Introduction
This study explores how learning English among one subset of English learners, Asian female international students at US colleges, contributes to the larger project of advancing gender equality. Using their narratives, we ask why Asian female international students invest so much of their identities and effort into learning English. We discuss the ways in which their endeavours may even silently promote the development of English as a gender-neutral language. The population of Asian students offers a compelling case of how the English language is potentially transformed via its spread to this English learner population and how it presents new avenues for identity formation for the growing number of female English users worldwide (cf. Brutt-Griffler, Reference Brutt-Griffler, Wyse, Andrews and Hoffman2010: 232).
As English has adapted to demands of its users, one notable change is toward gender neutrality. For instance, the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) now includes the gender-neutral honorific prefix ‘Mx.’ as an alternative to expressions such as ‘Mr.’ or ‘Ms.’ for transgender people as well as those who decline to be recognized by gender. Similarly, through a vote by its members the American Dialect Society selected singular they, used as the gender-neutral pronoun, as the 2015 Word of the Year, recognizing its conscious usage for those who identify in ‘non-binary’ gender terms. OED assistant editor Jonathan Dent explains, ‘This is an example of how the English language adapts to people's needs, with people using language in ways that suit them rather than letting language dictate identity to them’ (The Sunday Times, May 3, 2015: 12–14). That process is not limited to native speakers.
Questions of gender identity are just as important to English language users and learners, who not only bring identities rooted in their first language but also a desire to express new ones (cf. Schieffelin, Reference Schieffelin1990). As Kramsch (Reference Kramsch2009: 4) points out, acquiring another language equips learners with ‘the potential medium for the expression of their innermost aspirations’. A growing body of literature in applied linguistics discusses new gender identities among the new spaces that language learning affords (e.g. Pavlenko, Reference Pavlenko, Pavlenko, Blackledge, Piller and Teutsch-Dwyer2001). We argue that they are an important population that advances a gender equality agenda and contributes to English language spread and change.
Despite the rapid increase in Asian female students entering US higher education institutions (IIE, 2015), there is insufficient literature addressing their experiences. There are good reasons for looking at these questions regarding this group of learners. As the proportion of women dramatically increases among Asian international students, there is a concomitant need to understand their perspectives and aspirations, including with respect to their perceptions of gender roles and their investment in learning English. Many of our assumptions about the roles that females have played may no longer hold, having been formed during the period when males predominated.
By studying international students at US universities, we are able to glean their ‘innermost aspirations’ to uncover how investing in English language learning can reflect their needs and advance their goals. In carrying out our research, we contend that the understanding of gender identity construction is essential for the negotiation of the subject's sense of self as well as investment in language learning in her new surroundings (cf. Norton, Reference Norton2013).
Like the young generation everywhere, Asian female millennials have grown up in a world transformed by forces that include internationalization. For instance, Japanese women, for their part, have welcomed local government efforts that promote their economic activities such as the initiative of ikumen that involves men looking after the children. A young Japanese woman expresses the meaning of the need for such a term in expressing her ‘hope that by 2020 terms such as ikumen … will not be used anymore as it will come naturally’ (The Japan Times, April 14, 2015: 54–56). The use of the meme ‘girl crush’ has caused a sensation among Korean female millennials. According to The Korea Times (July 28, 2016: 14–15), the ‘girl crush’ phenomenon demonstrates that ‘[w]ith no change in [a] social system that is disadvantageous to women, women are on the verge of bursting’ with outrage, that finds expression through these virtual images.
Corresponding with these internal changes, the motivation to study abroad may be changing for young women across these Asian societies. Where a generation ago, ‘cultural reasons’ of personal enrichment counted more (Goldsmith & Shawcross, Reference Goldsmith and Shawcross1985), today pursuing early and mid-career goals predominates (see e.g. Bamber, Reference Bamber2014). But scholars have also found that escape from ‘conservative social norms which constrain their lives’ features prominently in women's choice to study abroad (Habu, Reference Habu2000: 43). The role of acquiring and using English in the furtherance of these women's gender equality goals also plays a significant and largely unexplored part.
