The denial of ideology in perceptions of “nonnative speaker” teachers

The Denial of Ideology in Perceptions of‘Nonnative Speaker’ Teachers is a prejudice against ‘nonnative speaker’ teachers which is deep andsustained and connected to an inherent racism wi

The Denial of Ideology in Perceptions of

‘Nonnative Speaker’ Teachers

is a prejudice against ‘nonnative speaker’ teachers which is deep andsustained and connected to an inherent racism within the fabric ofWestern society This article argues that there is such a deep andsustained prejudice but that it is not recognised because of a denial ofthe ideology which underpins it on two fronts The first is perceptions

of objectivity and accountability in the dominant modernist researchparadigm The second is common descriptions of other cultures, underthe headings of individualism and collectivism, which appear on thesurface to be neutral, but are in fact underpinned by cultural prejudice.However, a postmodern qualitative research methodology is able toengage with the subjectivities of the unspoken discourses of TESOLprofessionalism, and therefore to uncover elements of global position-ing and politics behind the ‘nonnative speaker’ teacher label, which inturn reveal an ideology of racism

A growing number of teachers and researchers claim that there is ahidden racism within TESOL professionalism which is directed atso-called ‘nonnative speaker’ teachers However, others feel there isinsufficient objective evidence that this phenomenon is widespread Weaddress this issue of evidence by evaluating first the researchmethodology, and then the dominant beliefs about culture whichaffect the way in which race is perceived The article concludes with analternative explanation of the ‘nonnative speaker’ teacher label which isrelated to cultural politics

‘NONNATIVE SPEAKER’ TEACHERS AND RACE

There has been a growing discussion in the past 20 years regardingthe traditional ‘native–nonnative speaker’ distinction This is mapped byMoussu & Llurda’s (2008) state-of-the-art article They argue that thedistinction is losing its relevance within the context of the expandingnature of English, the increased recognition of teachers with a widevariety of language backgrounds (p 316), and evidence that languagelearners do not find it meaningful (p 328) Other factors in thediscussion are that so-called ‘nonnative speaker’ teachers are no longerconfined to a home country status and compete with so-called ‘nativespeaker’ teachers in every respect across the world (Holliday, 2008, p.128) with the added dimension to their repertoires of bi- or multilingualexperience and layered identities (Petric´, 2009)

It is also now fairly well established that ‘nonnative speakers’ havebeen discriminated against in employment because of a historicalwidespread belief in the dominance of presumed ‘native speaker’standards in language and language teaching methodology (e.g.,Aboshiha, 2008, p 129; Ali, 2009; Braine, 1999, p xiii; Holliday,2005b, p 13) There is also a growing understanding that thisdiscrimination can be racist—where the image of a ‘native speaker’teacher is associated with Whiteness (e.g., Aboshiha, 2008, p 129;Holliday, 2008, p 124; Kubota & Lin, 2006) This association is complex

On the one hand, many so-called ‘nonnative speakers’ may beconsidered White and may therefore pass as ‘native speakers’ (Connor

as cited in Kubota et al., 2005) and, on the other hand, racism may nolonger be associated with colour, now recognised as an indefinablenotion, but with any Other group which is imagined to be deficient(Delanty, Jones, & Wodak, 2008, p 1)

However, there seem to be differing views about how deeply rootedthis discrimination is Whereas some believe it may be solved byestablishing antidiscrimination principles in major professional bodiessuch as TESOL (Moussu & Llurda, 2008, p 330), others believe it ishidden within the discoursal structure of the profession and muchharder to address An example of the latter is the recent report of one ofthe authors (Aboshiha, 2008) concerning a sustained, powerfulchauvinistic discourse among British teachers directed at both ‘non-native speaker’ colleagues and students Aboshiha observed that

The profession seemingly does nothing to examine these ‘‘loaded discourses’’either at the beginning of teachers’ careers or during them, so in this way it ispossible for such discourses to be unendingly perpetrated and the superioridentity of the ‘‘native speaker’’ teacher endlessly reinforced throughout theteachers’ careers (p 149)

This report adds to descriptions of the perpetuation of a chauvinisticprofessional discourse in Anderson’s (2003) ethnography of profes-sional practice in a British language centre and Baxter’s (2003)ethnography of British teacher training, both reported at length inHolliday (2005).This discourse is further evidenced in two empiricalworks investigating the status and experiences of ‘nonnative speaker’teachers in England (Unsain Giraudo, 2007) and Mexico (Armenta,2008) These studies suggest that there is a cultural chauvinism toward

