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Native-speakerism, stereotyping and the collusion of applied linguistics
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System 37 (2009) 12–22 www.elsevier.com/locate/system
Native-speakerism, stereotyping and the collusion of applied linguistics Ahmed Kabel * Center for Academic Development, Al Akhawayn University, Avenue Hassan II, P.O. Box 104, Ifrane 53000, Morocco Received 5 May 2008; received in revised form 1 September 2008; accepted 15 September 2008
Abstract Although, in recent years there have been several advances in critical applied linguistics which have attempted to problematize the ideological underpinnings of language practices, there have in parallel been resistances mounted on the part of traditional applied linguistics that adamantly oppose any form of coming to terms with the political and ideological nature of the discipline. The native speaker and its putative native-speakerism ideology are an exemplary site where the different applied linguistics epistemologies and vested disciplinary interests are contested. In an article published in a recent issue of System, Waters (Waters, A., 2007. Native-speakerism in EL: plus ca change. . .? System 35, 281–292) argued that nativespeakerism critique suffers from serious epistemological and methodological flaws in that it, the argument runs, adopts an under-developed concept of stereotyping and fails to provide empirical evidence in support of the claims it advances. I would argue in this paper that Waters’ (i) position is indicative of the conservatism of applied linguistics to come to terms with its condition of possibility and the deeply ideological and political nature of its practices and (ii) psychologization of stereotyping and ahistorical account of native-speakerism misrepresent the fundamental nature of social reality and applied linguistics practices, and consequently deflect attention from and reproduce the structures of power and inequality that they embody and uphold. Ó 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Native speaker, nonnative speaker; Traditional, critical applied linguistics; Stereotyping; Epistemology; Discourse; Politics of language teaching
When we unthinkingly put to work our most ordinary modes of thinking, we inflict upon our object a fundamental adulteration, which can go all the way to pure and simple destruction and that may well remain unnoticed Bourdieu (1998): 134.
For the native [the colonized], objectivity is always directed against him Fanon (1968): 77. *
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0346-251X/$ - see front matter Ó 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.system.2008.09.004
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1. Introduction In The Gay Science, Nietzsche asserted that because of three errors, science has been promoted for the wrong ends. The first error concerns the conviction that through science one aspired to grasp God’s wisdom; this he imputed to the English. The second error, which he generously bestowed the French, relates to the belief in the absolute usefulness of knowledge. The third and last error was the conviction that ‘in science, one had and loved something selfless, harmless, self-sufficient and truly innocent in which the evil drives of humanity had no part at all’ (2001: 55); this he specially reserved for Spinoza. My argument is that Alan Waters’ article suffers from exactly the same inadequacies that, as Nietzsche, in his customary biting style, maintained, characterize the practice of science. The ‘three errors’ that the article comprises are (i) psychologization of stereotyping, (ii) dehistoricization and depoliticization of native-speakerism and (iii) an uncritical adherence to ‘mainstream’ positivistic epistemologies. Indeed, the ‘shibboleth of positivistic value-neutrality’ and cognitivism have funnelled Waters into the naturalization and ideological neutralization of stereotypes and native-speakerism wherein ‘the evil drives of humanity had no part at all’. To put my argument into a wider perspective, I argue that the position advanced by Waters is symptomatic of the kind of applied linguistics he practices. 2. Traditional and critical applied linguistics For the past 15 years or so, there has been a growing interest in critical approaches to applied linguistics (Pennycook 1994, 1998, 2001, 2006, 2007; Phillipson, 1992; Canagarajah, 1999, 2002; Fairclough, 1989; Holliday, 1994, 2005; Shohamy, 2001; Ricento, 2006; Blommaert, 1999; Norton and Toohey, 2004; Pennycook and Makoni, 2007; Karmani and Makoni, 2005; Kumaravadivelu, 2006, 2007). Despite the diversity of perspectives, these approaches share a common interest in the dismantling of the ideological assumptions and professional doxa involved in applied linguistic practices, and a commitment to addressing issues of power, inequality and domination. This wide spectrum of scholarship is dedicated to practicing applied linguistics ‘with an attitude’ (Pennycook 2001:168), ‘from a perspective that is always mindful of the interrelated concerns of dominion. . ., disparity. . ., difference. . . and desire’ (Pennycook 2006: 283). Critical applied linguistics is thus highly ‘suspicious’ of the categories that characterize the ‘present applied linguistics order’ and seeks to demystify the conditions of possibility of applied linguistics as a field of academic inquiry as well as pinpoint and combat the ‘hypostasized powers’ involved in language and professional practices. Notwithstanding these developments, traditional applied linguists have been reluctant to accommodate the change or at least seriously engage with it. Widdowson, for instance, is clearly dismissive of critical applied linguistics as being downright hypocritical and possessing suspicious political agenda (2001: 16). He admonishes that it may at any time metamorphose into a malevolent, diabolic mission once the Pennycook angels are no longer here! (2003: 14). Similarly, Alan Davies, although concurring that it has become pervasive, argues that critical applied linguistics is unhelpful and remains marginal to the concerns of the discipline (2001: 139– 142).1 Substituting the Widdowsonian angels for birds, he finally dismisses calls for applied linguists to critically engage with language matters as merely ‘cuckoo-like’ vying to take over the much-beloved discipline. These pronouncements by leading mainstream applied linguists are suggestive of a general malaise of the discipline to look beyond the fence and consider advances in other areas of social science. The malaise translates into the erection of defense mechanisms that make change impossibly difficult to effect. As Rajagopalan puts it, ‘there is still a very long way to go and many stubborn resistances to overcome’ (2004: 415), with of course, serious consequences for, to bend Fanon, ‘the wretched’ of applied linguistics. What are then the roots of these resistances? Applied linguistics has mostly been disengaged from the ideological conditions of its possibility. Perhaps the clearest form of this reflexive stasis is the lack of recognition of the historical situatedness of the discipline. The current dominant applied linguistics is a product of western epistemological and philosophical ideologies. And consonant with most western disciplinary traditions, it lays claims to universal validity and applicability, 1
We must leave aside the question of who defines the concerns of the discipline, marginal or otherwise.
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thus denying its very historicity and particularity. The neat result is that these persistent ‘attempts to move outside history’ render ‘social and historical factors. . . secondary to the discipline’ (Makoni, 2003: 133). In a review of the historical development of the discipline, Guy Cook cautions his readers that his ‘historical characterization. . . may retrospectively seem localized in Anglo-American, and even more particularly British applied linguistics. The first two stages (1950s–1984 and 1984–mid 1990s) belong to an era in which applied linguistics was still predominantly an Anglo-American affair, rather than the internationally distributed discipline that it is today’ (2005: 284). Leaving aside the problem of periodization, the Cook characterization is problematic on at least one count. Applied linguistics was not ‘internationally distributed’ only in the mid 1990s; it has been ‘practiced in many social and historical contexts outside the Anglo-American academic space, India, South Africa and Latin America’ and these ‘too have developed their own histories’ (Makoni, 2003: 131). More crucially, as Pennycook argues, the assumptions underlying ‘a great deal of thinking about English and English language teaching have their origins in the colonial contexts rather than in what is often assumed to be their provenance in Britain itself’ (2007: 15). Another source of problem is related to the practical concerns of traditional applied linguistics. Under the continuing strong influence of the founding specters (Corder, 1973) and with its focus on classroom application and efficiency, applied linguistics has insulated itself from the need for reflexive practice. As Corson pointed out, ‘just this perception that ‘‘language teaching” is its central function, may have distorted the epistemological foundations of AL in general’ (1997: 168). Along analogous epistemological lines, with its heavy dependence on structural and cognitive linguistics, there have been an uneven focus on quantitative and positivistic methodologies (Lazaraton, 2000)2 and preoccupation with individual disembodied cognition (Firth and Wagner 2007, 1997). Not only does such a restricted view belie wider sociolinguistic issues of discourse and communication, it also foists territorial boundaries and fosters a kind of epistemological censorship. As Firth and Wagner put it, it ‘is a view that erects barriers, sealing off the area of SLA as a kind of intellectual ‘‘private property” of documented, card-carrying SLA researchers’ (1998: 91). This territorial logic obviates the need for appreciating the ethical complexities of applied linguistic practices. On much broader level, Pennycook has criticized mainstream applied linguistics for being deeply hypocritical in its ‘inability or unwillingness to grapple adequately with the social, political, cultural and ethical concerns that certainly come to bear on any applied linguistic context’ (2006: 287), thus resulting in an adherence to the unquestioned and unquestionable doxa of performing applied linguistics. The disinclination to serious reflexive work results in claims to objectivity and political neutrality which render traditional applied linguistics politically, ethically, socially and culturally unaccountable or at least indifferent. The consequence is that, to echo Horkheimer, the applied linguist and his (or her) ‘science is a factor in the preservation and renewal of the existing state of affairs’ (1972: 196). Traditional applied linguistics can thus be characterized by deep-seated misconceptions about (if not outright dismissal of) the complex political and ethical implications of language practices, a clinging to positivistic ideals of neutrality and prioritization of efficiency and applicability. What transpires from this alchemy is a perpetuation of the systems of inequality and domination that characterize applied linguistics and TESOL institutional practices. It is my argument that Alan Waters and the entirety of his narrative are an exemplification of traditional applied linguistics. His conception of native speakerism, stereotyping and cultural politics leads him to disregard the wider context in which these practices take place. Waters argues that the critique of native speakerism adopts a seriously flawed construct of stereotyping. Instead, the problem, he urges, should be ‘approached from a very different perspective, from the need to invoke other forms of understanding, argument and persuasion’ (2007: 288). So rather than relegating it to the sub-category of the irrational or problematic, stereotyping, according to these new forms of intellect, should be deemed an unavoidable, normal and healthy process of human cognition (ibid: 287).3 Unfortunately, these attempts to conceptualize the question of racial stereotyping in terms of ‘information processing’ 2 Rod Ellis indicated that one of the reasons behind this uneven balance is that the review and selection process is biased towards the quantitative paradigm (2007: 261). 3 Waters suggests that we need to ‘distinguish the ‘natural’ occurrence of [these] psychological processes from making moral judgments’ (2007: 287, my emphasis). Besides the inadequacies outlined above, the caricaturing of the political and ideological account of stereotypes as merely an example ‘moral judgment’ wildly misses the mark.
