Negotiating gendered identities in the ESL classroom

This qualitative case study relies on critical ethnographic methods and a case study design to explore how three female language learners overcame feelings of powerlessness and marginalization that may have been due to cultural gender norms in order to create opportunities to speak during discussion in ESL classrooms. The theoretical framework for this study is based on a critical approach toward language learning that focuses on connections between the social world and the ESL classroom and a post-structuralist approach to identity that defines identity as multiple, contradictory, and changing. The framework also relies on the concept of language as a site of struggle where identities are constructed. I propose several questions: How do proscriptions and prescriptions concerning gender from the culture of origin influence female participants' definitions for social positions of mother, spouse, and daughter? How do female participants overcome rigid cultural gender norms that prescribe obedience, passivity, and silence in order to create opportunities to learn? How do these social positions change over time so that these women redefine gender identities that encourage them to feel that they are entitled to speak? How is learning English an investment in the learner's identity? How is a language learner's identity reflected through the discourse that she uses to describe gender norms?; From the data, I found that the focal participants changed the way they thought about themselves by imagining a new identity and by initiating new non-linguistic experiences. Shifting identities of the focal participants were also reflected in what these women said and how they said it. Personal pronouns and modals, for instance, were often used to express solidarity, division, and commitment to certain truths; in one case, personal pronouns were used to show identification with an imagined community. The analysis of active and passive voice reflects how these women changed from thinking of themselves as powerless to feeling empowered, which suggests a major shift in identity.