Re contextualizing locus of enunciation and linguistic citizenship a diary analysis of chinese efl teachers critical intercultural awareness develop

Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found atCritical PerspectivesISSN: Print Online Journal homepage: www.tandfonline.com/journals/cthe20Re-contextualizing locus of enunciat

Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at

Critical Perspectives

ISSN: (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: www.tandfonline.com/journals/cthe20

Re-contextualizing locus of enunciation and

linguistic citizenship: a diary analysis of ChineseEFL teachers’ critical intercultural awarenessdevelopment

Lina Sun

To cite this article: Lina Sun (13 Feb 2024): Re-contextualizing locus of enunciation and

linguistic citizenship: a diary analysis of Chinese EFL teachers’ critical intercultural awareness development, Teaching in Higher Education, DOI: 10.1080/13562517.2024.2306257

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/13562517.2024.2306257

Published online: 13 Feb 2024.

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Re-contextualizing locus of enunciation and linguistic

citizenship: a diary analysis of Chinese EFL teachers’ critical intercultural awareness development

Lina Sun

Department of English, School of Foreign Languages, Nankai University, Tianjin, People’s Republic of China

This study navigates the constructive role of English as a foreignlanguage (EFL) as a critical intercultural discourse of locus ofenunciation and linguistic citizenship through which teachers inChinese educational context act as agents of action and socialchange Based on a critical discourse analysis of learner diaryentries, the study traces the preservice teachers’ development ofcritical intercultural awareness as a result of learning provided inthe course Findings of this study suggest that relevant EFLteacher education programs should strategically fortify thediscursive role of English for contesting hegemonic ideologies incurricular materials and engaging in justice-oriented dialoguethrough advancing learners’ reflexivity and agency.linguistic citizenship; learnerdiaries; EFL teachers; criticalintercultural awareness; EFLcurricula

1 Introduction

Over the past few decades since the implementation of opening-up and reform policy, China has experienced tremendous political, economic, and sociocultural transformation Of particular note are the shift from a planned economy to a market economy, the growing popularity of English as an international language, and ever-increasing access to the Internet resources The government of China has prioritized English language edu-cation to promote the global competitiveness of the nation English language competence is also closely related to personal development, employability, and social mobility in the country Therefore, for China, it has become critical to continuously enhance the quality of English language education and address the demands for bilingualism and multilingu-alism in the era of intensifying globalization (Xiong and Yuan2018).

There is now widespread recognition of the importance of adopting a critical intercul-tural stance on foreign language teaching (Baker 2012; Byram2012; Holmes 2014) In particular, in thefield of teaching English as a foreign language, there is an increasing

CONTACTLina Sunsunlinano.1@163.comDepartment of English, School of Foreign Languages, Nankai Uni-versity, Weijin Road 191, Nankai District, Tianjin 300071, People’s Republic of China

trend to shift the focus from developing native-speaker competence toward more prac-tical competencies to facilitate exchanges between speakers from diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds (Byram and Parmenter 2012; Trim 2012; Sharifian 2013) Against such a backdrop, I begin by re-conceptualizing EFL education as a discursive terrain reinforcing Anglocentric ideologies and then shift to a different conception of EFL discourse, as providing an alternative framework of transformation that promotes a cultural politics of decolonization, equity, and social justice (Milani2008) To illustrate how the move from ideological reproduction to social transformation is realized, I draw on a five-month ethnographic case study of Chinese EFL preservice teachers in high schools in Northern China Through a critical discourse analysis (CDA) of diary entries, classroom observationfield notes, teacher interviews, as well as relevant docu-ments and artifacts, I attempt to explore the way preservice teachers mobilize their auton-omy to confront stereotypes, bias, and hegemonic ideologies within the theoretical framework of locus of enunciation and linguistic citizenship.

