Language Learning Gender And Desire

For many Japanese women, the English language has never been just another school subject. For them, English is the tool of identity transformation and the means of obtaining what they passionately desire – mobility, the West and its masculinity. Language Learning, Gender and Desire explores Japanese women's passion for learning English and how they negotiate identity and desire in the terrain of racial, sexual and linguistic politics. Drawing on ethnographic data and popular media texts, the book offers new insights into the multidirectionality of desire and power in the context of second language learning.

This state-of-the-art volume offers a comprehensive and accessible examination of perspectives within the field of discourse analysis on the processes and conditions of second language learning, teaching, and use. Led by Brian Paltridge and Matthew T. Prior, this collection brings together leading global researchers in the field to guide readers through background theories, theoretical paradigms, methodological issues, and pedagogical implications by synthesizing current and past work, and setting a future agenda for discourse-oriented second language research. The book is a critical resource which will be indispensable for scholars and advanced students of applied linguistics, second language acquisition, education, and related fields.

The Routledge Handbook of Instructed Second Language Acquisition is the first collection of state-of-the-art papers pertaining to Instructed Second Language Acquisition (ISLA). Written by 45 world-renowned experts, the entries are full-length articles detailing pertinent issues with up-to-date references. Each chapter serves three purposes: (1) provide a review of current literature and discussions of cutting edge issues; (2) share the authors’ understanding of, and approaches to, the issues; and (3) provide direct links between research and practice. In short, based on the chapters in this handbook, ISLA has attained a level of theoretical and methodological maturity that provides a solid foundation for future empirical and pedagogical discovery. This handbook is the ideal resource for researchers, graduate students, upper-level undergraduate students, teachers, and teacher-educators who are interested in second language learning and teaching. .

An original and intriguing exploration into the language we use to talk about and express romantic and sexual desire.

The Routledge Handbook of Language and Identity provides a clear and comprehensive survey of the field of language and identity from an applied linguistics perspective. Forty-one chapters are organised into five sections covering: theoretical perspectives informing language and identity studies key issues for researchers doing language and identity studies categories and dimensions of identity identity in language learning contexts and among language learners future directions for language and identity studies in applied linguistics Written by specialists from around the world, each chapter will introduce a topic in language and identity studies, provide a concise and critical survey, in which the importance and relevance to applied linguists is explained and include further reading. The Routledge Handbook of Language and Identity is an essential purchase for advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students of Linguistics, Applied Linguistics and TESOL. Advisory board: David Block (Institució Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avançats/ Universitat de Lleida, Spain); John Joseph (University of Edinburgh); Bonny Norton (University of British Colombia, Canada).

This edited volume extends current voluntourism theorizing by critically examining the intersections among various forms of work-leisure travel and language learning/teaching. The book’s contributors investigate volunteer tourism and its cognates such as working holidaymaking, international internships, and gap year labor, as discursive fields in which powerful ideas about language(s), their speakers, and pedagogical practices are propagated worldwide. The various authors’ chapters shed light on the hegemony of global English, the social consequences of linguistic commodification and neoliberal rationalities, the ways in which speaker identity positions can alter the exchange value of languages, and how language competencies are tied to power in the labor market, among related topics. This volume will be of interest to readers in Applied Linguistics, Critical Sociolinguistics, Educational and Linguistic Anthropology, Tourism and Leisure Studies, Migration and Mobility Studies, and Language Teaching and Learning.

This volume develops a comprehensive understanding of the manner in which dominant/emergent ideologies, discourses and social structures impact language education. The 17 chapters analyze the complex social dynamics of "isms" within language education and detail how such dynamics influence language education pedagogies and practices, institutional policies, intergroup subjectivities in addition to language proficiency achievements.

This edited book comprises chapters integrated around a central theme on college-educated Japanese, Korean, and Chinese women’s orientation to English study. The collection is composed of two parts: (1) East Asian women’s motivation to study in the West and (2) East Asian women’s dream to use English as a career. The first part discusses their international migration as facilitated by factors characteristic of East Asian nations (e.g. middle-class women’s access to advanced education and yet unequal access to professional career) and other factors inherent in each nation (e.g. different social evaluations of women equipped with competitive overseas degrees and English proficiency). The second part sheds light on the dreams and realities of East Asian female adults who, having been avid English learners, aim for "dream jobs" (e.g. interpreters) or have few other career choices but to be re-trained as English specialists or even as Japanese language teachers working abroad. This collection is suitable for any scholar interested in the lives and voices of young educated women who strive to empower themselves with language skills in the seemingly promising neoliberal world that is, however, riddled with ideological contradictions.