Dialogicality and Racialized Discourse in TESOL Recruitment

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

The investigation and unmasking of racial inequality have been one of the cornerstones of the critical turn in TESOL, so much so that a significant body of literature on the topic now exists. Yet, there is often a lack of reflection on the fact that discourse surrounding contentious social issues like race is inherently dialogical in that it consists of constant interaction between different voices (heteroglossia) and ideologies (polyphony). This paper presents the findings of a study focussing on the dialogicality of discourse surrounding the recruitment of non‐local teachers of English in Thailand. This research, framed by the existence of significant inequalities between teachers of different nationalities and ethnic backgrounds in the Thai educational system, examined the role race played in interactions in a Facebook group for non‐local teachers of English seeking employment in Thailand. The analysis focussed on identifying points of struggle, salient topics around which particularly intensive concentrations of dialogicality could be found. Two are presented in this paper, the struggle for discursive space to debate racial inequality and the struggle over the assignment of victimhood and perpetratorhood. I conclude by arguing for more attention to be paid to how global inequalities in TESOL are debated and challenged locally.