A relational approach to social class in language teaching

Abstract This article builds upon recent work on inequality, which calls for those nearer the top of the social ladder to be brought into the conversation. Through a relational notion of social class, the article argues that those in positions of disadvantage, marginalisation, or oppression are best understood when seen in their relations to those who are privileged, centred, or in positions of power and command over them. Drawing on interview data with language teachers in the UK, the US, Chile, Argentina, and Spain, this article asks how language teachers construct discourses of themselves in the role of labour, in relation to employers and owners of language learning institutions in the role of capital. Social class is often seen in terms of a general trend of a disidentification of the working class , where expressions of class solidarity or antagonism in relation to an employing capitalist class are seen as taboo, outdated, or irrelevant. However, participants in this research talked at length about their dissatisfaction with the injustices of the class relations they reproduced at work, through discourses of legality, ethics, and exploitation at work. The article concludes with a call to examine the interrelatedness of forms of exploitation in society beyond labour and capital in the workplace.