Presenter(s): Dylan Williams
Faculty Mentor(s): Kaori Idemaru
Poster 146
Session: Social Sciences & Humanities
Issues related to identity play an important role in guiding learners as they acquire a new language. The purpose of this study was to examine how gender transition may affect the use of linguistic gender-forms during language acquisition. Japanese is a highly gendered language, with varying degree of feminine and masculine forms in pronouns and sentence ending particles. My learning of Japanese and experience with transition provided an opportunity to analyze the interaction between the two. In order to conduct this study, I completed an autoethnography of my own past journal writings from the Japanese 301 and 302 courses here at the UO. The analysis revealed heavy avoidance of explicitly gendered forms and a strategy of solely using neutral pronouns and sentence ending particles, reflecting a low comfort level between using gender-matched features and the struggle with gender identity. The anxiety associated with transition appeared to have influenced language performance, also leading to less classroom interaction and involvement. The implication of this study is that students in this situation are not fully able to center themselves as users of that language, and so are less likely to center themselves in classwork. More support from instructors and researchers is needed in order to properly address the obstacles that trans students face, such as alleviating anxiety due to gender transition and understanding how it influences language use. Such efforts could address gender in broader ways, leading to overall more inclusive, comfortable, and inviting classroom environment that encourages language use and learning.