“Accent matching skin?”: an arts-based trioethnography of minoritized women English educators in Japan

Abstract

This trioethnography explores traumas of minoritized teachers in Japan and their collaborative reflection and research through ethics of care (Gilligan 1982. In a different voice: Psychological theory and women’s development . Cambridge: Harvard University Press; Noddings 1984. Caring: A feminine approach to ethics and moral education . Oakland: University of California Press; Tronto 1993. Moral boundaries: A political argument for an ethics of care . New York: Routledge). As three East Asian non-Japanese women teachers of English in Japan, we experienced linguistic racism – discrimination based on linguistic practices, race, and ethnicity – which can result in trauma (Busch and McNamara 2020. Language and trauma: An introduction. Applied Linguistics 41(3). 323–333; Dovchin 2020. The psychological damages of linguistic racism and international students in Australia. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism 23(7). 804–818). To theorize our experiences, we initiated a trioethnography exploring: (a) How do minoritized East Asian women English teachers in Japan experience and respond to trauma generated by linguistic racism?; and (b) How does trioethnography serve as a transformative space for care, healing, and collective empowerment in addressing linguistic racism-induced trauma? Based on iterative qualitative analysis of our narratives and meetings, we created artworks that express our in-between identities, emotional distress, and struggles associated with privilege and marginality. With the artworks, we engaged in dialogue on doing aesthetic labor to fit in, feeling “not enough,” and (un)learning our accents, within the trioethnography space we built based on non-hierarchical relationship, interdependent care, and responsiveness to each other’s needs. Our study suggests trioethnography could be a space for healing and for cultivating care among teachers suffering from the kaleidoscopic impacts of linguistic racism.