"Señora, boys just cannot speak Spanish": Negotiating Masculine Identities in a Foreign Language Classroom
Year: 2008
Type: article
Abstract: Studies of gender and classroom foreign language learning in Anglophone countries have documented the prevalence of ideologies that posit females as superior FL learners and FL learning as a fundamentally "girlish" pursuit in secondary school settings.The present paper extends this work, examining how this ideology gets constructed and negotiated in the course of doing FL learning in a college context.Specifically, it describes how two male learners in an advanced Spanish conversation course positioned themselves and were positioned in ways that both reproduced and challenged the associations between being female and being a good foreign language student that circulated within and through their classroom.Moreover, it considers the implications of these acts of positioning for both these learners' classroom identities and our overall understanding of the role of gender in classroom FL learning.Linguistics 23/2: 1-23, 2008 In this paper, I take up the gendering of classroom FL learning again, but with a focus on two male students at a U.S. university who have voluntarily chosen to study Spanish at the advanced level.That is, this paper offers a close look at two male learners who embrace normative gender identities, while simultaneously expressing favorable attitudes toward FL learning.While previous work has documented and questioned the prevalence of ideologies that posit females as superior FL learners and FL learning as a fundamentally "girlish" pursuit in secondary school settings (e.g., Carr & Pauwels, 2006;Chavez, 2001;Schmenk, 2004;Sunderland, 1995 Sunderland, , 2000a Sunderland, , 2000bSunderland, , 2004)), the present paper seeks to complicate and extend this line of research.Specifically, I describe how two male learners in an advanced Spanish conversation course positioned themselves and were positioned by others in ways that both reproduced and challenged the associations between being female and being a good foreign language user/good foreign language student that circulated within and through their classroom.In other words, I examine the ways in which gender intersected with other relevant identities to both enable and constrain the kinds of positions that were available to male students in the Spanish classroom under consideration. Working Papers in EducationalIn the sections which follow, I lay out the key concepts which guide my analysis, review contemporary scholarship on gender and classroom FL learning, provide an overview of the study and the participants, describe my analytic approach, discuss the focal students, and consider the implications of this work for classroom practice. Key Terms and Concepts Good Language Learners vs. Good Language StudentsThroughout the paper, I make a distinction between "good foreign language users" and "good foreign language students" in order to highlight the kinds of identities that tend to circulate in FL classrooms (Norton & Toohey, 2001; Pomerantz, forthcoming;Pomerantz & Bell, 2007).Briefly, I argue that being a "good" (i.e., competent and creative) language user is not the same as being a "good" (i.e., competent and conformist) language student.The former implies expertise in range of linguistic practices that may or may not be validated in school settings, the latter refers only to expertise in school-sanctioned linguistic practices (cf.Norton & Toohey, 2001).For example, language play is generally frowned upon in FL classrooms, even though numerous scholars have suggested that it may index advanced proficiency (Belz, 2002;Belz & Reinhardt, 2004;Broner & Tarone, 2001;G. Cook, 2000;Pomerantz & Bell, 2007).As such, learners who repeatedly engage in language play may
Author: Anne Pomerantz
Institution: University of Pennsylvania
Language: English
Subfield: Language and Linguistics
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2405175425