2 Theoretical framework

2 1 Re-conceptualizing critical intercultural competence in EFL education

The term‘interculturality’ has different connotations in different contexts According to Liddicoat and Scarino (2013), the goal of learning is‘to decenter learners from their pre-existing assumptions and practices and to develop an intercultural identity through engagement with an additional culture’ (29) In the process of responding to each other’s different understandings and reflections, the borders between self and other are negotiated, redrawn and problematized Meanwhile, achieving transformative goals in EFL teaching practices has to underscore the critique of English as an oppressive language that reproduces socio-political and cultural inequalities between English and other languages (Phillipson 1992; Pennycook1994; Canagarajah 1999; Holliday2013) Mindful of this caveat, it is important to examine and re-evaluate how English teaching plays out at non-hegemonic levels in shaping local and global education programs amidst the colonial processes of the globalization of English The notions of‘linguistic citizen-ship’ (Stroud 2018) and ‘locus of enunciation’ (Grosfoguel 2011; Kubota 2020; Diniz de Figueiredo and Martinez 2021) could offer useful counter-hegemonic frameworks for teachers and learners to engage in justice-oriented dialogue.

Linguistic citizenship defines acts of citizenship in language education contexts as related to ‘practices whereby new actors, seeking recognition in the public space in order to determine a new course of events, shift the location of agency and voice’ (Stroud2018, 21) The notion of linguistic citizenship is relevant to thefield of language and intercultural education on account of its emphasis on agency－what people do with and around available linguistic resources in order to‘position themselves agentively, and to craft new emergent subjectivities of political speakerhood’ (Stroud2018, 4) By stres-sing emerging agencies and cultural-political voice among marginalized groups (Rampton, Cooke, and Holmes2018), LC helps to identify acts of citizenship in EFL con-texts characterized by asymmetrical power relations so as to have a better understanding of how learners contest linguistic, cultural, and political hegemonies, as well as colonial praxis embedded in EFL education (Awayed-Bishara2018/2021).

The concept of‘locus of enunciation’ was initially put forward by Mignolo (1999) as being dominant in decolonial and Southern theories It comprises‘the geographical, his-torical, bodily, and ideological context from which one is speaking’ (Diniz de Figueiredo and Martinez2021, 2) In the scholarship of applied linguistics, the emphasis has been on incorporating particular geographical locations or topics not addressed by Global North-ern applied linguistics, and the inclusion of usually marginalized people (Pennycook and Makoni2020) Confronting the hegemony of the Global North, this vision also moves towards integrating varied epistemologies and challenging extant modes of knowledge production and distribution.‘Locus of enunciation’ is important in language pedagogy and intercultural education in terms of offering multiple spaces for the juxtaposition of varied worldviews and the complex heterogeneity of subjectivity (Luke2018) Thus educators in schools should work with young people to enable them to address both the challenges particular to them and also those shared with others in other loci Through the act of ‘border-thinking’ (Souza 2019, 31), students could ‘improve their own inequitable situatedness and engage in the transformation of their present and futures on the basis of their local knowledge and conditions, experimentation, inno-vation, imagination and creativity’ (Porto and Byram2022).

2.2 Freire’s dialogical approach and EFL critical pedagogy

In EFL instructional contexts, learners from socially and culturally marginalized groups in the Global South often experience feelings of disconnection when addressing their local positionality for the sake of constructing their knowledge of global issues rep-resented in EFL textbooks (Awayed-Bishara2018; Liu, Zhang, and May2022) Such feel-ings of disconnection might also be detrimental to nurturing their agency To offer possible ways for empowering disadvantaged populations through English, Freire’s

methods the teachers in this study use to facilitate students to become active co-construc-tors in the production of knowledge In the case of EFL, dialogue characterizes an epis-temological relationship that provides a way of crafting a generative space for different ways of thinking about language (Leonard 2017) This requires a‘decolonial turn’ that involves ‘interventions at the level of power, knowledge, and being through varied actions of decolonization’ (Maldonado-Torres 2007, 262) A decolonized politics of knowledge, stemming from local experiences and needs, entails a knowledge-making for well-being of the marginalized groups (Mignolo2009) In this regard, a Freirian dia-logical approach that stresses the importance of speaking from one’s locus of enunciation provides a route for disrupting how language has long been constructed in the Global North.

