A Media Discourse Analysis on LGBTQ Teachers

This study aims to examine how LGBTQ teachers are represented in media discourse as a way of addressing the issue that, despite the institutionalisation of human rights for LGBTQ students in school education since the 2000s, LGBTQ teachers remain invisible. In doing so, we also sought to examine the normalcy debate surrounding the sexual identity of teachers in Korean society. To do this, a critical discourse analysis was conducted on articles about LGBTQ teachers published in daily newspapers during this period. The analysis revealed that there are two main types of representations of LGBTQ teachers in media discourse. One is the case of LGBTQ teachers abroad, who are represented as a threat that negatively affects schools and students because of their sexual behaviour or physical characteristics. In this case, LGBTQ teachers are regarded as not only not teachers, they are not people, and they are out of the intelligibility of the heteronormative gender order surrounding schooling. The second category of articles presents LGBTQ teachers in the frame of minority human rights issues, where they are presented as parties to human rights issues and as subjects who deserve to have their fundamental rights guaranteed. These articles serve as an alternative knowledge production to the discourse of normality surrounding teachers. On the other hand, articles about LGBTQ students during the same time period also present these students as subjects of human rights, but their teachers are assumed to be non-LGBTQ. In this context, a series of articles that make these teachers visible and represent them as citizens and human rights subjects has the power to shape discourse, creating a new category of teacher as a teacher. The findings of this study invite us to reconsider what it means to make LGBTQ teachers visible in school practice and discourse. In addition to raising the issue of their human rights, the visualization of LGBTQ teachers can also question what constitutes normalcy and the legitimacy of the teacher subject.