply cannot be achieved without reference to and contextualization within the surrounding environment. As Murphey et al. (2012: 222) describe of embodied cognition: ‘context is internalized by the individual and the way it is internalized can change our moods, physiology, and ability to think in different ways. We refer to this as “context-in-person”’ (the authors playing with wording relating to Ushioda’s work on ‘person-in-context’, introduced previously). Murphey et al. (2012) argue that such a perspective of extended and embodied cognition can be found in multiple key concepts within SLA, including the zone of proximal development (that which a learner is able to complete with the support of a more knowledgeable peer; Vygotsky, 1962) and role modelling (Bandura, 1997; Muir et al., 2019; Murphey & Arao, 2001).
The powerful influence of groups on individuals is well documented: language learners’ motivation is shaped not only by internal processes but also by the surrounding L2 learning environment (Dörnyei, 2005, 2009b; Islam et al., 2013; Lamb, 2012). It is noteworthy that that there has been a stark lack of research into this core component of the L2MSS, with Dörnyei (2019b) going so far as to dub it ‘Cinderella’. Acknowledging the significance of group dynamics and of intergroup relationships within language classrooms (Dörnyei & Murphey, 2003; Henry & Thorsen, 2018), it therefore follows that individual investigation of learner motivation should also be complemented by ‘a focus on what is emergent at the class group level’ (Sampson, 2016: 169; Muir, 2021).
We can understand the emergence of group-level energy by referring to processes of emotional contagion, i.e. the catching or ‘infection’ of the cognitions and emotions of others (Barsade, 2002). The ripple effects of emotional contagion, which diffuse throughout a group, are capable of furnishing an entire group with positive mood, which subsequently impacts positively – or negatively – on attitude and the collective motivational level of the group (see Sampson, 2015, 2016). As Barsade and Gibson explain, not only is it the case that ‘affect at the group