Narrative Identity in English Language Teaching: Exploring Teacher Interviews in Japanese and English

Narrative Identity in English Language Teaching: Exploring Teacher Interviews in Japanese and English addresses language teachers or researchers interested in identity or narrative analysis. Taking the position that identity is a particularly relevant concept to language teaching, this book introduces a new approach to exploring identity through narrative. Drawing on a qualitative study of narrative interviews in Japan with local `non-native' teachers in Japanese and foreign `native' English teachers in English, it explores stories that teachers tell about their lives as teachers. Individual chapters focus on the overall structure of the research interview; the use of time and space as identity resources; how evaluations of self and other create identity positions, and a thematic discussion of professional identity in English language teaching. The final chapter suggests how the insights gained through this analysis could benefit English language pedagogy. Anecdotes told by the teachers are used throughout as illustrative examples.

Patrick Kiernan is Lecturer in English at Meiji University, Tokyo. He is an applied linguist whose research interests include narrative, identity, comparative discourse analysis and English language teaching.