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and cognitive ‘categorization’ avert attention from both the origins and the politics of representation which are integral features of the semiotic economy of stereotypes. 3. Stereotyping as categorization It is general knowledge to say that categorization is essential for the cognitive survival of the species; we cannot live and make sense of the world and events around us without categorizing them into manageable, intelligible units. The problem, however, lies in precisely why we categorize the world in certain ways and not in others and why some categories are more salient and ‘front of mind’ than others. Like the commandments in Orwell’s Animal Farm, there are categories which are ‘more cognitive’ than others. And here one needs to clarify the relationship between categories and stereotypes. Contrary to what Waters claims, when considering stereotypes and categories, it must be recognized that one is not comparing like with like. While categorization is inevitable, stereotypes are not and cannot be an integral part of our perception and cognitive organization of reality. Moreover, although we need categories to organize the world, one should not ‘exaggerate their significance or elevate them to a supreme position as a unit of thought’ and regard them as ‘the elemental structure of thought’ (Pickering, 2001: 3). Furthermore, categories are generally flexible and can be disputed and realigned. However, stereotypes, as I show in more detail below, are exactly the reverse; they resist any form of malleability; their contents are ossified. The crucial difference then is that while categories are mental, cognitive constructs, stereotypes are discursive practices. They are integral parts, not of our cognitive apparatus, but of the structures of meaning and power which they maintain and reproduce. Based on this, the claim that categorization is ‘cognitively’ inevitable and can be ‘neutral’, rather than explaining the problem, completely obscures the historical and ideological nature of stereotyping. A different view, to which Waters seems to subscribe, holds that stereotypes are not a natural mode of processing; they represent a ‘processing error’. On close scrutiny, this view seems to be predicated on identical parochial cognitivist arguments. 4. Stereotyping as processing error The notion of stereotyping as error occludes the complex processes involved in stereotyping. The implication is, of course, that stereotyping is a slippage, an idiosyncratic blunder in the ‘perception’ and ‘processing’ of the social world. The depiction implies the existence of an objective, authentic reality that is independent of the ‘perceiving’ subject. This position thus fails to spot the fundamental feature of social reality as historically and discursively constructed. It fails to recognize that ‘error’ is itself socially constructed, is itself discursively produced. The presence of ‘error’ is not simply fortuitous and random; it constitutes the ‘default’ for perceiving the other. Otherwise, how can one then account for the ubiquity and similarities across time and space of such ‘errors’? Edward Said, in his critique of Orientalism, compellingly argued that the Western representation of the Orient was not merely ‘erroneous’, ‘unreal’; it was the medium through which the orient was turned into a subject of knowledge, production and control; as Said writes, ‘Orientalism can be discussed and analyzed as the corporate institution for dealing with the Orient – dealing with it by making statements about it, authorizing views, describing it,. . . ruling over it’ (1978: 3). The point here is that stereotyping, a great portion of which is the stock in trade of Orientalist discourse, is not simply a faulty representational machine; it is conversely very much the process through which statements, in the Foucauldian sense, are passed, and cultural production and power are effected and maintained. With relation to TESOL, the stereotyping of learners cannot easily be dismissed as an ‘error’ in processing, a failure of our limited-capacity cognitive system. That ‘mode of processing’ is the means through which the learners are produced and made as (non-native) learners. 5. Stereotyping as lack of ‘information’ The second point that Waters makes with regard to stereotypes is that although they are prone to error, they are equally amenable to revision and perhaps abandonment. In his words, ‘(stereotypes) are seen as provisional constructs, as much subject to revision and temporary reconstitution as perceptions of any other kind’
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(2007: 286). This stance removes from view two crucial points. The first is that stereotyping takes place within particular historical, cultural and social contexts and has meaning only within those discourses. Unless these discourses change (a kind of epistemological break or Kuhnian paradigm shift), it is highly unlikely that the nature of the stereotypes will be altered; they can do so only when their conditions of possibility change accordingly. Secondly, stereotypes are not easily and readily amenable to change and reconsideration. They are exactly the opposite as was pointed out above; they are, to use a Fodor term, ‘informationally encapsulated’, or as Tajfel argues, ‘rigidity and resistance to information which contradicts them are undoubtedly one of their salient features’ (1981: 133).4 Once stereotypes fall into place, they become irrevocably subsumed ‘in the order of things’. It would be therefore too simplistic to assume that stereotypes are erroneous mental representations and can easily be modified or forsaken all together as a result of ‘incoming’ information or rectification. The logic underlying these presumptions, Pickering writes, is that ‘if stereotypicality’s gross error of description and judgement is based on a paucity of information, of detailed empirical evidence, then surely the error will evaporate once such information and evidence are supplied’, and the conditionality of reversing stereotypes on the supply of ample information is ‘not only a big ‘if’, it is also a species of wishful liberal thinking’ (1995: 692). Given that all ‘information’ is fundamentally caught up in complex webs of power and ideology, ‘neutral doses’ of it are hardly a convincing argument. The arguments outlined above suggest that Waters’ characterization of stereotypes is untenable. His treatment of stereotypes as cognitive categories and information processing constructs conceals their historical and ideological nature. This conceptualization fails to appreciate that categories ‘contain value judgments’ no matter how ‘scientific discourse masks such judgements with a neutral, objective and even liberal humanistic tone’ (Kubota and Lin, 2006: 477). It also falls short of recognizing that the ‘establishment of stereotypical error (or supply of an adequate informational diet) considerably underestimates the play of ideological forces set in motion by processes of stereotyping’ (Pickering, 1995: 692). Beyond this mechanistic ‘transmission’ conception of cultural representation, stereotypes have to be treated for what they really are, as discursive practices symbiotically linked to the structures of power and ideology, no matter, as Horkheimer stated above, ‘what fine names’ one tries to give them. Waters’ cognitivism and naturalization of stereotyping ultimately led him to extremely distort and ‘inflict a fundamental adulteration’ (Bourdieu, 1998: 134) upon the politics of nativespeakerism, to which we now turn. 6. The discourses of native-speakerism One does not really know whether to rejoice in the ongoing debate on the native speaker as a healthy sign of the insistent problematization of one of the most ‘sacred cows’ of ELT or to regret this unholy ‘ostrichism’ of a discipline that adamantly persists in the denial and perpetuation of one of its most conspicuous forms of domination and inequality. Accounts have run the gamut from ‘eulogies’ to ‘wakes’ (Quirk, 1990; Paikeday, 1985) through critical imperialist, postcolonial, cultural and educational treatments (Phillipson, 1992; Pennycook, 1998; Canagarajah, 1999; Holliday, 2005; Braine, 1999). I will return to some of these accounts later. What I would like to do now is to point to some of the politics of the discursive construction of native speakerism. My point is that native-speakerism is not simply a reflection and continuation of colonial constructs and practices, a site where images of a ‘Modern’ ‘Self’ and a ‘Traditional’, Other are produced and reproduced. Nativespeakerism embodies a discursive dialectic in that it produces a current ELT ‘Other’ through the lens of colonial representations and at the same time those colonial representations are reconstituted through (whether physical or scholarly) contact with that Other; the outcome of these representational strategies is the production and justification of an unproblematic ‘colonial’ and ‘contemporary’ Self. One should, however, 4
On a more empirical level and to illustrate the magnitude of the problem, Jack Shaheen (2001), in his book Reel Bad Arabs, analyzed more than 900 Hollywood movies for how they depict Arabs; apart from the (unsurprisingly!) predominantly negative qualities that were bountifully bestowed the Arabs, Shaheen found that even after five decades, the same stereotype had not been subjected to the slightest change Similarly, in a series of studies, a group of American researchers reached the disturbing conclusion that the stereotype common a century ago that black people are more ape-like and less human than whites remains in force (Goff, Williams, Eberhardt and Jackson, 2008).
