(En)Countering Native-speakerism

Global Perspectives

Adrian Holliday, Pamela Aboshiha, Anne Swan, Adrian Holliday, Pamela Aboshiha, Anne Swan, Adrian Holliday, Pamela Aboshiha, Anne Swan

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781137463500
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Teaching Languages

The book addresses the issue of native-speakerism, an ideology based on the assumption that 'native speakers' of English have a special claim to the language itself, through critical qualitative studies of the lived experiences of practising teachers and students in a range of scenarios.

Part I
Exposing the Ideologies Promoting Native-speakerist Tendencies in ELT

1
Native-speakerism: Taking the Concept Forward and Achieving Cultural Belief

Adrian Holliday

This chapter maintains that native-speakerism damages the entire ELT profession as well as popular perceptions of English and culture. It represents a widespread cultural disbelief – a disbelief in the cultural contribution of teachers who have been labelled ‘non-native speakers’. This label not only describes a relationship with English but also implies a cultural deficiency derived from non-Western stereotypes. Native-speakerism also demeans ‘native speaker’ teachers who themselves become commodities to serve an industry which is hungry for the ‘native speaker’ ideal. While the ‘non-native speaker’ label may have more neutral connotations with other languages, with respect to English it relates to a global politics which gives it neo-racist meaning. Although the native-non-native speaker division is well-established as a problem, as an ideology, native-speakerism has almost disappeared between the lines of our everyday professional lives. This is particularly damaging because issues may appear to have been solved when in fact they have not. Kumaravadivelu (in press) therefore argues that native-speakerism represents an unresponsive ‘native speaker’ hegemony, against which the ‘non-native speaker’ subaltern must take action.

I cannot in any way speak for the ‘non-native speaker’ subaltern. My aim is to make sense of the circumstances which create native-speakerism and the unfortunate hegemony within our profession which thrusts the majority of its members into the subaltern position on a daily basis. I can do this from an insider position because I have lived the ‘native speaker’ persona throughout my career and understand much of the detail of how the ideology operates (Holliday 2005: 6). On this basis I argue that cultural belief – a belief in the cultural contribution of all teachers regardless of their background is the only way to remove the prejudice which positions ‘non-native speakers’ as the subaltern. It is essential to shift the ‘problem’, so that it is not the ‘non-native speaker’, but the cultural disbelief which creates the concept of the ‘non-native speaker’.

I will begin by looking at the nature of the ideology and the cultural disbelief which it promotes. I will then explore the wide-ranging, multidirectional impact of native-speakerism on all parties within the profession and beyond, and how it has become domesticated as an almost neutral phenomenon. This will be followed with a discussion of more effective ways to research and reveal native-speakerism, and then a proposal for how to achieve belief in the contribution of teachers from all cultural backgrounds as a possible antidote to native-speakerism.

This is a difficult subject to write about because there is the necessity to use terms, ‘non-native speaker’ and ‘native speaker’, which should not be in use at all. Inspired very much by Kumaravadivelu’s (forthcoming) paper, I also find it disturbing because he identifies himself as ‘non-native speaker’ whereas I never associated this label with him or with any of the people I know, including some of the co-authors of this book, who use English just as well as I do, but happen not to have been born with it as their only language. The label is highly disquieting, but has to be used in order to seek to undo it. Cumbersome though it may be, I therefore continue to place ‘native speaker’ and ‘non-native speaker’ in inverted commas both to signal ‘so-called’ and to indicate a burden that has to be endured until the issue can be undone. The other thing that I have tried to do throughout is to remember that these labels are labels and not actual groups of people.

Ideology and cultural disbelief

The chapters in this book are driven by a recognition that the perceived native-non-native speaker division within ELT stems from the ideology of native-speakerism. A useful definition of ideology is ‘a set of ideas put to work in the justification and maintenance of vested interests’ (Spears 1999: 19). The vested interest of native-speakerism is the idealisation and promotion of teachers who are constructed as ‘native speakers’ as representing a ‘Western culture’ from which spring the ideals both of English and of the methodology for teaching it (Holliday 2005: 6). This in turn derives from Phillipson’s (1992) linguistic imperialism thesis that the concept of the superior ‘native speaker’ teacher was explicitly constructed in the 1960s as a saleable product to support American and British aid trajectories.

