Queer Theory In Language Teaching And Learning

Language and gender study, after about 50 years' development, has thrived into its maturity, with its independent research achievement and systematic establishment of theories. From the discriminative "biological determinant theory", to the dichotomy (deficit theory, male dominace theory, and "difference" theory) which emphasizes the difference and opposition between man and woman, to "construction" theory, in which gender is regarded as not innate facts or traits any more but as "performative" acts constructed in "community of practice". This development of language and gender is greatly affected by the outer society especially feminist thoughts and movements.In the field of education, feminism is aimed at female equality and justice, and makes efforts from three aspects: politics, critique and teaching practice, to fulfill its aim. However, feminism has been accused of leading to boys' troubles, especially the troubles in language classroom, by some scholars and media. It is this accusation that motivates the author to do this research. After reviewing language and gender study from the perspective of feminism, this paper analyzes how feminism works on education from politics, critique and teaching practice, and points out the positive and negative impacts of feminism on education as the method to analyze the reason of that accusation and gender troubles. The reason lies in the traditional dichotomy of gender and language, in which man and woman are defined and categorized as opposite and exclusive two parts, thus the pursuit for female educational equality and opportunity will bring about male problems at different degrees. Particulary, in context of language teaching and learning, boys lag behind girls at almost evey level of schooling.For better analysizing gender difference in language teaching and learning, this thesis adopts "queer theory". Queer theory is more comprehensive and more objective, because it theorizes sexual identittes as acts rather than facts; it problemizes all sexual identities rather than legitimizes subordinate one it regards sexual identities potentially significant to everyone; and it pays attention to how certain sexual identities are or are not made to seem normal. Especially, queer theory claims that in culturally and linguistically diverse groups, a focus on investigating sexual identities as socially situated practices may be more useful than a focus on promoting "tolerance" of those so-called subordinate identities. This "inquiry" approach of "queer theory" is employed and applied in this thesis to "inquire" and study gender difference in context of languge teaching and learning, as well as the relevant aspects: female verbal superiority, role of gender difference in language chievement, and gender equality and opportunity. Finally, it is concluded that gender difference plays only a small part, compared with social-economic, cultural, racial and ethnic backgrounds in language success; and that the overstatement on female verbal superiorty means the exaggeration of gender difference in language achievement, can only lead to harm and hurt to gender equality and opportunity, including both male and female, since both will suffer when one is misunderstood and excluded. Therefore, this thesis puts forward the suggestion that the new breakthrough of dealing with gender troubles in language teaching and learning, as well as of language and gender study rests with not debating but inquiring.