Language learning memoirs as a gendered genre

Abstract

The paper argues that while the analysis of cross-cultural lifewriting may provide important insights for the study of second language acquisition and socialization, researchers should approach language learning memoirs as a genre and not simple as ethnographic data, subject to content analysis. Using gender as a case in point, the paper analyses a corpus of sixteen full-length language memoirs and seven essays within a theoretical framework, which combines sociohistoric, sociocultural, and rhetorical analysis of the narratives in the corpus. The analysis of these texts demonstrates that social, cultural, and historic conventions shape stories that are told about language learning. It is argued that treating language memoirs as a genre has a great potential for future studies of second language memoirs as a genre has a great potential for future studies of second language learning. While this approach prevents the researchers from using the narratives simplistically as an objective 'source of ethnographic data', it allows for a complex, theoretically and sociohistorically informed, investigation of social contexts of language learning and of individual learners' trajectories, as well as an insight into which learners' stories are not yet being told.

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