Perceiving and problematizing ‘invisibility’ in English language education and criticality: a duoethnographic dialogue

ABSTRACT

The dominant social, political and educational narrative of ‘homogeneous Japan’ has been both perpetuated and challenged inside Japan and abroad. Transdisciplinary scholarship and critical communal voices have highlighted Japan’s history as a site of diversity and complexity. the diverse ways people negotiate being, becoming and belonging as ‘Japanese’ and/or as members of Japanese society, and the marginalization individuals and groups have faced due to the homogeneity narrative. This article presents two researcher-practitioners employing duoethnographic inquiry to dialogue regarding how critical frameworks in applied linguistics and English language teaching (ELT) seek to account for identity negotiation, experience and (in)equity in Japanese society, and ELT therein. In sharing, probing, reflecting on and reimagining their stories dialogically, the authors discuss one key concern: in limiting their scope to addressing ‘essentialized and idealized nativeness in English’ dominant approaches to criticality have rendered individuals’ broader negotiations of identity and community membership, ‘invisible.’ The authors invite readers to engage with the dialogue herein, and reflect on what frames their own ‘seeing.’

KEYWORDS:

• identity
• criticality
• diversity
• language education
• Japan
• duoethnography

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Ryukyuan languages are described as hōgen [dialects of Japanese], and viewed as such by its speakers, based on the ideology of monolingual Japan (e.g. Heinrich, 2012; Maher & Yashiro, 1995).