Power, Resistance and Second Language Learning

Abstract

This chapter addresses resistance theory and the need to better understand how and why resistant and/or oppositional behaviors are performed in classrooms. To that end, it champions the use of microethnographic approaches for exploring the moment-by-moment negotiation of identity, resistance, collusion, and control in classroom interaction. Five classroom-based studies are explored in some detail (Canagarajah, 1993, 1999; Chick, 1996; Lin, 1996; Miller & Zuengler, 2011; Talmy 2004, 2008). In each, English was the primary language of instruction though it was not the primary language of the students nor, in some cases, of the teachers. Several studies identified how students' oppositional behavior, emerging in circumstances marked by unequal power relations and social stigma, ultimately served to reproduce the very power relations and undesirable identities that the students were rejecting. In contrast, two studies demonstrated how non-conflictual interactions between teachers and students functioned as resistant behaviors in the face of hegemonic language and curricular policies. In following the local emergence of power and resistance in classroom interaction, one comes to see that power is negotiable, that local behaviors are responsive to larger ideological values, but that they also (re)create, sustain, and sometimes resist such beliefs and values.

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