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state a couple of reasonable qualifications. It would be completely misguided to conclude that native-speakerism is only a set of discursive fabrications. While the discourses of native-speakerism are disciplinary constructions, their consequences are, nonetheless, very real. Native-speakerism produces realities of exclusion, discrimination and rationalizations for intervention and ‘cultural correction’. The redoubtable politics of native-speakerism resides precisely in the amalgamation of discursive hegemony and the various actualities of inequality that it rationalizes and sustains. A few manifestations of the discourses of native-speakerism are in order. In an article on how Japanese culture is constructed in US classrooms, Kubota (1999) argued that these constructions reflected a dichotomization and rigid demarcation of Western and Eastern cultures. The dichotomizations have been given character flesh of the sort that is redolent of colonialist overtones. Those seemingly irreconcilable entities have been ‘given labels such as individualism, self-expression, critical and analytical thinking, and extending knowledge to western cultures on the one hand, and collectivism, harmony, indirection, memorization, and conserving knowledge to Asian cultures on the other’ (p. 14). More recently, Palfreyman (2005) addressed the issue of ‘Othering’ in an English language program in Turkey. He found that the local Turkish professionals were depicted as possessing essential qualities like irrationality and lack of critical thinking and other skills. Palfreyman writes that ‘Othering discourses among expatriate administrators and teachers. . . represent Turkish students and teachers as irrational and reactionary and as lacking independent thought and other skills’ (2005: 229). Kumaravadivelu (2003) also identified a number of persistent manifestations of native-speakerism ideology in TESOL. He asserts that the TESOL profession ‘has shown a remarkable readiness to forge a causal connection between the classroom behavior of Asian students and their cultural beliefs even though research findings are ambiguous and even contradictory’ (p. 710). He pinpointed three portrayals of Asian learners in the TESOL literature: obedience to authority, passivity in class, and lack of critical thinking. Kumaravadivelu then moved to debunk these cultural myths one by one and, remarkably, reversed that cultural order by giving an account of how those very qualities are characteristic of North American classrooms. However, Kumaravadivelu’s subversion, no matter how powerful and convincing, remains only ‘rhetorical’ before the ‘globe-trotter’ images of irrationality and intellectual deficiency that seem to characterize at one sweep such diverse cultures and locales as Japan, China, India and Anatolia. As long as the structural systems of signification and power do not uphold those reversals, they remain powerless and ineffective. Their force resides in the ‘permission to narrate’ (Said, 2000), the capacity to enunciate. And this provides further support for the fact that stereotypes are not simply mental or cognitive constructs; they are discursive practices which are tangled up in configurations of power and ideology. 7. Native-speakerism as political practice: plus c¸a change, plus c’est pas la meˆme chose As a rebuttal of the critiques of native-speakerism, Waters points out that ‘rather than truly solving the problem of how to counter native-speakerism, (those critiques) simply replaced one kind of problem with another’ (2007: 282). This sublime rendering of the whole literature of native-speakerism critique as simply another form of ‘hegemony’ reflects a facile treatment of the complex issues involved. First of all, it ignores the structural and historical contexts and constraints within which native-speakerism operates. Such a view and framing of native-speakerism has also immediate impacts on how one perceives and analyzes the problem. In his account of TESOL stereotyping, Waters lambasted the proponents of ‘Critical Theory’ for regarding generalized perceptions of cultural differences as created for purposes of political control and for failing to recognize that stereotyping is simply part of a neutral, value-free technology of language teaching (ibid: 283). To provide support for the failings of the ‘critical theorists’, Waters attempted a counteranalysis of a seminar presentation which Holliday used as a means to unveil the ideological, culturalist workings of native-speakerism. The presentation was given to an audience of native speakers working in an East Asian setting. The presentation started with a description of the host culture which was used as an explanatory framework of the difficulties encountered by the expatriates. Holliday argued that this presentation represents an example of culturism whose main feature is the production of stereotypical and racist images of learners. According to Holliday, culturalism can be characterized as following five specific steps:
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Step Step Step Step Step
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1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
See the individual’s behavior as mostly explainable by membership of a foreign national culture. Describe the foreign culture as a generalized Other, whose main characteristic is difference to Self. Find details of this difference. Explain all behavior in terms of this difference. Reify the stereotype (2005: 25–26).
Waters chastised Holliday for providing no ‘empirical evidence’, ‘interviews’ or ‘other means of verification’ to back his claims and concluded that his ethnographic exegesis of the event (or was it a ritual?) was an ‘ad hominem’ one (2007: 284). Waters went on to provide his personal rendering of the ‘train of thought of the participants’. His alternative account runs as follows: Step 1: I am working in a culture that is unfamiliar to me. I felt it might help if I got some basic information about it, in order to begin to know it better. Step 2: In the light of this knowledge, what can I do (i) to limit culturally inappropriate behavior on my part, and (ii) improve my ability to understand/accept behavior on the part of locals? Step 3: In the longer-term, how can I use this information to give me a basis for building up a better general picture of how expatriates and locals can live and work together as well as possible, and to help me perceive the individual person behind the cultural ‘mask’ (2007: 284)? What can one make of this re-interpretation? Reading this counter-analysis, one is in fact assailed by several doubts about the exact character of the ‘train of thought’, not of the participants but, of the analyst. To start with, Waters did not supply any of evidential technologies he accused Holliday for not employing. His own ‘alternative’ interpretation might as well be considered, mutatis mutandis, an ‘ad hominem one’. Also the faith in ‘mainstream methods’ to obtain evidence and justification for culturalist perceptions is predicated on simplistic epistemological assumptions. Because most of what we know about the social world is beyond conscious awareness, the categories of vision of native-speakerism cannot be easily recognized let alone verbalized. On the other hand, very few of us would reasonably expect native-speakerists to tell us that they were in fact racist, that they were engaged in culturally unacceptable behavior and that they would love to be shown the errors of their ways and provided more ‘information’ on the local culture. Even the most hard-nosed of fascists or xenophobes, as Billig (1995: 122-123) argues, disavow their bigotry and attempt to cloak their racial attitudes in the garb of liberalism. And this is not only a question of honesty; the problem has more to do with how we construct the real (as opposed to the cognitive) world of TESOL. Van Dijk, commenting on the ubiquity of racism in modern institutions, states that ‘many of the older and newer racist ideas, perhaps formulated in less blatant biological terms, that is in the guise of sociocultural differences and hierarchies, not only appear in the self-legitimating discourse of extremist racism, but increasingly also in the mainstream discourse in politics, the media, education and scholarship’ (1999: 147). More specifically, Kubota (2001) pointed out that an apparently ‘nice field like TESOL’ does not seem to be racist because it promotes ‘the contemporary discourse of liberal humanism’ which ‘suppresses overt expression of racial prejudice’ (p. 28, my emphasis). But the manifestation and articulation of these racist stereotypes need not to be overt; they can be more effectively expressed in very subtle ways by those who, on the surface, appear to hold egalitarian values. In several studies, Dovidio and his associates (Dovidio and Gaertner, 1986, 2004; Hodson, Dovidio and Gaertner, 2002, 2004) have argued that in contemporary societies there has been a shift from more traditional to more indirect and subtle forms of racism, a phenomenon they call ‘aversive racism’. Aversive racism is hypothesized to characterize the racial attitudes of many whites who endorse egalitarian values and regard themselves as non-prejudiced but who nonetheless discriminate in subtle, rationalizable ways (Hodson, Dovidio and Gaertner, 2002: 460, my emphasis). Aversive racism is thus expressed both in terms of reasoning and behaviors by those who firmly believe that they are not bigoted and are not aware of their negative racial attitudes and feelings. On a discursive plane, several studies in critical discourse analysis have demonstrated (using evidence!) that racists usually employ ‘shields’ to protect and distance themselves from accusations of discrimination when
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they express views on racial matters (Van Dijk, 1992; Forman and Bonilla-Silva, 2000; Mallinson and Brewster, 2005). Those ‘shields’ are usually manifested in the utilization of semantic moves and argumentation schemata that are both subtle and rationalized. I would argue then that the episode that Holliday analyzes is a clear manifestation of aversive racism in TESOL. The subtlety of racism, its unconscious nature and its rationalization are reflected in the participants’ reactions. Holliday wrote that ‘when I questioned the underlying essentialist assumptions of the description. . ., I was accused by others in the room of ‘not knowing’ because I hadn’t ‘been there’ and also of taking time away from those who wanted to ask questions’ (2005: 25). Rationalization and subtlety also work through the justification of cultural difference through the use of science and ‘mainstream’ academic argumentation (Billig 1991). These are embodied in the ‘detailed and systematic description of the culture’ and also in the magical power that this description has in explaining the difficulties they had encountered and for ‘rationalizing’ their coping strategies. In addition, Palfreyman, in his study of Othering in TESOL in Turkey, stated that in accounting for their ‘Othering’ practices, Western administrators ‘tend to appeal to the rational norms from the TESOL profession’s international discourses’ (2005: 226, my emphasis). So what we see here is a very subtle and pervasive form of culturalism at work which might be characterized as ‘TESOL aversive racism’. Another problem with the Waters’ reinterpretation is its conceptualization of individual agency, which, I maintain, is consistent with his dehistoricized view of stereotypes and native-speakerism. The participants were depicted as voluntaristic generators of meanings about the host culture and as a cultural tabula rasa approaching the task of knowing the Other with such phenomenal cultural ‘innocence’. In keeping with traditional applied linguistics, this ahistorical and apolitical characterization ignores the fundamental nature of sociality. Reality is socially constructed, mediated by a complexity of semiotic regimes of signification. The human subject is constituted and mediated through a plethora of ‘truth games’ or what Foucault calls ‘grids of specification’ (1972: 42). In other words, the subject is a repository of the multifarious historically constituted discourses that have made it possible for him or her to be a knowing subject. Indeed, confesses Foucault, the goal of his oeuvre ‘has been to create a history of the different modes by which, in our culture, human beings are made subjects’ (1982: 208). The categories of vision and division, as Bourdieu calls them, that individuals internalize and utilize as ‘interpretative procedures’ are the result of complex processes of subjectification, of how they have become and been made subjects. And it is not only because one feels that human agency is morally desirable that one should dismiss the weight of circumstance and constraint. As imminent anthropologist