Papers / Book chapters by Łukasz Pakuła
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Z JOANA CHOJNICKĄ i ŁUKASZEM PAKUŁĄ – językoznawcami, którzy badają, jak na poziomie języka ludzi... more Z JOANA CHOJNICKĄ i ŁUKASZEM PAKUŁĄ – językoznawcami, którzy badają, jak na poziomie języka ludzie LGBT+ funkcjonują w polskich szkołach – rozmawia Jakub Wojtaszczyk.
Linguistic Perspectives on Sexuality in Education: Representations, Constructions and Negotiations, 2021
This chapter offers an unprecedented study of Polish non-heterosexually identified teachers' disc... more This chapter offers an unprecedented study of Polish non-heterosexually identified teachers' discourses of sexuality circulating in and beyond the classroom. To this end, we organized one focus group (FG) and two follow-up in-depth interviews (IDIs). The overarching aim was to identify and explore discourses produced by LGBT teachers for possible convergences and clashes, and to juxtapose these with their reported teaching praxis. Our data show the discursive struggle between the need for an inclusive classroom and the jeopardy that executing this need entails for the teachers' professional identity construction, and-as a consequence-their careers within the state-run educational system. We also draw attention to the heterogeneity of discourses and fragmented inclusive/progressive language use.
Linguistic Perspectives on Sexuality in Education: Representations, Constructions and Negotiations, 2021
The dictionary-sexuality interface to a great extent remains an uncharted research territory. Onl... more The dictionary-sexuality interface to a great extent remains an uncharted research territory. Only recently has there been a small uptick in the interest in representations of sexualities in this type of reference works. From a theoretical-cum-practical vantage point, however, this research gap does not seem to be justified as dictionaries are vested with a powerful semantic authority thus potentially engendering real-life consequences. The aims of this chapter are twofold. Firstly, it sketches out the intimate and longstanding relation between lexicography and queer linguistics. Secondly, it addresses the research gap by making a case for queer critical metalexicography (QCM). To this end, a selection of sexuality-related dictionary entries is subjected to a diachronic scrutiny showcasing the practical implications of the concept of 'degrees of heteronormativity' for the purpose of critiquing reference works. Keywords queer critical metalexicography queer(ing) lexicography queer linguistics sexuality dictionaries degrees of heteronormativity This is a preview of subscription content, log in to check access. Appendix SEX MEDAL
Linguistic Perspectives on Sexuality in Education: Representations, Constructions and Negotiations, 2021
Back in 2018 I witnessed an instance of verbal behaviour which-I believe-would be categorised as ... more Back in 2018 I witnessed an instance of verbal behaviour which-I believe-would be categorised as hate speech, for instance, in the UK, yet regrettably remains unpenalised in the Polish legal system. A social media group intended for teachers of English as a foreign language (EFL) in Poland, I used to be a member of, featured a post asserting that non-heteronormative students should not be treated on a par with the heterosexual majority. It contained denigrating and devaluating claims about such students. What is more bewildering and saddening, it was authored by a teacher. Would you expect an instant reprimand on the part of the group community defending the rights of such student minority? I certainly did. For this reason, I was rather taken aback to read only a few moderately critical comments that were followed with somewhat vehement replies by the author becoming even more verbally aggressive. My reaction was instinctive: to label the behaviour appropriately, refute the ludicrous argumentation and direct the fellow group members to relevant research literature. If I recall correctly, I was supported by merely one more member and at the same time chastised by the group admin for "name calling", that is, using the word homophobe. In an ensuing private conversation with a group administrator, I was advised of the fact that the group was not intended for "social polemics" as it was conceived of as a platform fostering discussions on language teaching only, as if language could be taught in a social vacuum. Deeming it pertinent to the case in point, I indefatigably pursued this subject by creating a new post informing fellow teachers of the insidiously perilous dangers of