A critical-ethical politics for transnational commercial English language teaching: conjectures, contradictions, affects, and possible just futures

<p>This thesis aims to promote a critical-ethical politics for transnational commercial English language teaching. This type of politics seeks to liberate TESOL researchers and practitioners from the ‘totalising system’ (Dussel, 2013) that continues to model English language education after th...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Imperial, RA
Other Authors: Rose, H
Format: Thesis
Language:English
Published: 2023
Subjects:
_version_ 1826312706593914880
author Imperial, RA
author2 Rose, H
author_facet Rose, H
Imperial, RA
author_sort Imperial, RA
collection OXFORD
description <p>This thesis aims to promote a critical-ethical politics for transnational commercial English language teaching. This type of politics seeks to liberate TESOL researchers and practitioners from the ‘totalising system’ (Dussel, 2013) that continues to model English language education after the ‘hegemonic ontology’ or normative ideal: the white/Anglo-American/native English speaker, which reflects deep-seated colonial and racial logics and inflicts a range of material, epistemic, and affective injustices on language-minoritised racialised communities. The study that I present here focuses on a particular community of English language users, i.e., Filipino English teachers, the cost-effective and cost-efficient lifeline of the lucrative multi-billion dollar English language education market in East and Southeast Asia. These teachers tread a very fine line between privilege and marginalisation, and experience day-to-day exclusion and oppression by virtue of their ‘non-nativeness,’ nationality, racial background, and skin colour.</p> <p>The study was carried out via year-long online fieldwork in the Philippines, which involved compiling and analysing a corpus of online publicity, marketing, and lesson materials from 37 ELT platforms, and semi-structured interviews with 50 Filipino English teachers. I adopted an abductive and interpretive approach to data analysis that I call critical-ethical semiotics, which involves the metasemiotic construal of the teachers as a starting point or site of ideological work (Gal & Irvine, 2019). This approach, commensurate with de-coloniality (Quijano, 2000a,b; Grosfoguel, 2011), Marxist (Simpson, 2023), critical post-structuralist (Chong, 2009; Flores & Rosa, 2015; Tajima, 2018), and trans-ontological perspectives (Dussel, 2013; Táíwò, 2022a), allows for the critical and ethical examination of the hegemonic ontology, as it were, from the outside (Mills, 2018). It is my hope that the critical-ethical perspectives and approaches developed in this study will help forge a new pathway forward in TESOL – one that will lead us towards a more just and sustainable future for language education. </p>
first_indexed 2024-04-09T03:59:14Z
format Thesis
id oxford-uuid:e2505315-b8db-469a-b505-1140370d1b1f
institution University of Oxford
language English
last_indexed 2024-04-09T03:59:14Z
publishDate 2023
record_format dspace
spelling oxford-uuid:e2505315-b8db-469a-b505-1140370d1b1f2024-04-05T15:09:18ZA critical-ethical politics for transnational commercial English language teaching: conjectures, contradictions, affects, and possible just futuresThesishttp://purl.org/coar/resource_type/c_db06uuid:e2505315-b8db-469a-b505-1140370d1b1fSocial justice and educationLinguisticsPhilosophy of liberationLanguage and educationEducationApplied linguisticsEnglishHyrax Deposit2023Imperial, RARose, H<p>This thesis aims to promote a critical-ethical politics for transnational commercial English language teaching. This type of politics seeks to liberate TESOL researchers and practitioners from the ‘totalising system’ (Dussel, 2013) that continues to model English language education after the ‘hegemonic ontology’ or normative ideal: the white/Anglo-American/native English speaker, which reflects deep-seated colonial and racial logics and inflicts a range of material, epistemic, and affective injustices on language-minoritised racialised communities. The study that I present here focuses on a particular community of English language users, i.e., Filipino English teachers, the cost-effective and cost-efficient lifeline of the lucrative multi-billion dollar English language education market in East and Southeast Asia. These teachers tread a very fine line between privilege and marginalisation, and experience day-to-day exclusion and oppression by virtue of their ‘non-nativeness,’ nationality, racial background, and skin colour.</p> <p>The study was carried out via year-long online fieldwork in the Philippines, which involved compiling and analysing a corpus of online publicity, marketing, and lesson materials from 37 ELT platforms, and semi-structured interviews with 50 Filipino English teachers. I adopted an abductive and interpretive approach to data analysis that I call critical-ethical semiotics, which involves the metasemiotic construal of the teachers as a starting point or site of ideological work (Gal & Irvine, 2019). This approach, commensurate with de-coloniality (Quijano, 2000a,b; Grosfoguel, 2011), Marxist (Simpson, 2023), critical post-structuralist (Chong, 2009; Flores & Rosa, 2015; Tajima, 2018), and trans-ontological perspectives (Dussel, 2013; Táíwò, 2022a), allows for the critical and ethical examination of the hegemonic ontology, as it were, from the outside (Mills, 2018). It is my hope that the critical-ethical perspectives and approaches developed in this study will help forge a new pathway forward in TESOL – one that will lead us towards a more just and sustainable future for language education. </p>
spellingShingle Social justice and education
Linguistics
Philosophy of liberation
Language and education
Education
Applied linguistics
Imperial, RA
A critical-ethical politics for transnational commercial English language teaching: conjectures, contradictions, affects, and possible just futures
title A critical-ethical politics for transnational commercial English language teaching: conjectures, contradictions, affects, and possible just futures
title_full A critical-ethical politics for transnational commercial English language teaching: conjectures, contradictions, affects, and possible just futures
title_fullStr A critical-ethical politics for transnational commercial English language teaching: conjectures, contradictions, affects, and possible just futures
title_full_unstemmed A critical-ethical politics for transnational commercial English language teaching: conjectures, contradictions, affects, and possible just futures
title_short A critical-ethical politics for transnational commercial English language teaching: conjectures, contradictions, affects, and possible just futures
title_sort critical ethical politics for transnational commercial english language teaching conjectures contradictions affects and possible just futures
topic Social justice and education
Linguistics
Philosophy of liberation
Language and education
Education
Applied linguistics
work_keys_str_mv AT imperialra acriticalethicalpoliticsfortransnationalcommercialenglishlanguageteachingconjecturescontradictionsaffectsandpossiblejustfutures
AT imperialra criticalethicalpoliticsfortransnationalcommercialenglishlanguageteachingconjecturescontradictionsaffectsandpossiblejustfutures