Asad (1996) stated, the notion of agency must not ‘be given priority in our reflections just because we like the idea of agency – that we must reject a theoretical approach which doesn’t give adequate scope to agency simply because we disapprove morally of situations in which people can’t shape their own lives’. On the other hand, native-speakerists are not ‘there’ merely to understand the ‘locals’, to make sense of who they are and, if time allows, envisage ways of how to live and work together. They are there as a result of structural realities and make sense of their experiences in light of their personal histories. For space constraints, I will briefly shed light on how structural (political, economic and cultural) factors shape the way expatriate professionals cope with the locales in which they operate. It is hardly an overstatement to say that the TESOL industry has been closely connected to its colonial past. The presence of TESOL professionals in formerly colonized lands is a structural continuation of colonial history and is deeply enmeshed in postcolonial realities of dependency, modernization and development (Pennycook, 1994: 46–54). TESOL professionals may either avowedly identify themselves with these processes or, given the historical anaemia of the discipline, simply ignore or decline them all together. This rhetoric of the role of English in modernization and development did not only ‘produce widespread teaching of English, but did produce wide spread images of English as a superior language that could bestow immense benefits on its users’ (Pennycook, 2007: 15) and on the country in general. It is not very hard to see how the meaning ‘free rangers’, of the type Waters describes above, can easily subscribe to such rhetoric. Phillipson has also strongly argued that the global spread of English represents a new form of imperialism and that the native speaker plays a major role in this regard. Linguistic imperialism occurs when ‘the dominance of English is asserted and maintained by the establishment and continuous reconstitution of structural and cultural inequalities’ (Phillipson, 1992: 47). Related to this is the fact that English is also closely connected to the dynamics and forces of predatory global capital. Edge, self-reflexively, points to the paradox inherent in teaching that is dominated by global
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capitalism; he states that ‘we celebrate our educational successes as our students achieve the levels of English that will enable them to fulfil their. . . aspirations, in the knowledge that we simultaneously facilitate multinational globalization’ (2003: 703). Similarly, Kramsch argues that there are ‘two debates that capture well. . . the conflicting demands currently placed on foreign language researchers and educators: the demands by a global economy for both communicative and intercultural competence, and the demand by the US government for speakers with ‘advanced levels’ of language proficiency to serve the needs of national security’ (2005: 546). Karmani (2005) has also very convincingly pinpointed the tight connections between ELT and oil in the Arabian Gulf. He argues that the triumphalism of the global spread of English is intimately connected to the global struggle for oil (2005: 88). Another point that Karmani makes is that this global triumphalism is also tightly connected with the US – led messianic ‘war on terror’ and the politics of post-9/11. The unholy connection between these forces in Iraq pushes one to ‘conclude that the intended Iraqi (US-imposed and directed) administration will not only oblige Western oil interests, it will evolve a ruling cadre whose command of English will be exceptional in the Arab world’, and certainly, ‘a fluent command of English will be more than ever a requisite for advancement, and ESOL teachers will be playing an important role in the process’ (Edge, 2003: 703). English may also be a requisite for the advancement of causes of a very peculiar kind. Commenting on the pervasiveness of TESOL-related missionary work, Varghese and Johnston (2007: 28) pointed out that the ‘TESOL field can no longer ignore the significant community of Evangelical language teachers in its midst’. To give a feel (and evidence!) of what this means, Varghese and Johnston reported that when they asked one of their respondents, Robert, about his primary goal after finishing school, ‘he was unequivocal about wanting to go into missionary work. Robert had a coherent vision of how English language teaching and missionary work coincided and he articulated this view consistently as the interview unfolded’ (ibid: 16). However, in such a hostile political world environment where negative sentiments about Islam prevail and with a US president having direct communion with God, TESOL-based Evangelism acquires a more political function, namely the ‘deradicalization of political Islam’ (Karmani, 2005). ‘The east’, in Benjamin Disraeli’s celebrated and compellingly telling statement ‘is a career’. It is not too simplistic to state that this Kafkian melange of Imperial Troopers, the Servants of the Lord and Robinson Crusoe gives very good reason for alarm. Given all this, it is not very hard to see what kinds of meaning will be negotiated with the ‘locals’. And it would not be very hard either to discern how this ‘overdetermined’ discourse of native-speakerism will give rise to feelings of ‘cultural strength’ which will lead to and rationalize all kinds of ‘corrections’, of which ‘cultural correction’, which Holliday talked about, is only one. Native-speakerism and stereotypes are a ‘thing of this world’; they are performed by individuals who also inhabit this world, who are historically and culturally situated and whose subjectivities are determined by the myriad of discourses that surround them. To treat them otherwise is to ‘inflict a fundamental adulteration’ and symbolic violence on the object and subject of the analysis (Bourdieu, 1998: 134). Two direct consequences follow from this. The ideological and political nature and practices of stereotyping and native-speakerism are obfuscated and submerged under the heavy rhetoric of cognitivism and social psychology. Second, failure to put matters into their wider contexts neutralizes their direct affiliation with configurations of inequality and power and leads to their reproduction. And in this very respect, the stance that Waters adopts is not very different from that embraced by Master Pangloss in Voltaire’s Candide. ‘‘It is demonstrable,” said he (Pangloss), ‘‘that things cannot be otherwise than as they are; for as all things have been created for some end, they must necessarily be created for the best end. Observe, for instance, the nose is formed for spectacles, therefore we wear spectacles. The legs are visibly designed for stockings, accordingly we wear stockings. . .; and they, who assert that everything is right, do not express themselves correctly; they should say that everything is best.’ Reading Waters’ Panglossian account, it is very hard to resist the temptation to believe that since stereotypes and native-speakerism ‘have been created’, we have to concede that ‘they must necessarily be created for the best end’. Acknowledgement I would like to thank two anonymous reviewers for their helpful feedback. I am also grateful to Norman Davies, the editor, for his valuable comments.
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References Asad, T., 1996. Modern Power and the Reconfiguration of Religious Traditions. Stanford Humanities Review 5. Billig, M., 1991. Ideologies and Opinions: Studies in Rhetorical Psychology. Sage, London. Billig, M., 1995. Ideology and Opinions. Sage, London. Blommaert, J., 1999 Language Ideological Debates. Mouton de Gruyter. Bourdieu, P., 1998. Practical Reason. Polity Press, Oxford. Braine, G., 1999. Non-Native Educators in English Language Teaching. Lawrence Erlbaum, Mahwah, NJ. Canagarajah, A.S., 1999. Resisting Linguistic Imperialism in Language Teaching. Oxford University Press, Oxford. Canagarajah, A.S., 2002. Critical Academic Writing and Multilingual Students. University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, MI. Cook, G., 2005. Calm seas or troubled waters? Transitions, definitions and disagreements in applied linguistics’. International Journal of Applied Linguistics 15, 282–302. Corder, P., 1973. Introducing Applied Linguistics. Penguin Education. Corson, D., 1997. Critical realism: an emancipatory philosophy for applied linguistics? Applied linguistics 18, 166–188. Davies, A., 2001. An Introduction to Applied Linguistics: From Practice to Theory. Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh. Dovidio, J.F., Gaertner, S.L., 1986. Prejudice, Discrimination and Racism. Academic Press, Orlando, FL. Dovidio, J.F., Gaertner, S.L., 2004. Aversive racism. In: Zanna, M.P. (Ed.), Advances in Experimental Social Psychology. Academic Press, San Diego, CA, pp. 1–52. Edge, J., 2003. Imperial troopers and servants of the lord: a vision of TESOL for the 21st century. TESOL Quarterly 37, 701–709. Ellis, R., 2007. Editorial language. Teaching Research 11, 261–263. Fairclough, N., 1989. Language and Power. Longman, London. Fanon, F., 1968. The Wretched of the Earth. Grove, New York. Firth, A., Wagner, J., 1997. On discourse, communication, and (some) fundamental concepts in second language acquisition research. Modern Language Journal 81, 285–300. Firth, A., Wagner, J., 1998. SLA property: no trespassing! a reply. Modern Language Journal 82, 91–94. Firth, A., Wagner, J., 2007. Second/foreign language learning as a social accomplishment: elaborations on a reconceptualized SLA. Modern Language Journal 91, 798–817. Forman, T., Bonilla-Silva, E., 2000. I’m not racist, but. . .: mapping white college students’ racial ideology in the USA. Discourse and Society 11, 50–85. Foucault, M., 1972. The Archaeology of Knowledge. Tavistock, London. Foucault, M., 1982. The Subject and power. In: Dreyfus, H., Rabinow, P. (Eds.), Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics. Harvester, Brighton. Goff, P., Williams, M.J., Eberhardt, J.L., Jackson, M.C., 2008. Not yet human: implicit knowledge, historical dehumanization, and contemporary consequences. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 94, 292–306. Hodson, G., Dovidio, J.F., Gaertner, S.L., 2002. Processes in racial discrimination: differential weighting of conflicting information. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 28, 460–471. Hodson, G., Dovidio, J.F., Gaertner, S.L., 2004. The aversive form of racism. In: Lau, J.L. (Ed.), The Psychology of Prejudice and Discrimination Westport. Praeger Press, CT, pp. 119–135. Holliday, A., 1994. Appropriate Methodology and Social Context. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Holliday, A., 2005. The Struggle to Teach English as an International Language. Oxford University Press, Oxford. Horkheimer, M., 1972. Critical Theory. Herder and Herder, New York. Karmani, S., 2005. Petro-linguistics: the emerging Nexus between Oil, English, and Islam. Journal of language, Identity and Education 4, 87–102. Karmani, S., Makoni, S., 2005. Islam and English in the Post-9/11 Era. Lawrence Erlbaum, New Jersey. Kramsch, C., 2005. Post 9/11: foreign languages between knowledge and power. Applied Linguistics 26, 545–567. Kubota, R., 1999. Japanese culture constructed by discourses: implications for applied linguistics research and ELT. TESOL Quarterly 33, 9–35. Kubota, R., 2001. Discursive construction of the images of U.S. classrooms. TESOL Quarterly 35, 9–38. Kubota, R., Lin, A., 2006. Race and TESOL: introduction to concepts and theories. TESOL Quarterly 40, 471–493. Kumaravadivelu, A., 2003. Problematizing cultural stereotypes in TESOL. TESOL Quarterly 37, 709–719. Kumaravadivelu, A., 2006. TESOL methods: changing tracks; challenging trends. TESOL Quarterly 40, 59–81. Kumaravadivelu, A., 2007. Cultural Globalization and Language Education. Yale University Press, Baltimore. Lazaraton, A., 2000. Current trends in research methodology and statistics in applied linguistics. TESOL Quarterly 34, 175–181. Makoni, S., 2003. Review: an introduction to applied linguistics: from practice to theory and critical applied linguistics. Applied Linguistics 24, 130–137. Mallinson, C., Brewster, Z., 2005. ‘Blacks and bubbas’: stereotypes, ideology, and categorization processes in restaurant servers’ discourse. Discourse and Society 16, 787–807. Nietzsche, F., 2001. The Gay Science. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Norton, B., Toohey, K., 2004. Critical Pedagogies and Language Learning. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Paikeday, Thomas. 1985. The Native Speaker is Dead! Missisauga, Ontario. Palfreyman, D., 2005. Othering in an English language programme. TESOL Quarterly 39, 211–233. Pennycook, A., 1994. The cultural politics of English as an international language. Longman, London.
