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(1)Hegemonic Masculinity and the Desire to Acquire a Foreign Language Todd. Squires. Abstract Within. mainstream. be adequately interest. The. to the. introduces and. addressed.. in identity. the field. is due. L2 motivation. Marxist. reproduction is introduced masculinity. and. reasons. This the. of the. an alternative and. of unequal and. proposes relations. to. that. most. and. Data the. and identity. since. in the. highly. written. the topic. methodology,. gender. in society.. acquisition. the. avoided. to gender. to highlight the. been. have. of gender. troubling. privileged. approach. discussed. in regard. have. researchers. restrictions. questions. is particularly. "L2 self". why. theory. research. based. ways. of English. and. in which by. yet. to. years. topics. in. motivation This. paper. in psychoanalysis. that. a discussion. five. about. psychometrics.. is a construct from. past. of gender. motivation. have. is complicit between. they. three. construct. appropriating. in the men their. hegemonic. masculinity.. 覇権的男性性と外国語習得の欲動トッド. 要旨. スクワイヤーフ. ジェンダーはどのように第二言語習得に関わっているか。その習得過程はどのよう. に学習者のアイデンティティに影響があるか。第二言語学習におけるモチベーション研究は、主に社会心理学に基づいてきたが、この二つの問題は今まで明白にしていない。なぜなら、主流モチベーション研究方法は心理統計学が優先されているので、ジェンダーというのはただ男性か女性かその性的二形に限られている。本論文は、精神分析学やマルクス主義により人々が歴史的・社会的・経済的に構成されているかを考察する。ジェンダーも社会的に構成され、多様性があると論じる。英語習得する欲動と男性性の密接な関わりが男のディスカッションで互いに構成されるデータを紹介して分析する。.

(2) ft*. • i-liftefft. ^37—CV. Hegemonic. Masculinity. and. the Desire. to Acquire. a Foreign. Language. Introduction Over the past 40 years, mainstream. motivation research within the field of Second. Language Acquisition (SLA) has enlightened us about the complex and varied reasons why learners endeavor to acquire second and foreign languages. (hereafter. "L2"). Even. so, there remain at least two aspects of L2 motivation that have yet to receive adequate attention:. the roles of the unconscious. and gender. attempt to remedy these two shortcomings appropriated. by male learners when discussing their goals for acquiring English. First,. are historically. approach. a theory. constructed. This paper will. by looking at how hegemonic masculinity is. what has been called a "materialist approach" desire. in acquisition.. and culturally. to understanding. produced. how the subject and. will be reviewed.. of gender in which gender is also understood. and reproduced. through. its performance. by subjects. Second, to this to be historically will be explored.. Finally, excerpts from a discussion between three male students will be presented with a discussion of how masculine subjectivities. are constructed. in respect to one object of. desire, English as a foreign language.. The Gendered Subject of Desire A Materialist Approach to the Subject The discourse on motivation within SLA has been largely shaped by theories that are deeply rooted in Anglo-American reasons. social psychology.. why this has been the case, the adoption. theorizing. how individuals. develop and maintain. such a position? recognized. social environment. In keeping. are many for. their desire to learn and acquire the relationship between the. (Atkinson, 2002). Why has SLA embraced. with the effort to establish. field of study, prominent. there. of this overall framework. another language severely limits our ability to understand individual and his/her. Although. researchers. SLA as an academically. have urged us to situate ourselves. firmly within cognitive science (Doughty & Long, 2003). Human psychology is seen as functioning within a computer-like therefore,. is something. information-processing. system, and consciousness,. that exists a priori of the social context. Granted there is a. reciprocal relationship between the individual and society; however, the self is held to be ultimately transcendent. with the ability to adjust to his/her environment and never-. -. 288 —.

