doing culture, doing race

This article was downloaded by: [Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile]On: 29 April 2015, At: 10:11Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registeredoffice: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

Click for updates

Journal of Multilingual andMulticultural DevelopmentPublication details, including instructions for authors andsubscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rmmm20

Doing culture, doing race: everydaydiscourses of culture and culturaldifference in the English as a secondlanguage classroomEna Leeaa Faculty of Education, Simon Fraser University, 8888 UniversityDrive, Burnaby, BC V5A 1S6 CanadaPublished online: 14 Mar 2014.

To cite this article: Ena Lee (2015) Doing culture, doing race: everyday discourses of culture andcultural difference in the English as a second language classroom, Journal of Multilingual andMulticultural Development, 36:1, 80-93, DOI: 10.1080/01434632.2014.892503

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01434632.2014.892503

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (theContent) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis,our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as tothe accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinionsand views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors,and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Contentshould not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sourcesof information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims,proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever orhowsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arisingout of the use of the Content.

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Anysubstantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing,systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms &

Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

Dow

nloa

ded

by [P

ontif

icia U

nivers

idad C

atolic

a de C

hile]

at 10

:11 29

Apr

il 201

5

Doing culture, doing race: everyday discourses of culture andcultural difference in the English as a second language classroom

Ena Lee*

Faculty of Education, Simon Fraser University, 8888 University Drive, Burnaby, BC V5A 1S6Canada

While current conceptualisations of the inextricable connection between language andculture in English language education are largely informed by complex socioculturaltheories that view culture as constructed in and through social practices among people,classroom practices continue to be influenced by mainstream discourses of culture thatsimplistically construct essentialised cultural/racialised identities. This article will pres-ent data excerpts from a case study of a Canadian university -based English as asecond language (ESL) programme that specifically emphasised in its pedagogical andcurricular design the significance of learning language through culture and a processof cultural analysis. In various classrooms observed, however, the programmesdialogic approach to culture most often manifested as cross/intercultural comparisonsof cultural difference. The potential danger of this pedagogical approach to culture inthe ESL classroom, however, arises with a contextualisation of the English languagein broader identity politics namely, the equating of the English language withWhiteness where discourses of culture can become a proxy for race. Seeminglyinnocuous everyday common-sense discussions of culture in second languageeducation may thus construct identities in problematic ways. It is therefore imperativefor us to critically reflect on how our pedagogies may be doing race through doingculture in the ESL classroom.

Keywords: ESL; culture; cultural difference; race; racialisation; identity

Introduction

We do race, all of us, every day.The challenge we face now is to learn how to stop doing race. (Moya and Markus 2010, 92)

Interest in and inquiry into the topic of race and racialisation in applied linguistics haveincreased since the publication of the 2006 special topics issue of TESOL Quarterly onRace and TESOL (edited by Ryuko Kubota and Angel Lin), as well as edited booksfocusing on race and language education by Curtis and Romney (2006) and Kubota andLin (2009). In all of these collected works, race is viewed as a social, rather than abiological, construction of essences. Race is theorised as a process of meaning makingand identity making that is situated in and manifests through discursive practices. Moyaand Markus (2010) argue that race do[es] important personal and societal work (21).It is a complex system of ideas and practices regarding how some visible characteristicsof human bodies such as skin color, facial features, and hair texture relate to peoples

*Email: [email protected]

Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 2015Vol. 36, No. 1, 8093, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01434632.2014.892503

2014 Taylor & Francis

Dow

nloa

ded

by [P

ontif

icia U

nivers

idad C

atolic

a de C

hile]

at 10

:11 29

Apr

il 201

5

character, intellectual capacity, and patterns of behavior (22). The concept of racism thusdescribes discrimination rooted in the perceived meaning(s) of particular visiblecharacteristics of human bodies.

It is safe to assume (one hopes) that in the year 2013, few would argue against a callto end racism. But in actual practice, race, as a set of ideas and practices, is done everyday and can manifest subtly in speech acts of the everyday commonsense; yet, thiseveryday talk is oftentimes not associated with or similarly named as racism thoughthey are rooted in the same discursive process of constructions of identity based onphenomenology. For example, while research on the native/non-native speaker prolifer-ates in applied linguistics, the research of Amin (1997, 1999) and Shuck (2006) has beenamong the very few to disrupt the common-sense linguistic categorisation of the term toquery it, instead, as primarily a racial categorisation. Other supposedly linguisticphenomena such as Standard English/Standard American (Bonfiglio 2002) and accent-edness (Lippi-Green 1997) have been similarly resituated in a discussion of race andracialisation rather than merely linguistic theory. Race-based theorisations along theselines, however, do not predominate in our field, and as such the (un)raveling [of] racismin a nice field like TESOL (Kubota 2002) continues to remain far less common.

Critical questioning of the equating of English with Whiteness can seem particularlythreatening to those deeply invested (and with good intentions) in a field deep-rooted inhistorical legacies of the colonial project, but we must be wary of leading ourselves tobelieve in the possibility (and the desirability) of divorcing (and/or at least distancing)ourselves and our practices from this history under the guise of an entering into the post-eraof colonialism. Similarly, liberal discourses of multiculturalism, equality and tolerance suchas those prevalent in the Canadian context of multicultural diversity lull us into complacencythat we have moved away from these dark pasts, but have we genuinely moved to morecritically aware spaces, or have we merely languaged our way out of the shadows of the pastwhile remaining subject to its discourses and common-sense notions?

