Books by Roslyn Appleby
Sexing the Animal in a Posthumanist World: A Critical Feminist Approach
Sexing the Animal in a Posthumanist World: A Critical Feminist Approach, 2019
This pioneering collection of essays unpacks the complex discursive and embodied relationships be... more This pioneering collection of essays unpacks the complex discursive and embodied relationships between humans and animals, contributing to a more informed understanding of both human-animal relations and the role of language in social processes. Focusing on the example of shark-human interactions, the book draws on forms of analysis from multimodality and critical discourse studies to examine the representations of this relationship across visual arts, popular media, and the natural sciences, each viewed through a critical feminist lens. The combined effect highlights the significance of the emergent turn to post-humanism in applied linguistics and its role in fostering more engaged discussions around broader contemporary social issues, including environmental degradation and climate change on the one hand, and resurgent feminism and challenges to normative heterosexuality on the other. Paving the way for new forms of writing and language for a post-anthropocentric age, this volume is essential reading for students and scholars in applied linguistics, gender studies, sociolinguistics, human-animal studies, and environmental humanities.
Men and Masculinities in Global English Language Teaching
This book looks at men, masculinity and heterosexuality in global English language teaching. It e... more This book looks at men, masculinity and heterosexuality in global English language teaching. It examines contemporary theories in masculinity studies, and applies these to issues such as the idealisation of white male bodies, the impact of male bonding, and the effects of marriage, singleness, and sexual desire on men’s personal lives and professional aspirations. It analyses a range of sources, including tales of adventurers and castaways, fictional characters in the arts and popular culture, and includes empirical studies of Western men teaching English in conversation schools and universities in Japan. Through these diverse approaches, the book explores many current concerns around teacher identity, gender and intercultural sexuality in a global industry.
ELT, Gender and International Development
For believers in the power of English, language as aid can deliver the promise of a brighter futu... more For believers in the power of English, language as aid can deliver the promise of a brighter future; but in a neocolonial world of international development, a gulf exists between belief and reality. Rich with echoes of an earlier colonial era, this book draws on the candid narratives of white women teachers, and situates classroom practices within a broad reading of the West and the Rest. What happens when white Western men and women come in to rebuild former colonies in Asia? How do English language lessons translate, or disintegrate, in a radically different world? How is English teaching linked to ideas of progress? This book presents the paradoxes of language aid in the twenty-first century in a way that will challenge your views of English and its power to improve the lives of people in the developing world.
Journal Articles by Roslyn Appleby
Literacy and Numeracy Studies: An international journal in the education and training of adults, 2020
This paper presents a case for the inclusion of human-animal relationships as a focus for adult l... more This paper presents a case for the inclusion of human-animal relationships as a focus for adult literacy education. It outlines the ways in which language is implicated in human alienation from nature in a modern technology-focused life, and discusses the effects of nature-deficit disorder on human well-being. It calls for an ‘entangled pedagogy’ that attends to stories of local wildlife, and points to the importance of such a pedagogy for particular groups of adult literacy learners, including international students, new migrants and recent refugees, who may be unfamiliar with the flora and fauna of their new environment. As an example of entangled pedagogy the paper presents ideas for literacy lessons based on the iconic Australian Magpie whose relationship with humans is, at times, problematic.
The critical project the authors propose overturns the assumptions of human centrality that have ... more The critical project the authors propose overturns the assumptions of human centrality that have underpinned much educational thought and practice, questions the ways in which the human and nonhuman are defined, and opens up new forms of engagement with the material, corporeal, and affective world. The authors ask how critical language studies can be rethought to incorporate a better understanding of the place of humans in the more-than-human world. They discuss the growing body of work that connects concern with the environment with other forms of political activism, particularly through an ecological feminist lens. Bringing this discussion back to focus on the place of language and pedagogy in human exceptionalism, the authors explore ways in which alternative understandings of human relations to the more-than-human material world can reorient the logocentricity of critical language studies toward different forms of critical engagement and entangled pedagogies.