maintaining uncritical attitude towards using homophobic language in educational settings, including acts of suicide, and cross-referenced a report on gender and sexuality in the Polish EFL I co-authored (Pakuła et al. 2015). This was met with a preventive measure, according to the admin, of deleting it in order to avoid an "ideological war" on the forum as this was "a space for people of divergent worldviews". I can only recall my feeling of disillusionment and disappointment. In the report I mention, one of the interviewees who had been an EFL textbook reviewer for a number of years christened EFL practitioners members of a vanguard group due to their insightful knowledge not only of the language per se but also of the broader socio-cultural context. This, however, at least in this case, can be only cast away as mere wishful-thinking. A vision of an inclusively oriented teacher need not be utopian, though. However, in order to arrive at this, a certain set of criteria need to be fulfilled. First and foremost, the vital role of teacher training programmes needs to be widely acknowledged (Bellini 2012, Paiz this volume). They ought to incorporate explicit content related to LGBT+ students and
Trabalhos Em Linguística Aplicada, 2020
In this article, we discuss the narratives of struggle, resistance, and counter-resistance over t... more In this article, we discuss the narratives of struggle, resistance, and counter-resistance over the rights of the LGBT+ community at several Polish universities, which remain unnamed in order to protect our informants. In particular, we look at the discourses of LGBT+ groups struggling to establish or maintain organizations of various forms (from students' study circles to union-like institutions) within the context of internal university structure, Polish academic culture and current political developments in the country. This research draws on semi-structured in-depth interviews we conducted in the spring and summer of 2020. In our analyses of the interview material, we apply a multidisciplinary methodological framework combining CDA and narrative inquiry in order to examine linguistic phenomena participating in constructing a particular version of reality through text in talk. Such research design enables us to offer a case study of the difficulties and obstacles faced by LGBT+ activists in the Polish academia the way they understand them, and of the resistance strategies they employ in this particular context. Our research shows a wide range of resistance strategies employed by the LGBT+ community members that can be classified according to the scale of discriminatory practices they form a response to (systemic/individual discrimination) and the type of the response itself (group/individual response). On the basis of the discussed examples, our article offers an interagentive matrix of strategies of addressing LGBT+ issues emerging within the Polish academic context. RESUMO Neste artigo, discutimos as narrativas de embates, resistência e contra-resistência sobre os direitos da comunidade LGBT+ em várias universidades polonesas, cujos nomes não são fornecidos a fim de proteger os nossos informantes. Em particular, analisamos os discursos de grupos LGBT+ que lutam para estabelecer ou manter organizações de várias formas (desde círculos de estudo de estudantes a instituições do tipo sindical) no contexto da estrutura interna das universidades, da cultura acadêmica polonesa e dos atuais desenvolvimentos políticos no país. Esta investigação baseia-se em entrevistas em profundidade semi-estruturadas que realizamos na primavera e no verão de 2020. Nas nossas análises do material da entrevista, aplicamos um quadro metodológico multidisciplinar que combina ACD e investigação narrativa, a fim de examinar fenômenos linguísticos que participam na construção de uma versão específica da realidade por meio de texto em conversa. Tal concepção de investigação permite-nos oferecer um estudo de caso das dificuldades e obstáculos enfrentados pelos ativistas LGBT+ na academia polonesa, da forma como os entendem, e pelas estratégias de resistência que empregam neste contexto particular. A nossa investigação mostra uma vasta gama de estratégias de resistência empregadas pelos membros da comunidade LGBT+ que podem ser classificadas de acordo com a escala de práticas discriminatórias a que respondem (discriminação sistêmica/individual) e com o tipo de resposta em si (resposta de grupo/individual). Com base nos exemplos discutidos, o artigo oferece uma matriz interagentiva de estratégias de abordagem de questões LGBT+ emergentes no contexto acadêmico polonês.