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Pennycook, A., 1998. English and the Discourses of Colonialism. Routledge, London. Pennycook, A., 2001. Critical Applied Linguistics: A Critical Introduction. Lawrence Erlbaum. Pennycook, A., 2006. Critical applied linguistics. The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics. Elsevier, Amsterdam. Pennycook, A., 2007. ELT and colonialism. In: Cummins, J., Davison, C. (Eds.), Kluwer International Handbook of Education. English Language Teaching. Kluwer Academic Publishers, Norwell MA. Pennycook, A., Makoni, S., 2007. Disinventing and Reconstituting Languages. Multilingual Matters, Clevedon. Phillipson, R., 1992. Linguistic Imperialism. Oxford University Press, Oxford. Pickering, M., 1995. The politics and psychology of stereotyping. Media, Culture and Society 17, 691–700. Pickering, M., 2001. Stereotyping: The Politics of Representation. Palgrave, Basingstoke. Quirk, R., 1990. Language varieties and standard language. English Today 21, 3–21. Rajagopalan, K., 2004. The philosophy of applied linguistics. In: Davies, A., Elder, C. (Eds.), The Handbook of Applied Linguistics. Blackwell, Oxford, pp. 397–420. Ricento, T., 2006. An Introduction to Language Policy: Theory and Practice. Blackwell Publishing, Malden. Said, E., 1978. Orientalism. Vintage, New York. Said, E., 2000. The permission to narrate. In: Bayoumi, B., Rubin, A. (Eds.), The Edward Said Reader. Vintage, New York. Shaheen, J., 2001. Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People. Olive Branch Press, New York. Shohamy, E., 2001. The Power of Tests: A Critical Perspective on the Uses of Language Tests. Longman, London. Tajfel, H., 1981. Human Groups and Social Categories. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Van Dijk, T., 1992. Discourse and the denial of racism. Discourse and Society 3, 87–118. Van Dijk, T., 1999. Discourse and racism. Discourse Society 10, 147–148. Varghese, M., Johnston, B., 2007. Evangelical Christians and English language teaching. TESOL Quarterly 41, 5–31. Waters, A., 2007. Native-speakerism in EL: plus ca change. . .? System 35, 281–292. Widdowson, H.G., 2001. Coming to terms with reality: applied linguistics in perspective. In: Graddol, D., (Ed.), Applied Linguistics for the 21st Century, AILA Review, vol. 14, pp. 2–17. Widdowson, H.G., 2003. Defining Issues in English Language Teaching. Oxford University Press, Oxford.
System 37 (2009) 12–22 www.elsevier.com/locate/system
Native-speakerism, stereotyping and the collusion of applied linguistics Ahmed Kabel * Center for Academic Development, Al Akhawayn University, Avenue Hassan II, P.O. Box 104, Ifrane 53000, Morocco Received 5 May 2008; received in revised form 1 September 2008; accepted 15 September 2008
Abstract Although, in recent years there have been several advances in critical applied linguistics which have attempted to problematize the ideological underpinnings of language practices, there have in parallel been resistances mounted on the part of traditional applied linguistics that adamantly oppose any form of coming to terms with the political and ideological nature of the discipline. The native speaker and its putative native-speakerism ideology are an exemplary site where the different applied linguistics epistemologies and vested disciplinary interests are contested. In an article published in a recent issue of System, Waters (Waters, A., 2007. Native-speakerism in EL: plus ca change. . .? System 35, 281–292) argued that nativespeakerism critique suffers from serious epistemological and methodological flaws in that it, the argument runs, adopts an under-developed concept of stereotyping and fails to provide empirical evidence in support of the claims it advances. I would argue in this paper that Waters’ (i) position is indicative of the conservatism of applied linguistics to come to terms with its condition of possibility and the deeply ideological and political nature of its practices and (ii) psychologization of stereotyping and ahistorical account of native-speakerism misrepresent the fundamental nature of social reality and applied linguistics practices, and consequently deflect attention from and reproduce the structures of power and inequality that they embody and uphold. Ó 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Native speaker, nonnative speaker; Traditional, critical applied linguistics; Stereotyping; Epistemology; Discourse; Politics of language teaching
When we unthinkingly put to work our most ordinary modes of thinking, we inflict upon our object a fundamental adulteration, which can go all the way to pure and simple destruction and that may well remain unnoticed Bourdieu (1998): 134.
For the native [the colonized], objectivity is always directed against him Fanon (1968): 77. *
Tel.: +212 035 86 23 19. E-mail address: [email protected]
0346-251X/$ - see front matter Ó 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.system.2008.09.004
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1. Introduction In The Gay Science, Nietzsche asserted that because of three errors, science has been promoted for the wrong ends. The first error concerns the conviction that through science one aspired to grasp God’s wisdom; this he imputed to the English. The second error, which he generously bestowed the French, relates to the belief in the absolute usefulness of knowledge. The third and last error was the conviction that ‘in science, one had and loved something selfless, harmless, self-sufficient and truly innocent in which the evil drives of humanity had no part at all’ (2001: 55); this he specially reserved for Spinoza. My argument is that Alan Waters’ article suffers from exactly the same inadequacies that, as Nietzsche, in his customary biting style, maintained, characterize the practice of science. The ‘three errors’ that the article comprises are (i) psychologization of stereotyping, (ii) dehistoricization and depoliticization of native-speakerism and (iii) an uncritical adherence to ‘mainstream’ positivistic epistemologies. Indeed, the ‘shibboleth of positivistic value-neutrality’ and cognitivism have funnelled Waters into the naturalization and ideological neutralization of stereotypes and native-speakerism wherein ‘the evil drives of humanity had no part at all’. To put my argument into a wider perspective, I argue that the position advanced by Waters is symptomatic of the kind of applied linguistics he practices. 2. Traditional and critical applied linguistics For the past 15 years or so, there has been a growing interest in critical approaches to applied linguistics (Pennycook 1994, 1998, 2001, 2006, 2007; Phillipson, 1992; Canagarajah, 1999, 2002; Fairclough, 1989; Holliday, 1994, 2005; Shohamy, 2001; Ricento, 2006; Blommaert, 1999; Norton and Toohey, 2004; Pennycook and Makoni, 2007; Karmani and Makoni, 2005; Kumaravadivelu, 2006, 2007). Despite the diversity of perspectives, these approaches share a common interest in the dismantling of the ideological assumptions and professional doxa involved in applied linguistic practices, and a commitment to addressing issues of power, inequality and domination. This wide spectrum of scholarship is dedicated to practicing applied linguistics ‘with an attitude’ (Pennycook 2001:168), ‘from a perspective that is always mindful of the interrelated concerns of dominion. . ., disparity. . ., difference. . . and desire’ (Pennycook 2006: 283). Critical applied linguistics is thus highly ‘suspicious’ of the categories that characterize the ‘present applied linguistics order’ and seeks to demystify the conditions of possibility of applied linguistics as a field of academic inquiry as well as pinpoint and combat the ‘hypostasized powers’ involved in language and professional practices. Notwithstanding these developments, traditional applied linguists have been reluctant to accommodate the change or at least seriously engage with it. Widdowson, for instance, is clearly dismissive of critical applied linguistics as being downright hypocritical and possessing suspicious political agenda (2001: 16). He admonishes that it may at any time metamorphose into a malevolent, diabolic mission once the Pennycook angels are no longer here! (2003: 14). Similarly, Alan Davies, although concurring that it has become pervasive, argues that critical applied linguistics is unhelpful and remains marginal to the concerns of the discipline (2001: 139– 142).1 Substituting the Widdowsonian angels for birds, he finally dismisses calls for applied linguists to critically engage with language matters as merely ‘cuckoo-like’ vying to take over the much-beloved discipline. These pronouncements by leading mainstream applied linguists are suggestive of a general malaise of the discipline to look beyond the fence and consider advances in other areas of social science. The malaise translates into the erection of defense mechanisms that make change impossibly difficult to effect. As Rajagopalan puts it, ‘there is still a very long way to go and many stubborn resistances to overcome’ (2004: 415), with of course, serious consequences for, to bend Fanon, ‘the wretched’ of applied linguistics. What are then the roots of these resistances? Applied linguistics has mostly been disengaged from the ideological conditions of its possibility. Perhaps the clearest form of this reflexive stasis is the lack of recognition of the historical situatedness of the discipline. The current dominant applied linguistics is a product of western epistemological and philosophical ideologies. And consonant with most western disciplinary traditions, it lays claims to universal validity and applicability, 1
We must leave aside the question of who defines the concerns of the discipline, marginal or otherwise.
