Presenting at AAAL 2025!

Hi all,

🎉 I'm thrilled to announce that my paper presentation, “Investing in ‘love languages’: Identity and power dynamics in multilingual romantic couples’ text conversations,” has been accepted into the American Association for Applied Linguistics (AAAL) 2025 Conference in Denver, CO, as part of the:

INVITED COLLOQUIUM
Investment in language learning and teaching: The negotiation of identity, capital, and ideology

Organized by Conveners Professor Ron Darvin and Professor Bonny Norton!

This presentation looks closer at one of the key trends emerging from my larger dissertation study, where I explore the dynamics of multilingual romantic couples' text conversations. Viewed through the L2 investment model (Darvin & Norton, 2015), findings illustrate how partners positioned themselves as language and culture "experts" or "novices" during digitally-mediated language-related episodes (LREs), serving as guides, facilitators, and occasionally gatekeepers of their partner’s learning. This talk will demonstrate how challenges and opportunities arising from intercultural conflicts, individual differences, (in)accessibility of resources, and digitally-mediated communication shape couples' investment in learning their partner’s language(s). 💬📱

I look forward to sharing these insights into how text messaging and digital communication influence intercultural communication and language learning in romantic relationships, as well as their implications for second language learners across different contexts. Stay tuned for more updates as we get closer to AAAL 2025!

Thank you for your continued support! 🙏

Best,
Kris Cook