Societal development of English: macroacquisition
To understand the link between English acquisition and the quest for gender equality, we draw on the concept of macroacquisition (Brutt-Griffler, Reference Brutt-Griffler2002). Through historical analysis, Brutt-Griffler (Reference Brutt-Griffler2002: 107) has shown that ‘non-native speakers’ of English grouped into speech communities have served as ‘active agents in the process of creation of world English’ due in part to the collective goals and identities, old and new, of its learners (cf. Kachru, Reference Kachru1996; Bolton, Reference Bolton, Kachru, Kachru and Nelson2006; Mufwene, Reference Mufwene and Coupland2010). Macroacquisition puts the emphasis on understanding of how English language users act as agents of language spread and change and how speech communities emerge in the context of English language spread.
Macroacquisition calls for a deeper understanding of how English expresses L2 learners’ identity and subjectivity, beyond simply acquiring its knowledge base and skill sets (cf. Kramsch, Reference Kramsch2009; Seidlhofer, Reference Seidlhofer2011; Norton, Reference Norton2013). The framework views English users today in and from all parts of the world as significant contributors to English spread and development across local and global milieus (see e.g. Kim, Reference Kim2016). Therefore, English spread and change is not understood as a unidirectional process and instead seen as a complex linguistic and sociocultural process that needs to take into account a wide spectrum of the speakers’ personal desires and dispositions.
Brutt-Griffler (Reference Brutt-Griffler2002) employs the notion of shared subjective knowledge, which represents a collective set of beliefs and norms held within a certain social community. As those beliefs can pertain to cultural norms, inclusive of gender practices and/or ideologies, the notion of shared subjective knowledge is important in our study, to understand the female (and male) students gender perceptions (their ‘subjective knowledge’) that emerge in the examination of the case studies.
Brutt-Griffler and Kim (Reference Brutt-Griffler, Kim, Pitzl and Osimk-Teasdale2016) have shown that the gender ideologies of their home societies prompt Asian female international students to construct themselves as a speech community that markedly differs from that of their male counterparts. Gender ideology, as scholars note, pertains to ‘its structural emphasis on the roles and statuses of men and women as an integral part of the overall social order’ (Lebra, Reference Lebra, Slote and DeVos1998: 210, emphasis in original). According to Brutt-Griffler and Kim (Reference Brutt-Griffler, Kim, Pitzl and Osimk-Teasdale2016), regardless of their nationality, Asian female students hold more equitable gender perceptions on roles in family, work, and education than their male counterparts. In this contribution, we pay attention to their unique voices and their contributions to the societal development of English today.
The study
The present study, as part of the larger project (Brutt-Griffler & Kim, Reference Brutt-Griffler, Kim, Pitzl and Osimk-Teasdale2016; Kim, Reference Kim2016), provides an emic perspective on what we will call breaking out of gendered identities. We present data from semi-structured interviews and classroom observations, which were conducted in academic year 2013–2016. Given space limitations, we have extracted narratives from six students for inclusion in this study (Table 1).
Table 1: Participant profiles
Note: All are pseudonyms.
Each participant was interviewed twice and all the interviews that lasted approximately 50–90 minutes were audio-recorded. To augment our understanding of the subjects’ English language learning and gender enactments, we also collected authentic interactional performance data, and we provide a sample of such a classroom interaction in the present study. All audio recordings were manually transcribed to conduct open coding, which generates ‘initial categories of information about the phenomenon being studied by segmenting information’ (Creswell, Reference Creswell1998: 57). It helps the researcher to analyze ‘data for both differences and similarities’ among the subjects (Strauss & Corbin, Reference Strauss and Corbin.1998: 102). Within each category, the researcher further locates ‘properties or subcategories’ (Creswell, Reference Creswell1998: 57). In our study, we identified emerging themes/categories and subsequently we moved to axial coding, a stage of analysis that allows the investigator to explore causal conditions, strategies, and contexts in which the subjects locate themselves (Creswell, Reference Creswell1998). We report on our findings in the sections below. In our axial coding of narratives, we searched for the following: commonalities and distinctions regarding (a) their gender socialization and (b) their motivation toward learning English.