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thus denying its very historicity and particularity. The neat result is that these persistent ‘attempts to move outside history’ render ‘social and historical factors. . . secondary to the discipline’ (Makoni, 2003: 133). In a review of the historical development of the discipline, Guy Cook cautions his readers that his ‘historical characterization. . . may retrospectively seem localized in Anglo-American, and even more particularly British applied linguistics. The first two stages (1950s–1984 and 1984–mid 1990s) belong to an era in which applied linguistics was still predominantly an Anglo-American affair, rather than the internationally distributed discipline that it is today’ (2005: 284). Leaving aside the problem of periodization, the Cook characterization is problematic on at least one count. Applied linguistics was not ‘internationally distributed’ only in the mid 1990s; it has been ‘practiced in many social and historical contexts outside the Anglo-American academic space, India, South Africa and Latin America’ and these ‘too have developed their own histories’ (Makoni, 2003: 131). More crucially, as Pennycook argues, the assumptions underlying ‘a great deal of thinking about English and English language teaching have their origins in the colonial contexts rather than in what is often assumed to be their provenance in Britain itself’ (2007: 15). Another source of problem is related to the practical concerns of traditional applied linguistics. Under the continuing strong influence of the founding specters (Corder, 1973) and with its focus on classroom application and efficiency, applied linguistics has insulated itself from the need for reflexive practice. As Corson pointed out, ‘just this perception that ‘‘language teaching” is its central function, may have distorted the epistemological foundations of AL in general’ (1997: 168). Along analogous epistemological lines, with its heavy dependence on structural and cognitive linguistics, there have been an uneven focus on quantitative and positivistic methodologies (Lazaraton, 2000)2 and preoccupation with individual disembodied cognition (Firth and Wagner 2007, 1997). Not only does such a restricted view belie wider sociolinguistic issues of discourse and communication, it also foists territorial boundaries and fosters a kind of epistemological censorship. As Firth and Wagner put it, it ‘is a view that erects barriers, sealing off the area of SLA as a kind of intellectual ‘‘private property” of documented, card-carrying SLA researchers’ (1998: 91). This territorial logic obviates the need for appreciating the ethical complexities of applied linguistic practices. On much broader level, Pennycook has criticized mainstream applied linguistics for being deeply hypocritical in its ‘inability or unwillingness to grapple adequately with the social, political, cultural and ethical concerns that certainly come to bear on any applied linguistic context’ (2006: 287), thus resulting in an adherence to the unquestioned and unquestionable doxa of performing applied linguistics. The disinclination to serious reflexive work results in claims to objectivity and political neutrality which render traditional applied linguistics politically, ethically, socially and culturally unaccountable or at least indifferent. The consequence is that, to echo Horkheimer, the applied linguist and his (or her) ‘science is a factor in the preservation and renewal of the existing state of affairs’ (1972: 196). Traditional applied linguistics can thus be characterized by deep-seated misconceptions about (if not outright dismissal of) the complex political and ethical implications of language practices, a clinging to positivistic ideals of neutrality and prioritization of efficiency and applicability. What transpires from this alchemy is a perpetuation of the systems of inequality and domination that characterize applied linguistics and TESOL institutional practices. It is my argument that Alan Waters and the entirety of his narrative are an exemplification of traditional applied linguistics. His conception of native speakerism, stereotyping and cultural politics leads him to disregard the wider context in which these practices take place. Waters argues that the critique of native speakerism adopts a seriously flawed construct of stereotyping. Instead, the problem, he urges, should be ‘approached from a very different perspective, from the need to invoke other forms of understanding, argument and persuasion’ (2007: 288). So rather than relegating it to the sub-category of the irrational or problematic, stereotyping, according to these new forms of intellect, should be deemed an unavoidable, normal and healthy process of human cognition (ibid: 287).3 Unfortunately, these attempts to conceptualize the question of racial stereotyping in terms of ‘information processing’ 2 Rod Ellis indicated that one of the reasons behind this uneven balance is that the review and selection process is biased towards the quantitative paradigm (2007: 261). 3 Waters suggests that we need to ‘distinguish the ‘natural’ occurrence of [these] psychological processes from making moral judgments’ (2007: 287, my emphasis). Besides the inadequacies outlined above, the caricaturing of the political and ideological account of stereotypes as merely an example ‘moral judgment’ wildly misses the mark.
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and cognitive ‘categorization’ avert attention from both the origins and the politics of representation which are integral features of the semiotic economy of stereotypes. 3. Stereotyping as categorization It is general knowledge to say that categorization is essential for the cognitive survival of the species; we cannot live and make sense of the world and events around us without categorizing them into manageable, intelligible units. The problem, however, lies in precisely why we categorize the world in certain ways and not in others and why some categories are more salient and ‘front of mind’ than others. Like the commandments in Orwell’s Animal Farm, there are categories which are ‘more cognitive’ than others. And here one needs to clarify the relationship between categories and stereotypes. Contrary to what Waters claims, when considering stereotypes and categories, it must be recognized that one is not comparing like with like. While categorization is inevitable, stereotypes are not and cannot be an integral part of our perception and cognitive organization of reality. Moreover, although we need categories to organize the world, one should not ‘exaggerate their significance or elevate them to a supreme position as a unit of thought’ and regard them as ‘the elemental structure of thought’ (Pickering, 2001: 3). Furthermore, categories are generally flexible and can be disputed and realigned. However, stereotypes, as I show in more detail below, are exactly the reverse; they resist any form of malleability; their contents are ossified. The crucial difference then is that while categories are mental, cognitive constructs, stereotypes are discursive practices. They are integral parts, not of our cognitive apparatus, but of the structures of meaning and power which they maintain and reproduce. Based on this, the claim that categorization is ‘cognitively’ inevitable and can be ‘neutral’, rather than explaining the problem, completely obscures the historical and ideological nature of stereotyping. A different view, to which Waters seems to subscribe, holds that stereotypes are not a natural mode of processing; they represent a ‘processing error’. On close scrutiny, this view seems to be predicated on identical parochial cognitivist arguments. 4. Stereotyping as processing error The notion of stereotyping as error occludes the complex processes involved in stereotyping. The implication is, of course, that stereotyping is a slippage, an idiosyncratic blunder in the ‘perception’ and ‘processing’ of the social world. The depiction implies the existence of an objective, authentic reality that is independent of the ‘perceiving’ subject. This position thus fails to spot the fundamental feature of social reality as historically and discursively constructed. It fails to recognize that ‘error’ is itself socially constructed, is itself discursively produced. The presence of ‘error’ is not simply fortuitous and random; it constitutes the ‘default’ for perceiving the other. Otherwise, how can one then account for the ubiquity and similarities across time and space of such ‘errors’? Edward Said, in his critique of Orientalism, compellingly argued that the Western representation of the Orient was not merely ‘erroneous’, ‘unreal’; it was the medium through which the orient was turned into a subject of knowledge, production and control; as Said writes, ‘Orientalism can be discussed and analyzed as the corporate institution for dealing with the Orient – dealing with it by making statements about it, authorizing views, describing it,. . . ruling over it’ (1978: 3). The point here is that stereotyping, a great portion of which is the stock in trade of Orientalist discourse, is not simply a faulty representational machine; it is conversely very much the process through which statements, in the Foucauldian sense, are passed, and cultural production and power are effected and maintained. With relation to TESOL, the stereotyping of learners cannot easily be dismissed as an ‘error’ in processing, a failure of our limited-capacity cognitive system. That ‘mode of processing’ is the means through which the learners are produced and made as (non-native) learners. 5. Stereotyping as lack of ‘information’ The second point that Waters makes with regard to stereotypes is that although they are prone to error, they are equally amenable to revision and perhaps abandonment. In his words, ‘(stereotypes) are seen as provisional constructs, as much subject to revision and temporary reconstitution as perceptions of any other kind’