This paper addresses the ways in which the teaching of English for academic purposes by 'Western'... more This paper addresses the ways in which the teaching of English for academic purposes by 'Western' teachers in Japanese higher education institutions is shaped by gender and sexuality. The paper draws on findings from a 5 year ethnographic study of white Western teachers of English in Japan. Drawing on interview data with 18 male participants, the paper points to the way elite status is attached to the teaching of English for academic purposes (TEAP) in contrast with teaching general English; the way TEAP is reproduced as a male-dominated activity among English-native-speaker teachers; and the way white Western men teaching in these contexts display an enhanced professional masculinity. Discourses articulated by the men also serve to position gendered Others as illegitimate or unworthy participants in TEAP. Although the men's accounts tend to frame TEAP as a rational, disembodied, asexual occupation, the paper argues that gender and sexuality are deployed as identity gatekeeping tools that serve to police the borders of academic English as an elite, male-dominated professional category. In closing, I make proposals for transformation of gendered hierarchies in this context, but these would require shifts in deep-seated cultural, institutional, and interpersonal gender ideologies.
TESOL Quarterly
Skyrocketing military spending, ongoing military conflicts, and human displacement worldwide have... more Skyrocketing military spending, ongoing military conflicts, and human displacement worldwide have significant consequences for the teaching and learning of English. TESOL increasingly requires a robust research base that can provide informed, critical guidance in preparing English language teachers for work in and near conflict zones, for teaching refugees and asylum seekers from conflict zones, and, more broadly, for teaching English in highly militarized times. This investigation, which takes the form of a transdisciplinary, translocal literature review, consolidates and extends TESOL’s peace–conflict studies through a close examination of two areas that are connected but rarely considered in tandem: TESOL’s multiple involvements and entanglements in armed and militarized conflicts and their aftermath; and the challenges of teaching English in a conflict zone or for students who have escaped or been exiled from one. Implications for pedagogy and further research are suggested. The argument is, in short: that the dialectical relationship between TESOL and conflict is in urgent need of collegial scrutiny, that teachers need to be equipped to facilitate critical and creative engagement with English not apart from broader sociopolitical realities but in relation to these, and that the teaching implications of conflict are relevant across the wider TESOL community, given world developments.
In a seminal book on researching language and identity, observed that 'an enormous proportion of ... more In a seminal book on researching language and identity, observed that 'an enormous proportion of all social research is conducted on populations of relatively powerless people' (p. 2). In research on teacher identity, this focus on socially and professionally disadvantaged, marginalised or vulnerable groups has changed little over succeeding decades. Within our profession, for example, a major focus in TESOL teacher identity research over recent years has been the marginalisation experienced by non--native--English--speaker (NNES) teachers and teachers of colour. In contrast, relatively little explicit attention has been paid to researching privilege -and its means of reproduction -as a factor in teacher identity. As a consequence, there are few explicit guidelines that help researchers when investigating and writing about teachers who may enjoy certain privileges inherent in the TESOL profession, including the privileges attached to whiteness, native--English--speaker (NES) status, and Inner Circle (Kachru 1997) origin.
Gender and Education, vol. 26, no. 7, pp. 776-793 , 2014
In research on gender and teaching in higher education, the experiences of male teachers as men, ... more In research on gender and teaching in higher education, the experiences of male teachers as men, and of whiteness in a non-majority-white context have received little attention. As one step towards addressing this gap in the literature, this paper analyses interview accounts of white Western men working as English language teachers in Japanese higher education. The paper demonstrates, first, ways in which disembodied academic identities are constructed by erasing the men’s racialised gender and sexuality. Second, it shows how favourable images of white Western male teachers are produced through a series of negative contrasts based on gender and race. Third, it suggests that men’s homosocial networks may serve to facilitate male predominance in the Japanese university system. The analysis contributes to current understandings about the construction of white Western masculinities in academic institutions, in international education, and in English language teaching as a globalised industry.
PORTAL Journal of Multidisciplinary International Studies, Feb 2013
This article reports on a study of Australian men and their accounts of living and working in Jap... more This article reports on a study of Australian men and their accounts of living and working in Japan as English language teachers. In this site, recent research has explored Japanese discourses of desire for the West, Western men, and English language learning. These patterns of desire have afforded white Western men a privileged personal and professional status in Japan, and enabled access to employment opportunities as teachers of English language. At the same time, white Western men working as English language teachers face the challenge of negotiating competing discourses that threaten their social status. In particular, their employment in a lowly-regarded profession and a reputation for sexual promiscuity potentially position Western male language teachers as the ‘white trash’ of Asia. My analysis of interview data focuses on the ways in which the men negotiate these discourses, and construct ‘respectable’ Western heterosexual masculinities by mobilising a binary distinction between singleness and marriage. Marriage to a Japanese spouse is presented as a bulwark against alignment with problematic discourses that threaten the status of white masculinity: it is associated with fidelity and maturity, and with integration into Japanese social, linguistic and professional communities. However, the articulation of marital status also reinforces a marginalised position for teachers who do not conform to heteronormative expectations.
