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Paper short abstract

This paper analyzes Japanese English Foreign Language students’ comprehension of desexed terminologies in English and discusses the findings and implications in postmodern contexts. It proffers ways that neoliberal governmentality is extended into linguistic subjects.

Paper long abstract

This paper presents an interdisciplinary project that dissects the epistemologies of desexed language in an English-speaking and Japanese context through the question: how does desexed language affect comprehension among Japanese English Foreign Language (EFL) learners?

Many countries have recently seen polarized discussions about the meaning of biological sex and gender, with some adopting a system that prioritizes gender identity over biological sex in socio-legal classifications. Theorizations in feminist studies originally aimed at deconstructing gender as a set of meanings and power relations associated with biological

sex have increasingly moved towards questioning the scientific underpinnings of sex itself.

Advancing these ideas are postmodernist proffers that reality is constituted through discourse (Foucault 1978-1990, Butler 1990), a result of which is the ongoing dissemination of desexed language (e.g. person with a cervix in place of woman) as a

purported modern enterprise of equality. Here, language functions as a mechanism of state- sanctioned and self-imposed governance with linguistic terms increasingly being used to represent ‘‘inclusion’’ through the replacement of specific, scientifically accurate speech (e.g. chest-feeding in place of breastfeeding), resulting in a modality of moral-linguistic

governmentality that normalizes an idea of an ‘‘ethical’’ and ‘‘progressive’’ speaker. Following this trend in deconstructivism, language policies in education may risk becoming a technology of control (Foucault), while also obscuring concepts for language learners who are unfamiliar with this type of postmodern language use. Cautious of the Foucaultian

notion that discourse constitutes reality, this paper uses Foucault’s ideas of governmentality to expose technologies of power that chisel speakers into self-disciplining subjects through linguistic normalization. Accordingly, this paper discusses ways that neoliberal and postmodern governmentality is extended into linguistic subjects who internalize and

reproduce ideological positions through language.

Further informed by Foucault’s theories on power and knowledge, this paper analyzes Japanese EFL learners’ comprehension of desexed terminologies and aims to discuss if efforts to standardize desexed language may reproduce neo-colonial hierarchies of language authority.