AI-Generated Discomforting Emotions towards Racism in TESOL Classrooms: AI-Powered Storytelling as A Space for Critical Antiracist Language Pedagogy

The present study probed into the way Iranian EFL learners’ experience of discomforting emotions evoked through AI-powered storytelling around the controversial topics helped to enact critical antiracist language pedagogy. The controversial topics revolved around individual, institutional, and epistemic forms of racism. The qualitative data was generated through AI-storytelling products and post-intervention interviews. The analysis of the data through a hermeneutic lens led to the extraction of two themes: grounding consciousness and transcending racial inequalities. The participants mainly spoke of guilt, shame, fear, and anger reflecting their race-blindness, fragility, and lack of knowledge of the complexity and intersectionality of various identity categories leading to discriminatory practices. AI, used as a co-creator, helped to cultivate the participants’ critical affective literacy and empower them to disrupt the frames that framed certain lives nonlivable. Grounding consciousness formed by exposing blindness and stopping fragility underscored the possibility of de-silencing antiracism and practicing critical reflexivity in TESOL. Transcending inequalities, which was composed of unmasking various forms of oppression and acknowledging the interrelated form of racism highlighted the value of epistemic balance in TESOL through de-simplifying and de-essentialising antiracism. Findings showed the role of human-AI interactions in decolonising TESOL and enacting the language pedagogy of discomfort.

کلیدواژه ها:

critical antiracist language pedagogy ، discomforting emotions ، language pedagogy of discomfort ، Iranian EFL learners