To fully realize their potential as agents of social change, Freire postulates that teachers must take the steps of self-reflective consciousness and transformation with their stu-dents, or the process of conscientização, with a focus on the political responsibility and commitment to social justice of educators (Guilherme 2012) Conscientização encapsulates gaining a nuanced and in-depth understanding of the world in a way that allows learners to perceive political and sociocultural complexities and conflicts (Torres2019) Additionally, these interdisciplinary insights underpin the epistemological nature of a Freirian EFL pedagogy of utilizing problem-posing methods for engaging

learners in a productive conversation of culturally related issues spanning local and global settings (Awayed-Bishara2021) In dialogical contexts, students become more fre-quently involved in habitual routines of reflection and action.

2.3 Critical intercultural competence in EFL education in the Chinese context

With the power and dominance of English in contemporary world, English language is deeply situated in different socio-political and cultural contexts and imbued with varied ideologies (Gil and Adamson2011; Nieto2017; Fang2018) In China, as English is linked to individuals’ employability and personal development, intercultural awareness is pro-moted in English learning for communication purposes However, English as a lingua franca is still permeated with the ideology of native-speakerism (Holliday 2005; Fang

2018) The craze of English learning might contribute to an invisible linguistic hierarchy and identity crisis among Chinese people on account of the‘worship’ of the Anglophone language and cultures (Gil and Adamson2011) For instance, many students claimed not to have developed enough awareness of Chinese culture in the process of studying various concepts of intercultural communication (Liu and Fang 2017) It is therefore noted that ‘effectively understanding other cultures requires adequate comprehension of one’s own home culture’ (Liu and Fang 2017, 33) Home culture should also be regarded as an integral component in English language teaching and learning.

Under such circumstances, the identity and ideological debate in relation to how English should be positioned in the Chinese context will be prolonged in the foreseeable future (Ramanathan2013; Gil2016; Fang2018) Therefore, it is important to learn the norms of non-native speakers of English for effective communication (Pennycook

1994/2017), to re-evaluate the debate of identity and ideology concerning the English language as a lingual franca, and to confront the native-oriented ideology (Blommaert

2010; Fang2018).

3 Methods

3.1 Context and participants

This ethnographic case study was conducted in five high schools in mainland China, within afive-month teaching practicum program of twenty-two preservice EFL teachers who were also fourth-year English majors at a Chinese teacher’s university During the teaching practicum, student teachers attend the high schools three times a week, where they observe or co-teach with their mentor and participate in a weekly seminar on critical intercultural pedagogy with their teacher educator As their teacher educator, the author, along with her graduate assistant, accompanied the students throughout their practicum program and conducted the ethnographic study that included observing their classes for 5 months (covering one academic semester), keeping classroom observation field notes, conducting teacher interviews, and analyzing diary entries as well as relevant documents and artifacts The host schools are located in the downtown in a metropolitan city of Northern China and comprise mostly Chinese EFL students and some EFL lear-ners of other nationalities such as Korea, Japan, Thailand, and Malaysia.

To enhance the academic rigor of the study, firstly, it is plausible to assume that intense ideological training in the Chinese educational context may have an impact on individuals’ ability to critically engage with their own cultural and linguistic practices This impact may manifest in various ways, such as reinforcing dominant ideologies, dis-couraging dissenting voices, or limiting alternative perspectives Secondly, it is essential to recognize the diverse cultural and linguistic practices within China, beyond the domi-nant Han-centric narrative The intense ideological training prevalent in the Chinese educational context may prioritize and promote the dominant Han-centric perspective, potentially marginalizing or suppressing alternative ways of knowing and representation Additionally, the policy of Sinicisation, which aims to promote a unified Chinese identity and culture, may inadvertently suppress or devalue non-Han centric ways of knowing and representation.

However, the integration of children’s literature as a pedagogical instrument in the intercultural course studied in this research provides a potential counterbalance to the impact of intense ideological training Children’s literature, by presenting diverse per-spectives and alternative ways of knowing and representing the world, can challenge dominant ideologies and encourage critical thinking Through exposure to different nar-ratives and cultural perspectives, the participants may have the opportunity to develop a more nuanced understanding of their own cultural and linguistic practices, and to criti-cally reflect on the dominant ideologies they have been exposed to.