(3) HegemonicMasculinityand the Desireto Acquirea ForeignLanguage endingly improve his/her mental functioning. As Squires. (2008, 2009) has argued, the foregoing. view of the self ultimately. stems from the philosophical "camp" of Idealism which approaches relationship. between being and thought from the perspective. both precede and filter the way we understand materialism. offers an alternative. mental processes conditions. the question of the. that ideas or concepts. the world (Engels, 1946). In contrast,. view of the relationship. and the social world. Consciousness. between. is formed. the individual's by the historical. in which human beings live, and it is "in the social production. of their. existence," Marx (1904) argues, that "L.] men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent. of their will, namely relations of productions. given stage in the development the transcendent. appropriate. of their material forces of production". (p. 11). Unlike. and ever-malleable self that is proffered by mainstream. theorists. (Dornyei,. 2009), Marxist. learning. and the development. theory. would encourage. of consciousness. by the ideological and institutional. L2 motivation. us to view language. as part of an overall. internalizing specific modes of being and patterns of social interaction Volosinov, 1973). By extension, subjectivity. to a. process. of. (Vygotsky, 1986;. at any given point in history is determined. apparatuses. that ensure the reproduction. of the. unequal relations of production favoring one group over others (Althusser, 1972).. The Gendered Subject While the study of input and output on language acquisition is to a greater extent easy to model and observe interrelationship. between. through. experimental. procedures,. gender, class and social status. and their influence on the. desire to acquire an L2 is much more difficult to understand psychometrics. and may better. be approached. things such as the. relying. solely upon. by using tools from other disciplines.. (See, for example, Norton, 2000; Norton Peirce, 1995; and Pavlenko & Lantolf, 2000.) The ability for psychometrics. to adequately. explain the role of gender. in motivation. is. particularly problematic, given that the major studies which make claims about gender within the hypothesized. construct of L2 motivation, tend to reduce gender to biological. sex, and thus fall into the dual traps of simplifying gender as the possession of a certain physical configuration. and reinforcing. or repackaging. stereotypes. women. The assumption that gender is simply another independent contradictory. conclusions using the same psychometric. — 289 —. about men and variable has led to. instrumentation. with different.

(4) populations. of learners,. (See, for example,. Baker. & McIntyre,. 2000; Corbin. &. Chiachiere, 1997; Dornyei & Clement, 2001; Ehrman & Oxford, 1989; Mori & Gobel, 2006; Oxford et al., 1993; Warden & Lin, 2000.), and for this reason the results of this research on the relationship between gender and motivation have been inconclusive and, quite frankly, unenlightening. The explosion in theories of gender in the social sciences and cultural studies was nearly coeval with the emergence. of SLA as an academic. discipline. Yet, while the. former has made great strides in developing complex theories of gender, within the latter gender has become almost completely fossilized as a synonym for the differences between the two sexes, where sex is seen as biological, natural. and deterministic,. a. position that has been mostly rejected in gender studies. (See, for example Kessler & McKenna, 1978; Kemper, 1990; Thorne, 1993; Pringle, 1992.) More recently the research trend in gender theory is toward the construction theories that encompass. of. both biological sex and the body and how gender roles are. constructed, regulated and maintained by society, groups and individuals. Butler (1990) draws upon Althusser's. (1972) ideas of the ideologically produced subject as a way of. theorizing gender as performativity.. For Butler, gender is the entirety. of our actions. that make up reality: it is the accumulation of all the instances of gender from the past as well as our specific actions in the present. Gender has:. no ontological status apart from the various acts which constitute. its reality... [it. is] an effect and function of a decidedly public and social discourse, the public regulation of fantasy through the surface politics of the body, the gender border control that differentiates inner from outer, and so institutes the "integrity" of the subject. In other words, acts and gestures, articulated and enacted desires create the illusion of an interior. and organizing. gender. core, an illusion discursively. maintained for the purposes of the regulation of sexuality with the obligatory form of reproductive. Performativity. heterosexuality. (pp. 185-186).. of gender emphasizes how bodily practice and language acts combine to. establish oneself as a gendered subject. Just as is the case with natural language we are not free to create our own words, grammatical similarly restricted. rules and patterns. of usage, we are. by the societies in which we are born and live. This regulatory. — 290 —.