In this article, I present data excerpts from case study research of an English as asecond language (ESL) programme located within a post-secondary institution inmulticultural Canada. The programme emphasised the interconnections between thecomplex learning of the English language through more deep understandings of alanguages culture (Canadian,1 in this case). This belief about language teaching andlearning manifested in the programmes pedagogical (and philosophical) approach toEnglish language instruction that emphasised a process-driven critical dialogical approachto learning language and culture informed specifically by literature from critical theoryand cultural studies (e.g. Freire 1973; Kramsch 1993; Rosaldo 1993, among others)2.Cultural understanding along these lines was conceptualised as an analytical skill ratherthan as discrete cultural facts to be learned. The everyday discourses of culture andcultural difference as they manifested on the ground of this ESL programme whether itwould be in the classrooms, in the hallways or in the meeting rooms however, entailed aracialised production of English language student (and teacher) bodies. Discourses ofculture within the programme, at times, thus served as a proxy for the notion of race.

Previous publications (Lee 2008, 2011) based on this case study analysed how Asianstudents and an Asian instructor experienced racial discrimination in their everydayinteractions with students, teachers and coworkers at Pacific Universitys ESLprogramme.3 In these previous analyses, research participants recounted experiencingovert racism at the programme specifically attributed to the process of being racialised asthe cultural (and, I argue, racial) Other. In the present article, however, I am interested in

Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 81

Dow

nloa

ded

by [P

ontif

icia U

nivers

idad C

atolic

a de C

hile]

at 10

:11 29

Apr

il 201

5

focusing more closely on how the more seemingly innocuous but, arguably more perni-cious due to its subversiveness, everyday common-sense discourses of culture andcultural difference served to racialise without race (cf. Bonilla-Silva 2010). I hold thebelief that the overt racial discrimination observed in other data excerpts from this casestudy was able to manifest in liberal multicultural Canadian ESL classrooms preciselybecause of the common-sense racialisations that occurred at the programme on a dailybasis. It is thus in the more complex understandings of how everyday common-sensediscourses of culture, cultural difference and cultural identities are talked into being thatwe can see the connections of how doing culture can, in the racialised context of ESLeducation, serve to do race.

Doing culture, doing race?Contemporary antiracist theory highlights how the naming of race is no longer necessarywhen talking about race; rather, we do race through our everyday speech andbehaviours a racism without racists, as Bonilla-Silva (2010) compellingly argues.Markus and Moya (2010) introduce the concept of doing race as follows:

Race is not something that people or groups have or are, but rather a set of actions thatpeople do. More specifically, race is a dynamic system of historically derived andinstitutionalized ideas and practices. Certainly, the process involved in doing race takesdifferent forms in various times and places. But doing race always involves creating groupsbased on perceived physical and behavioral characteristics, associating differential power andprivilege with these characteristics, and then justifying the resulting inequalities. (x, emphasisin original)

In connection with the doing of race, however, antiracist theorists further posit theevolution of the notion of culture as a proxy for race (Ladson-Billings 2006; Reiter andDavis 2011), where race is a metonym for culture; and it does so only at the price ofbiologising what is culture or ideology (Appiah, as cited in Gonzlez 2004, 19). Byrevealing how the everyday terminology of culture and cultural difference enables anavoidance of the clearly more controversial terminology of race, these theorists and othersargue that the work of race is able to continue to pervade invisibly in our everydayclassroom discourses.

Kubota and Lin (2009), by the same token, have cautioned that analyses of culturaldifference in the context of second language education can be used to differentiate,exclude, or privilege certain groups of people. Therefore, issues of culture can beinvestigated with the understanding that they are often implicitly and yet profoundlyconnected to the idea of race (5, emphasis in original; cf. Ellwood 2009). As such,I argue that it is in the pervasiveness of the unquestioned everyday talk of culture thatrace continues to be produced in ESL classrooms in multicultural Canada. In this vein,I apply Markus and Moyas (2010) theory of doing race as a relevant heuristic in ananalysis of how we may similarly do culture or cultural difference in the field of TESOLand how, in an ESL classroom, the doing of culture can inadvertently become a doingof race.

But in order to more clearly see how discursive processes of doing culture may bedoing race within the specific context of English language education, it is necessary toreview how conceptualisations of culture in applied linguistics have shifted over time andhow these theoretical shifts have (or have not) impacted language classroom practices onthe ground.

82 E. Lee

Dow

nloa

ded

by [P

ontif

icia U

nivers

idad C

atolic

a de C

hile]

at 10

:11 29

Apr

il 201

5

Culture in language educationLanguage education has long been interested in investigating the inextricable linkbetween language and culture and the pedagogical applications of notions of culture insecond language teaching and learning. Although scholars in applied linguistics and otherrelated fields have long rejected modernist static, monolithic views of culture in favour ofmore postmodern views that highlight multiplicity, fluidity and hybridity (e.g. Ilieva2000, 2001; Kramsch 1993, 1998; Kubota 1999, 2003), such views are not entirelyreflected in actual language-teaching contexts. This is partly due to a practical concern ofinstructional strategies for understanding culture of the self and other in languageclassrooms. Michael Byram (2008), for instance, argues:

national identities are perceived as linked to if not created by national language and traditionsof teaching have made this assumption. Teachers thus feel most comfortable with the notionof national cultureeven if they have to be wary of national stereotypesand as long as it istreated as a starting point that is later problematised, knowledge about a national culture is anappropriate means to an end. All pedagogy needs simplification, followed by refinement andcomplexity. (248, Note 22)

