This book claims that the silent period represents a psychical event, a non-linguistic as well as linguistic moment in the continuous process of identity formation and reformation. It calls on psychoanalytic concepts to undertake a dialogue with the learner as a being engaged in the psychical work of making an identity.

Colette Granger works in the Faculty of Education at York University in Toronto, Canada. Her research explores issues in several areas of education, including second language learning, teacher education and new technologies. Guiding all her work is an overarching question about the ways in which broad social goals, institutional and curricular objectives, and the internal worlds of the individual participants in education collide and at times disrupt one another. This is her first book.