3.2 Positionalities

At the time of the study, the author is a full-time EFL teacher educator at a university As a teacher educator and researcher, her involvement in the study has indeed entailed dynamic praxis of becoming an active participating member of the classroom commu-nity By engaging with alternative perspectives and encouraging critical reflection, the researcher aims to help the participants challenge hegemonic ideologies, develop reflex-ivity, and promote agency in their cultural and linguistic practices It is crucial for EFL teacher education programs to strategically incorporate such pedagogical approaches in order to fortify the discursive role of English in contesting hegemonic ideologies and advancing learners’ critical intercultural awareness.

3.3 Learner diaries

In thefield of foreign language education, keeping a diary for research purposes, has gained an increasing acceptance and advocacy since the late 1970s (Nunan and Bailey

2009) In a word, learner diaries, as a valuable information resource of qualitative data, maintain a regular record of learners’ thoughts, experiences, perceptions as well as their interpretations of texts and responses to curricular policies, or other important issues through self-observation or retrospection (Park 2003) Considering their inher-ently unrestricted nature of giving access to the participants’ voices, diary data play the central role of providing rich insights into learners’ life experiences and sociocultural backgrounds, thereby scrutinizing cognitive, affective, and instructional factors that have structured learning over time (Nunan and Bailey2009) Previous studies have indicated that proper scaffolding has to be provided before making entries consistently over time

when undertaking a diary study so that learners could deeply reflect on specific issues in the long term (Benson2001; Nunan and Bailey2009) The data presented here, however, are drawn from the diaries of six students, the content of which manifest a developing sense of agency and a profound understanding of dialogic and problem-posing methods (Freire1970/2005).

3.4 Data collection

Prior to accessing the diaries, the participants were provided with a detailed explanation of the study’s purpose, procedures, potential risks, benefits, and their rights as partici-pants They were also informed that their participation was voluntary and that they could withdraw at any time without consequences To protect the participants’ identities and maintain confidentiality, all diary entries were assigned unique codes or pseudonyms instead of using their real names The research study underwent a thorough ethical review process by the Human Research Ethics Committee at the university The research team remained vigilant in addressing any potential ethical issues that may have arisen during the study, such as safeguarding the participants’ emotional well-being and addres-sing any concerns they may have had.

All participants handed their diaries to the course assistant every four weeks In total, 452 entries were written in English and Chinese by 22 diarist during the five-month course All diary extracts have been translated from Chinese to English and were sub-sequently clarified through discussions with the students to verify their original meaning of certain entries when necessary Excerpts from the six selected diaries are pre-sented in thefindings section verbatim Two students’ practicum took place in the 11th

grade, whereas four students’ was in the 10thgrade.

3.5 Data analysis

It is important to acknowledge that research in educational settings often involves some degree of participant reactivity, where participants may alter their behavior or responses due to their awareness of being observed This is a common concern in qualitative research, particularly when studying a sensitive topic such as critical intercultural aware-ness development However, it is crucial to recognize that participant reactivity does not necessarily invalidate thefindings or diminish their value By creating a supportive and non-judgmental environment for self-expression, triangulating data from multiple sources, emphasizing the importance of genuine self-reflection, and acknowledging potential limitations and biases that may be present in the research design, researchers can strive to obtain authentic and valuable insights into the participants’ thoughts and experiences.

Bearing in mind how EFL education is embroiled in issues of power and social inequality (Canagarajah 1999/2002), this study aims to gain nuanced insights into the complexity of teaching English in Global South often characterized by different socio-political system, colonial legacy, and multiple linguistic and cultural repertoires This study was focused on two research points: (a) student teachers’ perceptions of this inter-cultural course organized around curricular materials such as textbooks and children’s

literature, and (b) their development of critical intercultural awareness during the course and practicum.