‘nonnative speaker’ teachers and students that resides so deeply withinthe ideological structure of the profession that teachers can be eitherunaware of it or ignore it

Ideology can be defined as a system of ideas put to work to justify,maintain, or act as weapons for vested social interests (Berger &Luckmann, 1979, p 18; Gellner, 2005, p 2; Spears, 1999b, p 19) But it

is indeed very possible that someone can be ‘‘typically unaware’’ of theirown ideological position, or to hold ideological positions which are

‘‘incompatible with his or her overt political or social beliefs andaffiliations, without being aware of any contradiction’’ (Fairclough, 1995,

p 42) This is the basis of the liberal–essentialist duality which we discusslater

It is thus quite probable that if there is a sustained racist ideologydeep within the fabric of TESOL professionalism, it is hard to establishits existence and easy to deny The research methodology which is able

to address this question needs to be equipped to dig deep to addressissues of hidden ideology in professional practice

ISSUES WITH RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

In this respect there are significant divisions between what we will callmodernist and postmodern viewpoints, while appreciating that there aremany positions in between Most modernist viewpoints emphasizeefficiency, objectivity, dependability, accountability, and liberation fromideology Most postmodern viewpoints acknowledge ideology withineverything and engage with the pervasive subjectivity which this implies

The Struggle to be Objective

At the more modernist end of the spectrum is Moussu and Llurda’s(2008) problematization of what they consider to be the more subjectiveforms of evidence They comment that much of the work concerningrace and ‘nonnative speaker’ teachers has been ‘‘based on nonempiricalthink-pieces’’ which rely on personal experiences and narratives which,they say, although possessing verisimilitude and an important background

to research, lack the required empirical verification to achieve propersocial science status They argue that ‘‘excessive reliance on this kind ofwork poses a clear danger to the field’’ with an ‘‘inflationist repetition

of the same ideas in different words and by different authors’’ (pp.333–334) This is a very important point, which relates in some way tothe warning presented by Spack (1997) that successive referencing ofideas from one writer to another results in a distortion of knowledge(p 771)

A similar point is made by Waters (2007) in his critique of one of theauthors’ own use of a description of a conference event as evidence ofchauvinistic native-speakerism (Holliday, 2005, p 25) Waters arguesthat

the participants in the session were assumed to have used it [the conferencepresentation] to construct a racial stereotype of the members of the culture

in question However, no empirical evidence (for example, interview orquestionnaire data) is provided to support it The analysis appears to bebased entirely on the author’s own presuppositions (2007, p 357)

The reply to Waters was as follows:

The conference event must not be seen in isolation, but as part of athick description which extends across the whole book within which it ispresented The analysis of the event is thus made in the light of a broaderpicture emerging from email interviews with 36 colleagues from 14 countries,descriptions of professional behaviour in conferences and other events, twoethnographic studies of teaching and training in BritishELT , and my ownpersonal narrative of professional experience as depicted in documents andreconstructed events (Holliday, 2007b, p 361, original emphasis)

Thick description is a well-established method for building standing from pieces of data within a specific research setting which,because of richness of their interconnection, contribute more than thesum of their parts (Geertz, 1993, p 6) However, the normalunderstanding of thick description is stretched in this reply to Waters

under-to a wide range of instances from different locations and times Thismore creative, postmodern research approach is in stark contrast to themore modernist approach advocated by Moussu and Llurda (2008)

Scientific Engagement with Subjectivity

The difference between a modernist and a postmodern approach toqualitative research is discussed by a number of theorists (Clifford, 1986;Denzin & Lincoln, 2005, p 11; Gubrium & Holstein, 1997; Hammersley

& Atkinson, 1995) The modernist, or postpositivist, or naturalistapproach, while acknowledging the need to access deeper socialmeanings, seeks to maintain scientific objectivity by keeping theresearcher detached from research subjects as though a fly on the walland to maintain the control of variables found in quantitative research.Moussu and Llurda (2008) suggest the same type of rigour forinterviews, where ‘‘researchers should be very serious about not exertingany influence on subjects’ responses’’ and ‘‘in which the population isstrictly controlled’’ (p 336).

