This paper discusses theoretical results of the research project "Linguistic Identity and Identification: A Study of Functions of Second Language in Enunciating Subject Constitution". Non-cognitive factors that have a crucial incidence in the degree of success and ways of accomplishment of second language acquisition process are focused. A transdisciplinary perspective is adopted, mobilising categories from Discourse Analysis and Psychoanalysis. The most relevant ones are: discursive formation, intradiscourse, interdiscourse, forgetting n<FONT FACE="Symbol">°</FONT> 1, forgetting n<FONT FACE="Symbol">°</FONT> 2 (Pêcheux, 1982), identity, identification (Freud, 1966; Lacan, 1977; Nasio, 1995). Revuz’s views (1991) are discussed. Her main claim is that during the process of learning a foreign language, the foundations of psychical structure, and consequently first language, are required. After examining how nomination and predication processes work in first and second languages, components of identity and identification processes are focused on, in an attempt to show how second language acquisition strategies depend on them. It is stated that methodological affairs of language teaching, learner’s explicit motivation and the like are subordinated to the comprehension of deeper non-cognitive factors that determine the accomplishment of the second language acquisition process. It is also pointed out that those factors are to be approached, questioning the bipolar biological-social conception of subjectivity in the study of language acquisition and use and including in the analysis symbolic and significant dimensions of the discourse constitution process.
Second language acquisition; Discourse analysis; Discursive formation; Identity; Unconscious subjectivity