The pedagogy of love: a register of precarised English teachers in Chile

Abstract

Abstract In this contribution, I will look at the imbrication of language, labour and affective capitalism in the exemplary context of a Chilean private university, as part of a larger sociolinguistic ethnography project that seeks to examine processes of precarisation in university teachers. I argue that the affective-discursive practices used by three English Language teachers, which they called the pedagogy of love, constitute a register. This register is one of the many available to women and men, which they can manage, negotiate, manipulate and capitalise on. I show in this article the way teachers enact, align with and detach from the register to make sense of their professional identities and navigate a precarious higher education market, and how the university benefits from it to regulate teachers’ labour and students’ expectations and eventually, obtain financial stability.