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Accepting and Circumventing Native Speaker Essentialism

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

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

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Abstract

This chapter reports on a qualitative study of multilingual South-Asian English language teachers working in an ESOL department in Leicester. Through narrative interviews and focus groups the study explored how the participants experience linguicism, which positions them as inauthentic native English speakers (NES) or non-native English speakers (NNES). Several of the participants are also complicit in this, with many resisting a NES label or feeling some ambiguity with their native speaker status. One of the reasons for this, is that the NES/NNES dichotomy is embedded in the ideology of English language teaching and the ideological values of society. NES is semantically linked with other terminology, such as British English, RP, ‘whiteness’, Standard English, correct English and good English. In attempting to overcome prejudice, rather than identifying themselves as NES, the participants emphasised their multilingualism and presented stories of teaching practices. Therefore, while tending to accept essentialised identity construction by others, the participants utilized other aspects of their identity to overcome prejudice in the workplace.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for English Language Education, University of Nottingham Ningbo, Ningbo, China

    Robert Weekly

Authors
  1. Robert Weekly
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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: Transcription Conventions

Appendix: Transcription Conventions

(@@@@)

Laughter: The length of the @ indicates the length of the laughter

[

Left sided bracket indicate where overlapping speech occurs

°

Indicates talk which is noticeably quieter than the surrounding talk

(1.5)

Numbers in parentheses indicate the periods of silence in tenths of second

(.)

Indicates a pause in talk of less than 0.2 s

Becas-

A hyphen indicates words which are incomplete because of abrupt cut off or self-interruption

He says

Underlined words indicate stress or emphasis

=

Equal signs indicate latching with no noticeable silence between the talk of different people

:::

Colons indicate the sound was prolonged

[…]

Parentheses with three dots indicate that there is a gap between the sections of the transcription which were not included

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Weekly, R. (2018). Accepting and Circumventing Native Speaker Essentialism. 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_8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-72920-6_8

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-72919-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-72920-6

  • eBook Packages: EducationEducation (R0)

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