Intersectional highlighting in queer immigrants’ English learning through dating: Dominant ideologies, individual agency, and implications for second language education

Abstract

Drawing on a combined framework of raciolinguistics, imagined community, and language learner agency, this article presents an ethnographic case study exploring two Chinese queer immigrants’ English learning experiences embedded in dating relationships in Canada. Applying the theoretical construct of “intersectional highlighting”, I scrutinize critical events in which racial hierarchy intersects with gendered sexual values in key participants’ dating stories and further investigate how language leaner agency plays a key role in overcoming ideological constraints in English learning processes. Findings reflect performativity in language learning, highlighting the interplay between micro-level semiotic practices of learners’ doing and talking of identities and macro-level social structures of racial, gender, and sexual ideologies circulated in Canadian society. Further, I argue for a race-centered decolonial approach in the study of racialized queer immigrants’ English learning and propose pedagogical strategies to stimulate language learner agency assisting marginalized learners navigate disadvantageous discourses in and beyond second language classrooms.