GENDER, SEXUALITY, DISCOURSE, AND SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION RESEARCH

Twenty years ago, Ingrid Piller and Aneta Pavlenko provocatively stated that “While language and gender studies have been characterized by a widespread monolingual bias, research in mainstream bilingualism and second language acquisition has suffered from just as widespread gender-blindness.” A similar argument could have been made about sexuality. Since then, however, there has been a burgeoning body of scholarship addressing these blind spots. Against this backdrop, the aim of this chapter is to offer an overview of these research developments. The chapter concentrates not only on discourse-analytical research that focuses on either gender or sexuality in second language acquisition but also on recent studies that draw upon queer theory, intersectionality, and the notion of language desire in order to unveil the mutual entanglements of gender and sexuality in second language acquisition contexts, and their imbrications with other social categories such as social class, ethnicity, and race. With the help of existing research, the chapter seeks to make a broader argument about the importance of attending to gender and sexuality in the pursuit of a socially just second language acquisition both as an academic field and as a pedagogical practice.