Chisato Danjo, Indu Meddegama, Dai O’Brien, John Prudhoe, Linda Walz and Rachel Wickasono (eds.), Online Proceedings of the 51st Annual Meeting of the British Association for Applied Linguistics: Taking Risks in Applied Linguistics. York: York St John University, 86–90., 2019
Gender Representation in Learning Materials: International Perspectives, May 1, 2015
Poland, as a young conservative democracy, is witnessing an unprecedented amount of public debate... more Poland, as a young conservative democracy, is witnessing an unprecedented amount of public debate where ‘gender’ and ‘sexuality’ figure prominently. Both, however, tend to be perceived as foreign imports and thus fiercely contested. Consequently, the role of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) materials as well as teachers as potential mediators of markedly different Anglophone socio-politics is of paramount importance.
What is more, the only Polish research examining the portrayal of women in EFL materials is that by Jaworski (1986), who exposed the abundance of sexism in EFL textbooks available in Poland at that time. Regrettably, ‘sexuality’ as a culturally (but not linguistically) important identity category was not addressed or recognised in the broad Polish educational context until 2012 (Świerszcz 2012).
This chapter reports on two studies conducted as part of the research project entitled “Investigating Gender and Sexuality in the ESL classroom: Raising publishers', teachers' and students' awareness”. The aim of the first study was to qualitatively scrutinize the discursive and multimodal construction of gender, gender relations, and sexuality in two leading illustrated Primary School EFL textbooks in Poland, along with the accompanying workbooks and teacher’s books. To this end the analytical methods of Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis (Fairclough 1989; Lazar 2005, 2014), Multimodal Discourse Analysis (see e.g. Giaschi 2000; Guo 2004; O’Halloran 2004; Kress and Van Leeuwen 2006) and the concept of critical heteronormativity (Motschenbacher 2010, 2011) were utilized. The analyses focused on the representation of the social roles of men and women, boys and girls in EFL materials. They also demonstrated different textual manifestations of heteronormativity.
‘Gender critical points’ (Sunderland et al. 2002) – identified in the first study - were drawn on in the second study. We also extended Sunderland et al.’s (2002) concept by introducing the notion of ‘gender-emerging points’, which we believe enriches the analytical apparatus by highlighting the dynamic character of classroom interactions and thus the central role of teachers. Here we used audio-recorded primary school classroom interactions to demonstrate how the identified ‘gender critical points’ are addressed and how ‘gender-emerging points’ surface and/or are made (ir-)relevant in the classroom setting. Thus the analysis focused on gendered ‘talk around the text’ emerging in teacher-student interactions to explore negotiation, challenge and/or rejection and ‘uptake’ of gender roles and discourse. To this end methods and insights from critical linguistic analysis were used along with Sunderland’s (this volume) agenda for future research on gender representation in foreign language textbooks.
Keywords: EFL, gender, sexuality, Poland, CDA, Multimodal Discourse Analysis, hidden sexuality and gender curriculum
Journal of Gender and Power 1(1): 49-66
Schools in general and classrooms in particular are among society’s primary socializing instituti... more Schools in general and classrooms in particular are among society’s primary socializing institutions (Freeman and McElhinny, 1996, p. 261; Adger, 2001). In particular, education, as an institution of Gramsci’s ‘civil society’ (Jones, 2006), can be considered a grassroots space where hegemonic gendered and sexual identities are constructed and regulated. This article looks at the context of the EFL classroom – a discursive space where learners are potentially (re-)constructed in relation to various (gender) roles in society as well as learning the practices, values and rules of a given society at large. In this paper we explore and discuss how the categories of gender and sexuality are represented, (re-)constructed and generally dealt with in this learning environment. We follow Foucault’s (1978, 1979) conceptualization of power as something which “weaves itself discursively through social organizations, meanings, relations and the construction of speakers’ subjectivities or identities” (Baxter, 2003, p. 8) and is enacted and contested in every interaction (see Mullany, 2007). We see power as being produced, reproduced, challenged and resisted in the EFL classroom in connection with the construction of gender and sexuality. The article discusses how views on what/who is ‘powerful’ in the context of the EFL classroom have changed over the years, from the early privileging of textbooks to the currently advocated central role of the teacher in addressing and promoting (or not) traditional and/or progressive discourses of gender and sexuality. Critical pedagogies and queer pedagogies are discussed as offering educators potent insights and tools to deal with heteronormativity and various forms of discrimination in the EFL classroom as well as helpful means for empowering all students by addressing their various identities. It is thus our contention that relationships between gender, sexuality and EFL education are in need of urgent (re)addressing as existing research is outdated, lacks methodological sophistication or is lacking in the Polish context.
