Twitter posts on English language learning in Japan: Attitudes towards 'Neitibu'（‘native speakers’)

To critically explore the ideological nature of English and English learning/teaching in Japan, this study, as part of a multifaceted project, explores how attitudes towards English (or learning/teaching English） are displayed on the social media platform Twitter. First, I examined the results of the thematic analysis of Twitter discourse with an analytical viewpoint of native-speakerism, illustrating the underlying assumptions and inconsistencies in attitudes towards English learning. Then, I applied van Dijk’s （2004） analytical framework and explored the recreation of the power relationship between ‘native speakers’and ‘non-native speakers’ in the social media discourse. This study argues that hegemonic ideology is recreated by ‘ourselves’ by unintentionally applying inverted ‘ideological squares’. This study focuses on Japanese society as a case study of learning English as a foreign language, revealing a self-defeating attitude towards ‘native-speakers’, which potentially reinforces their own subjugation, in turn having implications for future studies in global contexts.