English as Affirmative Action ... But Affirming What? A Study of Interactions in the Affirmative Space

Abstract

Affirmative Actions (AA) in education are presumed to be interventions that enable access to educational spaces and by extension to quality learning opportunities. The assumption is that these programs would build capabilities that affirm their identities while providing equal opportunities to socio-economic growth and thus, again by extension enable agency. But is that what they do? We begin by placing agency as the terminal goal of AA. We then situate our study within a ̳Third space‘ framework to examine the interactional space in an AA – A space of asymmetrical power and advantage inhabited by the implementer of the AA and a participant in an AA intervention. Therefore the question we ask in this study is: how are structures of dominance produced? Based on the analysis of the interactions we find several power-inflected controls that impact the actors of AA. This paper reports three sets of language use patterns and three modes of establishing dominance, all of which work in tandem to annihilate any possibility of nurturing the capability to act and voice oneself. Based on our study we propose that if AA has to materialize into affirming agency then the possibility of contestation and mediation needs to be built into the AA program. How and what changes need to be brought in to humanize each of the stakeholders is the billion dollar question.