In the late 1990s, Byram introduced intercultural communicative competence (ICC) atheorisation of culture as it applies to foreign language education. ICCs theorisation ofculture and understanding cultural incompatibilities implicates constructions of culturein coherent and knowable nation-state identities. The focus on identifiable practices,perspectives and products of national cultures(s) is envisioned as a means to understandand empathise with the values of others that are incompatible with ones own (Byram2008, 69). However, Angouri (2010) warns that a nation-state driven conceptualisationof culture and cultural identity cannot avoid reducing culture to a set of standardisedcommonalities which fails to capture the dynamics of the discursive construction ofnational identities (209; see also Dhamoon 2009; Kubota 1999, 2004; Sharma 2008).Conceptualisations of culture that collapse cultural and racial identity with nation-stateidentity reinforce how culture is always associated with borders (Blommaert andVerschueren 1998, 94, emphasis in original; cf. Holliday 2009, 2010). Thus, we see howICCs exploration of fixed nation-state cultures of the self/other through doing culture canbe used to discursively produce, rather than explore and analyse, these cultural bordersand [in]compatibilities.

Furthermore, a pedagogical shift from examinations of national identities toexplorations of cultural complexities may be challenging if there is a significant lackof understanding or consensus of what culture actually means, how to teach educators about it, and the ways in which such concepts should be addressed in theclassroom (Reiter and Davis 2011, 41). More importantly, however, there is fundamentaldanger for any aspect of education to place primary emphasis on what teachers feel mostcomfortable with. In the context of learning about constructions of difference,Kumashiro (2004, 84) questions how the comfortableness and desire to learn aboutdifferences stem from its allowance for us to continue to focus our gaze on them andnot really change how we think about us. Further, Motha (2006) more generally raisesconcerns about the function of discourses of comfort and safety in education, particularlyin relation to addressing issues of racism and oppression, as the consequences of thisteacher comfort may, for example, be the continued doing of race through the morecomfortable means of doing culture in the ESL classroom.


Dow

nloa

ded

by [P

ontif

icia U

nivers

idad C

atolic

a de C

hile]

at 10

:11 29

Apr

il 201

5

Despite the critiques articulated above, nation-based understanding of culture isprevalent in the language classroom (e.g. Menard-Warwick 2008, 2009). As Wilcox(2007) observes, even in light of recent research pointing to the heterogeneousand fragmented nature of culture and its relationship to language learning, common-sensical mainstream conceptions continue to inform how teachers and studentsnegotiate the heteroglossic landscape of the language classroom (280). Hence, whilethe significance of culture as well as the will and intention to recognise and respectthe cultures of ESL students may be a pedagogical and philosophical given, what isless common sense, I would argue, is awareness that the ESL classroom is a site inwhich nation-based cultures and racialisation are constructed through doing cultureand doing race. In an ESL programme in multicultural Canada, where a common-sense notion of Canadian culture is inherently connected with Whiteness (Bannerji2000; Fleming 2003, 2010; Ng 1993), doing culture in the classroom is likely tobecome synonymous to drawing a racial line between Whiteness (Canadianness) andotherness (non-Canadianness).

A dialogic approach to language and culture in a Canadian ESL programme

Research setting

This case study was conducted over the course of one year (four academic semesters of12 weeks each, spanning from March 2003 to March 2004) at Pacific Universitys ESLprogramme, located within the Continuing Studies department of a major Canadianuniversity. Research participants included three administrative staff, 14 instructors and87 students. Student participants came from a number of different countries, but reflectiveof the overall student population in the programme, the vast majority of the studentsparticipating in my study (over 50%) originated from mainland China. In contrast, all ofthe administrative staff and all but three instructors (specifically, one Chinese male, oneChinese female and one Japanese female) were white.

The programme distinguished itself from other English language programmes by itsopenly stated dissatisfaction with traditional ESL pedagogies. Its pedagogy was basedon the belief that knowledge of linguistic structures does not provide language learnerswith the skills needed to communicate effectively. The programmes pedagogicalapproach recognised that meaning exists not only in a languages words and grammar,but also in its social and cultural contexts. With this in mind, the belief was that broadercultural understandings behind language would provide students with the additionaltools needed for communication. The programmes central focus lay in its process-driven critical dialogic approach to a messier analysis of culture along the lines ofSilbersteins (2003) concept of contradiction (328). The research questions thuslooked into how a critical dialogic approach to culture was conceptualised andnegotiated within the programme. I was further interested in investigating the pedago-gical possibilities as well as limitations of this conceptualisation of culture in theESL classroom.

To initially contextualise the research questions, I analysed programme documentsincluding marketing materials as well as curricular documents that were the basis forprofessional development within the programme.4 One of the latter documents includedan instructor manual, wherein the programmes pedagogical approach was articulatedmore in depth:

84 E. Lee

Dow

nloa

ded

by [P

ontif

icia U

nivers

idad C

atolic

a de C

hile]

at 10

:11 29

Apr

il 201

5

The instructor provides the material/problem and challenges students to find/solve theproblems of meaning or interpretation through dialogue.Meaning in the target language arises when the students cultural/personal values &assumptions are acknowledged and appropriately challenged in direct relation to those ofthe target culture.In a dialogic approach, instructors must be open to exploring and challenging their ownvalues & assumptions. If instructors are not open to doing this, there is the tendency toinfantilize students. In addition, the racism; heterosexism; ablism and classim [sic] we allfilter through goes unexplored and worse yet, is transmitted to students. (instructors manual04-1, 8)

The above articulation of the programmes target language (i.e. English) and relatedtarget culture (i.e. Canadian culture), however, already indexes nation-state borders andthe cultural incompatibilities that Byram (2008) theorises. Counter to the theoreticalframeworks upon which the programme was supposed to be based (i.e. critical dialogicinquiry), programme documentation seemed unable to escape the common-sensediscourses of culture it hoped to separate itself from.