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(2007: 286). This stance removes from view two crucial points. The first is that stereotyping takes place within particular historical, cultural and social contexts and has meaning only within those discourses. Unless these discourses change (a kind of epistemological break or Kuhnian paradigm shift), it is highly unlikely that the nature of the stereotypes will be altered; they can do so only when their conditions of possibility change accordingly. Secondly, stereotypes are not easily and readily amenable to change and reconsideration. They are exactly the opposite as was pointed out above; they are, to use a Fodor term, ‘informationally encapsulated’, or as Tajfel argues, ‘rigidity and resistance to information which contradicts them are undoubtedly one of their salient features’ (1981: 133).4 Once stereotypes fall into place, they become irrevocably subsumed ‘in the order of things’. It would be therefore too simplistic to assume that stereotypes are erroneous mental representations and can easily be modified or forsaken all together as a result of ‘incoming’ information or rectification. The logic underlying these presumptions, Pickering writes, is that ‘if stereotypicality’s gross error of description and judgement is based on a paucity of information, of detailed empirical evidence, then surely the error will evaporate once such information and evidence are supplied’, and the conditionality of reversing stereotypes on the supply of ample information is ‘not only a big ‘if’, it is also a species of wishful liberal thinking’ (1995: 692). Given that all ‘information’ is fundamentally caught up in complex webs of power and ideology, ‘neutral doses’ of it are hardly a convincing argument. The arguments outlined above suggest that Waters’ characterization of stereotypes is untenable. His treatment of stereotypes as cognitive categories and information processing constructs conceals their historical and ideological nature. This conceptualization fails to appreciate that categories ‘contain value judgments’ no matter how ‘scientific discourse masks such judgements with a neutral, objective and even liberal humanistic tone’ (Kubota and Lin, 2006: 477). It also falls short of recognizing that the ‘establishment of stereotypical error (or supply of an adequate informational diet) considerably underestimates the play of ideological forces set in motion by processes of stereotyping’ (Pickering, 1995: 692). Beyond this mechanistic ‘transmission’ conception of cultural representation, stereotypes have to be treated for what they really are, as discursive practices symbiotically linked to the structures of power and ideology, no matter, as Horkheimer stated above, ‘what fine names’ one tries to give them. Waters’ cognitivism and naturalization of stereotyping ultimately led him to extremely distort and ‘inflict a fundamental adulteration’ (Bourdieu, 1998: 134) upon the politics of nativespeakerism, to which we now turn. 6. The discourses of native-speakerism One does not really know whether to rejoice in the ongoing debate on the native speaker as a healthy sign of the insistent problematization of one of the most ‘sacred cows’ of ELT or to regret this unholy ‘ostrichism’ of a discipline that adamantly persists in the denial and perpetuation of one of its most conspicuous forms of domination and inequality. Accounts have run the gamut from ‘eulogies’ to ‘wakes’ (Quirk, 1990; Paikeday, 1985) through critical imperialist, postcolonial, cultural and educational treatments (Phillipson, 1992; Pennycook, 1998; Canagarajah, 1999; Holliday, 2005; Braine, 1999). I will return to some of these accounts later. What I would like to do now is to point to some of the politics of the discursive construction of native speakerism. My point is that native-speakerism is not simply a reflection and continuation of colonial constructs and practices, a site where images of a ‘Modern’ ‘Self’ and a ‘Traditional’, Other are produced and reproduced. Nativespeakerism embodies a discursive dialectic in that it produces a current ELT ‘Other’ through the lens of colonial representations and at the same time those colonial representations are reconstituted through (whether physical or scholarly) contact with that Other; the outcome of these representational strategies is the production and justification of an unproblematic ‘colonial’ and ‘contemporary’ Self. One should, however, 4
On a more empirical level and to illustrate the magnitude of the problem, Jack Shaheen (2001), in his book Reel Bad Arabs, analyzed more than 900 Hollywood movies for how they depict Arabs; apart from the (unsurprisingly!) predominantly negative qualities that were bountifully bestowed the Arabs, Shaheen found that even after five decades, the same stereotype had not been subjected to the slightest change Similarly, in a series of studies, a group of American researchers reached the disturbing conclusion that the stereotype common a century ago that black people are more ape-like and less human than whites remains in force (Goff, Williams, Eberhardt and Jackson, 2008).
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state a couple of reasonable qualifications. It would be completely misguided to conclude that native-speakerism is only a set of discursive fabrications. While the discourses of native-speakerism are disciplinary constructions, their consequences are, nonetheless, very real. Native-speakerism produces realities of exclusion, discrimination and rationalizations for intervention and ‘cultural correction’. The redoubtable politics of native-speakerism resides precisely in the amalgamation of discursive hegemony and the various actualities of inequality that it rationalizes and sustains. A few manifestations of the discourses of native-speakerism are in order. In an article on how Japanese culture is constructed in US classrooms, Kubota (1999) argued that these constructions reflected a dichotomization and rigid demarcation of Western and Eastern cultures. The dichotomizations have been given character flesh of the sort that is redolent of colonialist overtones. Those seemingly irreconcilable entities have been ‘given labels such as individualism, self-expression, critical and analytical thinking, and extending knowledge to western cultures on the one hand, and collectivism, harmony, indirection, memorization, and conserving knowledge to Asian cultures on the other’ (p. 14). More recently, Palfreyman (2005) addressed the issue of ‘Othering’ in an English language program in Turkey. He found that the local Turkish professionals were depicted as possessing essential qualities like irrationality and lack of critical thinking and other skills. Palfreyman writes that ‘Othering discourses among expatriate administrators and teachers. . . represent Turkish students and teachers as irrational and reactionary and as lacking independent thought and other skills’ (2005: 229). Kumaravadivelu (2003) also identified a number of persistent manifestations of native-speakerism ideology in TESOL. He asserts that the TESOL profession ‘has shown a remarkable readiness to forge a causal connection between the classroom behavior of Asian students and their cultural beliefs even though research findings are ambiguous and even contradictory’ (p. 710). He pinpointed three portrayals of Asian learners in the TESOL literature: obedience to authority, passivity in class, and lack of critical thinking. Kumaravadivelu then moved to debunk these cultural myths one by one and, remarkably, reversed that cultural order by giving an account of how those very qualities are characteristic of North American classrooms. However, Kumaravadivelu’s subversion, no matter how powerful and convincing, remains only ‘rhetorical’ before the ‘globe-trotter’ images of irrationality and intellectual deficiency that seem to characterize at one sweep such diverse cultures and locales as Japan, China, India and Anatolia. As long as the structural systems of signification and power do not uphold those reversals, they remain powerless and ineffective. Their force resides in the ‘permission to narrate’ (Said, 2000), the capacity to enunciate. And this provides further support for the fact that stereotypes are not simply mental or cognitive constructs; they are discursive practices which are tangled up in configurations of power and ideology. 7. Native-speakerism as political practice: plus c¸a change, plus c’est pas la meˆme chose As a rebuttal of the critiques of native-speakerism, Waters points out that ‘rather than truly solving the problem of how to counter native-speakerism, (those critiques) simply replaced one kind of problem with another’ (2007: 282). This sublime rendering of the whole literature of native-speakerism critique as simply another form of ‘hegemony’ reflects a facile treatment of the complex issues involved. First of all, it ignores the structural and historical contexts and constraints within which native-speakerism operates. Such a view and framing of native-speakerism has also immediate impacts on how one perceives and analyzes the problem. In his account of TESOL stereotyping, Waters lambasted the proponents of ‘Critical Theory’ for regarding generalized perceptions of cultural differences as created for purposes of political control and for failing to recognize that stereotyping is simply part of a neutral, value-free technology of language teaching (ibid: 283). To provide support for the failings of the ‘critical theorists’, Waters attempted a counteranalysis of a seminar presentation which Holliday used as a means to unveil the ideological, culturalist workings of native-speakerism. The presentation was given to an audience of native speakers working in an East Asian setting. The presentation started with a description of the host culture which was used as an explanatory framework of the difficulties encountered by the expatriates. Holliday argued that this presentation represents an example of culturism whose main feature is the production of stereotypical and racist images of learners. According to Holliday, culturalism can be characterized as following five specific steps:
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Step Step Step Step Step
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1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
See the individual’s behavior as mostly explainable by membership of a foreign national culture. Describe the foreign culture as a generalized Other, whose main characteristic is difference to Self. Find details of this difference. Explain all behavior in terms of this difference. Reify the stereotype (2005: 25–26).
