This article presents findings from a study investigating the gendered interpretative repertoires or ‘ways of seeing the world’ that a group of Japanese women drew on as they discursively constructed their gendered identities during semi-structured interviews. The study draws on critical discursive psychology which views language not simply as a window into people’s minds, but as a discursive resource which individuals utilize to perform various discursive functions. Participants assumed a range of subject positions in relation to these repertoires that suggests that Japanese society may be in a state of flux where dominant repertoires are undergoing discursive reformulation and change. Results of this study indicate that while interpretative repertoires constitute cultural ‘common sense’, individuals possess agency to discursively deploy, resist, and sometimes even reconstruct these discursive resources.

No abstract

No abstract

Recent instructional trends in the field of TESOL emphasize teaching language through course content. The dual focus of content-based English instruction (CBI) provides a way for language teachers to engage learners with challenging material while increasing their linguistic proficiency. This article describes a unit in a CBI course at a Japanese university that was designed to promote the development of critical consciousness (Freire, 2005) through the analysis of a film. Students identified race- and gender-related issues, engaged in discussions about these issues, and finally wrote a critical response paper to the film.

The end of World War II saw the emergence of a gendered division of labour in Japan where 'salarymen' committed themselves to their workplaces, while 'professional housewives' devoted themselves to domestic work and childcare. Masculinity can therefore be seen as 'bounded' since social norms constructed men as family breadwinners. On the other hand, femininity can be seen as 'unbounded' in that women were released from the pressure to assume a breadwinning role. This article draws on critical discursive psychology to investigate the subject positions that a group of Japanese men and women assume in relation to a 'bounded masculinity/unbounded femininity' interpretative repertoire during group interviews. Results of the analysis indicate that a majority of the participants assumed complicit subject positions in relation to these repertoires and in the process normalized a traditional gendered division of labour. Those participants who took up more resistant subject positions can be seen as contesting and potentially subverting unequal gender relations. The contribution these accounts make to reify or conceivably democratize gender relations is also considered.