Excerpts from classroom observations at Pacific Universitys ESL programmebetween three white Canadian instructors and their ESL students (the vast majority ofthem, visible minorities) illustrate how culture and cultural identity were thus talked intobeing through everyday discourses of cultural difference. Querying the common-sensediscourses of culture as they manifested within the programme simultaneously sheds lighton how culture is done on a daily basis, how natural doing culture can be and how doingculture can essentialise cultural identities and cultural difference around notions of selfand/versus other in ways that can be analysed simultaneously as doing race.

Problematising everyday discourses of culture and cultural differenceAlthough the programme espoused a dialogic approach to the analysis of language andculture, classroom practices often took the form of essentialising processes of culturalcomparison. At the forefront of this comparative inquiry was the identification of culturaldifference between the students cultural groups and, most often, between the culturesof the students and that of the target language culture (i.e. Canadian culture). Discoursesof Kaplans (1966) much critiqued contrastive rhetoric were used to describe howstudents written compositions reflected the Asian way of writing, and discourses of thecultural expert/ambassador were prominent in processes of cultural inquiry duringclassroom discussions (e.g. How does this compare to your country?; Do guys thinklike that in your country?; What about in China?; What about in Canada?). Theeveryday discourses of cultural inquiry in many of the classrooms I observed werepervaded by crosscultural reifications of nation-state identities. Of particular importanceto note, however, was that this reification of cultural (and racial) identities was not alwaysinitiated by classroom instructors; rather, even during classroom activities when studentswere responsible for facilitating the dialogic inquiry process, reproduction of crossculturalessentialisations continued to predominate.

Julie, an instructor in the programme, often relied on crosscultural inquiry in thedevelopment of cultural awareness and understanding in her classrooms. Throughout myobservations, however, underlying this line of inquiry was an assumption of difference that there was an expectation of cultural otherness that would arise through this process ofdialogic cultural inquiry. For example, for her TV News class, pairs of students wereassigned to facilitate class discussions on a Canadian news story of their choosing.


Dow

nloa

ded

by [P

ontif

icia U

nivers

idad C

atolic

a de C

hile]

at 10

:11 29

Apr

il 201

5

During one particular classroom observation (12 August 2003), a pair of students choseto lead a discussion on a TV news clip addressing the Mad Cow scare that had recentlyarisen.5 The news clip discussed the impact of Mad Cow on the pricing (both wholesaleand retail costs) of beef and the impact of the scare on international exportations. Alongthe lines of the everyday discourses of culture I observed in Julies classroom throughoutthe study, one of the student presenters, Rei, a student from Japan, posed the question tothe class, If Canadian government announce the safety of Canadian beef and offer us lowprices, do you think your country should import the Canadian beef?

The languaging of Reis question collapses individual student perspectives as arepresentation of homogeneous nation-state sensibilities (i.e. do you think yourcountry). But as Holliday, Hyde, and Kullman (2004) argue, we need to cease theprocess of essentialisation and take what people say about their own culture as a personalobservation which should not be generalised to other people who come from the samebackground (48; see also Holliday 2010). Reis perpetuation of a discourse of thecultural representative became further evident in this classroom interaction when shenoted a lack of response from Tamara, the only other Japanese student (aside from Rei) inthe class of 16 students. Reis observation prompts her to specifically ask, What aboutJapan?, a question immediately taken up by Julie, who responds by visibly shifting herbody and gaze towards Tamara to pointedly ask, The representative from Japan? (towhich Tamara begins to stammer, I dont know. Umm), Because you know Japan isnot importing Canadian beef, right? Crosscultural analyses such as that observed inJulies class, however, highlight how cultural truths can be produced. As Harklau (1999)explains:

when instructors dichotomize culture, they may implicitly suggest that they view American[or Canadian] cultural perspectives and students cultural perspectives as mutually exclusive.Furthermore, because of teachers dominant role in the classroom, that implicit view is notlikely to be challenged. Rather, it is likely to be reproduced in the writing of students, whocome to believe that teachers expect them to emphasize the foreign, the different. (117)

I came to question the relationship between this expectation of producing culturalforeignness with the one-dimensional analyses of culture observed by another instructor,Rose, who found students unfailingly reproducing cultural essentialisations in theirwritten work even at the end of semester.

According to Rose, very, very few students by the end of semester at the programmegot it (slim to none were her exact words); rather, she expressed disappointment in theprogrammes ability to engage students in a process of cultural analysis where studentscould look at comparisons in culture and make sense of it without reverting tostereotypes. She lamented:

What are we actually doing in terms of discussing cultural difference and getting somewherewith these discussions? To me, they [students final assignments] showed a sense of thefailure of the program in dealing with these issues. (Rose, Instructor, Interview 22March 2004)

Harklaus (1999) observation that students may be socialised into the common-sensediscourses of culture espoused by their instructors, however, can serve to complicateunderstandings of the phenomena Rose observes. For another possible reading ofstudents productions of cultural understanding could be that students have come to learnhow culture and cultural analysis is done at Pacific Universitys ESL programme.

86 E. Lee

Dow

nloa

ded

by [P

ontif

icia U

nivers

idad C

atolic

a de C

hile]

at 10

:11 29

Apr

il 201

5

Specifically, crosscultural analyses bear assumptions of often-diametrically opposedidentities.