TESOL Quarterly, Feb 2013
This article reports on a study of Western male English language teachers and considers the ways ... more This article reports on a study of Western male English language teachers and considers the ways in which their identities were shaped in relation to discourses of masculinity and heterosexuality. The article first argues that masculinity and heterosexuality have remained unmarked categories in research on TESOL teacher identities. It then draws on interview data with 11 White Australian men and considers the discourses of gender and sexuality in their accounts of English language teaching in Japanese commercial eikaiwa gakkô (English language conversation schools). The analysis suggests that although some enjoy the privileges that attach to being a White, Western male, they also struggle to negotiate the eikaiwa gakkô as a contact zone where the professional and personal, the educational and commercial, the pedagogical and the sexual coexist. In this ambiguous space, discourses of White male embodiment, and of sexualised desire between teacher and student, are perceived to be in conflict with discourses of an acceptable masculine professional identity, and may limit the professional and pedagogical aspirations of the male teachers. The article concludes that it is timely for conversations about gender and sexuality as aspects of professional identity to include accounts of masculinity and heterosexuality as integral to professional practice in TESOL.
This paper considers the gender positioning of white Australian women working on aid projects in ... more This paper considers the gender positioning of white Australian women working on aid projects in East Timor during the military and aid intervention of 2000-2002. Drawing on interviews with women employed in English language teaching programs, I compare the positions women adopted in relation to their engagement with men in the foreign intervention/occupation community and with men in the local Timorese community. From the women’s perspective, the intervention was constructed as patriarchal regime that carried the gendered legacy of an earlier colonial era. This context provided a challenging domain for women development workers, as they juggled often conflicting discourses of gender equality and cultural sensitivity in their relations with men in the community of foreign occupiers, and with local Timorese men. The women’s self positioning in relation to these two groups varied markedly: while they readily rejected the behaviour and attitudes of foreign men as sexist and patriarchal, their response to Timorese men was more complex and ambivalent, demonstrating an awareness of their own inappropriacy as foreign intruders in this space.
Journal and Proceedings of the Gender …, Jan 1, 2009
This paper considers the policing of gender as a dimension of English language teachers’ experien... more This paper considers the policing of gender as a dimension of English language teachers’ experiences in international development work. I argue that international development zones have tended to reproduce the patriarchal regimes of an earlier colonial era and provide a challenging context for a (mostly) feminised language teaching profession. Just as colonial space, away from the safety of home, was primarily constructed as a domain of masculine endeavour, so too contemporary development missions, particularly in areas designated as politically unstable, produce a masculine domain that marginalises ‘unruly others’ defined by gender and race.
Within Australian universities, language, literacy and communications (LLC) lecturers have often ... more Within Australian universities, language, literacy and communications (LLC) lecturers have often led a marginal existence: working in a traditionally female-dominated field, supporting marginalised students, focusing on pragmatic ‘skills’ rather than academic ‘content’, prioritising teaching at the expense of developing research. In light of these conditions, how do LLC lecturers define or describe a research agenda?
This paper explores some of the challenges faced by EAP teachers as they address gender issues th... more This paper explores some of the challenges faced by EAP teachers as they address gender issues that arise when teaching in a non-Western cultural context. It draws on interviews with four Australian teachers regarding their experiences in delivering EAP programs in East Timor as part of the international aid effort, and focuses on critical incidents in which gender was perceived as an issue in classroom practice. The paper discusses the ways in which teachers were navigated the competing claims of gender equity and cultural sensitivity in the pedagogic domain of the classroom. Four spatial paradoxes that frame the teachers’ narratives are presented as a counterpoint to conventional discourses of development, EAP and gender equality as temporal narratives of progress.
