Textual representations and transformations in teacher masculinity

This chapter focuses on the ways in which classroom texts and background texts mediate language teachers’ construction and performance of a gendered self and, in particular, the performance of a heterosexual, masculine self. The chapter draws on data generated in interviews with Western men in which they discuss their experiences of living and working as English language teachers in Japan’s conversation school industry. In this context, interaction between teachers and students is mediated by two different types of texts: on the one hand, prescriptive classroom texts that provide functional language lessons; and on the other hand, locally circulating texts that discursively represent Western men—including Western male language teachers—as desirable romantic partners for Japanese female language learners. Analysis of the men’s accounts demonstrates the various ways in which these two texts are perceived and deployed, and the ways in which they shape the men’s sense of inhabiting and performing a masculine self