Departing from the view that learner beliefs are mental traits and in keeping with the discursive turn in SLA (Kalaja, 1995, 2003; Young, 2009), I argue that SLA learner beliefs research can be advanced through the use of two constructs--language ideology and positioning--that originate from linguistic anthropology and discursive psychology, respectively. Applying these two constructs to a year-long ethnographic case study based in a Singapore secondary school, I investigate how the language ideologies and positioning of a 16-year old immigrant ESL learner from China ultimately impacted her language learning outcomes. To illustrate this, I draw on audio-taped interview and video-taped interaction data involving her. This study supports the view that a contextual approach to examining learner beliefs affords a refined understanding of beliefs through an emic perspective. (Contains 1 table.)