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Teachers’ Identities as ‘Non-native’ Speakers: Do They Matter in English as a Lingua Franca Interactions?

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Criticality, Teacher Identity, and (In)equity in English Language Teaching

Part of the book series: Educational Linguistics ((EDUL,volume 35))

Abstract

This study closely examines sequences in which a so-called nonnative English teacher resolves miscommunication with students in a multilingual writing classroom at a U.S. university, and investigates how an identity as a nonnative-English-speaker teacher (NNEST) might affect English as a lingua franca (ELF) interactions. Recent studies on ELF academic discourse (e.g., Björkman (2013) have demonstrated ELF speakers’ skillful communicative strategies for dealing with complex intercultural communication. Combining sequential analysis with ethnographic information, this study examines such ELF academic interactions, highlighting the practice and identity of an instructor. The data analysis exhibits that pre-given categories (NNESTs and ‘nonnative’ students) are neither interactionally relevant, nor treated as important by interactants in this context. Rather, the instructor’s identities as a multilingual teacher, who works hard to resolve miscommunication with students, have been achieved through ongoing classroom interactions rather than being predetermined. I contend we need more research exhibiting the fluid nature of multilingual teacher practice and process of identity construction in real-time instructional contexts.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Such national background information of students and teacher is utilized only in relation to precise behavioral evidence from video-recorded interactions to avoid haphazard invocation of background information in order to explain what is seen in interactions. This is because it is inappropriate to take for granted the nature and impact of these cultural background aspects on interactions.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Educational Linguistics Division, Graduate School of Education, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA

    Yumi Matsumoto

Authors
  1. Yumi Matsumoto
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Yumi Matsumoto .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Curriculum and Instruction, The University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, AL, USA

    Bedrettin Yazan

  2. Department of English, Mukogawa Women’s University, Nishinomiya-shi, Hyogo-ken, Japan

    Nathanael Rudolph

Appendix

Appendix

1.1 Transcription Symbols

The video-recorded materials were transcribed according to the following notation system, whose core was originally developed by Gail Jefferson for the analytic research of conversation (cited by Atkinson and Heritage 1999).

Symbol

Represents

[

Overlapping utterances

=

Latched utterances

(.)

Micro pause

(2.0)

Timed (e.g., 2-second) pause

:

Extended sound or syllable

.

Falling intonation

,

Continuing intonation

?

Rising intonation

!

Animated intonation

-

Cut-off

>word<

Speech at a pace quicker than the surrounding talk

°no°

Speech quieter than the surrounding talk

$

Smile voice

((walks toward))

Nonvocal action that is not synchronized with verbal, details of conversational scene

{raises his arm}

Nonvocal action that is synchronized with verbal speech

(  )

Unrecoverable speech

RH

Right hand

LH

Left hand

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Matsumoto, Y. (2018). Teachers’ Identities as ‘Non-native’ Speakers: Do They Matter in English as a Lingua Franca Interactions?. In: Yazan, B., Rudolph, N. (eds) Criticality, Teacher Identity, and (In)equity in English Language Teaching . Educational Linguistics, vol 35. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-72920-6_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-72920-6_4

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  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-72920-6

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