Despite efforts to acknowledge the legitimacy of nonnative English speakers (NNES) in English language education, the unequal treatment of them and the superiority attributed to mainstream-English-speaking teachers from inner circle countries persist. Conceptualized as a dynamic process rather than as a predetermined product, race has been given more visibility in TESOL scholarship to promote anti-racist educational practices. From a raciolinguistic perspective, this study delineates the racialized experiences of an Asian, non-mainstream-English-speaking teacher, and elucidates the shifts in her conceptualization of race, as well as the (re)construction of her identities and ideologies as a teacher. It illuminates how language, race, and other interrelated categories are discursively (un)marked in the racializing process. The chapter concludes with suggestions to promote anti-racism research and to enact socially just practices.
All the ESL courses should be taught by those who speak and write English as their first language - A quote from an international student in an ESL course evaluation, USA
With all due respect, can I take the class with the English department? - A question from an international student attending an ESL writing class, USA
...but Hong Kong was a British colony and schools teach British English... I believe China will need good teachers like you. - A comment from a member of a school board at a primary school in Hong Kong
Where (in which community) does your family live? What do your parents do?- Questions from parents at a tutoring institution in China
TopIntroduction
The issue of the legitimacy of nonnative English speakers (NNES) in second language education has been discussed extensively. Since the late 20th century, scholars have advocated for the dismantling of the pervasive native-speakerism (Holliday, 2005), and have criticized the native speaker fallacy (Phillipson, 1992). According to Moussu and Llurda (2008), Thomas M. Paikeday, who published a book entitled The Native Speaker is Dead in 1985, made the first attempt to problematize the notion of “nativeness”. For years, scholars have highlighted the native speaker (NS) as a colonial product, and have argued that the idea of NS is socially constructed and imagined (De Costa & Norton, 2017; Kondo, 1990; Varghese, Morgan, Johnston, & Johnson, 2005). The native-speakerism ideology results in the conflation of nationality and language competence, as well as the overdetermination of teachers’ teaching competence based simply on their place of birth. Situated in the context of globalization, frameworks such as English as a lingua franca (Seidlhofer, 2004), World Englishes (Kachru, 1992), and multilingualism (Ortega, 2019) have emerged to disrupt the hierarchy of NS and NNES to do linguistic justice to non-standardized varieties of English, as well as to peripheralized teachers.
Despite the efforts to acknowledge NNES in teaching practice, the pervasive native-speakerism ideology continually poses risks to nonnative English-speaking teachers’ (NNEST) professional development. Pre-service NNESTs have been reported as having been deprived of professional opportunities for positions that privilege idealized “native” speakers (Canagarajah, 1999; Clark & Paran, 2007; Golombek & Jordan, 2005; Rampton, 1990; Ruecker & Ives, 2015). Similarly, in-service teachers, either in language or in content subject education, were found to receive undeserved negative evaluations based on skepticism about their teaching practice (e.g., Rubin & Smith, 1990; Subtirelu, 2015; Nemtchinova, 2005; Ramjattan, 2019). Endeavors also have been made in teacher education to accommodate the alleged needs of NNESTs and to acknowledge the strengths that they have due to their bi/multilingual backgrounds.
Nevertheless, the binary categories are not necessarily exclusive, and the underlying issue extends beyond the nativeness of language. The deficit frame insufficiently addresses the inequity imposed on teachers as they are uncritically provided with remedial training to modify individual behaviors, which results in the reproduction of the stereotyped categories and the perpetuation of inequalities between NS and NNES. The privileged variety of English, or white mainstream English (Alim & Smitherman, 2012; Baker-Bell, 2020), has been retained rather than being effectively contested; thus, it is necessary for researchers to increase the visibility of race, racism, and racialization (Kubota & Lin, 2006, 2009; Kubota, 2020).