Findings
Theme 1: Gendered socialization and its relevance to English language learning
The subjects’ awareness of gender inequalities and their unmet expectations in the L1 contexts clearly emerge from analysis of their narratives. They demonstrate that there is gendered socialization that reflects a gendered order, often lacking openness to educational participation for women. For our Japanese participant, Yumiko, it is imperative to be ‘a Japanese woman’, whose speech styles and behaviours should be more polite and courteous than men in accordance with ideal social values in Japan. She states:
I was shy and polite but very talkative when I spoke Japanese. So whenever I talk much in Japanese, my mom said to me, ‘礼儀正しい態度で、丁寧な言葉で話すように。 reigi tadashii taido de, teineina kotoba de hanasu youni)Speak courteously in a polite manner)’ and my mom sometimes gave me a demonstration with a very high, feminine tone.
(Interview 10/10/2014)Yumiko also recalls that her parents raised her brother and her in an inequitable way. She narrates:
My parents have high hopes and expectations of my brother [ … ] They always expect better of my brother as a man of his family in the future. They thought that I would just get married in late 20s without a job. My mom did like that. My grandma did like that.
(Interview 10/10/2014)Indeed, Yumiko was not very motivated to study English prior to coming to the US due to her parents’ expectations reflecting conventional gender norms. She nevertheless envisioned the possibility of her successful integration into US academic culture without gender being a major barrier. Yumiko added that, in the English-speaking context she felt emancipated from the gender-specific constraints imposed upon her by Japanese usage. In our interview, Yumiko relates how the English she uses to liberate her from L1 cultural gender norms provides her with a sense of liberation from those cultural and linguistic conventions:
When I speak with them (classmates) … I cannot express it exactly … I feel … 自由 (jiyu, [freedom]) … freedom? I think it is the best way to explain my feeling. For example, as I told you before, there are many restrictions in my native culture and language in terms of speaking like ‘a very Japanese woman’ [… ] If I keep in mind that ‘I must be shy and quiet’ when I interact with my classmates in English, I might feel some restrictions on getting along with them.
(Interview 10/10/2014)Similar to Yumiko, Woo-ri speaks to the gendered treatment she received in her family compared to her brother. She reports:
Even though my brother was … just [a] second year student of [middle] school, my parents supported [him] a lot … like [with] very expensive private lessons for English and mathematics. [ … ] Our world is changing, but my family is a very … my brother-centred world. He is a king.
(Interview 3/19/2016)Her decision to study science in the US stemmed from her belief that in Korea ‘actually many women feel afraid of studying with men … competing [against] them’. She underscores the tangible societal gender bias she felt: ‘Even though women are better than men, men will become a winner because men still dominate the country’ (Interview 3/19/2016).
Like Yumiko, for Woo-ri English provides her an exit from gendered identities. She relates, ‘when I use English, my culture does not affect me any more [ … ] I become a totally different person while I am speaking English’ (Interview 3/19/2016). For both of these women, the attraction of studying in the US was integrally connected to the opportunity to learn and use English.
Shu deems herself to be a member of a traditional family in Taiwan. Her mother was forced to quit her professional job after marriage in deference to her mother-in-law's opinion, and she in turn attempted to inculcate traditional gender values in Shu. Also, her major, chemistry, reinforced her experience of the gender inequalities in Taiwan. Pointing to the gendered ideologies widespread in her domestic context, Shu compares the gender inequities that limited her opportunities there with her expectations in the US.
When I was a college student in Taiwan, the priorities in the field related to science went to male students first, regardless of academic achievements or talents [ … ] I agree that US society seems to support gender equality, especially on my academic major.