The combination of critical discourse analysis and ethnography is deemed as a reliable method in educational research with an emphasis on explicit rules of the arrangement and classification of data (Krzyzanowski 2011) While conducting critical discourse analysis, the diary entries were examined, consolidated, and categorized for familiariz-ation and coding The author read through data and assigned various names to specific words, sentences, patterns, ideas, thoughts or experiences in the data-set During familiarization, the diary data were also scrutinized and marked to identify recur-ring themes and patterns Furthermore, explicit accounts related to the different dimen-sions of critical communicative competence were counted and coded Negotiation, grouping, cross-checking and interpretation were conducted following in-depth close reading Finally, a synopsis of thefindings was written based on all the coded data.

4 Findings

4.1 Responding to Anglocentric ideologies, neoliberal discourse, and misrepresentations in children’s literature and EFL textbooks

A critical content analysis of EFL textbooks in China shows that most texts present nar-ratives and details that are immersed in Western values (Liu, Zhang, and May2022) As the diary entries show all the participants respond to problematic ideologies they associ-ate with the EFL textbooks they are compelled to use in their classes At the forefront of their critical evaluation of these textbooks stand explicit concerns about mandatory EFL textbooks and curricula in China that present somewhat biased Eurocentric perspectives and accounts In turn, the cultures of non-Western countries or underdeveloped countries in Southeast Asia, Africa, and Latin America are often excluded, stereotyped, or devalued A student teacher articulated her thoughts as follows:

The English language textbooks are all about Western culture, glorifying its enlightenment and industrial/technological progress There are few contents about Africa, India, Vietnam, Burma, Iraq and Latin America The few narratives that do exist tend to denigrate these countries as places in need of salvation or objects of exploitation, without respect for their cultures and histories (Liu Ying, diary entry 3)

Similarly, another preservice teacher pointed out students’ superficial understanding of Third world countries as shaped by Eurocentric mindset She articulated:

All students learn about during their whole lessons was the economic and political super-powers It is no wonder at all that students developed biased attitudes towards underdeve-loped countries Most students think that poor countries are the beings that need to be saved and rescued through charity and benevolence (Li Ming, diary entry 5)

Textbooks may serve to paradoxically reproduce prejudice, bias, and difference in spite of the claims of supporting cosmopolitan attributes and intercultural citizenship (Golding

2017) As shown above, the mandatory EFL textbooks along with tendencies toward the acceptance of Eurocentric superiority were identified as obstacles by student teachers when enacting critical intercultural education Deeply concerned about students’ stereo-typed viewpoints and uncritical perspectives as formulated by Eurocentric colonial

hegemony, student teachers in the study were motivated to implement critical global-oriented lessons in their classrooms However, due to some restrictive environmental elements, student teachers sometimes felt as though they had few genuine opportunities to teach what they wished to address, described as follows:

The status quo of the imbalanced cultural representations in the textbooks is likely to promote a narrow and reductionist view on world culture In particular, the marginalization or even absence of Chinese culture may lead to cultural aphasia for students, for example, a sense of cultural inequality or cultural inferiority It is a barrier to preparing students for future intercultural communication in terms of negotiating cultural differences and promot-ing intercultural understandpromot-ing Likewise, students would not have the opportunity to learn about the varieties of world Englishes, limiting their ability to reflect on both target culture and native culture so as to get a connection It also poses a big challenge to classroom prac-titioners, like me (Wang Xia, diary entry 8)

In the same vein, some student teachers wrote in the entries of their diaries about the misrepresentations of racial and cultural diversity when it came to selecting and using teaching materials Through assuming an agentive stance, they described the problematic cultural contents and unequal representation of race perceived as prevalent in children’s literature In this respect, they reflected:

In our small group project, we closely examined the works by Dr Seuss, whose children’s books have been very popular for more than half of a century We investigated the represen-tation of racial diversity in these books and were aghast tofind racial stereotypes and white supremacy prevalent in such well-known books as If I Ran the Zoo, And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street, and The Cat in the Hat Comes Back: the exaggerated thick lips, the quail-egg-like oval eyes, the derisive black accent, the slow-witted, lazy and buoyant image All the non-white characters are marginalized, subservient, barbaric, or exotic in the reference framework of white Europeans The Asians have slanted eyes, bright yellow skin, and long pigtails Racism is thus ingrained in people’s sub-consciousness through embodied stereotypes, reflecting the otherized imaginings of the Blacks (Lin Feng, diary entry 16)

