Native-Speakerism in Japan

Houghton (intercultural communication, Saga U., Japan) and Rivers (applied linguistics, Osaka U.) assemble 18 essays that consider prejudices and discrimination against native speaker language teachers of English in Japan, as well as links with the situation in Italian tertiary education. They examine how native-speakerism has been conceptualized and empirically investigated, problems facing teachers categorized as native speakers, and their resistance of native-speakerism though labor unions, court action, or engaging in academic forms of protest, dissent, or resistance; employment policies and patterns in tertiary and secondary education in Japan, including hiring evaluation criteria, barriers facing women, the language barrier, and exclusion from full-time employment in the public education sector; the construct of the native speaker, the relationship to race and racialization, and the role of English-only policies in perpetuating native-speakerism; and socio-historical and sociolinguistic views of native-speakerism. Distributed in the US by UTP Distribution. Annotation c2013 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Stephanie A. Houghton is an Associate Professor in Intercultural Communication at Saga University, Japan. She holds a doctorate in Education from Durham University, UK. She is author of Intercultural Dialogue in Practice and Developing Criticality through Foreign Language Education (with Etsuko Yamada), and editor of Becoming Intercultural: Inside and Outside the Classroom (with Yau Tsai).
Damian J. Rivers holds an MSc in Social Psychology, an MA in Applied Linguistics, and a PhD in Applied Linguistics / Sociolinguistics from the University of Leicester, UK. He is currently an Associate Professor at Osaka University and undertakes research into intergroup dynamics in foreign language education.