(Interview 10/14/2014)Motivated in part by the gender inequity that she felt in her family relations, she set out to seek an alternative space outside Taiwan for her academic and career journey. It is significant that she does so in a field with its own gendered stereotypes - which Shu pointedly refuses to accept as she carves out her new professional identity infused with the gender-neutral ethos that, as we explore more in ‘theme 2’, she attributes to English.
Wei also shared a similar feeling as a member of a family influenced by traditional values in China. This is due to her grandparents’ differential treatment of her brother and her. Additionally, her attitudes toward gender were derived to some degree from the educational environments in her L1 context. She specifically perceives that certain academic majors are still heavily weighted in favour of men in China. She used her major as an example:
In China, nursing is just a work for women, but there are quite a number of men in my class in the US. I was so surprised to see the guys in my major classes. Here it seems like one professional job that we … boys and girls can participate in equally. It doesn't sound unusual to me now.
(Interview 3/27/2013)Her inference that men and women have the same status at work and in education in the US led Wei to rethink her vision of what she wants to be and subsequently to decide to settle in the US. Yumiko, Woo-ri, Shu and Wei's narratives underscore a keen awareness of gendered practices in their L1 cultures together with a search to exit from them in the new L2 context where they decided to pursue their studies.
Theme 2: Learning English and professional trajectories
Our second major finding relates to the value that the subjects place on learning English while pursuing their desired identities and professions. Shu aspires to attend graduate school in the US after graduation. Because of this, she exhibits a high level of motivation in learning English to use it ‘effective[ly] and fluent[ly]’. Although Shu feels that learning English is ‘difficult, challenging, and never-ending’, she believes that it will be ‘very rewarding’ for her future. She continues:
My impression is that women are on a roll, but there are a lot of things we have to cross over, particularly in my culture. When I first came to the US as an exchange student, I felt positive for my life … English makes me change the way I value my life as a woman.
(Interview 10/14/2014)Similarly, Wei also desires to pursue her career in the US. Initially, learning English was closely connected to her previous exposure to a normative tradition of son preference in her family as well as to various forms of inequity within gender relations in China. She relates:
My dreams will come true in America. I have two big dreams. One is to be a nurse. The other is to be a nurse in the US. To pursue my own dreams, the most obvious thing to be the best is to improve my English proficiency. [ … ] I'm a female. I'm a non-native English speaker. Why not?
(Interview 03/27/2013)Woo-ri, like Shu, has decided to apply to the master's program when she finishes her undergraduate studies. She feels more hopeful in her new context; however others may experience the gendered nature of American society, particularly with respect to women in STEM, Woo-ri has concluded that ‘at least in the US … I will have some chances because … I think my field … STEM is very popular and … encourage women to work with men together’. For Woo-ri, her drive to fulfil her ambition is closely connected to her sense of identity as an English speaker.
When I use English, my culture does not affect me any more. Yeah … I become a totally different person while I am speaking English. I feel men and women are on the same stage regardless of age and gender when we use English.
(Interview 3/19/2016)Wei's narrative too indicates that her cultural heritage is less important in her mind than her self-generated identity. Her professional ambitions clearly reflect what she asks for herself from the world. And she too sees English as making the realization of her ambitions possible. Yumiko amplifies their point:
[Learning] English makes me establish strengths in my future. [ … ] I won't go back to Japan. Sometimes I miss my family, but if I return … I can picture myself, I live like other Japanese women in the end. [ … ] I have to do something here.
(Interview 12/16/2014)Yumiko's experience is diametrically opposite to that of male subject, Hiro, though they concur on the impact of gender on their opportunities for employment in Japan. Hiro explains his lack of motivation for learning English:
I think having overseas experiences may be worth more than sufficient English skills to compete with other Japanese boys who are not experienced enough to study overseas, when I hunt [for] and have a full-time job in a big company. [ … ] I have to get a job.
(Interview 12/18/2014)Hiro expresses confidence in his ability to secure a suitable position, in no small part because he is male.
