The missing piece of the conversation on native speakerism (pt. 1)
This week, we're talking about a hot topic in the linguistics-meets-education world: native speakerism.
Native speakerism is a relatively new term. It’s defined by Holliday (2005) as, “an ideology that upholds the idea that so-called native speakers are the best models and teachers of English because they represent a ‘Western culture’ from which spring the ideals both of English and the methodology of teaching it,” (p. 6).
In other words, it’s the belief that English “native” speakers are the best teachers of English, regardless of qualification or teaching experience. They’re simply better because they represent countries strongly associated with the best versions and pedagogies of English.
There are hundreds of research papers and books which dive into native speakerism, often looking at what makes “native” and “non-native” speaker teachers different in the classroom.
Most papers are survey-based and ask students to rate “native” and “non-native” speaker teachers in terms of certain metrics. Many papers (Medgyes, 1994, Cheung 2002) conclude with lists that generally associate “native” speaker teachers with having the best knowledge of everyday language (e.g. slang, idioms) and cultural knowledge, and “non-native” speaker teachers with better knowledge of grammar and having the ability to relate to students, as they, too, have learned the target language.
There’s hundreds of papers modeled after this concept. But there’s a fundamental flaw in all of them—the idea that this dichotomy exists in the first place.
That’s going to be our topic for the next two weeks. In this newsletter, we’re going to study how native speakerism looks different when we take race into account. Next week, we’re going to discuss the belief that native speakerism will continue to persist as long as ESL classrooms remain English-only.
Before we begin
A trend I’ve noticed is for researchers to give brief introductions at the beginning of their papers. This gives the reader insight into the researcher’s perspective and potential biases. For a topic, like native speakerism, I think it makes sense to re-introduce myself:
I’m Monica. I grew up in the U.S., in Miami: a city where 69.4% of the population is Latinx, and 66.07% are native speakers of Spanish (US Census, 2020; Claritas, 2021). My mother is Colombian and my dad is Swiss, so we spoke three languages in my home: Spanish, English, and Swiss German. Due to many factors, I’ve always considered myself to be English-dominant.
As an ESL teacher, I have benefitted from native speakerism. I’ve been teaching English for about five years and I’ve never had trouble finding a job as an ESL teacher (many “non-native” speakers cannot say the same). I’ve worked for companies that have required a copy of my passport (not as proof that I could legally work in the U.S., but as proof that I am a U.S. citizen1.)
I have a B.A. and M.A. in linguistics. In graduate school, one of my main research interests was native speakerism.
Back to the main topic!
Is native speakerism really about language?
I don’t think it’s controversial to say that the main perceived difference between “native” and “non-native” speaker teachers is command of the English language, this idea that “native” speakers just know English better.2
But the strange thing is that even if we define “native” speakers as people who started learning English as babies and speak it as their dominant language as adults, there will be many people who fit that definition, but who are not privileged as “native” speakers.
Why?
Because native speakerism has little to do with language3 and a lot to do with sociopolitical power:
“it is becoming increasingly apparent that this marketing of “native speaker” teachers is less to do with language and more to do with an association with “Whiteness,” (Holliday, 2006, p. 2).
Job listings don’t ask for any “native” speakers. No, they often ask for teachers from Inner Circle countries (Kachru, 1991): U.S., U.K., Canada, Australia, New Zealand.
It doesn’t matter if you’re really a “native” speaker (i.e. someone who has spoken English since birth and uses it as a dominant language4). What matters more is which English you speak.
Moreover, inside of Inner Circle countries, not all “native” speakers are privileged—only speakers associated with the standardized varieties.
What happens when we center race in the native speakerism conversation?
A raciolinguistic perspective (Rosa and Flores, 2015) suggests that language cannot be studied without taking into account race, and vice versa.
So, language, as an objective thing in the world, cannot be studied in isolation. That’s because language is embodied and can be perceived differently depending on who is using it.
It creates a situation in which two people can do the same thing with language, but be perceived differently.
I posted an example of this on Instagram a couple months ago. I drove by a restaurant that had an ad that said “Let’s breakfast together!” Breakfast was being used as a verb, and it made for a cute ad.
But, wait!
Spanish speakers are told over and over that breakfast is not a verb in English. Saying “I breakfasted at 9AM,” is considered a mistake.
So, here we have the same language being perceived differently depending on the speaker.
For this reason, a raciolinguistic perspective questions the idea that if speakers simply learn to better mimic the standard, then racial hierarchies will be eliminated (p. 155). In other words, it questions whether teaching students to mimic the standard does anything to fight racial inequality.
Using a raciolinguistic lens, we can see that “non-native” speakers may always be perceived as deficient, regardless of how well they speak English.
