Native‐Speakerism

Abstract

Native‐speakerism is a neo‐racist ideology that has wide‐ranging impact on how teachers are perceived by each other and by their students. By labeling teachers as separate “native speakers” and “non‐native speakers,” it falsely positions them as culturally superior and inferior with separate roles and attributes. While Western in origin, native‐speakerism is present across the profession and results in employment discrimination and a divisive professional discourse. The depth of embeddedness in professional life requires that radical action be taken to remove the use of “native speaker” and “non‐native speaker” as labels and to recognize the diverse cultural and linguistic contributions of all teachers in all sectors of the profession. Authentic content in English language teaching (ELT) also needs to be redefined as related to students' existing cultural and linguistic experience rather than to “native speaker” language and culture. In teacher education and research, treating teachers as separate speakerhood groups with easy acronyms should be discouraged.

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