Cultural disbelief is central to native-speakerism because the concepts of ‘native’ and ‘non-native speaker’ are framed as cultural. ‘Native speaker’ is constructed in professional texts as organised and autonomous in fitting with the common description of ‘individualist cultures’ of the West, while ‘non-native speaker’ is associated with deficiency in these attributes in fitting with the common description of ‘collectivist cultures’ of the non-West (Holliday 2005: 19, citing Kubota, Kumaravadivelu, Nayar, and Pennycook), which are themselves considered to be culturally deficient according to a Western construction (Holliday 2011; Kim 2005; Kumaravadivelu 2007: 15; Moon 2008: 16). The result is a disbelief in the ability of teachers labelled as ‘non-native speakers’ to teach English with ‘active’ oral expression, initiation, self-direction and students working in groups and pairs (Holliday 1994: 167–71; 2005: 44), and a deeper conviction that non-Western and ‘Western English’ ‘cultures’ are incompatible.

That ‘native speaker’ and ‘non-native speaker’ are constructed is clear because they are not self-evident on technical linguistic or even nationality grounds. They are instead professionally popularised categories, often with skin colour as a determining characteristic (e.g. Ali 2009; Kubota et al. 2005; Kubota & Lin 2006; Shuck 2006). Native-speakerist cultural disbelief is therefore neo-racist. Even though race is not an explicit agenda in the minds of the people concerned, it ‘rationalizes the subordination of people of colour on the basis of culture’ (Spears 1999: 11–12). Neo-racism is a form of racism which is implicit in but hidden by supposedly neutral and innocent talk of cultural difference.

Widespread impact

However, the implications of native-speakerism go further than the promotion of teachers who are labelled ‘native speaker’. Ideologies are large, complex and far-reaching. They can travel beyond their original borders and can be bought into in different ways and to different degrees at different times by a wide range of individuals. Not all, and not only English-speaking Western professionals buy into native-speakerism. Discrimination is evident in employment practices and customer preference far beyond the English-speaking West, where ‘native speaker’ has become a sales icon for all types of language teaching institutions and their customers (e.g. Ali 2009; Holliday 2005: 8; Lengeling & Mora Pablo 2012; Shao 2005). There is also still a widespread belief that ‘authenticity’ in English lessons derives from ‘native speaker’ language and cultural content. Despite claims that English in India has been an Indian language since independence, I met students who were still being told by their teachers that only ‘British English’ pronunciation would be intelligible (Holliday 2014); and interviews with school students in China indicate their alienation from cultural content in textbooks which their writers construe as ‘native speaker’ (Gong & Holliday 2013).

The vested interests of native-speakerism are therefore multidirectional and can impact on a wide range of settings, as illustrated in the chapters in this book. Native-speakerism is so much in the air in both professional and popular circles that it provides a default and often tacit image of English and how it should be taught against which all parties position themselves either in resistance or compliance and many shades in between. This is not only in teacher and student struggles to construct language and cultural identity (Armenta & Holliday, Aboshiha, Bae, Kamal, Mora Pablo, and Swan, this volume), but also in perceptions of English and culture in Turkish bilingual families and diaspora (Oral, Fell) and in academic journals (Sughrua, this volume). Yazan (2014) reports how a new generation of teachers are still being questioned explicitly and implicitly about their English because of their names and appearance.

Kumaravadivelu (forthcoming) reports how ‘non-native speaker’ deeply and relentlessly reduces the academic and professional status of those it labels. The examples he cites run from not allowing masters students to participate in teaching practice in US universities, then failing in competition with teachers labelled as ‘native speaker’ when applying for jobs, to hardly ever being in a position to open or be the major speakers at conferences in the countries they come from, to not being expected to author textbooks, curricula or major academic works. Kumaravadivelu cites in detail a conference event in 2013, which I also witnessed. The joint organisers were the EFL University in Hyderabad, India and the British Council. However, the British Council invited the speakers and made all their arrangements, even as far as policy and legal matters. After winning independence from foreign agencies in the mid 1980s, there now seemed to be a new culture of dependence.

This account resonates with my own account of a conference in Egypt, almost 30 years earlier, where a well-thinking but dominant British curriculum consultant was trying to ‘support the voices’ of Egyptian colleagues in a conference colloquium by introducing them and ‘giving’ them ‘space’ (Holliday 2005: 133). The dominant position of the British consultant was caused by his absolute inability to stand back and just let them get on with it – the pure cultural disbelief that they were able to. Of course there might have been protestations from the Egyptian colleagues that they lacked experience; but it is pervasive cultural disbelief which will always imagine that ‘they’ cannot work things out for themselves and that ‘we’ can always show them how.