As Blommaert and Verschueren (1998) expand:

the way in which others are depicted is never to be dissociated from collective or individualperspectives, influenced or determined by an habitual frame of reference, power relation-ships, personal stakes and motivations culture is used to explain or justify images of oropinions on the other which are generated by factors outside the others culture. (16)

The spaces in which we inhabit as well as those who inhabit these spaces with us thusfundamentally shape how those being ascribed view (or can possibly view) themselveswithin these identity creations (Moya and Markus 2010, 19). However, race isdiscursively subsumed under discussions of language and culture within the raciallymarked space of a Canadian ESL classroom; thus, when normative assumptions ofcultural difference position non-Canadian student identity vis-a-vis Canadian teacheridentity, students quickly come to understand what racialised identities and culturalcharacteristics are possible to do/not do.

The way in which culture is languaged in everyday talk does more than merelydescribe our understandings about culture it concomitantly produces culture (Gonzlez2004, 22) and by extension race. The common-sense constructions of culture in PacificUniversity classrooms talk cultural difference into being, further objectifying the other(Kumashiro 2004, 83), and this repetition of the production of difference reinforces thenormative doing of racialised bodies and scripts within its spaces.

Producing racialised identities through everyday discourses of cultureIn another classroom observed, Monique, a critical reading and writing instructor, askedstudents to introduce their final essay topic to their classmates in the form of an oralpresentation. By presenting their argumentative strategy for their essay as a work-in-progress, the intention was for each student to receive feedback to help them assess theoverall viability of their topic, clarity of their thesis statement and quality of theirarguments. This process would help students improve upon their final paper and providethem with an opportunity to practise their peer feedback skills as well as presentationskills. Judy, a student from Japan, revealed to her peers that the recent loss of her pet priorto her arrival in Canada led to her interest in the essay topic of pet loss. MuYun, a studentfrom China, and Jean Phillipe, a white student from France, attempt to engage Judy ina discussion of the small cultures of pet loss, but Moniques facilitation appears toconceptualise the culture of pet loss alternatively:

Judy: Im going to write about, uh, how do people cope with pet loss. Andmy statement, uh, is it could be possible to forget it. But I think its stillgeneral.

Monique: So, Judy, you feel like your thesis statement is too general. Does anybody elsehave any suggestions about how she could make it more specific, or?

MuYun: I think, uh, the pet loss for Canadian is there are, like, two kind of people. One istreat their cat like a, like a person. A human. And maybe it have some ill or tooold, so they dont want their, like, die or, like, hurt or something, and then theyput it in sleep. Some people just like, uh, like a chore, like a body and you keepit and you help it. But one day, maybe you cant keep it, you just put it to sleep.


Dow

nloa

ded

by [P

ontif

icia U

nivers

idad C

atolic

a de C

hile]

at 10

:11 29

Apr

il 201

5

Monique: So youre saying that some Canadians have two different attitudes about pets.

MuYun: You can compare these two or found, uh, which way should we really chooseor, like, treat your pet.

Monique: Okay. So maybe we can pick up on what MuYun is suggesting a little bit, and,and Judy, you might want to talk about the cultural differences.

Judy: Oh, but, I, I think there is, um, there is not much cultural differences and thatpeople are

Monique: betweenJudy: between Japanese or any other countries.Monique: OkayJudy: The feelings are the sameMonique: OkayJudy: soMonique: Do you think thats an issue worth exploring? If the feelings are the same, if

people treat their pets the same throughout different cultures, or do you thinkthats, thats too self-evident?

Jean Phillipe: I think she, um, I do not agree if she do like you said.Monique: Why not?Jean Phillipe: Because its not the topic. Its not this topic. Its not about country, just about

the feeling. I think maybe its aboutMonique: How can youJean Phillipe: what, whatMonique: OkayJean Phillipe: kind of relationship or what kind of thing dogs can bring you in your life.

And after, you can have a conclusion about if you loss, its can beMonique: Do you think its the same in every culture?

(Monique, Critical Reading and Writing, 21 August 2003)

When the suggestion is made by Monique (and, initially, MuYun, a student frommainland China) to turn the lens of analysis on cultural differences regarding pet loss,Judy appears clearly confused by this essentialisation of her argument. As a result, shequestions (albeit hesitantly) the proposed shift in her focus, unconvinced that this is themost fruitful direction for her intended argument. The process through which the topic ofpet loss was culturally appropriated (cultural difference, different cultures, same inevery culture) and subsequently retranslated by Monique was counter to the direction ofJudys desired argumentation, which was, in part, to speak of the universality of griefsurrounding pet loss among pet owners regardless of culture. In asking whether it wouldbe possible for people to forget the loss of their pet, Judy seems to want to imply not onlythat the process is an emotionally difficult one, but also that the process applies to anyonewho has ever experienced pet loss (i.e. not just to pet owners in Japan or to those inCanada, etc.). The proposed shift in discourse from the universality of pet loss to anation-state conceptualisation subsequently prompts Jean Phillipe, a student from France,to openly challenge the need to essentialise feelings of pet loss as geographically bound(Its not about country). Instead, Judy, MuYun and Jean Phillipe seek to identify thesmall cultures of pet loss, rather than a unified account of large national culture(Holliday 1999, 2009), in their critical cultural analysis association with these smallcultures enabled them to transcend national culture differences (Holliday 2009, 147).

The agency to transcend constructions of difference, however, was made challengingby Monique within the above excerpt as the repeated common-sense discourse thatbehaviours were situated in nation-state identities served to reproduce the discursivestrength of cultural incompatibilities (cf. Byrams ICC) and the impermeability of cultural

88 E. Lee

Dow

nloa

ded

by [P

ontif

icia U

nivers

idad C

atolic

a de C

hile]

at 10

:11 29

Apr

il 201

5

borders. Students identities were discursively constructed vis-a-vis the (white) Canadianimaginary, and the strength of discourses of difference made alternate identity positioningunavailable. Thus, from both of the above classroom excerpts, it could be argued thatinhabitable identities within the programmes everyday discourses of culture and culturaldifference were synonymous with the performativity of Asian otherness.

