ABSTRACT
This study traces the ways in which an Arabic-speaking immigrant girl in Cyprus positions herself towards the different gender ideologies that she encounters at home and in school. Through Nadia’s linguistic choices and discursive strategies we come to see how competing gender codes, meeting at the crossroads of geographic, linguistic, and cultural transition, lead to the emergence of a hybrid cultural identity. The data also reveal that “passing” is not always the goal of speakers who enter a new culture; instead, social categories such as gender mediate between the ability and the willingness to pass. These findings suggest that L2 users, through their daily linguistic and cultural practices across and within discourse sites, become agents of multiple, dynamic, and flexible identities. The study demonstrates the particular implications of second language learning and use and gender ideologies in the process of identity construction and highlights the complexities of identity work in today’s multilingual and multitextual social settings.
