Reading between the lines

Abstract

We have now heard from the people this project has been about – boys themselves; and also from teachers who work with these boys and from some girls, who, it turns out, have a lot to say about boys. Our focus on the boys–languages relationship made us wonder whether what we were identifying as a problem would impact on the nature of the data we would collect. As the previous chapters have shown, however, boys proved to be rich informants, willing to talk directly and thoughtfully about themselves, about language and languages, and about their experience in the classroom. Summarising their schools-based project into ‘young masculinities‘, Frosh, Phoenix and Pattman talked about the relationship between pre-research assumptions and what actually happened when they sat down and talked at length with boys, about the contradiction between ‘everyday assumptions about boys and the reality of their capacity to show psychological depth and sophistication’ (2002:256). Drawing from Hollway and Jefferson (2000), they concluded that ‘perhaps it is simply that most individuals – boys, in our case – have very limited encounters with people who really listen to them in an active, sympathetic and thoughtful way’ (2002:256).