Creating gender identity in two different languages (English and Arabic) : a case study of Lebanese AUB students

This thesis sought to explore how Lebanese, specifically AUB, males and females create their gender identities in English and Arabic in a multicultural society, Lebanon. I explore the relationship between gender, culture (ideology) and linguistic practice. My research aims to answer the following questions: To what extent does what we say reflect our ideology and affect our gender identity? Do we perform gender according to the cultural norms (ideology) of the language we are speaking? Does learning or speaking a foreign language affect our gender performance in the native language? I.e. does the ideology of the foreign culture affect our performance of gender in the native language or vice versa? I decided to use non-probability purposive sampling. I administered an open-ended questionnaire to gain background information about participants. The study used semi-structured individual interview, single sex friendship focus group interviews and mixed sex friendship focus group interviews. The previously mentioned conceptual framework was the first planning stage of the process of data analysis. The second stage involved first, description and reduction of the data, second, displaying and classification and, third, interpretation and drawing conclusions. To analyze the data, I referred to three analytic concepts of discourse psychology: interpretive repertories, ideological dilemmas, and subject positions.;Findings revealed that (1) through discourse, males and females perform different feminine and masculine identities. (2) There is not one way of performing masculinity or femininity but there is a range of masculinities and femininities even when speaking the same language because different interpretive repertories imply different subject positions: (3) When people learn and use a foreign language in the mother country, they might either undergo different degrees of transformations in their understanding of gender or might use the foreign language only as a means of translating their native language culture i.e. find words to express gender ideologies of their native language culture. Participants whose gender performances undergo transformations when they learn a FL, may have either reached a level of social and cultural awareness that is in harmony with the foreign language culture or is living a duality (an ideological dilemma).