CHALLENGING THE NATIVE AND NONNATIVE ENGLISH SPEAKER HIERARCHY IN ELT: NEW DIRECTIONS FROM RACE THEORY

Abstract

Over the past decade, English Language Teaching (ELT) scholars have shown an increased interest in exploring the intersections of racism and native speakerism, leading to more articles, special journal issues, and edited collections dealing with this topic. While this work has been valuable, it has largely been limited to considering one's appearance, nonnative speaking status, and the connection between the two. In this article, the author argues that we can draw more extensively on theories of difference developed by race theorists to better analyze and deconstruct the hierarchy between native and nonnative speaking professionals in ELT. Drawing on work by ELT and race theorists, the author applies Harris' (1993) theory of “whiteness as property” to make the argument that ELT scholars need to draw more extensively on race theory in order to challenge the inequalities present in ELT.