Student teachers’ account of the problems they encounter when using EFL textbooks reinforce the researchfindings (e.g Ndura2004; Awayed-Bishara2021) that hegemonic discourses and exclusionary ideologies still dominate EFL curricular materials, exacer-bating the tensions between nationalizing and internationalizing agendas Through the predominance of western cultural values, EFL curricular materials utilize discursive devices that perpetuate a discourse of inequity, a lack of balanced multicultural represen-tations, and biased values Such tendency contributes to maintaining western hegemony while stifling the voices of marginalized populations Deng Yu shared her experiences with children’s books as EFL curricular materials:

More and more schools in China are adopting the literature-based instructional method in EFL education While I click on the list of English picture book bestsellers, 80% of them feature white Euro-Americans and the rest feature animals or without well-defined charac-ters I wonder, with such an imbalanced representation, what the impression of the world might be in the mind of children growing up in China, and what kind of world scenario they may conjure up concerning skin color and race A typical example is the popularity of English children’s books on Columbus These books present cut-and-dried portrayals, mostly glorifying Columbus as a heroicfigure who explored the new continent and discov-ered the new world, always avoiding the most unpardonable offenses ever committed

against American Indians I think by operating within this limited viewpoint, the materials never invite the learners to think about what happened to reduce Indian societies to the impoverished peasantry they are today They also rob students of the chance to appreciate how important American Indian ideas have been in the formation of the modern world Thus, they keep students from understanding what caused the world to develop as it is (Deng Yu, diary entry 12)

In view of the aforementioned scholarship of foreign language pedagogies on developing critical intercultural competences and the role of English as the international language, the abovefindings highlight the exclusionary ideologies prevalent in some EFL curricular materials including textbooks and English children’s literature Despite the hegemonic discourse, the paper argues that EFL education as a socio-political discursive practice constitutes a potentially unique educational platform for advancing a cultural politics of action, empowerment, and social justice To gain nuanced understandings of how EFL discourses could be transformed into the site of meaning making and contesting unequal power relations, the following subsection demonstrates how student teachers act against the discriminatory practices in an endeavor to advance critical intercultural consciousness and global citizenship.

4.2 Promoting Freirian methods of dialogicity and problem-posing

Through contesting the problematic cultural content of some of the texts they encounter in EFL curricular materials, student teachers act as active agents to confront the exclu-sionary practices these texts consolidate about other people and cultures Their agentive practices of problem-posing and dialogical critique are demonstrated in the excerpt fol-lowing a lesson Wu Xin taught about the American civil rights movement:

When I taught about the civil rights movement in the textbook along with The Youngest Marcher, I started my lesson asking students: What is the goal of the movement? What were African Americans fighting for? Who did create and enforce the laws responsible for segregation? When they realized the simplification of the Black freedom struggle narra-tive and the erasure of the violent and structural nature of oppression, I continued to ask them: What is the solution to the problem of racism as indicated in the ending? Why is the narrative simplified by centering food as the theme deserving remembrance? Who is the audience of these narratives? What are the consequences of representing an important historical event with such superficial accounts? These narratives aim to keep students ignor-ant of the past by shielding young people from the harsh realities of white supremacy Such simplistic narratives are pervasive in the teaching materials, thus perpetuating the illusion that the historical problem was solved in a happy ending and we are currently living in an equitable and color-blind society (Wu Xin, diary entry 20)

Drawing on students’ lived experiences, Wu Xin further guided them to draw parallels between global and local issues of poverty, economic exploitation, domestic violence, and discriminatory practices For example, Wu Xin introduced Beyond’s song Remember the Titans to his students to facilitate a discussion about racial segregation and interge-nerational transmission of poverty In the discussion, Wu Xin prompted,‘How is apart-heid designed in particular contexts? How to abolish the systemic racial segregation? How is poverty passed down across generations? What are the institutional factors that give rise to poverty?’