(5) HegemonicMasculinityand the Desireto Acquirea ForeignLanguage process becomes internalized. and shapes our consciousness, as well. We come to lack. complete freedom because the gendered subject positions are, in Althusserian terms, " always-already made," but they are also vital in that they provide us with a way of being, thinking and behaving. While Althusser. gives equal importance. to institutions. in the production of the. subject, for Lorber (1994), gender itself is a social institution that does not originate in biological differences. between. two sexes nor is it based upon sexual reproduction.. Instead, Lorber argues that gender is a social structure. that traces its genesis back to. the development of human culture. Being an institution, gender "establishes patterns expectations. of. for individuals, orders the social processes of everyday life, is built into the. major social organizations. of society". (p. 1), and as such, gendered. closely entwined with ideology in the apparatuses Thus, doing gender, or gender understood. subjectivities. and practices associated with them.. as performativity. entails two important. points for us. The first of these is that individuals are born into a gendered which his/her horizons of subjectivity. are. world in. are delimited. A child's world is gendered from. the outset, and he/she is raised in culturally specific gendered ways. Second, as he/she becomes an adult he/she manner that reproduces. may (or may not) behave, speak, dress and consume in a existing gendered subjectivities that are created by institutions. and their associated ideologies and thus within the praxis of living his/her life will help to ensure the perpetuation. of inequalities. ought to be seen as an ongoing encompassing. process. Ideal. Although. vast these. with. of genders,. number. as Hegemonic the. foregoing. regulated. in the material. world,. and maintained by society, groups and. this. is not. to say. that. become. linked. with. the. most. is arguably. domination. that. hegemony. allows. one the. social group. Masculinity formulation. of genders. genders. masculinity. that is grounded. (Connell, 2002).. The Salaryman. number. groups in society. Thus, gender. both the physical (biological sex, the body and sexuality) and the social. (how gender roles are constructed, individuals). between. can. group. that. exist. of gender all genders. within. power.. to maintain. are. a particular. Of these. powerful. has. there. other. social,. — 291 —. valued.. society,. certain. to. and. the. and. room. economic. for any. Among. the. versions. genders,. refers. groups. political. the. equally. empowered. Hegemony. over. exists. of. hegemonic. the. power. ways. and. in which. control. over.

(6) another. (Gramsci, 2010). Working in tandem with ideology and institutions, hegemony. subordinates. other competing ideas and thoughts. by making the unequal balance of. power seem to be normal or matter of fact to both those in power and to those who experience domination. Since this hegemonic masculinity is privileged, conformity with it brings one material and social benefits, while femininities and other masculinities are devalued, and those who perform them are disadvantaged. as a result. As individuals. develop in the patriarchal system, men (who are by birth given a biological advantage) internalize. the unequal gender relationship. and come to experience. power as their. ability to exercise control. For this reason, most men accept this power because it gives them privilege. and advantages.. internalized gender subjectivities. By accepting. and living out our lives according. in turn allows patriarchal. to. systems to be reproduced. from one generation to the next. Although nearly universal, hegemonic masculinity also must be seen as being both a historical and cultural phenomenon. that is always being revised. In post-war Japan,. hegemonic masculinity has been and continues to be perpetuated salaryman. (sarariiman).. in the image of the. Some of the associations that go along with the salaryman. include notions such as lifetime employment, a nine-to-five work day with several nights of overtime,. many nights of after work socializing. absence from the home and non-involvement. with colleagues. until late, near. in the rearing of children, wearing a suit. and tie to work, engaging in pastimes such as golf and tennis, and surrendering. of one's. salary to one's wife in return for a small monthly allowance. Likewise, counterparts the salaryman in this system are the office lady (young and unmarried) shufu (professional. homemaker). around the salaryman. and the sengyo. who also have a set of defining traits that revolve. and the caring. of his children. Although. working age men work in large corporations, the stereotyped continues to be the standard. to. benchmark. only about 40% of. image of the salaryman. of what it means to be a man in Japan within. the media, in advertising and in personal life. Even though there are challenges to the salaryman (Taga, 2003, Salamon, 1975), the salaryman continues to be taken for granted as orthodox. masculinity. and is used for measuring. society (Taga, 2001).. — 292 —. one's gendered. subjectivity. in.

