Impacts of Positioning, Power, and Resistance on EFL Learners’ Identity Construction through Classroom Interaction: A Perspective from Critical Classroom Discourse Analysis

Abstract

In this study, we explored how positioning, power, and resistance might have possible impacts on learners’ identity construction. We conducted this study in a 6-month language and culture program from August 2018 to January 2019 involving one teacher and 24 English major undergraduate students at a public university in Thailand. Using Kumaravadivelu’s (1999) Critical Classroom Discourse Analysis (CCDA) as an analytical framework and Braun and Clarke's (2006) thematic analysis approach to analysing data , we found three themes that illustrate how participants demonstrated positioning, power, and resistance: (a) learners’ choice of code as passive resistance, (b) circulating power in interaction and struggles of power, and (c) multiple positioning in classroom interactions. The findings suggest classroom context serves as a learning space to shape the contours of learners’ identity positioning and dynamics of power negotiation. This study contributes to the growing research on language learners’ identity in classroom interactions from a CCDA perspective. It suggests that EFL teaching should incorporate learner identity as an explicit goal that serves as an interpretive frame for learners’ on-going academic growth as English users within and beyond classroom contexts.