How well I deal [with] English is a very minor thing. [ … ] Maybe I can [more] easily obtain a job [in] Japan than women because Japanese companies already know well … generally women don't continue their profession and power. Although Japanese society is changing, manpower [is] still alive. Men must make money, you know.
(Interview 12/18/2014)In the cases of both Yumiko and Hiro, they tie their motivation to study English to the relative value they perceive that the Japanese job market places on their gender suitability for employment. For Hiro, learning English is not a high priority because he expects that companies will favour his applications for employment over those of his female competitors. For Yumiko, that recognition motivates her decision not to want to return to Japan. It is not simply a question of career ambitions, as she also expresses the desire for liberation from normative gender roles socially constructed in Japan.
Theme 3: The English classroom, a site of advancing the subject's gender equity
The female subjects recognize the significance of English in pursuing their dreams and an imagined future self. They believe that achieving a high level of English proficiency is important for their future careers. Shu manifests that motivation in a group assignment in her English class with two male subjects.
Excerpt 1. Shu (with Hiro and Xian)
Shu: Marriage is topic
Hiro: WHAT? We are going to make THREE stories?
Shu: NO (.) NO (.) NO (.) They don't have to be long (.) Just like (2.0) the idea (4.0) Do you have any thoughts or ideas on marriage?
Xian: We have to have several paragraphs?
Shu: Um (2.5) I don't think so (.) We just share very interesting ideas on this (.)
Okay (.) let me explain (2.0) For example (.) we can find quote (.) stories (.)
statistics (.) and surprising facts (.) She said (.) it's okay we use cellphones (.)
iPad to find something (.) So we just find them
Xian: Oh (.) Okay
Shu: (2.5) Let me see (long pause) um (5.0) I found something (.) Interracial
marriages in the US hit all-time high 4.8 million (3.0) This is title (.) and (2.0) 8.4 per cent of all current US (unintelligible) marriages are interracial (.) up from 3.2 per cent in 1980 (6.0) Any ideas?
Xian: Um (3.5) I found this (.) 41 percent of first marriages end in divorce (.) 60
per cent of second marriages end in divorce
Shu: That is interesting (.) we found (.) quite different topics on marriage (7.5)
([to Hiro]) You have any ideas? Did you find something? (.) Have you heard any
stories or (2.0) read literature about marriage?
Hiro: (4.0) Literature?
Shu: Yeah (.) Interesting stories (.) You read a lot of books
Hiro: (5.5) Do you know Socrates? (.) Socrates’ wife (.) She is a bad woman
Shu: A bad woman? (.) Can you let us know more details? We need to share all of our ideas
Hiro: (2.5) Yeah (.) A bad wife
Xian: They divorced?
Hiro: ([chuckling]) NO (.) NO
(Classroom interaction 10/27/2014)
In this classroom interaction, Shu actively assembles collective knowledge so that the group completes the assignment. She also pulls out more information from Hiro by encouraging and questioning him further for elaboration. Such classroom enactments suggest Shu's investment in English learning. She explains:
I'm a kind of student who likes to work hard in the classroom … In fact, it's one way to develop my English skills. Everybody knows … English [is] not optional to survive here.
(Interview 12/10/2014)On the contrary, Hiro justifies his passive participation:
I don't know [if] classroom participation matters much. How much improvement [of my English] can I expect to make from [classroom] activities?
(Interview 12/18/2014)Hiro does not perceive his limited classroom practice as an issue for his academic and professional achievement. Instead, he puts special emphasis on academic experience overseas, owing to his belief that it was germane to his native sociocultural connections to meet the needs of an ideal Japanese man as a head of household. Hiro admits, as described earlier, that these ‘ways’ of doing this are deeply gendered, as he counts on the patriarchal order to privilege his place in the corporate workforce. He feels no need to place the same priority on learning English that the female subjects do, as he could achieve a favourable result on the basis of simply being male.