(7) Hegemonic. Masculinity. and the Desire. to Acquire. a Foreign. Language. The Unconscious in SLA: The Gendered Subject of Desire Although a large part of gender is socially constructed, the animus of our action in society and in our intercourse. with others can be traced to its formation in the earliest. years of our lives and is the wellspring of our feelings, emotions and desires 1989, 2003, 2010). Within psychoanalytic human "psyche," which encompasses the mechanisms research, that. that regulate. Dornyei. is only one part of the. the unconscious, internalized. the individual.. (2001) summarily. is not available. theory, consciousness. (Freud. In his overview. societal norms, and of SLA motivation. dismisses the influence of any psychical matter. to consciousness. on the motivation. of the learner,. clearly. articulating the bias of the field by saying, "most of the significant thoughts and feelings that affect learning achievement known. by the learner". researchers. in prolonged educational. (pp. 9-10). The reason. settings are conscious and. why mainstream. L2 motivation. are forced to take this position derives from two interrelated. First, because. positions.. they have, as with the whole of SLA, adopted the cognitive science. paradigm, human consciousness is held to be a transparent, functions rationally, unimpeded. by emotional constraints.. computer-like system that Second, the methodology. SLA being inherited from social psychology relies upon self-report questionnaires, thus, if an individual's behavior and attitudes even within consciousness. to be distorted. of and. were held to be beyond consciousness or in some way, the results of their research. would have to be placed in serious doubt. As a result, the role of the unconscious as a source for the reasons why individuals make the acquisition of an L2 a goal and how they go about learning it have been largely ignored by researchers. working in the. mainstream of SLA. Building upon the ideas of Freud and interpreting structural. linguistics,. Jacques. Lacan explores. them within the framework. how subjects. and their. desire. of are. produced through language. For Lacan (2006), the existence of the unconscious and the conscious highlights that the subject that is internally contradictory—it. is decentered. by definition of its very existence. Agency is animated by the unconscious,. and the. unconscious is the motor that energizes the individual in his/her desire whose function is a "want-to-be" (manque-a-etre), desire is the desire to fill that recognizes. his/her. implying that the subject is by definition lacking and "hole" in the self. This lack emerges. image in the mirror. The Imaginary. when the child. is a structure. that Lacan. outlines in his analysis of the "Mirror Stage" (stade du rniroir, lit. "stage/stadium. — 293 —. of the.

(8) ft*.NAMItl—CV mirror" ) explaining that it is a point in human development. when the image of oneself. is formed and when desire simultaneously emerges. Prior to the Mirror Stage, the child has a feeling. that he/she. fragmented.. Seeing his/her. lacks control. over his body, and that. image in a mirror. the child realizes. independent. from his/her mother but at the same time recognizes. that he/she. is not whole. The pain of separation. individual for the rest of his/her. his/her. he/she. is. through reflection. from the Other. life and is the origination. that. body is. will haunt the. of desire, providing. the. catalyst for action. What comes between the individual and his/her attempt to recapture image of wholeness language). is language.. Within the Symbolic. Order. this illusory. (the sign system. of. the individual becomes a socialized being by taking up a subject position.. Language, Lacan argues, alienates us, but at the same time it is necessary. for us to. become subjects. While the accession to language bestows upon the individual a place in the world in relation to other individuals as we take up subject-positions. that were. made before our existence, these positions have no a priori relationship to us, but we must fit ourselves into them in order to function as socialized beings. At the same time, desire drives us to seek out and regain a lost whole, a project that is doomed to failure as the symbolic realm of language is never exact. We want to think of ourselves as unique and ahistorical beings, but this is never possible because it is language that has already constituted us before our births in the way that we can interact with other people. For Lacan, subjectivity is gendered in both the Imaginary and Symbolic orders. In the Imaginary, the subject sees itself as lacking something that will make it complete, and that object of desire is seen as being part of the Other (prototypically the mother). Masculine structure, the "non/nom. the one with which this paper is concerned, is defined simply by. du Pere," or the "no/name. of the Father". by which he enters. the. Symbolic. The homophony in French tethers two meanings, both of which are essential aspects of the subject's accession to the realm of language and ideology. This Lacan explains in a rereading. of Freud's Oedipus complex. What comes between the subject. and his desired object is the symbolic Father. This "no of the Father" is the prohibition against. taking. the mother. as his sexual. object.. individual takes his place as an always-already Father". The Symbolic. is also where. the. made subject, and the "name of the. refers to how the child takes the name that was waiting for him before birth,. giving a place for him in society but also setting limits on his desires and actions for. — 294 —.

