Gender, Identity and Intercultural Transformation in Second Language Socialisation

Abstract

In L2 learners' second language socialisation process, males and females from different sociocultural backgrounds have diverse attitudes and access to second language acquisition. In this study, informed by feminist poststructuralist theory, we can see the highly context-sensitive nature of the gendered practices and the corresponding outcomes of language learning and language contact. The study generalises from the assumptions of previous feminist poststructuralist studies on the ideologies of gender and language and integrates these with intercultural transformation theory. This theoretical framework is used to explain L2 learners'/users' reconstruction and transformation of gendered performance during their discursive reestablishment of social identities in heterogeneous sociocultural contexts. The dynamic and constantly changing nature of L2 learners' gendered identity has significant implications for second language educators, by ‘open(ing) up possibility for educational intervention’ (Peirce, 1995: 15). The paper concludes by suggesting how school instructions might mitigate the powerful social factors that retard L2 learners' acquisition in certain communities, as well as how educators can facilitate L2 learners' cross-cultural transformation to promote their social identity renegotiation and reestablishment to achieve legitimate membership during their second language socialisation.

Keywords:

• gender
• identity
• intercultural transformation
• second language