This study, conducted in Portugal, analysed interviews of 3 female students from working-class backgrounds and their respective families. These students were selected from a previous study in which academic results and their link to socio-economic background were analysed. That work demonstrated that, out of 600 students from all socio-economic backgrounds, there were only three working-class female students who achieved high academic results up to the 9-th and final year of compulsory education. The aim of the present study is to understand why these three female students have succeeded, and how they appreciate this success. "Critical discourse analysis" has been the theoretical and methodological basis for this work and has permitted to consider the possibility that these female students had achieved such great academic success by internalising the discourse of the middle classes, although this is dissimulated, hidden and masked forboth for the female students and their families.
Critical discourse analysis; academic success; identity; motivation for academic achievement; regulating discourse