The problem is not their English, or the way they speak.
The problem is that there’s two people in the conversation: them and, what Rosa and Flores call the white listening subject5, the listener who hears the speaker’s language as deficient regardless of language itself.
It’s time to question and become aware of times when we are, ourselves, white listening subjects who deem other’s language as deficient.
You can’t fight native speakerism by bringing down “uneducated” native speakers
A common response against native speakerism I see online is something like: “Native” speakers make plenty of mistakes, especially grammar and spelling mistakes. It’s only educated “native” speakers who speak the good English that everyone is talking about.6
While this sentiment correctly shows that “native” speakers are not inherently better, it does this at the expense of people who grew up in English-speaking countries who are not associated with standardized English (e.g. Spanglish speakers, African American English speakers, etc.).7
It stigmatizes and invalidates their language as inferior. And reinforces an idealized standard as superior.
Most importantly, the idea behind these messages is that if these “uneducated” speakers simply got educated and learned the standard language, then they would be viewed as “good speakers of English.”
If you take anything away from this newsletter I hope it’s that that message places all of the judgment on the speaker and none of the blame on the raciolinguistic ideologies of the listener.
To conclude
There are far more “non-native” speakers of English than “native” speakers. And yet, these “native” speakers are continually privileged as superior.
I offer a superficial, easy change and a long-term, harder change.
The superficial: as Holliday suggests, I believe that we should stop using the terms “native” and “non-native.8” These terms assume that there are objective differences between the two groups and that these differences are worth studying.
Discussing how these groups differ (which is impossible to do without sweeping generalization), is futile and we should focus on getting students to question their beliefs about why this is a discussion in the first place: Why do you think “native” speakers are better? Do you think “native” speakers can help you learn English more effectively? Why do you consider U.S. English better than your local English?
This ties and overlaps with my harder change: question your own beliefs about language. Which English do you think sounds educated? Where do you think you got that message from?
Then, you’ll be better equipped to help your students do the same.
Next week, we’re going to discuss native speakerism through a Translanguaging lens. It offers a strength-based approach to bilingual speakers of English, as well as a whole-new view of language.
Works Cited
Flores, N., & Rosa, J. (2015). Undoing appropriateness: Raciolinguistic ideologies and language diversity in education. Harvard Educational Review, 85(2), 149-171.
Holliday, A. (2006). Native-speakerism. ELT journal, 60(4), 385-387.
Holliday, A. (2014). Native speakerism. Adrianholliday. com.
Kachru, Y. (1991). Speech Acts in World Englishes: Toward a Framework for Research. World Englishes, 10(3), 299-306.
Medgyes, P. (1994). The non-native teacher. London: Macmillan.
Some papers have even posited that companies ask for passports to see whether the teacher has a “western looking” face (Jenks & Lee, 2019).
This is a good time to pause and ask yourself: In what ways do “native” speakers have a better command in English? Many social media posts will focus on “native” language being filled with slang, idioms, and cultural knowledge. But if the goal of learning English is to be able to express ideas in English, why are slang, idioms, and cultural knowledge from the U.S. and U.K. (as opposed to English meaningfully rooted in the student’s lives) best?
If you’re still skeptical about native speakerism not being about language, ask yourself: What makes U.S. and U.K. English better than any other English? If the goal of language is to communicate ideas, don’t all varieties of English do this? There are no solid answers. Because the only reason they’re perceived as better is because of sociopolitical power that the U.S. and U.K. have had historically and presently.
This is not a great definition of a “native” speaker. A great exercise for yourself and students is to define a “native” speaker. You’ll be surprised by how differently people understand the term!
The white listening subject does not refer to an actual person. It’s a mode of perception, so someone can be acting like the white listening subject.
While this is often used to show that “native” speakers need to study the language to be able to teach the language (which is completely true), the conversation becomes problematic when it veers away from explicitly talking about teaching qualifications. It also does not take into account the value of having a teacher who speaks multiple varieties or languages.
I can hear the counterargument: It’s not wrong to say that these people don’t know grammar because they objectively don’t; they’re using the wrong forms! It’s a lot more nuanced than this. For example, why are you assuming that they’re speaking standardized English? Additionally, speakers are privileged when their home language is perceived to be close to the standard. Taking a raciolinguistic perspective, education level is often implied for privileged speakers, while non-privileged speakers need to continually prove their education level.
I know, I know it’s ironic considering I used the terms several times throughout this paper. When I use these words, following Holliday, I put them in quotes to remind the reader that these terms are not objective. More important than disregarding the terms is making sure to not engage in making generalizations about “native” versus “non-native” speaker teachers.