Predicting the emotional labor strategies of Chinese English Foreign Language teachers

“Teachers' Emotional Labor” Publications in Web of Science: A Bibliometric Analysis

“…On the one hand, because of the long duration of the service, episodes and chronic stressors (e.g., repeated experiences of unpleasant emotions) should become two interesting research focuses for future research endeavors; in light of the complexity of teaching contexts, subject-specific TEL and culture-specific TEL (e.g., Li and Liu, 2021 ) deserve future research attention. In contrast, as Dewaele and Wu ( 2021 , p. 103) suggested, longitudinal designs may help “establish whether teachers' preferences change over time,” and that intervention studies and training may help teachers better regulate their emotions. Furthermore, as trait emotional intelligence (one personality trait) can predict TEL (Dewaele and Wu, 2021 ), it would be useful to examine to what extent other personality traits, such as L2 grit (Wei et al, 2020 ) and tolerance of ambiguity (Wei and Hu, 2019 ), have a similar influence.…”

“…Generally, two research camps influencing current TEL research have emerged in the past decade: what EL is (Grandey et al, 2013 ) and what EL can do socially (Benesch, 2017 ; Gkonou and Miller, 2021 ), or “structure research” vs. “poststructure research” (Benesch, 2017 , p. 34). The former approach deconstructs EL into several components (i.e., surface acting) and looks into and measures how they are correlated to other features (i.e., emotional intelligence, see Dewaele and Wu, 2021 ), while the latter looks at “what emotions do socially, not what they are inside people's minds” (Benesch, 2017 , p. 7). We take this divide to review the studies that are relevant to this study.…”

“…what EL is, has always guided the EL research in various disciplines to date. How emotions are managed or what strategies can be adopted to regulate emotions in the interaction (Grandey, 2000 ; Dewaele and Wu, 2021 ) is the key component of EL. Hochschild ( 1983 ) proposed surface acting (faking expressions or suppressing emotions) and deep acting (conjuring up desired feelings).…”

“…Grandey ( 2000 ) drew upon the previous EL literature and proposed a conceptual model of EL, which viewed EL as emotion regulation. She contended that the mechanisms of EL lie in “emotion regulation” (Gross, 1998 ) where employees regulate their physiological arousal and cognitions to display the desired feelings (also see Dewaele and Wu, 2021 ). In her tripartite model, Grandey ( 2000 ) included three antecedents [i.e., individual factors, organizational factors, and situational cues (i.e., situational expectations and emotional events)], the managing/regulating process (i.e., surface acting and deep acting), and two consequences (i.e., individual wellbeing and organizational wellbeing).…”

“…Grandey et al, 2013 ). These separate lenses make the understanding of EL void of transparency, which thus points to a need to embrace a more encompassing perspective in investigating EL (see Grandey et al, 2013 ; Dewaele and Wu, 2021 ). For EL research in the educational context, scholars have drawn inspiration from these lenses.…”