The present study examines English language pedagogy as a Janus-faced phenomenon based on interviews with 40 English language teachers in one province of Pakistan. The study draws on Foucault's writings on power relations and agency. The findings suggest that besides disciplinary techniques of surveillance and examination, states of domination maintained through officially sanctioned discourses and apparatuses, teachers also seem to exercise their agency by engaging in struggles against the institutionalized discourses that underpin the very existential question, e.g., ‘who are we?’. Such a question facilitates learning experience of diverse learners in classrooms and help them negotiate their identities. The study has implications for the similar global contexts where state-led ELT education is often studied in terms of the dominant ideologies obscuring the fact that they are also sites of contestation. English classes thus can be viewed as fields of force relations where teachers exist in a strategic relation with textbook content and diversity of learners subject to the states of domination as well as capable of countering such dominations and social hegemonies.

本研究基于对巴基斯坦一个省份 40 名英语教师的采访，将英语教育学视为一种两面性现象。该研究借鉴了福柯关于权力关系和代理的著作。研究结果表明，除了监视和考试的纪律技术、通过官方认可的话语和机构维持的统治状态之外，教师似乎还通过参与与支撑存在主义问题的制度化话语的斗争来行使自己的能动性，例如“谁是”。我们？'。这样的问题可以促进不同学习者在课堂上的学习体验，并帮助他们协商自己的身份。这项研究对类似的全球背景具有影响，在全球背景下，国家主导的英语教学教育经常根据主导意识形态进行研究，掩盖了它们也是争论场所的事实。因此，英语课堂可以被视为一种力量关系场，教师与教科书内容和受统治状态影响的学习者多样性存在战略关系，并有能力对抗这种统治和社会霸权。