Negotiating borders of being and becoming in and beyond the English language teaching classroom: two university student narratives from Japan

Abstract

This article, grounded in poststructural narrative inquiry, explores the narratives of two self-identified female Japanese university students, who are conceptualizing and challenging dominant, essentialized constructions of being and doing within Japanese society and English language education situated therein. The two detail their lived experiences negotiating glocal (fluidly local–global) discourses of identity within and beyond the classroom, that seek to establish, perpetuate and maintain linguistic, cultural, national and ethnic borders around being and becoming ‘Japanese’ and a ‘user of English.’ As such, the students contend that space for ‘border crossing’ within Japanese society, and English language education situated therein, has been limited and even eliminated. The students additionally conceptualize resistance to critical and practical shifts beyond native speaker-centric English language teaching in the Japanese context, and the perpetuation and maintenance of dominant, essentialized discourses and borders of ‘Japaneseness,’ in and beyond the classroom, as intertwined. After reflecting upon the implications the students’ narratives have for conceptualizing and approaching identity and experience in terms of inquiry, the article briefly contemplates approaches to classroom practice that cultivate discursive space for identity and experience beyond essentialized categories of being and doing.

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