Andrew S. Ross

Idealized English Teachers: The Implicit Influence of Race in Japan

English as a Foreign Language (EFL) education within the context of Japan is firmly underpinned by sociohistorical constructions of racial difference and racial hierarchies that have considerable influence on contemporary student and institutional attitudes. Embracing these sociohistorical foundations, this article adopts experimental procedures to explore the implicit influence of race upon student ratings of desirability of prospective non-Japanese EFL teachers in Japanese tertiary education across a number of manipulated conditions. Through presenting students with EFL teacher profiles of White, Asian, and Black racial heritage teachers, the experimental results indicate that the White teachers were rated as the most desirable when all explicit attributes such as age, country of origin, English language ability, Japanese language ability, and teaching experience were standardized across all three race conditions. However, when these explicit attributes were manipulated, the implicit influence of race was seemingly negated, as the students demonstrated a statistically significant preference for those teachers who retained the idealized attributes regardless of their race, namely the ‘native speaker’ of English status.

“77% of Aussies Are Racist”: Intersections of Politics and Hip-hop in Australia

The Australian government’s decision to turn away a Norwegian vessel with 438 asylum seekers on board became a national political issue and triggered a response from the hip-hop group The Herd in their track ‘77%’. Utilising Androutsopoulos’s (2009) framework of the three spheres of hip-hop discourse, this study explores how dissatisfaction and dissent are expressed through the lyrics, the media response to the track and through consumer channels in the comments section of the track’s YouTube video. The results show that hip-hop acts as a multi-level platform for such expressions.

Discursive Deflection: Accusation of “Fake News” and the Spread of Mis- and Disinformation in the Tweets of President Trump:

Twitter is increasingly being used within the sociopolitical domain as a channel through which to circulate information and opinions. Throughout the 2016 US Presidential primaries and general election campaign, a notable feature was the prolific Twitter use of Republican candidate and then nominee, Donald Trump. This use has continued since his election victory and inauguration as President. Trump’s use of Twitter has drawn criticism due to his rhetoric in relation to various issues, including Hillary Clinton, the size of the crowd in attendance at his inauguration, the policies of the former Obama administration, and immigration and foreign policy. One of the most notable features of Trump’s Twitter use has been his repeated ridicule of the mainstream media through pejorative labels such as “fake news” and “fake media.” These labels have been deployed in an attempt to deter the public from trusting media reports, many of which are critical of Trump’s presidency, and to position himself as the only reliable source of truth. However, given the contestable nature of objective truth, it can be argued that Trump himself is a serial offender in the propagation of mis- and disinformation in the same vein that he accuses the media. This article adopts a corpus analysis of Trump’s Twitter discourse to highlight his accusations of fake news and how he operates as a serial spreader of mis- and disinformation. Our data show that Trump uses these accusations to demonstrate allegiance and as a cover for his own spreading of mis- and disinformation that is framed as truth.

Introduction: Hip-hop as Critical Conscience: Framing Dissatisfaction and Dissent

Originating from youth cultures in the South Bronx during the late 1970s, the performative musical genre of hip-hop represents “a form of rhymed storytelling accompanied by highly rhythmic, electronically based music” (Rose, 1994, p. 2), one frequently portraying narrative experiences born from socioeconomic desperation, structural oppression, and other forms of perceived hardship (Flores, 2012; Neal, 1999). The social conditions lived by the first hip-hop artists were significant in shaping lyrical content. The South Bronx area of New York was known at the time as “America’s Worst Slum” (Price, 2006, p. 4) with Black and Latino communities facing “high rates of unemployment, extreme poverty, and other social structural barriers, such as a change from a manufacturing to a service-sector economy, along with urban renewal programs that pushed many black and Latinos from their residences” (Oware, 2015, p. 2). This situation was expedited by the construction of the Cross-Bronx Expressway (1948 and 1972), which resulted in the large-scale displacement of Blacks and Hispanics from razed neighborhoods into the South Bronx. Rose (1994, p. 33) explains how these displaced families were left with very little, and in particular with “few city resources, fragmented leadership, and limited political power”.

L1/L2 communication self-efficacy beliefs and the contribution of personality

ABSTRACT While mainstream psychology has made significant advances into the understanding of personality, applied linguistics research has offered a more muted response (Dörnyei and Ryan 2015) despite Bandura (2001: 10) declaring that self-efficacy beliefs represent ‘the foundation of human agency’. The study documented within this article therefore examines the contribution of personality traits from the five-factor model of personality to L1 (Japanese) and L2 (English) communication self-efficacy beliefs within a population of 300 Japanese university students. Through self-assessments drawn in relation to a hypothetical L1 and L2 interview encounter, and following a two-step process of hierarchical regression, the article shows to what extent personality traits make differentiated contributions to L1 and L2 communication self-efficacy beliefs.

“Froome with His SKY Bodyguards, Layers of Armour”: The ‘Sport is War’ Conceptual Metaphor in Grand Tour Cycling Commentary

The incorporation of metaphors into everyday language use has formed the basis of scholarly investigation for decades. Particular attention has been given to conceptual metaphors, which are seen as essential tools for individuals to interpret and process various ideas and experiences. Within the milieu of metaphorical speech, metaphors of war have frequently been applied across a range of domains including politics, business, and sport. Within the sporting context, the notion of ‘Sport is War’ has been discussed in relation to various football codes, baseball, and tennis. In this article, we examine this metaphor in relation to professional stage-race cycling, a sport known for its combative, tactical, and physically demanding nature. We focus specifically on cycling commentary of the 2016 Tour de France—thus recalibrating the metaphor as ‘Cycling is War.’ Our findings show that war metaphors are prevalent in cycling commentary and are particularly useful in highlighting aspects of the sport inclusive of competition, strategy, power, teamwork, and sportsmanship. Through these categories, the cycling is war metaphor can be said to have the potential to elevate viewer engagement as well as add insight into the technicalities of the sport and expand on previous understandings of sport/war metaphors.