Mun-su also provides a window into understanding his culture, gender relations in Korea and his passive (somewhat demotivated) attitude in the English classroom. In our interview, Mun-su reflects on his behaviour in class:
I would say, my attitude is quite related to ‘Sang Nam - Ja’1. You know … Sang Nam - Ja should keep ‘silent power’ as a man. That's the most important characteristic. Within the group … especially in the American classroom … I might appear a loser because we should keep saying what we know in class. But I think I'm not a loser. [ … ] Those kinds of my [communication] styles mean one of the ways expressing something … my masculinity as a Korean guy.
(Interview 6/17/2013)Mun-su's justification of his attitude and communication style seems to be rooted in his patriarchal cultural values. In this sense, his taciturn demeanour in the group is bound up with his identity as a ‘Sang Nam - Ja (a hyper-masculine male)’ in Korea. According to Mun-su, ‘Holding silence is a quite unique attitude that men have, particularly men from some Asian countries like Korea and Japan’. He further reflects that he could not easily escape from the prescribed norms of his native culture, saying, ‘It (Korean culture) is always following me … forming my personality’ (Interview 3/29/2013). Eventually, for Mun-su, the tension between his L1 cultural norms and L2 classroom practices seems to have diminished the English language learning needed for his professional goals.
Conclusion
This study provides qualitative data suggesting that English serves the function of helping its female subjects to surmount iniquitous gender roles and provide them with a new linguistic and social space to advance their aspirations. They share the common goal of advancing in English proficiency in the interests of counteracting gendered identities imposed by their L1 socialization. For them, employing English as a more gender-neutral medium is closely tied with the palpable promise of ‘not merely … crossing such societal borders temporarily but perhaps even permanently, permitting the exit from one social identity and entry into another’ (Brutt-Griffler, Reference Brutt-Griffler, Wyse, Andrews and Hoffman2010: 229).
Female students can also be seen as fully integrated into the development of English as active agents who do not merely exist on the margins of a transnational space. As we argue elsewhere (Brutt-Griffler & Kim, Reference Brutt-Griffler, Kim, Pitzl and Osimk-Teasdale2016), Asian female international students who are learning English constitute a speech community in the context of macroacquisition, both learning and changing the language. The Asian female student narratives reveal their efforts to re-order the hierarchical gender relations, in particular in familial and educational contexts. Concurrently, the subjects pursue new identitiesFootnote 1 through their construction of English as a more gender-neutral medium. This is in contrast to our Asian male participants who show a less engaged attitude and aspirations towards learning English in part due to their favoured positions in their L1 cultures (cf. Gordon, Reference Gordon2004).
We evince that this set of shared beliefs and aspirations with respect to English learning is shared collectively across our female subjects. These women self-consciously pursue a common agenda of advancing gender equity as Asian women via English, with implications that cross the contexts of their L1s and L2. It is important to note that this may be true in their cases whether other Americans share their perceptions. Though it is unlikely to be perceived as such, it is worth considering the impact of this speech community as one factor among many in pushing forward the cause of English as a gender-neutral language in the learners’ imagination to the actual transformation of the language.
JANINA BRUTT-GRIFFLER is a Professor in English applied linguistics at the State University of New York at Buffalo. Her research focuses on English as a global language, second language acquisition, language policy and higher education. She is the author of award winning book World English: A Study of its Development, English and Ethnicity, and Bilingualism and Language Pedagogy. She has published numerous peer-refereed articles and has served as the principle investigator on a number of international and US research grants. She serves as Director of the Center for Comparative and Global Studies and co-the Editor of The International Journal of Applied Linguistics (Blackwell-Wiley). E-mail: bruttg@buffalo.edu
SUMI KIM holds a Ph.D. in foreign and second language education and has been teaching applied linguistics at the State University of New York at Buffalo. Her dissertation focuses on the exploration of gender and English language learning among Asian international students and its intersections with the development of English from a sociolinguistic and postmodern stance. Her research interests include English as an international language, language and gender, multilingualism and discourse analysis.
