“¿Te parece que ella se afeita?”: Gender identity categories and vocabulary learning in foreign language classroom talk-in-interaction

Abstract

This article’s goal is to show how identities and foreign language learning happen in classroom talk-in-interaction (Sacks et al., 1974) and, at the same time, to argue in favor of Ethnomethodological Conversation Analysis (Garcez, 2008) as an analytical practice that contributes to understanding the actions that produce those social facts. A sequence of talk-in-interaction, extracted from an audiovisual recording of a Spanish-as-a-foreign language lesson, was transcribed and analyzed in which the participants orient themselves to a bipolar opposition of gender identities in order to clarify the particularities of using a word. The sequential analysis of the participants talk-in-interaction allows us to (i) observe that gender identity categories are local accomplishments and resources for making sense of the ongoing actions; and (ii) conclude that foreign language learning can be described as the extension of the intelligibility and accountability (Garfinkel, 1967) of the actions carried out by the participants through that language, that is, as the extension of their membership in a community that categorizes in Spanish, maintaining, that way, a world description that is valid for the practical effects of what those participants are doing here and now.

Key words: language use and identity, gender identities, foreign language learning.