Central to Butlers (1990, 1993) theory of performativity is the constitution of identitythrough the socially constructed doing (rather than an essentialised being) of identities.Specific to her theorisation, Butler addresses how gender is talked into being over time andis performed according to the discourses which pre-existed prior to ones performance ofthem. Normalisation of this gendered identity gains traction through the repetition of theperformance. Cameron (1995) has argued, however, that aside from gender:

we could substitute any apparently fixed and substantive social identity label what Butleris saying is that such social identities do not simply exist (they only have the appearance ofsubstance); rather they are brought into being when social actors repeatedly performthem. (16)

Doing culture and doing race, therefore, may be analysed through the same performativelenses as doing gender, and for this reason, Butlers theory of performativity offersimportant insights into the production of race through everyday discourses of culture andcultural difference in the ESL classroom.

Dervin (2010) cautions that if we are to understand culture as socially constructed andperformed within spaces of unequal power, any declaration of cultural truism should beviewed with caution. In the case of Pacific Universitys ESL programme, for example, itcould be argued that students were socialised into the performance of other throughinternalisations of nationalist and inherently racialised conceptualisations ofdifference. The notion of socialisation into the discourse of Asian otherness is importantto consider in the light of Butlers (1990) emphasis on the importance of repetition inconstruction of identity and performativity. She highlights that gender is the repeatedstylization of the body, a set of repeated acts within a highly rigid regulatory frame thatcongeal over time to produce the appearance of substance, of a natural sort of being (33).Discursive interactions in ESL classrooms such as those observed in my case study createthe identity of the Asian other, where a student becomes the cultural and racial otherthrough the repeated stylisation and talking into being of cultural difference or otherness.As Cameron (1995) explains, the repetition is necessary to sustain the identity, preciselybecause it does not exist outside the acts that constitute it (17). Thus, repetition ofdiscourses of the cultural other (i.e. students cultural/racial identities vis--vis that oftheir white, Canadian instructors) through everyday culture talk reinforces the strengthof these identities. And within the context of this multicultural Canadian ESLprogramme, generally, because everyday talk about culture was based on the distinctionsbetween the students cultures and Canadian culture, the subtleness of everydayculture talk within the programme indexicalised racial otherness every day in ways thatwere not always subtle (see, for example, my previous publications based on this casestudy that discuss racial tensions between students and teachers at the programme as wellas between White and visible minority teaching staff themselves).

It is in the interest of maintaining relational power and positionalities that possibilitiesof performance do not exist unrestrictedly; there are codes which define what isintelligible, acceptable and normal: individuals transgress those codes at their peril(Cameron 1995, 16). It is important to also consider, however, that discursive formations


Dow

nloa

ded

by [P

ontif

icia U

nivers

idad C

atolic

a de C

hile]

at 10

:11 29

Apr

il 201

5

make it difficult for individuals to think outside of them; hence they are also exercises inpower and control (Kumaravadivelu 1999, 460). Thus, when Pacific University ESLstudents continue to reproduce essentialised identity constructions within their writing (asRose found) or within everyday classroom discourses (e.g. Reis repetition of discoursesof the cultural expert), this reproduction can be emblematic of how repeated stylisation ofidentity of a cultural and racial other may lead ESL students to believe in (and occupy)the truth of this stylisation, making it difficult for them to imagine other possibilities ofbeing within the context of English language education. As Ellwoods (2009) case studyresearch conducted within a college-level ESL programme in Australia similarly found,both teachers and students reproduced discourses of cultural identity: teachersrecognized students and students recognized themselves through familiar com-mon-sense representations (112).

Doing culture and cultural difference differently in the ESL classroomIn Pacific University ESL classrooms, student and teacher identities were constitutedthrough the discursive practices of culture as it related to language learning in an ESLclassroom in multicultural Canada. The implicit intersection of the English language withWhiteness served to conceal the discourses of race and racialisation that populatediscourses of language and culture. Thus, while the programmes pedagogical approachsought to complicate common-sense discourses of culture through a process of dialogicinquiry, the power of everyday talk about culture proved difficult to escape.

Markus and Moyas (2010) theorisation of doing race challenges educators torecognise that:

Race is a widespread system of social interactions involving everyone race doesnt requireracism. Even people without racist thoughts or feelings will participate in the process ofdoing race just by being part of a society that is organized according to race. Understandingrace as a system of everyday practices in which we are all implicated allows insight into howour own actions might inadvertently support practices or institutions that perpetuate racialinequality. Further, it allows for the realization that individuals and society together constructand give meaning to human differences. (xi)

Recognising that racialisation is not about individuals nor individual action and thatdiscourse both describes as well as produces meaning and human (inter)action situates theanalysis of doing culture in the ESL classroom in more complex ways. It assists us inrecognising how the languaging involved in the commonsense discourses of culture in theracialised context of English language education can become a form of everyday cultural(and casual) racialisation. Doing culture in teaching ESL is often doing race in a color-blind manner, perpetuating cultural and racial essentialism, incompatibility, and inequalities.

