Identities through Words : Analyzing character positioning in Richard Yates’s Revolutionary Road

Sammanfattning: The aim of this thesis was to analyze how the discourse between the two main characters in Richard Yates’s novel Revolutionary Road implies complex power dynamics concerning identity formation. The analysis has been conducted by the use of positioning theory as well as the critical lens of the Heterosexual Matrix in order to discuss positioning findings in relation to gender formation. The results show that the positionings in discourse between Frank and April reveal great and detrimental power dynamics entrenched in social and cultural practices as well as predetermined ideas of gender identity. This thesis has also addressed how the knowledge of such complexity in discourse can be analyzed in the Swedish EFL classroom. This has been argued for by demonstrating the use of the discursive tool of positionings and the gender critical lens of the Heterosexual Matrix in the classroom to validate the use of Revolutionary Road as a source to raise awareness of gender consciousness and encourage students to become conscious gender actors in their social life.