World Englishes and Nativespeakerism: the role of the Brazilian non-native teacher

Six promising directions in Applied Linguistics (2008) From prescription to description From simplicity to complexity From commonality to idiosyncrasy From precision to scattergun

Canagarajah (2006) Academic writing and code meshing as a strategy “for merging local varieties with SWE.

Rajagopalan (2004)

Canagarajah (2006)

“A more recent argument is that appropriating English according to the preferred interests and identities of the speaker is both a condition for gaining voice and also the most effective way for developing proficiency in that language”(Peirce). English should be treated as a multinational language, one that belongs to diverse communities and not owned only by the metropolitan communities. From this point of view, “standard” Indian English, Nigerian English, and Trinidadian English would enjoy the same status as British English or American English, all of them constituting a heterogeneous system of Global English (Brutt- Griffler; Crystal, Language Revolution; McArthur; Modiano). This perspective will also make us reexamine the distinction native/nonnative when it comes to speaker identities. Should we call a person who has been speaking Sri Lankan English since his birth a nonnative speaker of English? Granting even my multilingualism, the use of the term nonnative is difficult to apply to me in relation to English.

Rajagopalan (2004)

Canagarajah (2006) Student’s Right to their Own Language (SRTOL)

Canagarajah (2006) Student’s Right to their Own Language (SRTOL)

Canagarajah (2006) Student’s Right to their Own Language (SRTOL)

Moussu and Llurda (2008) First, every language user is in fact a native speaker of a given language (Nayar 1994), and therefore speakers cannot be divided according to whether they have a given quality (i.e., native speakers) or they do not have it (i.e., non-native speakers), based on whether English is their first language or not. The second argument also centres the discussion on English, and focuses on research on World Englishes and indigenized varieties of English around the world (Higgins 2003). Finally, the NS/NNS dichotomy has been criticized for its lack of contextualization, on the grounds that it disregards the interdependence between language teaching and the local context where it takes place. (…) What these authors claimed was the existence of a continuum that accounted for all possible cases between the two extreme options, each corresponding to the two idealized notions of what traditionally was considered a native speaker and a non-native speaker. According to this view, individuals may stand on any given point along this continuum.

The Trojan Horse notion (Qiang and Wolff, 2004)

(Qiang and Wolff, 2004) Linguistic imperialism can occur when English becomes a gatekeeper to education, employment, business opportunities and popular culture and where indigenous languages are marginalised. (Pennycook 1995, 2001) White-collar workers expend a lot of energy on English learning, despite having few opportunities to use it, because it is a pre- condition for promotion. A professional's English language level is considered indicative of their overall caliber.” (Xie Kechang 2004) English remains a gatekeeper to higher education, better jobs and social position in the Hong Kong SAR. (Mee-Ling Lai 1999) “… language and culture converge when we assign value to particular words and their corresponding objects or symbols. In this sense, words are little more than audio-visual tags for cultural value.” (Steggaman 2004) The British Council, the United Kingdom’s international organization for educational opportunities and cultural relations, brags that “The English language is the UK’s biggest export success story.” (

What about the Brazilian situation? How do you feel about teaching English in ideologic terms? How do your students feel about it?