Markus and Moya (2010) are hopeful about systemic change as they recognise thatsince difference-construction and meaning-making are human projects, we should beable to do them differently (xi). Language educators must be acutely aware of thechallenges of talking about culture in a way that does not reinscribe race and understandthat the pedagogical and ideological complexity of this issue cannot be resolved bylanguage teaching recipes or special vocabulary or ESL phrase books. The examples ofthe common-sense discourses of culture discussed here illustrate clearly why languageeducators must move beyond the notion of comfort in language praxis. ESL is situated indiscourses of race and racialisation, and doing culture within this context mayinadvertently be a means through which we do race. However, it is not enough to

90 E. Lee

Dow

nloa

ded

by [P

ontif

icia U

nivers

idad C

atolic

a de C

hile]

at 10

:11 29

Apr

il 201

5

simply disrupt discourses that serve to oppress and marginalise; rather, there is afundamental need for language educators to critically analyse and question how cultureand cultural difference are constructed and constituted through our everyday race talk even in multicultural Canada.

FundingThis work was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada[grant number 752-2004-2133 04].

Notes1. I place Canadian in parentheses in recognition of the challenges posed by the term

Canadian culture challenges that will be discussed as the article progresses. Additionally,however, I highlight the term and its usage here in quotations as this resonates with how thenotion of culture was languaged in the everyday discourses of Pacific Universitys ESLprogramme.

2. These were some of the theorists cited in the ESL programmes professional development andcurricular documents.

3. The names of the university, ESL programme and all research participants are pseudonyms.4. Other research data collected included questionnaires, staff meeting observations, student

focus groups, interviews, classroom observations and research journals.5. Mad Cow Disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy, is a disease affecting the brains of

cattle. Fear that the disease could be passed onto humans through the consumption of meatfrom infected cattle lead to several countries banning the importation of cattle from affectedcountries and calling for stricter regulations for cattle testing.

ReferencesAmin, N. 1997. Race and the Identity of the Nonnative ESL Teacher. TESOL Quarterly 31 (3):

580583. doi:10.2307/3587841.Amin, N. 1999. Minority Women Teachers of ESL: Negotiating White English. In Non-Native

Educators in English Language Education, edited by G. Braine, 93104. Mahwah, NJ:Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Angouri, J. 2010. If We Know about Culture It Will Be Easier to Work with one Another:Developing Skills for Handling Corporate Meetings with Multinational Participation. Languageand Intercultural Communication 10 (3): 206224. doi:10.1080/14708470903348549.

Bannerji, H. 2000. Geography Lessons: On Being an Insider/Outsider to the Canadian Nation.In The Dark Side of the Nation: Essays on Multiculturalism, Nationalism and Gender, edited byH. Bannerji, 6386. Toronto: Canadian Scholars Press.

Blommaert, J., and J. Verschueren. 1998. Debating Diversity: Analysing the Discourse ofTolerance. New York: Routledge.

Bonfiglio, T. P. 2002. Race and the Rise of Standard American. New York: Mouton de Gruyter.doi:10.1515/9783110851991.

Bonilla-Silva, E. 2010. Racism without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and Racial Inequality inContemporary America. 3rd ed. New York: Rowman and Littlefield.

Butler, J. 1990. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge.Butler, J. 1993. Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex. New York: Routledge.Byram, M. 2008. From Foreign Language Education to Education for Intercultural Citizenship:

Essays and Reflections. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.Cameron, D. 1995. Verbal Hygiene. New York: Routledge.Curtis, A., and M. Romney. 2006. Color, Race, and English Language Teaching: Shades of

Meaning. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.Dervin, F. 2010. Assessing Intercultural Competence in Language Learning and Teaching:

A Critical Review of Current Efforts. In New Approaches to Assessing Language and (Inter-)Cultural Competences in Higher Education, edited by F. Dervin and E. Suomela-Salmi,157173. New York: Peter Lang.


Dow

nloa

ded

by [P

ontif

icia U

nivers

idad C

atolic

a de C

hile]

at 10

:11 29

Apr

il 201

5

Dhamoon, R. 2009. Identity/Difference Politics: How Difference Is Produced, and Why It Matters.Vancouver, BC: University of British Columbia Press.

Ellwood, C. 2009. Uninhabitable Identifications: Unpacking the Production of Racial Difference ina TESOL Classroom. In Race, Culture, and Identities in Second Language Education:Exploring Critically Engaged Practice, edited by R. Kubota and A. Lin, 101117. New York:Routledge.

Fleming, D. 2003. Building Personal and Nation-State Identities: Research and Practice. TESLCanada Journal 20 (2): 6579.

Fleming, D. 2010. Racialized Forms of Citizenship and the Canadian Language Benchmarks.Canadian Journal of Education 33 (3): 588616.

Freire, P. 1973. Education for Critical Consciousness. New York: Continuum.Gonzlez, N. 2004. Disciplining the Discipline: Anthropology and the Pursuit of Quality

Education. Educational Researcher 33 (5): 1725. doi:10.3102/0013189X033005017.Harklau, L. 1999. Representing Culture in the ESL Writing Classroom. In Culture in Second

Language Teaching and Learning, edited by E. Hinkel, 109130. New York: CambridgeUniversity Press.

Holliday, A. 1999. Small Cultures. Applied Linguistics 20 (2): 237264. doi:10.1093/applin/20.2.237.

Holliday, A. 2009. The Role of Culture in English Language Education: Key Challenges.Language and Intercultural Communication 9 (3): 144155. doi:10.1080/14708470902748814.

Holliday, A. 2010. Complexity in Cultural Identity. Language and Intercultural Communication10 (2): 165177. doi:10.1080/14708470903267384.

Holliday, A., M. Hyde, and J. Kullman. 2004. Intercultural Communication: An AdvancedResource Book. New York: Routledge.

Ilieva, R. 2000. Exploring Culture in Texts Designed for Use in Adult ESL Classrooms. TESLCanada Journal 17 (2): 5063.