(9) HegemonicMasculinityand the Desireto Acquirea ForeignLanguage fulfilling those desires. The two neuroses, obsession and hysteria, represent and feminine structures structure,. respectively.. the obsessive-compulsive,. the prototypical. In the most extreme Fink (1997) argues,. masculine. form of the masculine. "Ed]esire is impossible in. obsession, because the closer the obsessive gets to realizing his desire...the more the Other begins to take precedence the Other threatens. over him, eclipsing him as a subject. The presence of. the obsessive with what Lacan calls `aphanisis,'1 his fading or. disappearing as a subject" (p. 124). For the obsessive-compulsive, or annihilate the Other thereby object. Although. the urge is to remove. removing the Other as an impediment. when taken to excess, obsession. to taking the. will become debilitating. to the. individual, even for the "normal" individual there will always be the tension between the underlying. structure. of desire and societal rules and norms setting limits upon. behavior.. Summary Gender is not a closed set of two complementary a categorization These. based on sex that places people into two groups: male and female.. two groups. physiologically. are often. influenced,. biologically,. sociologically,. but gender as an institution. complex social phenomenon reproduced. biological sexes; rather gender is. that is produced. psychologically,. is gender. by institutions. and. understood. as a. and ideology which is. and maintained by individuals through practice. By recognizing this, we can. overcome the limitations of the view that gender is a strict biological dimorphism to which mainstream. L2 motivation research is bound because of its intractable devotion. to cognitive science and psychometrics.. Instead, a materialist approach—which. sees the. gendered subject as historical, changing from one culture to another and conditioned by the socio-economic. systems—allows. us to see how gendering. begins prior to our. existence in that the subject positions available to us at a specific historical moment are always-already. made. We become gendered subjects with our entry into the Symbolic. Order by taking up gendered our gendered subjectivities. subject positions, and we actively create and maintain. through our everyday practices, including our behavior and. language. Our agency is activated. by desire that is formed in the Imaginary. Thus, there is always a tension to recapture. Order.. our image of wholeness, yet at the same. time our actions are disciplined and regulated. — 295 —. by society. For this reason, this paper.

(10) ft* • i-liftefft. :/ 37—CV. argues that structurally,. the desire to acquire English is no different from any other. type of desire since all desires originate in the same place with the same underlying structure.. This does not make the study of L2 motivation. interesting;. unimportant. or any less. however, it means that the way which gender is approached needs to be. reconsidered.. Appropriating Hegemonic Masculinity in Male Discussions. of. Their Desire to Acquire English Data Background The data in the present study were collected from 15 students who were enrolled in a pre-departure one interviews,. ESL program in Osaka, and consisted of written narratives,. one-on-. a guided group discussion, and a follow-up interview. For this paper,. one of the group discussions between three men was analyzed. The individuals who participated. in this study were recent high school graduates. had decided not to continue. their education. at Japanese. who for varying reasons universities. and instead. intended to apply to universities and community colleges in North America. To prepare for their study abroad, they were enrolled technical college. The core curriculum. in a pre-departure. EAP program. at a. included a variety of academic English courses. along with content courses in American culture. There were three, 10-week terms, and students attended three classes a day, Monday through Friday. The English proficiency of the students varied widely as well as their overall academic abilities. After an initial background. interview, each student. was asked to write a set of narratives. related to their desire and goals for studying. English and attending. North America. A few weeks after these narratives. on topics. universities. were collected the students. divided into groups of three, some with same-sex participants. in. were. and others with mixed-. sex participants. Each group was given a set of questions to guide their discussion. The time for the discussions was limited to a maximum of sixty minutes; however,. most. groups concluded after thirty minutes of talk. The discussions (as was all of the data) were in Japanese. The audiotaped discussions were later transcribed. — 296 —. for close analysis..

(11) HegemonicMasculinityand the Desireto Acquirea ForeignLanguage Making Them Say "Wow!" Coming Alive, and Shooting Guns In the section of the discussion under consideration. here, the three participants. are responding to a question that asked them about their future goals with regard to their study of English. Takayuki takes the first turn and talks about his goal of working in the visual arts.. [...] They have a great impression, posters that you gaze at, like that, and movies, the trailers for movies, the trailers, there are movies that you feel, "Wow! I really want to see it," aren't there?. That kind of movie, I want to make them and. communicate with people. [...] But if I want to study that kind of thing in Japan, it would be at a technical school, wouldn't it? If I went there, to begin with English would disappear.. [...] If I went to a university. over there, that kind of major. exists, all kinds of them. If I can study that, it's cool, I guess. Like that. Of course, I can also learn English. I can learn what I want to. My final objective is to make the things I want to with Japanese sensibility and make foreigners say, "Wow!" Like that. Doing this, at the same time I can make use of English. [...] It's like killing two birds with one stone.. Making the trailers for movies, Takayuki explains, has the ability to make people feel, "W ow! I really want to see that." English will be useful for studying abroad, since he sees America as being more technically advanced, and to get the same skills in Japan he would have to study at a technical school (which usually does not include English in the curriculum).. Besides, studying abroad would enable him to speak English. Above. all, Takayuki sums up his desire to acquire English as being able to "make the things I want with Japanese sensibility to make foreigners say, 'Wow!'" Yasunari takes the second turn and begins by speaking at length about his bad relationship with his family, a situation that increasingly worsened as his performance in high school deteriorated. Even now in the EAP program, he says that his family and others mock him for not being able to speak English.. [...] As for me, up until now, since I've played around, until now, it's been the first time I've been able, been able.... It's like a pattern, isn't it? So, and then I was really scolded. [...1 People said [bad] things about me...rather a lot. If I am able to. — 297 —.

