Boys’ and Girls’ Gendered Voices in EFL Debates

Abstract

This article reports a case study conducted at a school in Bogotá. It was based on constructivist and poststructuralist frameworks that viewed gender positioning as a social construction in foreign language learning contexts (Baxter, 2003; Sunderland, 1992; Tannen, 1996). Aiming to understand how ninth grade gender positioning is constructed, and how gendered discourses emerge in EFL debates, we carried out interviews and observations and analyzed those issues following feminist poststructuralist discourse analysis (FPDA) principles (Baxter, 2008). Findings suggest that learners view themselves as both masculine and feminine, using their interests and behaviors as the principal means of defining their gender positioning discursively in debates in another language (L2).

Keywords

• Debates
• EFL
• gender positioning
• gendered discourses
• L2