In contrast, the postmodern approach, which relates to critical theory,constructivism, and feminism, feels the need to engage with subjectivity

It is asserted that researchers cannot help but interact with the socialworlds they study, and that they bring their own ideologies to thisinteraction Within a postmodern approach, scientific rigour does nottherefore reside in methods such as interviews per se, but in the manner

in which researchers manage their subjective engagement with the worldaround them Rather than claiming validity on the basis of objectivity,postmodern qualitative researchers thus need to provide detailedjustification for how their choices of research design suit the specificities

of the social setting and the researcher–subject relations which theygenerate (Holliday, 2007a, pp 9, 151) These choices relate to thenature of the research setting as it is revealed, and a wide range of datatypes are available These can include descriptions of behaviour, ofevents, of institutional settings, of the appearance of locations, and ofresearch events; personal narratives, subjects’ accounts, talk (whatpeople say), visual records and documents (pp 62–63) Just as surveyand interview design can easily be invalidated by superficial design(Moussu & Llurda, 2008, p 334), so too can narratives, and one of theshortcomings of published journal articles is the lack of space to allow afull account of the various types of methodological rigor which need to

be applied

The ‘‘postmodern researcher is in a position to dig deeper and revealthe hidden and the counter’’ (Holliday, 2007a, p 19), which isparticularly relevant to the uncovering of hidden racism in TESOL.One such example is Honarbin-Holliday’s (2005) ethnography ofIranian university fine art departments, where she incorporatesdescriptions of herself as a participant researcher in ethnographicaccounts and takes photographs of students with whom she co-constructs the nature of their pose to demonstrate how her ownpresence as a practising artists is instrumental in encouraging herparticipants to reveal previously unheard discourses Duan (2007) alsouses progressive conversations, and then, a year later, more formalinterviews, to uncover at the same time parallel and conflicting

discourses among Chinese high school students with regard to thepressures of the national university entrance examination.

The function of such studies is different to that of surveys or interviewresearch which sample populations to achieve statistical evidence ofphenomena Their purpose is instead to illuminate or to problematize;and it may indeed be the juxtaposition of such individualistic studieswhich create a macro thick description of what might be going on

Working With Rich Data

A particular example of a postmodern qualitative methodology inaction, employing thick description, is one of the authors’ study,referred to above, of British ‘native speaker’ teachers (Aboshiha, 2008).The core data are taken only from seven experienced career teachers.However, the aim is not to prove a statistical point through thestatements of a representative sample, but to drill down into theworkings of a professional discourse in order to critique establishedpositions This methodology develops in dialogue with what is found;and the interviews are complemented with descriptions of criticalincidents which ‘‘were flashbulbs, creating and illuminating’’ theresearcher’s ‘‘own realizations about the everyday discourses at work’’(p 78)

Because the researcher is a practising teacher who shares considerableprofessional experience with her subjects, she is able to uncover ‘‘a socialworld formed by the words, actions and expressed intentions of theteachers’’ juxtaposed with her ‘‘own perspectives on their ideas andreactions’’ (Aboshiha, 2008, p 75) Hence,

Teachers in the group and one teacher in particular, tell professional storiesover time They also tell the stories to another teacher, the researcher, who isinvolved in the same or similar professional contexts It is thus important toacknowledge that these narratives are then ‘‘positioned,’’ that is recon-structed ‘‘by a particular person [the researcher], at a particular moment, in aparticular location, for a particular audience, and for a particular purpose.The understandings of experience constructed through each storytelling arenecessarily situated understandings.’’ (Aboshiha, 2008, p 79, citing Fay)The outcome, informed by Atkinson (1990), is thus a text which

presents the reader not only with the complex surface of the writer’sideological commitments but also with those interwoven stretches of ‘‘voices’’

of respondents, that is small glimpses of the social world the respondentsinhabit The persuasiveness of the ethnography is due to this continuedinterplay of commentary and exemplification as the story moves from voice to

voice a kaleidoscope of differing and complementing dialogues whichshift from the abstract to the concrete, from my researcher’s voice to thevoices of the researched, from the past time of the teacher respondents andthe researcher as teacher to the present time of the reader and the researcher

as analyst (Aboshiha, 2008, pp 79–80)

Throughout, the researcher responds to this complexity with carefulaccounting for each step she takes in working out how to respondrigorously There is considerable discussion of how to manageresearcher–subject relationships, for example ‘‘the problem of ‘over-rapport’ with participants who are involved in the same field and areenthusiastic or irritated by similar issues as the researcher in his/hernormal daily role’’ (pp 89–90)

An Unspoken ‘Native Speaker’ Teacher Discourse

There is a particular breakthrough in the thesis resulting fromobservation of the researcher’s own role in an interview with one of theteachers about how a colleague has been discriminated against because

of being a ‘nonnative speaker’:

In this exchange with Jane it appears that the learners reject the teacher inquestion because he is not ‘‘white,’’ although the word is not articulated whenexplaining why the learners have rejected the teacher Moreover, Jane and Iboth refrain from saying ‘‘coloured,’’ although I say ‘‘brown.’’ However,earlier I have refrained from asking ‘‘So they really want a white teacher?’’ Infact Jane even talks about this teacher as ‘‘the one,’’ rather than ‘‘theteacher,’’ demarking him as different in her own mind I also say ‘‘someonewho’d been born in London,’’ again avoiding having to say ‘‘a colouredteacher’’ but we are both aware that this was the issue and yet continue toavoid the reality (Aboshiha, 2008, p 130)

It is as a result of this and other incidents that it is possible to uncover

an ‘‘unspoken discourse that the learners (and probably the other staff)would not accept a ‘non-native speaker’ teacher’’ (Aboshiha, 2008,

p 133) As the researcher compares what the teachers says with criticalincidents in which she herself is involved, she understands her ownimplicatedness in the chauvinism which is deeply embedded within thediscourse (p 110) After herself witnessing a highly skilled Argentineanteacher being overlooked in favour of less skilled British teachers, sherecollects, ‘‘I said once I thought it was unfair but then kept quietbecause I knew nothing would change’’ (p 133)

The discourse of the British teachers unfolds gradually to reveal

a superior professional identity, based on their pronunciation, classroompractices, ethnicity, British educational backgrounds and their relationalstance to ‘‘non-native speaker’’ teachers a considerable discrepancybetween the lived reality of the ‘‘native speaker’’ teachers’ professional livesand the new understandings of academics about English language teaching

in a globalizing world (Aboshiha, 2008, p 6)

The teachers also express considerable anger at what they considered to

be unuseful, impractical, ivory tower academic research However, astheir e-mail correspondence with the researcher continues, they begin tosend ‘‘admissions’’ or ‘‘corrections’’ to their initial stance and begin

‘‘dropping the names’’ of well-known theorists they have read andacknowledging the impact they have had on textbooks (Aboshiha, 2008,

pp 170–172) At this point the researcher begins to realize, again, fromher own professional experience, that the teachers’ initial reticence inmaking their academic knowledge public resulted from feelings ofunsureness about their own academic status (p 177) and feelings of

‘‘being relegated to a plateau of ‘practical’ knowledge by line-managersand institutions’’ where ‘‘they were afforded little scope to progress oncethey were technically competent’’ (p 183) being bored with there beingnothing new in teacher training and development (p 184), and theiremployers’ superficial ‘‘lip-service’’ to professional development (p.186) A particular case of one teacher reveals that, aided by asympathetic manager, she begins to get actively involved in writingand presenting at conferences on critical pedagogy and professionaldevelopment (p 207) There is, however, a note of caution, because thisteacher ‘‘admitted , at the end of an interview how careful she wouldneed to be in communicating some of her opinions to colleagues forfear of upsetting them’’ (p 212)

One might consider the possibility that a plausible reason for thesuperior Othering of the ‘nonnative speaker’ may be the result offeelings of professional marginalization on the part of the Britishteachers, which may explain this expression of anger from Britishteacher Alex (a pseudonym), as he summarizes the content of aconference presentation he attended:

Basically, ‘‘white man ‘native speaker’ bad.’’ We are all cultural and linguisticimperialists, probably racist as well Whatever merits his argument mighthave they will never be debated fully, only repeated ad nauseam by hissycophants who have already elevated his argument to the level of self-evidenttruth Everybody only seems to focus on a one way system of culturalimperialism i.e western (white) over non-western (non-whites) It is utterly

OK for non-westerners to rubbish, trash etc anything done by ‘‘whites’’ butshould a ‘‘white’’ argue back, or try to defend a position he is immediatelycondemned as a ‘‘cultural imperialist’’ or as a ‘‘racist,’’ or both What most

people don’t, or won’t, recognise is that ‘‘western’’ teachers in foreign landshave to put up with criticism of their culture, country, government on aregular basis from their students The teachers are just being too polite, orare not prepared to risk their jobs by arguing with students who might go tothe administration and complain about the teacher (Aboshiha, 2008, p 193,citing interview)