Ilieva, R. 2001. Living with Ambiguity: Toward Culture Exploration in Adult Second-LanguageClassrooms. TESL Canada Journal 19 (1): 116.

Kaplan, R. B. 1966. Cultural Thought Patterns in Inter-Cultural Education. Language Learning16 (12): 120. doi:10.1111/j.1467-1770.1966.tb00804.x.

Kramsch, C. 1993. Context and Culture in Language Teaching. New York: Oxford UniversityPress.

Kramsch, C. 1998. Language and Culture. New York: Oxford University Press.Kubota, R. 1999. Japanese Culture Constructed by Discourses: Implications for Applied

Linguistics Research and ELT. TESOL Quarterly 33 (1): 935. doi:10.2307/3588189.Kubota, R. 2002. The Author Responds: (Un)Raveling Racism in a Nice Field like TESOL.

TESOL Quarterly 36 (1): 8492. doi:10.2307/3588363.Kubota, R. 2003. Critical Teaching of Japanese Culture. Japanese Language and Literature 37

(1): 6787. doi:10.2307/3594876.Kubota, R. 2004. The Politics of Cultural Difference in Second Language Education. Critical

Inquiry in Language Studies 1 (1): 2139. doi:10.1207/s15427595cils0101_2.Kubota, R., and A. Lin. 2009. Race, Culture, and Identities in Second Language Education:

Introduction to Research and Practice. In Race, Culture, and Identities in Second LanguageEducation: Exploring Critically Engaged Practice, edited by R. Kubota and A. Lin, 123. NewYork: Routledge.

Kumaravadivelu, B. 1999. Critical Classroom Discourse Analysis. TESOL Quarterly 33 (3):453484. doi:10.2307/3587674.

Kumashiro, K. K. 2004. Against Common Sense: Teaching and Learning toward Social Justice.New York: Routledge Falmer.

Ladson-Billings, G. 2006. Its Not the Culture of Poverty, Its the Poverty of Culture: The Problemwith Teacher Education. Anthropology and Education Quarterly 37 (2): 104109.doi:10.1525/aeq.2006.37.2.104.

Lee, E. 2008. The Other(ing) Costs of ESL: A Canadian Case Study. Journal of Asian PacificCommunication 18 (1): 91108. doi:10.1075/japc.18.1.06lee.

Lee, E. 2011. Ethical Issues in Addressing Inequity in/through ESL Research. TESL CanadaJournal 28 (5): 3152.

Lippi-Green, R. 1997. English with an Accent: Language, Ideology, and Discrimination in theUnited States. New York: Routledge.

92 E. Lee

Dow

nloa

ded

by [P

ontif

icia U

nivers

idad C

atolic

a de C

hile]

at 10

:11 29

Apr

il 201

5

Markus, H. R., and P. M. L. Moya, eds. 2010. Doing Race: 21 Essays for the 21st Century. NewYork: W. W. Norton and Company.

Menard-Warwick, J. 2008. The Cultural and Intercultural Identities of Transnational EnglishTeachers: Two Case Studies from the Americas. TESOL Quarterly 42 (4): 617640.

Menard-Warwick, J. 2009. Co-Constructing Representations of Culture in ESL and EFLClassrooms: Discursive Faultlines in Chile and California. The Modern Language Journal93 (1): 3045. doi:10.1111/j.1540-4781.2009.00826.x.

Motha, S. 2006. Out of the Safety Zone. In Color, Race, and English Language Teaching: Shadesof Meaning, edited by A. Curtis and M. Romney, 161172. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence ErlbaumAssociates.

Moya, P. M. L., and H. R. Markus. 2010. Doing Race: An introduction. In Doing Race: 21Essays for the 21st Century, edited by H. R. Markus and P. M. L. Moya, 1102. New York: W.W. Norton and Company.

Ng, R. 1993. Sexism, Racism, Canadian Nationalism. In Returning the Gaze: Essays on Racism,Feminism and Politics, edited by H. Bannerji, 182196. Toronto: Sister Vision Press.

Reiter, A. B., and S. N. Davis. 2011. Factors Influencing Pre-Service Teachers Beliefs aboutStudent Achievement: Evaluation of a Pre-Service Teacher Diversity Awareness Program.Multicultural Education 18 (3): 4146.

Rosaldo, R. 1993. Culture and Truth: The Remaking of Social Analysis. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.Sharma, S. 2008. Teaching Representations of Cultural Difference through Film. In Everyday

Antiracism: Getting Real about Race in School, edited by M. Pollock, 186190. New York: TheNew Press.

Shuck, G. 2006. Racializing the Nonnative English Speaker. Journal of Language, Identity, andEducation 5 (4): 259276. doi:10.1207/s15327701jlie0504_1.

Silberstein, S. 2003. Teaching Culture: Imagined Communities and National Fantasies in the O. J.Simpson Case. Journal of Language, Identity, and Education 2 (4): 319330. doi:10.1207/S15327701JLIE0204_6.

Wilcox, K. C. 2007. Listening to Dissonance in Second-Language Classrooms. Critical Inquiryin Language Studies 4 (4): 265282. doi:10.1080/15427580701696498.


Dow

nloa

ded

by [P

ontif

icia U

nivers

idad C

atolic

a de C

hile]

at 10

:11 29

Apr

il 201

5

AbstractIntroduction'Doing culture', 'doing race'?'Culture' in language educationA dialogic approach to language and culture in a Canadian ESL programmeResearch settingProblematising everyday discourses of 'culture' and 'cultural difference'Producing racialised identities through everyday discourses of 'culture'

Doing 'culture' and 'cultural difference' differently in the ESL classroomFundingNotesReferences

doing culture, doing race

Documents