Desire in Translation: White Masculinity and TESOL

Abstract

This article reports on a study of Western male English language teachers and considers the ways in which their identities were shaped in relation to discourses of masculinity and heterosexuality. The article first argues that masculinity and heterosexuality have remained unmarked categories in research on TESOL teacher identities. It then draws on interview data with 11 White Australian men and considers the discourses of gender and sexuality in their accounts of English language teaching in Japanese commercial eikaiwa gakkô (English language conversation schools). The analysis suggests that although some enjoy the privileges that attach to being a White, Western male, they also struggle to negotiate the eikaiwa gakkô as a contact zone where the professional and personal, the educational and commercial, the pedagogical and the sexual coexist. In this ambiguous space, discourses of White male embodiment, and of sexualised desire between teacher and student, are perceived to be in conflict with discourses of an acceptable masculine professional identity, and may limit the professional and pedagogical aspirations of the male teachers. The article concludes that it is timely for conversations about gender and sexuality as aspects of professional identity to include accounts of masculinity and heterosexuality as integral to professional practice in TESOL. doi: 10.1002/tesq.51 Ben: We had a contest around Valentine's Day, who could cover their desk in chocolate the fastest.Ros: This was a contest amongst the men?Ben: Yes, the women had a duty to buy chocolate for the men.Ros: Was that a Japanese custom?Ben: Yes, the idea was to cover your desk with chocolate, because you could. So you'd try to curry favour with the students, but that wasn't difficult

White Western male teachers constructing academic identities in Japanese higher education

“…Observations such as those articulated in this section, and in other accounts of white Western men in Japan (Appleby 2013a(Appleby , 2013bHicks 2013), have led Yoko Kobayashi (2014) to suggest that white male native speakers of English may not only be benefiting from 'male-friendly hiring practices' (222), but also be 'tapping into a vein of masculinity in east Asia, which has long marginalized local women' and been denounced in the West as 'backward' and 'sexist' (220).…”

“…The context of this study This paper arises from a larger research project conducted over a period of five years (2009)(2010)(2011)(2012)(2013) that focused on the effects of gender on the experiences of men and women from Anglophone countries working as English language teachers in Japan (Appleby 2013a(Appleby , 2013b(Appleby , 2014. During that time, I travelled from Australia (my home country) to Japan on four occasions for ethnographic field work, visiting educational institutions and conducting interviews with teachers.…”

Translingual entanglements of English

“…English, as advertised for language schools and presented in textbooks, ‘emerges as a powerful tool to construct a gendered identity and to gain access to the romanticized West’ (Piller & Takahashi, 2006, p. 69). As Motha and Lin (2014, p. 332) contend ‘at the center of every English language learning moment lies desire: desire for the language; for the identities represented by particular accents and varieties of English; for capital, power, and images that are associated with English; for what is believed to lie beyond the doors that English unlocks.’ Takahashi (2013, p. 144) explains Japanese women's desire for English, as ‘constructed at the intersection between the macro‐discourses of the West and foreign men and ideologies of Japanese women's life‐courses in terms of education, occupation, and heterosexuality.’ Focusing on the ways in which these discourses of desire implicate White Western men, Appleby (2013, p. 144) shows how ‘an embodied hegemonic masculinity’ is constructed in the Japanese ELT industry, producing as a commodity ‘an extroverted and eroticised White Western ideal for male teachers.’ Any understanding of the motivations to learn English, therefore, has to deal with relations of power not only in economic and educational terms but also as they are tied to questions of desire, gender, sexuality, and the marketing of English and English language teachers as products. The political economy of English and the possibility of cheap but authentic English are also therefore tied to very real material conditions of sexuality.…”

Research tasks on identity in language learning and teaching

“…For example, the plight of struggling immigrant students cannot be attributed solely to the identity inscription of nationality or ethnicity, but must be examined with respect to other categories such as class, gender, and religion. In a study which crosses ethnic, gender, and sexuality divides, Appleby (2012) found, for example, that White Australian men teaching in Japanese language schools struggled to negotiate a particularly complex contact zone, which may have limited their professional and pedagogical aspirations. Also in Japan, Kamada's (2010) study of the hybrid identities of adolescent girls who were 'half' Japanese was focused on issues of both ethnicity and gender, and illustrates how these young women struggled to negotiate desirable identities when confronted by marginalizing discourses.…”