Research Methods in the Study of Gender in Second/Foreign Language Education
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RESEARCH METHODS IN THE STUDY OF GENDER IN SECOND/FOREIGN LANGUAGE EDUCATION
INTRODUCTION
Over the past three decades, the relationship between language and gender has attracted significant attention from researchers in a variety of fields, including education. Several recent monographs, volumes, special issues, and state-of-the-art reviews have specifically addressed the role of gender in second and foreign language learning and education (Chavez, 2001; Davis and Skilton-Sylvester, 2004; Langman, 2004; Norton, 2000; Norton and Pavlenko, 2004; Pavlenko, Blackledge, Piller, and Teutsch-Dwyer, 2001; Sunderland, 2000; see also Pavlenko and Piller, Language Education and Gender, Volume 1). What remained relatively obscured in this literature, however, is the relationship between the theoretical framework and methods selected to address one’s research questions. The present chapter aims to bridge this gap, identifying methodological strengths and weaknesses of the current studies and pointing out methodological and conceptual issues that need to be addressed in future work. E A R LY D E V E L O P M E N T S
Early sociolinguistic and educational research sparked by Lakoff’s (1975) Language and Woman’s Place conceptualized the relationship between language and gender through the notions of difference and dominance. In the dominance framework, theorized in Lakoff (1975), “women-as-a-group” were seen as linguistically oppressed and dominated by “men-as-a-group.” In the study of second and foreign language education, this paradigm translated into two methodological approaches. Text and content analyses were used to examine gender representation and sexism in foreign and second language textbooks. These analyses focused on frequency counts of male versus female names, pronouns, and appearances in illustrations, on comparison of social roles and occupations assigned to men and women, and on the uses of masculine generics. Interaction analysis was used to determine who speaks how much and when in the language classroom. This analysis also focused on frequency counts, this time of turns taken by male and female students and on the mean length of all turns taken by each group. K. A. King and N. H. Hornberger (eds), Encyclopedia of Language and Education, 2nd Edition, Volume 10: Research Methods in Language and Education, 165–174. #2008 Springer Science+Business Media LLC.
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A N E T A P AV L E N K O
In the differences framework, introduced by Maltz and Borker (1982) and developed and popularized by Tannen (1990), “womenas-a-group” and “men-as-a-group” were seen as speakers of different genderlects, developed through socialization in same-gender peer-groups. Second language acquisition researchers adopted this framework to look at classroom interaction and at language learning outcomes. Interaction analysis was conducted to see whether men and women have different goals in classroom interaction and concluded that men interact to produce output and women interact to receive input. In turn, studies of language learning strategie
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