Language learning through an intersectional lens: Gender, migrant status, and gain in symbolic capital for Syrian refugee women in Turkey

Rottmann S. B., Nimer M.

MULTILINGUA-JOURNAL OF CROSS-CULTURAL AND INTERLANGUAGE COMMUNICATION, cilt.40, sa.1, ss.67-85, 2021 (AHCI) identifier identifier

  • Yayın Türü: Makale / Tam Makale
  • Cilt numarası: 40 Sayı: 1
  • Basım Tarihi: 2021
  • Doi Numarası: 10.1515/multi-2020-0035
  • Dergi Adı: MULTILINGUA-JOURNAL OF CROSS-CULTURAL AND INTERLANGUAGE COMMUNICATION
  • Derginin Tarandığı İndeksler: Arts and Humanities Citation Index (AHCI), Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI), Scopus, Academic Search Premier, FRANCIS, IBZ Online, International Bibliography of Social Sciences, Periodicals Index Online, Communication & Mass Media Index, ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Index Islamicus, Linguistic Bibliography, Linguistics & Language Behavior Abstracts, MLA - Modern Language Association Database, Political Science Complete, Sociological abstracts, Worldwide Political Science Abstracts
  • Sayfa Sayıları: ss.67-85
  • Anahtar Kelimeler: gender, language, refugee, socialization, power, intersectionality, symbolic capital
  • İstanbul Üniversitesi Adresli: Hayır

Özet

This paper sheds light on Syrian refugee women's negotiation strategies in language learning classrooms and in their broader social contexts from an intersectional perspective. Drawing on in-depth interviews and focus groups complemented by participatory observation in language classes, we use a post-structuralist approach to examine gendered language socialization. Our research combines an intersectional framework and a Bourdieusian perspective on symbolic capital to show how women perform gender and negotiate their roles in classrooms, within families and vis-a-vis the host society. The findings demonstrate that being a woman and a migrant presents particular challenges in learning language. At the same time, learning language allows for the re-negotiation of gender relations and power dynamics. We find that gender structures women's access to linguistic resources and interactional opportunities as they perform language under social pressure to conform to prescribed roles as mothers, wives and virtuous, and shy women. Yet, these roles are not static: gender roles are also reconstituted in the process of language learning and gaining symbolic capital.