Roslyn Appleby is one of the featured speakers at the Gender Awareness in Language Education Spec... more Roslyn Appleby is one of the featured speakers at the Gender Awareness in Language Education Special Interest Group (GALE SIG) panel discussion on Negotiation/ Reinvention of Gender Globally during the upcoming JALT national conference. Appleby is a senior lecturer at the University of Technology in Sydney, Australia. Her areas of interest include language education and gender.
East Timor, Southeast Asia’s newest nation, has a centuries long history of colonial intervention... more East Timor, Southeast Asia’s newest nation, has a centuries long history of colonial intervention and indigenous resistance, and a remarkable heritage of indigenous and colonial languages. Following the vote for independence from Indonesia, the development of East Timor’s language policy was central to the emergence of a national identity. At this time, English was the language used by the United Nations Transitional Administration, international aid agencies and businesses, generating a strong demand for English language teaching supplied by expatriate Australians. Although Timorese students and Australian language teachers saw English as a means and goal of development, this paper suggests that rather than promoting empowerment, the orthodox practices of English language teaching more often replicated colonial relations that devalued local social, cultural and linguistic knowledge and practices.
TESOL …, Jan 1, 2002
This article highlights several issues of concern for language-indevelopment
programs through an ... more This article highlights several issues of concern for language-indevelopment
programs through an examination of different aspects of
such programs in three contexts: (a) the needs of Lao People’s
Democratic Republic (PDR) as it seeks greater integration with Southeast
Asia and the global economy; (b) the struggles over language
policy and education in East Timor, with its new mixture of economic
and political dependence and independence; and (c) the relationship
between local and external participants in a development project in
Cambodia. We argue that whereas countries such as Lao PDR seem to
have little choice in engaging in widespread English education, several
concerns emerge from East Timor and Cambodia: The discursive
context of development disallows participation both in the classroom
and in program development. By viewing their central concern as
language development rather than language in development, such programs
have frequently failed to confront the contexts in which they operate.
Together, these three contexts suggest that language development can
become language in development only when it faces up to these broad
political and discursive concerns.
Over recent decades, several key social and economic changes have affected the teaching of writin... more Over recent decades, several key social and economic changes have affected the teaching of writing in practice-based universities in Australia. This paper focuses on one of these changes; the impact of a ‘new vocationalism’ (Dovey 2006) on the type of assessment tasks designed in faculties, and on the type of written texts that students produce. These tasks aim to bring together academic and professional knowledges to address issues and problems that students might expect to face in the workplace. Working collaboratively and reflecting on learning are critical to these tasks. The written texts that students produce are intended for a dual academic/professional audience and are typically ‘hybrid’ in style. The paper discusses examples of writing tasks in humanities and engineering faculties that aim to address both the immediate needs of students who are learning to write within the academy and their long-term need to write for their professional careers.
Because of the power and spread of the English language, English teachers can find themselves wor... more Because of the power and spread of the English language, English teachers can find themselves working in a great diversity of situations in so-called ‘developing’ countries. Development projects may view the teaching of English as simply a transfer of universal language skills for technical, vocational or academic purposes that can be accomplished with a limited amount of adaptation to the local context. However, English teachers may find that the local context in which they are teaching is a perplexing and tumultuous tangle of political, social, historical and economic forces and that English language is woven into this complexity. In the spaces between colonialism, emerging nationalism and encroaching globalisation, I think one of the challenges we face is to know what to do with these contesting discourses in the relatively autonomous space of the classroom.
Uploads
Books by Roslyn Appleby
Journal Articles by Roslyn Appleby
programs through an examination of different aspects of
such programs in three contexts: (a) the needs of Lao People’s
Democratic Republic (PDR) as it seeks greater integration with Southeast
Asia and the global economy; (b) the struggles over language
policy and education in East Timor, with its new mixture of economic
and political dependence and independence; and (c) the relationship
between local and external participants in a development project in
Cambodia. We argue that whereas countries such as Lao PDR seem to
have little choice in engaging in widespread English education, several
concerns emerge from East Timor and Cambodia: The discursive
context of development disallows participation both in the classroom
and in program development. By viewing their central concern as
language development rather than language in development, such programs
have frequently failed to confront the contexts in which they operate.
Together, these three contexts suggest that language development can
become language in development only when it faces up to these broad
political and discursive concerns.