The Privilege of the Nonnative Speaker.

Abstract

This paper asserts that uses of a tongue other than one's own can reveal unexpected ways of dealing with the cross-cultural clashes that second language learners encounter as they migrate between languages. It notes that learners' appropriation of foreign languages enables them to construct linguistic and cultural identities in the interstices of national languages and on the margins of monolingual speakers' territpries. The paper discusses the notion of the native speaker, noting how people from different cultures and linguistic backgrounds interpret the concept of privilege. It suggests that seen from the perspective of linguistic travel and migration, rather than from the perspective of the traditional sedentary, bounded opposition native/nonnative, the notion of native speakership loses its power and significance. It also suggests that far more interesting are the multiple possibilities for self-expression in language, because in that regard, everyone is potentially, to a greater or lesser extent, a nonnative speaker, and that position is a privilege. (Contains 29 references.) (SM) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE AND DISSEMINATE THIS MATERIAL HAS BEEN GRANTED BY TO THE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) The Privilege of the Nonnative Speakei Claire Kramsch U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION Office of Educational Research and Improvement EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) XThisdocument has been reproduced as received from the person or organization originating it. 0 Minor changes have been made to improve reproduction quality. Points of view or opinions stated in this University of California, Berkeley document do not necessarily represent official OERI position or policy. ph csittul yd if f rheci l dn ol i ft rhaet vies sppreeadki t nd , guage pedagogy the premium put on spoken communicative competence since the 1970s has endowed native speakers with a prestige they did not necessarily have in the 1950s and 1960s, when the grammar-translation and then the audiolingual methods of language teaching prevailed; today foreign language students are expected to emulate the communicative skills of native speakers. Because American foreign language departments have always defined themselves against English departments by studying non-English languages and literatures (see Daniel and Peck 14), within the humanities native speakers of foreign tongues enjoy a de facto authority and prestige that the nonnative lacks. Literature students are usually assumed to be better readers of a foreign literature if they have a native command of its language; scholars specializing in their native languages often have an advantage on the job market over their nonnative colleagues. Foreign language study acquires credibility and legitimation from being backed by national communities of native speakers, who set the standards for the use of their national languages and often for the reading of their national literatures. Despite the spread of postmodern thought in the humanities and in many branches of linguistics and anthropology (Duranti and Goodwin; Gumperz and Levinson), this idealization of the native speaker has not been put into question. But native speakers do not always speak according to the rules of their standard national languages; they display regional, occupational, generational, class-related ways of talking that render the notion of a unitary native speaker artificial. Moreover, whereas students can become competent in a new language, they can never become native speakers of it. Why should they disregard their unique multilingual perspective on the foreign lan-

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