Returning to Class – Connections between language practices, educational identities and classed positions

This thesis explores inequalities in the constructions of educational identities among contemporary Danish youth in their trajectory from being gymnasium students to graduates. Based on a linguistic ethnographic study of two classes in a provincial STX gymnasium, the first part of the study investigates how local norms and ideologies in combination with wider circulating discourses concerning class positions, language and school performance can give students unequal access to perform linguistically as competent students. In the second part of the study, the students are interviewed 14-19 months after they graduated. It is investigated how the student's socioeconomic backgrounds and educational identities while they attended the gymnasium relates to their choice of study and class positioning after graduation.

The dissertation consists of four articles connected through nine short introductory and concluding chapters. These chapters support and elaborate theoretical, methodological and empirical points that are only briefly addressed in the articles. In the first part of the study, it is shown that students and teachers can engage in different language norms and ideologies, that the students have to navigate multiple and sometimes contradictive norms to position themselves as good students and that especially the students’ ideologies concerning linguistic authenticity can affect their own and their classmates’ possible positions in class. The study further shows that there, locally and in print media, circulates discourses, directly and indirectly, connecting class positions, language practices and school performance. Based on three case studies of students whose parents do not have a gymnasium degree, it is argued that such discourses affect the students' identification practices in the gymnasium.

The second part of the study focuses on the educational trajectory of two students with higher middle-class backgrounds, who during their time at the gymnasium had positions as good and competent students. In contrast to those of their peers, whose parents do not have a gymnasium degree, who all articulate intentions to enter further education, these two students express wishes to self-educate and create their own businesses. Their narratives are related to ‘masternarratives’ about self-realisation and ‘hackschooling’. It is argued that their positions can be related to a decreasing status of formal education in the twenty-first century, where the possibility to position as a competent, self-educated entrepreneur is connected to high status and middle-class privilege.

The different parts of the dissertation collectively contribute new insights into language practices in the contemporary diverse gymnasium in Denmark. Additionally, it contributes perspectives on how to understand and investigate connections between language practices, social class positions and education in contemporary society.