Waters chastised Holliday for providing no ‘empirical evidence’, ‘interviews’ or ‘other means of verification’ to back his claims and concluded that his ethnographic exegesis of the event (or was it a ritual?) was an ‘ad hominem’ one (2007: 284). Waters went on to provide his personal rendering of the ‘train of thought of the participants’. His alternative account runs as follows: Step 1: I am working in a culture that is unfamiliar to me. I felt it might help if I got some basic information about it, in order to begin to know it better. Step 2: In the light of this knowledge, what can I do (i) to limit culturally inappropriate behavior on my part, and (ii) improve my ability to understand/accept behavior on the part of locals? Step 3: In the longer-term, how can I use this information to give me a basis for building up a better general picture of how expatriates and locals can live and work together as well as possible, and to help me perceive the individual person behind the cultural ‘mask’ (2007: 284)? What can one make of this re-interpretation? Reading this counter-analysis, one is in fact assailed by several doubts about the exact character of the ‘train of thought’, not of the participants but, of the analyst. To start with, Waters did not supply any of evidential technologies he accused Holliday for not employing. His own ‘alternative’ interpretation might as well be considered, mutatis mutandis, an ‘ad hominem one’. Also the faith in ‘mainstream methods’ to obtain evidence and justification for culturalist perceptions is predicated on simplistic epistemological assumptions. Because most of what we know about the social world is beyond conscious awareness, the categories of vision of native-speakerism cannot be easily recognized let alone verbalized. On the other hand, very few of us would reasonably expect native-speakerists to tell us that they were in fact racist, that they were engaged in culturally unacceptable behavior and that they would love to be shown the errors of their ways and provided more ‘information’ on the local culture. Even the most hard-nosed of fascists or xenophobes, as Billig (1995: 122-123) argues, disavow their bigotry and attempt to cloak their racial attitudes in the garb of liberalism. And this is not only a question of honesty; the problem has more to do with how we construct the real (as opposed to the cognitive) world of TESOL. Van Dijk, commenting on the ubiquity of racism in modern institutions, states that ‘many of the older and newer racist ideas, perhaps formulated in less blatant biological terms, that is in the guise of sociocultural differences and hierarchies, not only appear in the self-legitimating discourse of extremist racism, but increasingly also in the mainstream discourse in politics, the media, education and scholarship’ (1999: 147). More specifically, Kubota (2001) pointed out that an apparently ‘nice field like TESOL’ does not seem to be racist because it promotes ‘the contemporary discourse of liberal humanism’ which ‘suppresses overt expression of racial prejudice’ (p. 28, my emphasis). But the manifestation and articulation of these racist stereotypes need not to be overt; they can be more effectively expressed in very subtle ways by those who, on the surface, appear to hold egalitarian values. In several studies, Dovidio and his associates (Dovidio and Gaertner, 1986, 2004; Hodson, Dovidio and Gaertner, 2002, 2004) have argued that in contemporary societies there has been a shift from more traditional to more indirect and subtle forms of racism, a phenomenon they call ‘aversive racism’. Aversive racism is hypothesized to characterize the racial attitudes of many whites who endorse egalitarian values and regard themselves as non-prejudiced but who nonetheless discriminate in subtle, rationalizable ways (Hodson, Dovidio and Gaertner, 2002: 460, my emphasis). Aversive racism is thus expressed both in terms of reasoning and behaviors by those who firmly believe that they are not bigoted and are not aware of their negative racial attitudes and feelings. On a discursive plane, several studies in critical discourse analysis have demonstrated (using evidence!) that racists usually employ ‘shields’ to protect and distance themselves from accusations of discrimination when
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they express views on racial matters (Van Dijk, 1992; Forman and Bonilla-Silva, 2000; Mallinson and Brewster, 2005). Those ‘shields’ are usually manifested in the utilization of semantic moves and argumentation schemata that are both subtle and rationalized. I would argue then that the episode that Holliday analyzes is a clear manifestation of aversive racism in TESOL. The subtlety of racism, its unconscious nature and its rationalization are reflected in the participants’ reactions. Holliday wrote that ‘when I questioned the underlying essentialist assumptions of the description. . ., I was accused by others in the room of ‘not knowing’ because I hadn’t ‘been there’ and also of taking time away from those who wanted to ask questions’ (2005: 25). Rationalization and subtlety also work through the justification of cultural difference through the use of science and ‘mainstream’ academic argumentation (Billig 1991). These are embodied in the ‘detailed and systematic description of the culture’ and also in the magical power that this description has in explaining the difficulties they had encountered and for ‘rationalizing’ their coping strategies. In addition, Palfreyman, in his study of Othering in TESOL in Turkey, stated that in accounting for their ‘Othering’ practices, Western administrators ‘tend to appeal to the rational norms from the TESOL profession’s international discourses’ (2005: 226, my emphasis). So what we see here is a very subtle and pervasive form of culturalism at work which might be characterized as ‘TESOL aversive racism’. Another problem with the Waters’ reinterpretation is its conceptualization of individual agency, which, I maintain, is consistent with his dehistoricized view of stereotypes and native-speakerism. The participants were depicted as voluntaristic generators of meanings about the host culture and as a cultural tabula rasa approaching the task of knowing the Other with such phenomenal cultural ‘innocence’. In keeping with traditional applied linguistics, this ahistorical and apolitical characterization ignores the fundamental nature of sociality. Reality is socially constructed, mediated by a complexity of semiotic regimes of signification. The human subject is constituted and mediated through a plethora of ‘truth games’ or what Foucault calls ‘grids of specification’ (1972: 42). In other words, the subject is a repository of the multifarious historically constituted discourses that have made it possible for him or her to be a knowing subject. Indeed, confesses Foucault, the goal of his oeuvre ‘has been to create a history of the different modes by which, in our culture, human beings are made subjects’ (1982: 208). The categories of vision and division, as Bourdieu calls them, that individuals internalize and utilize as ‘interpretative procedures’ are the result of complex processes of subjectification, of how they have become and been made subjects. And it is not only because one feels that human agency is morally desirable that one should dismiss the weight of circumstance and constraint. As imminent anthropologist Asad (1996) stated, the notion of agency must not ‘be given priority in our reflections just because we like the idea of agency – that we must reject a theoretical approach which doesn’t give adequate scope to agency simply because we disapprove morally of situations in which people can’t shape their own lives’. On the other hand, native-speakerists are not ‘there’ merely to understand the ‘locals’, to make sense of who they are and, if time allows, envisage ways of how to live and work together. They are there as a result of structural realities and make sense of their experiences in light of their personal histories. For space constraints, I will briefly shed light on how structural (political, economic and cultural) factors shape the way expatriate professionals cope with the locales in which they operate. It is hardly an overstatement to say that the TESOL industry has been closely connected to its colonial past. The presence of TESOL professionals in formerly colonized lands is a structural continuation of colonial history and is deeply enmeshed in postcolonial realities of dependency, modernization and development (Pennycook, 1994: 46–54). TESOL professionals may either avowedly identify themselves with these processes or, given the historical anaemia of the discipline, simply ignore or decline them all together. This rhetoric of the role of English in modernization and development did not only ‘produce widespread teaching of English, but did produce wide spread images of English as a superior language that could bestow immense benefits on its users’ (Pennycook, 2007: 15) and on the country in general. It is not very hard to see how the meaning ‘free rangers’, of the type Waters describes above, can easily subscribe to such rhetoric. Phillipson has also strongly argued that the global spread of English represents a new form of imperialism and that the native speaker plays a major role in this regard. Linguistic imperialism occurs when ‘the dominance of English is asserted and maintained by the establishment and continuous reconstitution of structural and cultural inequalities’ (Phillipson, 1992: 47). Related to this is the fact that English is also closely connected to the dynamics and forces of predatory global capital. Edge, self-reflexively, points to the paradox inherent in teaching that is dominated by global
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capitalism; he states that ‘we celebrate our educational successes as our students achieve the levels of English that will enable them to fulfil their. . . aspirations, in the knowledge that we simultaneously facilitate multinational globalization’ (2003: 703). Similarly, Kramsch argues that there are ‘two debates that capture well. . . the conflicting demands currently placed on foreign language researchers and educators: the demands by a global economy for both communicative and intercultural competence, and the demand by the US government for speakers with ‘advanced levels’ of language proficiency to serve the needs of national security’ (2005: 546). Karmani (2005) has also very convincingly pinpointed the tight connections between ELT and oil in the Arabian Gulf. He argues that the triumphalism of the global spread of English is intimately connected to the global struggle for oil (2005: 88). Another point that Karmani makes is that this global triumphalism is also tightly connected with the US – led messianic ‘war on terror’ and the politics of post-9/11. The unholy connection between these forces in Iraq pushes one to ‘conclude that the intended Iraqi (US-imposed and directed) administration will not only oblige Western oil interests, it will evolve a ruling cadre whose command of English will be exceptional in the Arab world’, and certainly, ‘a fluent command of English will be more than ever a requisite for advancement, and ESOL teachers will be playing an important role in the process’ (Edge, 2003: 703). English may also be a requisite for the advancement of causes of a very peculiar kind. Commenting on the pervasiveness of TESOL-related missionary work, Varghese and Johnston (2007: 28) pointed out that the ‘TESOL field can no longer ignore the significant community of Evangelical language teachers in its midst’. To give a feel (and evidence!) of what this means, Varghese and Johnston reported that when they asked one of their respondents, Robert, about his primary goal after finishing school, ‘he was unequivocal about wanting to go into missionary work. Robert had a coherent vision of how English language teaching and missionary work coincided and he articulated this view consistently as the interview unfolded’ (ibid: 16). However, in such a hostile political world environment where negative sentiments about Islam prevail and with a US president having direct communion with God, TESOL-based Evangelism acquires a more political function, namely the ‘deradicalization of political Islam’ (Karmani, 2005). ‘The east’, in Benjamin Disraeli’s celebrated and compellingly telling statement ‘is a career’. It is not too simplistic to state that this Kafkian melange of Imperial Troopers, the Servants of the Lord and Robinson Crusoe gives very good reason for alarm. Given all this, it is not very hard to see what kinds of meaning will be negotiated with the ‘locals’. And it would not be very hard either to discern how this ‘overdetermined’ discourse of native-speakerism will give rise to feelings of ‘cultural strength’ which will lead to and rationalize all kinds of ‘corrections’, of which ‘cultural correction’, which Holliday talked about, is only one. Native-speakerism and stereotypes are a ‘thing of this world’; they are performed by individuals who also inhabit this world, who are historically and culturally situated and whose subjectivities are determined by the myriad of discourses that surround them. To treat them otherwise is to ‘inflict a fundamental adulteration’ and symbolic violence on the object and subject of the analysis (Bourdieu, 1998: 134). Two direct consequences follow from this. The ideological and political nature and practices of stereotyping and native-speakerism are obfuscated and submerged under the heavy rhetoric of cognitivism and social psychology. Second, failure to put matters into their wider contexts neutralizes their direct affiliation with configurations of inequality and power and leads to their reproduction. And in this very respect, the stance that Waters adopts is not very different from that embraced by Master Pangloss in Voltaire’s Candide. ‘‘It is demonstrable,” said he (Pangloss), ‘‘that things cannot be otherwise than as they are; for as all things have been created for some end, they must necessarily be created for the best end. Observe, for instance, the nose is formed for spectacles, therefore we wear spectacles. The legs are visibly designed for stockings, accordingly we wear stockings. . .; and they, who assert that everything is right, do not express themselves correctly; they should say that everything is best.’ Reading Waters’ Panglossian account, it is very hard to resist the temptation to believe that since stereotypes and native-speakerism ‘have been created’, we have to concede that ‘they must necessarily be created for the best end’. Acknowledgement I would like to thank two anonymous reviewers for their helpful feedback. I am also grateful to Norman Davies, the editor, for his valuable comments.
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