An impressive work, both methodologically and theoretically, which brings clear novelties to the flourishing field of language teacher identity research.
This book aims to disrupt the native-speaker/non-native-speaker binary through a study of the construction of English teacher identities in Japan. The book suggests that macro discourses in the Japanese context, as well as institutional processes, are powerful forces in perpetuating native-speakerist discourses and ascribing identity labels.
However, in self-identification and in interactions with students, the results are found to be more nuanced, with a complex picture of identity construction emerging that questions the binary nature of the “native speaker/non-native speaker” duality. This complexity rests on the intersectional nature of identity construction and highlights the importance of taking into account the intersectionality of a variety of identity markers when researching language teacher identity.
Table of Contents:
Acknowledgements
Foreword: Gary Barkhuizen
Chapter 1. Setting the Scene
Chapter 2. Identity Theory and Language Teacher Identity
Chapter 3. Native-Speakerism and the Japanese Context
Chapter 4. Methodology
Chapter 5. Data Collection and Participants
Chapter 6. Case Study 1: Steve
Chapter 7. Case Study 2: Ed
Chapter 8. Case Study 3: Marco
Chapter 9. Case Study 4: Ai
Chapter 10. Case Study 5: Mayumi
Chapter 11. Case Study 6: Charles
Chapter 12. Discussion
Chapter 13. Conclusions, Implications and Ways Forward
References
Index
About the Author :
Luke Lawrence is an Associate Professor in the College of Commerce at Nihon University in Japan. He has written widely on identity, intersectionality and translanguaging in the ELT field and is the co-editor of two books: Duoethnography in English Language Teaching (2020, with R.J. Lowe) and Discourses of Identity in Japan (2023, with M. Mielick and R. Kubota).
Review :
This book provides a welcome new perspective on the processes through which teacher identities are constructed. Lawrence‘s application of intersectionality to the study of language teacher identity contributes significantly to our understanding of the ways in which social, institutional, and interpersonal discourses can influence how we see ourselves, and how we are seen, as language teachers.
Combining intersectionality with linguistic ethnography and Membership Categorization Analysis as methodological tools, Lawrence offers a compelling analysis of how six teachers navigate the sociocultural landscapes of ELT in Japan. Data-rich, it is a critical resource for researchers, language teacher educators, and students interested in the discursive construction of identities in this context.
In this detailed and insightful exploration of English language teachers’ identity in Japan, Lawrence makes the powerful argument that, like race, gender and class, native speakerism deserves, in this context at least, to be one of the axes of identity. As well as the analyses, the teachers’ stories stayed with me long after I had finished the book, causing me to reflect on my own experiences of teaching and researching English in Japan and to ask what, if anything, had changed?