Not only racist Othering of ‘nonnative speaker’ teachers but also thenature of the professional ideology which makes it possible thus begins

to become evident The emergent picture of an ideology of superioritybased on a ‘native speaker’ birthright which is under attack both by alack of academic status and accusations of linguistic imperialismcorresponds with the suggestion made at the beginning of this articlethat the controversy around the ownership of English has divertedattention away from issues of race Alex’s outburst indicates a fullrecognition of being threatened by the linguistic imperialism while atthe same time indicating a denial of complicity in the Othering of

‘nonnative speaker’ colleagues Alex may also be resisting a perceivedhegemony of ‘‘political correctness’’ which Waters (2007) says isimposing an ‘‘ideological power-structure of its own’’ and ‘‘exaggeratesthe extent to which both NSs [native speakers] actually exercisehegemony over NNSs [‘nonnative speaker’s], and the extent to whichthey are perceived by NNSs to do so’’ (p 358)

It needs to be emphasized here that a crucial part of a postmodernmethodology, as employed in this study, is researchers using their ownprofessional experience as a basis for dialogue with the data, which is anadded basis for pinning together thick description (Holliday, 2005a)

ISSUES WITH CULTURE

The second key to a possible lack of awareness with regard to race andperceptions of speakerhood is the preoccupation with culture as aneutral entity We define neutral to mean something which is a matter oftechnical fact or science which is therefore devoid of chauvinism, andwhich can therefore be associated with the modernistic notion ofresearch methodology discussed so far Professions depend on neutraltechnical terms to define expertise in such a way that the products oftheir work are accountable and valued by clients and customers At a veryobvious level, this can be seen in the use of ‘native speaker’ and

‘nonnative speaker’ as though they are neutral terms despite theevidence that they can no longer be validated on linguistic grounds(Moussu & Llurda, 2008, p 351) Other examples are the concepts of

‘‘skills, learner-training’’, and ‘‘autonomy’’ being treated as neutral termseven though they are deeply contested in critical literature within

TESOL and education (e.g., Anderson, 2003; Clark & Ivanicˇ, 1997;Holliday, 2005b; Palfreyman & Smith, 2004; Usher & Edwards, 1994).The preoccupation with culture in TESOL is long-standing andderives from a strong association between the second languages of ourstudents and their national cultures As such, culture is the establishedlocation of ‘‘problems’’ associated with language learning behaviour andcontent The ‘‘problem’’ may, however, not be with culture per se, butwith the manner in which culture has become a safe heading underwhich to discuss difference related to a foreign Other The outcome is aneoracism, which

rationalizes the subordination of people of colour on the basis of culture [but] is still racism, in that it functions to maintain racial hierarchies ofoppression Its new ideological focus on culture has the same function, andprovides a vast new field to mine for supposed causes of the lowerachievement of groups of colour base on dysfunctional attitudes, values,and orientations (Spears, 1999b, p 15)

(See also Delanty, Wodak, & Jones, 2008, p 2; Jordan & Weedon, 1995,

p 157; Kubota & Lin, 2006, p 476.) It is thus possible to draw a directparallel between a possible racism which remains hidden within our

‘‘nice TESOL profession’’ with racism which is hidden beneath anapparent celebration of cultural diversity in Western liberal multi-culturalism (Kubota, 2002, 2004; Lentin, 2008; Wodak, 2008).Multiculturalism is a set of beliefs through which education, the media,government policy and other institutions, deal with an influx of peoplefrom different national and cultural backgrounds It has been criticizedfor its superficial focus on food, clothing, festivals, and ceremonies,which has been considered patronizing and an oversimplification ofcomplex identities (e.g., Hall, 1991b, p 55; Y Y Kim, 2005;Kumaravadivelu, 2007, pp 104–106; Latour, 2006; Spears, 1999b) Thisattitude to difference has also influenced the way in which the Westlooks out upon the world as a place to experience and collect culture, as

an exotic commodity, through tourism and other activities (e.g., Jordan

& Weedon, 1995, p 150; McCannell, 1992, pp 158–170; Urry, 2002, pp

2, 5), and can also be connected to a dominant image of globalizationwhich suits Western markets (e.g., Bhabha, 1994, pp 207–209;Canagarajah, 1999, 2006, p 230) It is argued that racism neverthelesspersists ‘‘in every corner of society’’ (Kubota & Lin, 2006, p 479; alsoSpears, 1999a, p 8) There are thus deep contradictions, following thepoint made earlier regarding contradictory ideology, with statedegalitarian principles conflicting with chauvinistic attitudes toward aforeign Other: