The native speaker is often thought of as an ideal language user with a complete and possibly
innate competence in the language which is perceived as being bounded and fixed to a
homogeneous speech community and linked to a nation-state. Despite recent works that challenge
its empirical accuracy and theoretical utility the notion of the native speaker is still
prevalent today. The Native Speaker Concept shifts the analytical focus from the second
language acquisition processes and teaching practices to daily interactions situated in wider
sociocultural and political contexts marked by increased global movements of people and
multilingual situations. Using an ethnographic approach the volume critically elucidates the
political nature of (not) claiming the native speaker status in daily life and the ways the
ideology of native speaker intersects and articulates supports subverts or complicates
various relations of dominance and regimes of standardization. The book offers cases from
diverse settings including classrooms in Japan a coffee shop in Barcelona secondary schools
in South Africa a backyard in Rapa Nui (Easter Island) restaurant kitchens a high school
administrator's office a college classroom in the United States and the Internet. It also
offers a genealogy of the notion of the native speaker from the time of the Roman Empire.
Employing linguistic anthropological and educational theories the volume speaks not only to
the analyses of language use and language policy planning and teaching but also to the
investigation of wider effects of language ideology on relations of dominance and
institutional and discursive practices.
