Sexual Identity as Linguistic Failure: Trajectories of Interaction in the Heteronormative Language Classroom

Abstract

This article examines interactions from tertiary-level foreign languages classes in which students challenge the heteronormative construction of their sexual identity. These interactions are triggered by questions that potentially reference students' real-world identities but which attribute a heteronormative identity to the questions' recipients. Attempts to challenge this assigned identity establish an interactional trajectory between teacher and student in which students pursue a project of expressing identity while teachers construct such talk as linguistic failure. It is argued that the domination of the classroom by a heteronormative framing of identities coupled with the discursive construction of the purpose of language classes to focus on language contribute to this unfolding trajectory.