(12) ft*.NAMItl—CV do it, it [being able to speak English] would be really cool and if they took a look again at that idiot [me] they would say "He can really do it [speak English]."... My goal is to show them." My father said repeatedly, "Quit school!" Really, he did. Because I didn't study. So there were rather a lot of times that we fought. About the future, recently with my father [we've fought about] the future. "What will become of you in the future?" Like that, he's started to talk like that. He speaks like that recently. Well, of course, a small child is always watching back, isn't he? [My father]. his father's. is always observing various things, he's really glum,. that guy. Like that, that's the way I've come to think. Well, English, uhh, not at all, somehow until now it's like I haven't. done anything,. isn't it? It's just that he. started 2 or three years ago, but... Hiroyuki: Your father Yasunari: Yeah, two or three years [ago] he started, somehow, for his job. It's that he uses English. But it's not that his English is good. Like Indians, somehow, and Arabs. Normally, he's speaking in Japanese, Japanese, "ai amu a suchuudento," like that. It's like that. You can't understand English, you can't come to understand. it. If you only hear that kind of. it. It's not perfect, and as he speaks like. that I'm laughing at it. He's thinking, "I'm really cool," like that. Well, my father has gotten a bit older and well, it's not easy for him. Like that.. Yasunari's goal of acquiring English is for people who have had a bad opinion of him to look at him as being cool, and by doing so he will be able to show them that their assessment predicted. of him was wrong. Foremost that Yasunari will probably. among his detractors. quit the program. is his father who has. because he is not studying. hard. At this point Yasunari begins to talk about his father who began studying English a few years earlier. In Yasunari's Japanese. pronunciation,. estimation,. his father speaks. "Ai amu a suchuudento,". with stereotypical. and no one could learn English. listening to that kind of English. Yasunari's father seems to think that his own speaking skill is cool. In the end, Yasunari comes around by admitting that he wants to make something of himself and show filial piety toward his father perhaps out of pity that his father at such an age is just now fumbling about with English. The final response. to this discussion. question. is given by Hiroyuki. Hiroyuki. begins to answer the question directly by saying that he just wants to go to university. — 298 —.

(13) Hegemonic Masculinity and the Desire to Acquire a Foreign Language. abroad talk. and. about. graduate. without. his childhood. Takayuki:. any. dream. difficulties.. of becoming. At. this. point,. Hiroyuki. abruptly. begins. to. a policeman.. [...] As for me, as for English, in the future, uh, English, somehow,. anyway, as for my objective now, my objective now is to, anyway, uhh, university, be able to go to a university, and go there and not have any troubles. I think I will have trouble, but now I study hard to have less trouble, I study hard, and well, if I can go to university, I want to go and graduate. I think that, and anyway that is now my biggest. objective. If I can graduate,. if I can graduate,. and can have. success, my future• • • Of course, since long ago my dream was to become a police officer, a police officer, somehow, a normal, not like the koban over there, that type of police officer, somehow, but a position that is involved with international crime. Even in Japan, really. I want to get that kind of position and somehow, I want to confront evil, like that. [...] For the time being, somehow, somehow, I aspire to be a police officer, since long ago, since I was in elementary. school I've longed to be. one, of course, I want to be one, a police officer that is, a police officer. Yasunari: And then, you have to say "Fuck you!" to criminals? Or some sort of dirty words, right? Hiroyuki: Well, it's in Japan, so, uh, yeah, yeah, but in an international office, right? Yasunari: Because it is international, of course. Hiroyuki: Well, yesterday,. somehow yesterday,. somehow there was something. happening, wasn't there Uh, Tokyo, somehow, [it was] a quiet residential. area,. and then, there was a big arrest, a Korean Yasunari: You're kidding! Hiroyuki: A residential. neighborhood,. and then, and then, well, two shots were. fired, the police shot, and, well, they injured them, but like that, like that, I want to catch [criminals], in that kind of [situation]. That's the kind of circumstances. I. want to be in it, somehow. (laughs) Yasunari: Before you know it, you might possibly be dead you know. Isn't it a rather dangerous job? Hiroyuki: It probably is, right? I want to try to shoot a gun. If you're a man, if you're a man, if you're a man one time, well, even if you don't become a police officer, you can shoot one in Korea, when I went there recently, well there was a. — 299 —.

