“I'm Tired. You Clean and Cook.” Shifting Gender Identities and Second Language Socialization

Drawing on a multisite ethnographic study that spans educational, domestic, and workplace contexts in the United States and Laos, this article investigates the interplay between gender identity shifts and second language socialization, documenting the process by which working-class Lao women and men redefine gender identities in the United States. Lao women in the United States experience increased opportunities for enacting their gender identities through expanded leadership roles and wage labor, but Lao men experience a narrowing of opportunities because they have lost access to traditional sources of power. Language learning both influences and is influenced by these changing identities. The author considers the impact of gender identity shifts on access to second language resources, with particular focus on workplace and domestic language events as venues for second language socialization, and discusses implications for ethnographic research on gendered second language socialization. This study highlights the need for ESL practitioners to investigate and address the complexity of the everyday language events in which adult ESL learners are engaged and raises questions regarding how adult ESL classrooms can become spaces for discussing, interpreting, and responding to gendered lives in a new land and a new language.