[Somean] SoMean this week - "Native speaker" discussion

[Steele, Ariana]

Hello everyone,

This week, Anna will lead a discussion of the "native speaker." In preparation, please read this article https://psyarxiv.com/ektmf/. More details on some of the contents of our discussion below (inspired from an abstract of Anna and Devin Grammon's work).


Zoom link: https://osu.zoom.us/j/94792211951?pwd=MDVMZnpEdUVCS1dVbDN4cTU5L3pGdz09<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/osu.zoom.us/j/94792211951?pwd=MDVMZnpEdUVCS1dVbDN4cTU5L3pGdz09__;!!KGKeukY!1hdS3JocGP54H2CCWrhbcYKrGTLree9MeeyrS-sfaUJUdwNlEaxf09KqpuKpdADmxEdOQ6tQrNF7WHMbv0-Dpm1ohPlxZzB4ci3kl25SD1M$>

In person location: Oxley 103


Summary of some of what Anna will lead us in through our discussion:


Decentering the colonial native speaker



In this talk, we contrast Eurocentric definitions of the “native speaker” with those of speakers of Quechua, an indigenous language of the Andes that is highly heteroglossic and typically centered on orality rather than written language.  The native speaker construct has been thoroughly critiqued in fields such as second language acquisition and language policy and planning by demonstrating the ways in which this concept is racialized, reductionist, and used to validate the hegemony of powerful ethnic and political interests (e.g. Davies, 2003; Paikeday, 1985; Slavkov et al., 2022). Nonetheless, these critiques have tended to rely on implicit assumptions that connect an idealized native speaker to proficiency in a standardized national language via standard language ideologies (Bonfiglio, 2010; Bylin & Tingsell, 2022; Hackert, 2012; Lippi-Green, 1994).  Recent critiques in linguistics have advanced the discussion of native speakerism by highlighting the construct’s links to colonialism and essentializing discourses, and advocating for a more specific, and less reductionist approach to the concept (e.g. Chen et al 2021; Birkeland et al forthcoming; Grammon & Babel 2021).



Our research builds on these ideas and moves to decenter the colonial native speaker by investigating speakerhood beyond the western European nationalist tradition.  We consider data from Peru and Bolivia to explore the concept of the native speaker in Quechua.  In our data, drawn from recent interviews as well as long-term ethnographic fieldwork, family connections, place of birth, and language use, rather than language purism, nationalism and standard language ideologies, play an important role in defining a “[native] speaker of Quechua.”  Perhaps most strikingly, a Quechua speaker is centrally defined as bilingual or multilingual, and monolingual speakers are characterized as lacking something, objects of pity, and ultimately not fully competent human beings.



We argue that approaches to the “native speaker” are often fundamentally different in Indigenous communities, and that these differences point to important critiques that have so far been implicit in the literature on native speakerism. The characterization of native speakers by Quechua speakers leads us to question the naturalized linkages between idealized notions of racial and cultural purity, literacy, language standardization, and a modern national identity that are implicit in much of the academic literature in our fields.



Best,
Ariana

Ariana Steele (they/them)
PhD Student
Department of Linguistics
Ohio State University
Academic Website<https://www.arianasteele.com/>

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