(14) ft* • place where you could shoot a gun. I didn't shoot one, but it was that there were places where you could shoot them. Shooting ranges, anyone, if you are over 18. That too, anyway, guns, well, I have an interest in them. It's not that, but one time I want to shoot one, like that. I think in my life, you see, America, well, if I go to university. [there], of course and I graduate from the university, a big, somehow, I. think it will be a big plus for me, I... Yasunari: It will, it will.. Sensing that Hiroyuki is straying from the point, Yasunari nudges him back by asking him how being a policeman relates to acquiring English, and through. an interesting. exchange the two are able to flesh out a way that being a policeman would require the use of English, namely working in the international. office. Hiroyuki then relates a news. story about an arrest of members of a Korean gang in Tokyo and muses that he, too, would like to be in on the arrest. of criminals. who upset peaceful. Yasunari comments that working in such circumstances threatening.. neighborhoods.. could be difficult, if not life-. Hiroyuki then states that he wants to shoot a gun, and moreover, claims. that if you are a man you should shoot a gun, explaining that there are shooting ranges in Korea where you can try shooting and this he metaphorically. links to his upcoming. study abroad as his one chance to prove that he is a man. In the several lines that follow, Hiroyuki talks about acquiring opportunity. English as an. to improve himself and then maybe even taking time off from being a. policeman to join the Overseas Youth Cooperative. Hiroyuki laments the current state of Japan and the fact that even though Japan is a peaceful nation, he himself has not experienced. a "rich" (yutaka) life. After Takayuki. length about his current watching. TV instead. homework. assignments,. study habits expressing. of buckling. agrees with this, Hiroyuki talks at that he often wastes time, ends up. down to his studies. contrasting. and procrastinates. himself with other, hardworking. with his. students. In the. end, Hiroyuki sums up that he wants to be able to really speak English and experience other cultures abroad. In other words, as Hiroyuki concludes, he wants to be able to use English. to study. international. relations.. As he and the other two men come to. agreement, they all want to "make use of it" or "become alive" (ikashitai) Throughout. the discussion, the three. men appropriate. aspects. of hegemonic. masculinity in describing how they would like to change in the future. For Takayuki,. — 300 —.

(15) Hegemonic. his primary. Masculinity. and the Desire. to Acquire. a Foreign. Language. goal is his work and English will allow him to achieve that. The idea of. living for one's job, or ikigai, continues to be an empowering today and though introduced. part of masculinity even. by Takayuki, it is echoed by the other two discussants.. Yasunari builds upon this masculinity, by adding the notion of filial piety which for him involves giving back to his family, especially his father, and providing somehow for them to make their lives a bit easier. Finally, Hiroyuki adds to that one of the jobs that young boys commonly dream about: becoming a policeman, representing. a protector. and maintainer of societal order and harmony. These projected future selves are in stark contrast to what each of the men have been in the past. Unlike the normative male student who studies hard, graduates from university and then goes on to work for a large company, these men have opted out of this type of life either on their own volition or because of their behavior in the past. Takayuki and Hiroyuki both had participated. in study abroad programs. and it was from those experiences that they became interested. in high school,. in going to a university. outside of Japan. Yasunari, on the other hand, had a troubled life and study abroad was more or less a last ditch effort for him to further his education. Regardless. of their. backgrounds that deviate from the cultural narrative of becoming and being a man, one interesting thing is that through talk with men of similar backgrounds they try to forge subjectivities. that fit within the boundaries. of hegemonic masculinity. The reasons for. this became clear in the interviews that were conducted with each of the three men. In as much as they were studying their subjectivity. in an institution of further education, they each saw. defined by their status as a student. itself was socially ambiguous. since gakusei is a term with a default. definition of "university student," marked, and therefore,. (gakusei). This position in and of (i.e. privileged). and for this reason, their status as "student". it was outside of the hegemonic. was. norm. Yet, each of the men. qualified this by explaining that they were headed to a university. outside of Japan. where they would be able to learn and use English in an authentic way, in contrast to the experience that traditional Japanese students constructing. their experience. would have at university. Therefore,. with English as authentic. was a definitive element of. their identities and was used not to challenge the norm of hegemonic masculinity, but rather to bolster their own experience as empowered men. As argued in the first half of this article, part of this hegemonic masculinity is the relationship of the subject to objects of desire. Here in this excerpt and throughout. — 301 —. the.

