Affordances and Challenges of English Learner Identities in Glocalized Teacher Discourse
摘要
This chapter explores English speaker identities as constructed by teachers in a non-‘native’ context of English language teaching (ELT). It considers English speaker identities within the frame of globalization, the (re)territorialization of English in non-‘native’ contexts, and complex processes of homogeneity, heterogeny, and hybridization in identity development. A phenomenological approach was taken to investigate teacher constructions of English speaker identity in school using a series of three semi-structured interviews per teacher conducted over a three-week period. Analysis moved findings from roughly grained categories of openness, cultural-historical positioning, and democratic identity to finely grained categories of the Functional Speaker, the Expanding Speaker, the Speaker of Cultural Heritage, and the Cosmopolitan Speaker and Global Citizen. Findings suggest that teachers in glocalized contexts of ELT operate among heterogenous identities bound to local values and history as well as practiced identities that are hybrid and relate to contexts beyond the local. These dynamics, also reflected in processes of globalization, may open or constrain learners’ identity as speakers of English and may or may not decenter a ‘native’-speaking core and foster a more glocal mindset in the teaching and learning of English in the ‘periphery’.