Translingual Agency Among Nonbinary Adolescent Learners of French and Spanish

This study investigates U.S. nonbinary high school students’ (a) strategies for navigating grammatical gender in French and Spanish, (b) the logics underpinning their choices, and (c) the social constraints that impact their ability to choose. Grounded in trans epistemologies, the study analyzes responses from a qualitative survey of 211 youth identifying outside of the gender binary. Reflexive thematic analysis reveals that nonbinary language learners employ diverse and multiple linguistic strategies to situate their identities in the L2: choosing either masculine or feminine forms, using gender-neutral neologisms, mixing differently gendered forms, avoiding self-gendering, and more. Students justify their use of these strategies through two logics: authenticity and instrumentalism, which are undergirded by different conceptualizations of grammatical gender. However, nonbinary learners’ ability to choose how to express themselves in the L2 is limited by power and positioning: specifically, their and their interlocutors’ knowledge about and attitudes towards gender-neutral language. Findings reinforce the diverse, fluid, agentive, contextual, power-imbricated nature of trans’ youth’s linguistic practices, challenging the cisnormative assumption of a direct indexical relationship between pronouns and gender identity. The study offers implications for a language education that fosters all students’ agency, sociolinguistic awareness, and ability to interact in diverse community.