(16) ft*.NAMIt1-37---CV discussion, English is repeatedly figured as a tool for furthering specifically gendered subjectivities. Within hegemonic masculinity, masculine desire is to make use of English to prop up or actualize elements of what is still widely thought essential to becoming and being a man in Japanese society. Yet, in the discussion we witness that the object of desire is continually slipping behind or under other objects. This is accomplished most dramatically by Hiroyuki when he draws upon perhaps the most stereotypically masculine occupation, the policeman, which seems to hold ultimate power over life and death as symbolized in the gun. As Hiroyuki emphasizes, "If you're a man..." you have to shoot a gun at least once, although he himself had yet to do so. In his follow-up interview, however, Hiroyuki confessed that his expressed dream of becoming a policeman had no direct relevance to his current career goals, and in fact after he left the program he went to the United States and studied to get a pilot's license, his actual long-held dream. How stereotypical images of masculinities become wound up in the co-construction of masculinity through conversation reveals how true desire becomes displaced and frustrated when subjects take upon the task of creating public selves with objects of desire that are legitimated by dominant ideologies and the subject positions that are created by them. I would argue that what Lacan (1998) calls the fundamental fantasy is what is at the core of each of the man's desire. For Lacan, the subject is plagued by anxiety that his pleasure or enjoyment (jouissance) is never enough; there is always tension between satisfaction and dissatisfaction. Just when we think we possess our object of desire we feel that we are still dissatisfied. Masculine structure of desire consists of turning the Other into an objet a and mistakenly thinking that it can fully satisfy our desires. In the discussion, Hiroyuki sums up what this desire is, namely to "add something" (purasu ni naru) to their lives. This idea of something missing returns repeatedly throughout the conversation. Takayuki reveals that what he desires is to have his work recognized by foreigners. In other words, not only does he want to be desired by the Other in possessing something which the Other desires and will grab their attention, but he also yearns for that to complete him and make him into his imaginary image. Yasunari echoes this desire in a mutated way. Clearly Yasunari harbors a lot of aggression toward his father whom he figures as directing his behavior. Recall, that Yasunari sees his father as both pushing him to study as well as at the same time as commenting that Yasunari will give up. This object of desire, English, is. — 302 —.

(17) HegemonicMasculinityand the Desireto Acquirea ForeignLanguage then appropriated. by Yasunari as a way of taking power away from his father. They. both want the same object of desire, but the father's attempt at getting it is portrayed by Yasunari as incomplete: his father will only ever be able to speak English as if it were Japanese. (i.e. with stereotypical. Japanese. pronunciation).. Thus, Yasunari. is. caught in a bind between desiring what his father wants (assuming the desires of the Other is an inevitable aspect of the formation of desire) and denying that object to his father. The unresolved rivalry between Yasunari and his father and Yasunari's inability to separate. from his father's desire led Yasunari into a cycle of failure (conflict with. father figures. such as his bosses at part-time. jobs and his teachers). and violence.. Eventually, Yasunari left the school and never went to study abroad. Finally, Takayuki's desire became summed up in this dream he pulled out from the lexicon of hegemonic masculinity.. Conclusion Although we have entered an era when higher education is becoming increasingly accessible due to the declining birth rate, it is remarkable. that such a small percentage. of high school graduates in Japan still do not go on to university. Likewise, most men do not end up working in jobs that would be considered to fall under the definition of the traditional salaryman. Even so, in this paper it has been seen how in talk between men that orthodox masculinity continues to be a powerful image for men in contemporary society.. Moreover,. inextricably advertising. linked. on a daily basis we witness to the patriarchal. society. and the media. Thus, hegemonic. how the acquisition and is reproduced. masculinity. of English is in institutions,. is an integral. part of the. ideological fabric of the culture and its reiteration through private discourse and lived experience helps to ensure the reproduction. of class inequalities. Even so, as we have. seen in conversation, hegemonic masculinity is still a powerful concept that men evoke when fashioning their identities.. — 303 —.

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