Moroccan EFL Learners Identity: Does It Reflect the Profile of the Intercultural Speaker?

The process of globalization has brought a number of modern issues and perspectives to the landscape of foreign language education including influences on EFL learners' identity. Being exposed to local cultures together with foreign cultures raises critical questions vis-à-vis identity construction (Galajda, 2011; Guilherme, 2002; Houghton, 2013). Besides, as Niżegorodcew (2011) argues, questioning learners' identity as simultaneously speakers of different national languages and English as a lingua franca (ELF) is at the heart of EFL concerns. Hence, much effort is highly recommended to investigate EFL learners' identity in order to keep abreast of the growing issues including intercultural citizenship (Byram, 2009). In light of these controversial issues, the present paper provides a qualitative analysis about Moroccan EFL learners' identity that reflects the desired profile of the ‘intercultural speaker'. The analysis is based on Byram's framework of ICC (1997) that stresses mainly the ability of drawing on different cultural realities to highlight common issues and phenomena. Also, the paper aims at describing the development of the aforementioned identity among Moroccan EFL undergraduate learners. This paper, therefore, contributes to the extant literature on identity and intercultural communication.