The Construction of Gender Identities through Discourse: The case of EFL and Architecture Students.

Abstract

Adopting feminist post-structuralist analysis (FPDA), this study seeks to challenge the modernist myth that girls/ women are universally and uniformly depicted by a patriarchal order as powerless. This approach heralds a distinct move away from the notion of essentialist identities to the recognition of the multiplicity of gender identities and the acknowledgment that there are different femininities and masculinities which are often historically and culturally determined. This study opts to focus on the EFL and architecture Master classrooms at the university of Hassiba Benbouali (Chlef) as 'sites of struggle' to explore how male/female students always adopt multiple subject positions as they accordingly negotiate their identities, relationships and positions. This echoes the notion that the relationship between language, gender and discourse is always fluid and context-bounded. Feminist post-structuralism seems to search out maintaining the discourse of gender differentiation and unequal power relations which have traditionally served males' interests. This makes it easier to shackle women's opportunities and exclude them from education and other professions. Against this tangled background, FPDA theoretical approach offers me means of unveiling the ways in which female students, in both communities of practice; may be simultaneously powerful within certain subject positions, but as plainly powerless within other subject positions. FPDA puts us away from considering females as 'victims' of the patriarchal order and males as 'villains' in the scenario. Rather, male/female students are multiply positioned according to a grid of competing discourses which I identified along the observation journey. Albeit the fact that some female students may encompass the 'double bind' when they openly compete to adopt authoritative positions as speakers, they appear to resist certain social and institutional discourses. In a subliminal manner, I explored that there are conflicting realities of the teachers' assessment of the students' oral performances. This indicate that criteria for 'effective speech' in classroom public contexts is a relatively undervalued pillar within the Master curriculum for both contexts. What I recognized is that most assessors seemed to praise self-confidence, popularity and outspokenness for their oral skills' judgments, which can be stereotypically deemed masculine. This study directs a limelight on the need to teach students how to deconstruct the gendered power relations presupposed within any social and educational discourses.