It seems that despite the undeniable fact that colour research has received considerable attentio... more It seems that despite the undeniable fact that colour research has received considerable attention for centuries 1 resulting in more than 3000 publications during the last 150 years (MacLaury 1997 after Steinvall 2002, there still exists a niche to be filled. There has been no or very little research regarding colour terms conducted from the viewpoint of (meta)lexicography 2 . The present study is meant to evaluate existing dictionary definitions of Basic Colour Terms 3 (henceforth BCTs) from the colour lexicon of English, Japanese and Polish in order to detect any doubtful content which could be improved to equip the dictionary user with richer, more adequate information regarding the colour lexicon. The immediate aims of the study are to determine: 1) what definition types are used to define CTs 2) what prototypes extensional definitions point to when defining BCTs and how these relate to the data obtained from naive native speakers of the languages in question. To this end, two empirical investigations were conducted. The first one is devoted to dictionary definitions, while the second one is an experiment carried out among naive native speakers of the three languages.
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Papers / Book chapters by Łukasz Pakuła
What is more, the only Polish research examining the portrayal of women in EFL materials is that by Jaworski (1986), who exposed the abundance of sexism in EFL textbooks available in Poland at that time. Regrettably, ‘sexuality’ as a culturally (but not linguistically) important identity category was not addressed or recognised in the broad Polish educational context until 2012 (Świerszcz 2012).
This chapter reports on two studies conducted as part of the research project entitled “Investigating Gender and Sexuality in the ESL classroom: Raising publishers', teachers' and students' awareness”. The aim of the first study was to qualitatively scrutinize the discursive and multimodal construction of gender, gender relations, and sexuality in two leading illustrated Primary School EFL textbooks in Poland, along with the accompanying workbooks and teacher’s books. To this end the analytical methods of Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis (Fairclough 1989; Lazar 2005, 2014), Multimodal Discourse Analysis (see e.g. Giaschi 2000; Guo 2004; O’Halloran 2004; Kress and Van Leeuwen 2006) and the concept of critical heteronormativity (Motschenbacher 2010, 2011) were utilized. The analyses focused on the representation of the social roles of men and women, boys and girls in EFL materials. They also demonstrated different textual manifestations of heteronormativity.
‘Gender critical points’ (Sunderland et al. 2002) – identified in the first study - were drawn on in the second study. We also extended Sunderland et al.’s (2002) concept by introducing the notion of ‘gender-emerging points’, which we believe enriches the analytical apparatus by highlighting the dynamic character of classroom interactions and thus the central role of teachers. Here we used audio-recorded primary school classroom interactions to demonstrate how the identified ‘gender critical points’ are addressed and how ‘gender-emerging points’ surface and/or are made (ir-)relevant in the classroom setting. Thus the analysis focused on gendered ‘talk around the text’ emerging in teacher-student interactions to explore negotiation, challenge and/or rejection and ‘uptake’ of gender roles and discourse. To this end methods and insights from critical linguistic analysis were used along with Sunderland’s (this volume) agenda for future research on gender representation in foreign language textbooks.
Keywords: EFL, gender, sexuality, Poland, CDA, Multimodal Discourse Analysis, hidden sexuality and gender curriculum