5 Steps to Reframing our Language Experience

A 5-step guide for scholars to evaluate the use of language labels in their work.

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Step 1: Check our language

In research contexts, it is especially important to treat labels for socially constructed categories with care. These constructs are often simplifications which do not align with the complexity of social life. This does not mean we should avoid labels. It simply means that we should take the time to understand the limitations of these labels, and interrogate the validity of the constructs we use (cf. Cikara et al. 2022). 


"Native speaker/signer" is not an internally valid, “natural” category (Cheng et al. 2022). Rather, it is a socially constructed label which is a proxy for many other factors (Cheng et al. 2021). Using this label in an uninterrogated manner is not only exclusionary, it is often inaccurate. 


What is the role of this construct in our research questions or how we are describing the language use or experience of our participants, students, and colleagues?

Step 2: Check our ideologies

The "native speaker" concept as it is used today is heavily intertwined with other social categories like race (Gerald 2020), ethnicity (Kutlu 2020), nationality/citizenship (Khan 2022), disability (Namboodiripad & Henner 2022), and gender (Tripp & Munson 2021). Further, the roots of this term can be found in nationalism and essentialist ideas of language and identity (Hackert 2012). 


Taken together, centering “nativeness” in academic spaces contributes to the overrepresentation of white, cis, heterosexual, Western, and Anglo-centric perspectives. 


Is evoking these connotations part of our research goals or how we want to construct our academic spaces?

Step 3: Check our assumptions

"Nativeness" is tied in with identity and belonging (and all of the inequities which go into how belonging is determined, see also Bucholtz 2003), as well as language access (Costello et al. 2008), which influenced by macro-level factors such as nationalism, xenophobia, colonialism, and globalization.


 Being a "native speaker/signer" of a language is never a choice. One cannot choose which languages one will be exposed to upon birth. One cannot always choose which languages one can continue to use. 


Therefore, what is the value of prioritizing and valorizing ‘nativeness’ in academic spaces, when, by it is by its nature an unattainable status?

Step 4: Ask the right questions in our research practice

We can ask: 

Step 5: Ask the right questions in our academic communities

A part of our scholarly role is to review manuscripts, grants, and conference abstracts, as well as to write recommendations for our students/collaborators as relevant. The concept of "nativeness" can come up in our assessments of research and of the language use of our students and colleagues.


We can ask: