Re-significando mi yo culturado como resultado de una autoetnografía alrededor de interacción croscultural en línea de inglés como lengua extranjera

Abstract

The present thesis goes over the phenomenon of online EFL cross-cultural interaction between a teacher (researcher) and her students (co-researchers) in order to account for the way in which my (inner) cultured self is re-signified, as a result of said interaction and autoethnographic reflection around it. Through observation and analysis of critical-cultural episodes, and retrospection into my experiences as an EFL teacher, learner, and researcher, as well as my students’ experiences, I was able to find that an individual’s cultured self is a layered construction. The study led me to conclude that, in situations where (collective, individual, corporate, academic, etc.) culture plays a key role, a teacher’s cultured self is flexible enough to adapt to contextual demands, exerted by factors such as personal (research, pedagogical or ideological interests) and interpersonal (rapport with students) motivations, school’s corporate rules (teaching methods, customer service, quality control), which are all linked to broader cultural values. Nonetheless, the principles that individuals are brought up with, as well as turning points and experiences that we have had throughout our lives, exert a very considerable –at times unconscious– influence on our cultured selves, too. Even when our more recent affiliations and convictions clash with these ‘elemental’ tenets. The autoethnographic exercise also revealed that some of the cultural biases that have shaped our cultured selves respond to historical relations of subordination, exclusion, and discrimination of oppressed groups by dominant ones, based on social and economic aspects (race, gender, class, nationality, or religion.)