Citing Gramsci and Spivak, Kumaravadivelu interprets this dependency as the predicament of the subaltern not having managed to gain a voice by extricating itself from the discourses of the Centre. He goes so far as to decry students resisting the hegemony by critiquing ‘native speaker’ texts and scribbling their own agendas into its margins. (The reference here is to Canagarajah’s (1999: 90) account of Sri Lankan students and American textbooks.)

The commodification of ‘native speaker’ teachers

Native-speakerism is also multidirectional. Teachers who are labelled ‘native speaker’ also suffer from being treated as a commodity by being reduced to a list of saleable attributes. They can also be caught up in discriminatory employment practices where they are used on the basis of a speakerhood role which bars them from the recognition and rights of their wider professional role (Kumaravadivelu 2012: 22–3, citing Widin). This commodified and confining image of the ‘native speaker’ is the main topic of Houghton and Rivers (2013b), where a number of chapters report that expatriate teachers are employed in institutions in Japan with less favourable contracts on the basis of a reduced perception of their roles as language models. They argue quite rightly that the Othering of any teachers in this manner, regardless of their backgrounds, is a matter of human rights (Houghton & Rivers 2013a). This commodification of teachers takes place whenever they are presented as part of the offer of educational institutions anywhere in the world, under the heading of ‘native speaker’, in order to attract customers. I remember very well when I was a starting teacher at the British Council in Tehran in the early 1970s, that I wanted to be appreciated for my training and professionalism, as distinct from colleagues who had been employed just because they were considered to be ‘native speakers’.

It might be too tenuous to place the commodification of such teachers under the heading of neo-racism. However, I think it can be argued that this commodification is infected by the neo-racism that makes it possible. First, being commodified will only increase the culture of blaming already levelled at ‘non-native speaker’ colleagues and institutions already common amongst expatriate teachers (Holliday & Aboshiha 2009; Aboshiha, this volume). Second, it is highly likely that the ‘native speaker’ label under which they are employed will incorporate the racist concept Whiteness. This sinks to the same level as being considered a ‘prize catch’ anywhere just because of one’s looks or pedigree. As a teacher in Tehran, I wanted a career, not just itinerant employment. I should not complain, because getting employed at that time was particularly easy if one fitted the ‘native speaker’ label. I did not, however, get to teach the Shah’s children because I was not sufficiently well-bred, tall and blond.

Once a particular group of people, defined upon cultural or linguistic grounds, are demarcated as able or unable to carry out certain tasks by virtue of this native-speakerist imagery, an ethos of discrimination is set up which impacts on all parties. The core precept here is imagining that people who are labelled ‘non-native speakers’ to be culturally deficient. If this precept were removed, the whole cycle of native-speakerism would be disarmed. It may not change institutional practices which disadvantage foreign employees, but the native-non-native speaker excuse would no longer be there. It would be established that there is no cultural, professional, pedagogic or economic excuse for defining a teacher’s professional worth purely and narrowly in terms of their speakerhood, regardless of their mother tongue.

To disarm or undo this native-speakerist cycle there needs to be cultural belief in all parties. This should be the beginning principle – the starting point – the belief that everyone has cultural proficiency. If, then, the professional requirements to do the job, which would include the knowledge of English and culture, are not there, this would have nothing whatsoever to do with prescribed national or cultural background, or with perceptions of what is the mother tongue. It needs to be recognised that teachers who have been traditionally labelled ‘native speakers’ have much to offer by virtue of their particular and rich experience of English. However, to counter the hegemony of the ‘native speaker’ label, such teachers, whoever they are, must be considered part of a larger group of people who have long-standing and rich mastery of English, regardless of any idealised reference to country of origin or birth. Here it is important to consider Rajagopalan’s (2012) suggestion that one should be considered a native speaker of whichever language one feels competent in. He says this in the intensely multilingual scenario of India, where many people can have to speak a number of languages every day, and might not feel totally competent in any of them (Amritavalli 2012). In this sense, being a ‘native speaker’ has nothing whatever to do with the abilities to be a teacher of a particular language.

Everywhere, but invisible and between the lines

A major barrier against removing native-speakerism and achieving a redeeming cultural belief has been the demotion of the native-non-native speaker issue to an everyday, domestic, professional concern. This gives the impression that cultural belief has been achieved when in fact it has not. This domestication follows a modernist professional discourse in which not only the ideology of native-speakerism is largely denied, but teachers who are labelled ‘n...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• Notes on Contributors
• Introduction
• Part I Exposing the Ideologies Promoting Native-speakerist Tendencies in ELT
• Part II Native-speakerism and Teachers of English
• Part III Native-speakerism and Perceptions of Identity
• Part IV Native-speakerism in the Academic Environment
• Index