Representation, Globalization, and the Native Speaker

Abstract

This chapter investigates how the social practices within English Language Teaching (ELT), national educational and language policy, national politics, and globalization interact in ways that establish conceptions of native speakers of English (NS) and Standard English (SE) to serve as overarching norms in ELT practice. Employing a Foucauldian post-structural theory of representation as an analytic lens, this chapter examines how the representations of the NS, SE, and modernity are constructed, maintained, and reified to form a regime of truth within the global contexts of ELT and the specific context of ELT in Korea. The results of this analysis show how these representations affect the subjectivities of students, educators, and policies in ELT in ways that create social practices that benefit elite groups, rather than promoting classroom practices that foster a critical appropriation of language and culture. Finally, this chapter suggests that representational theory allows students and educators to not only better understand the actual contexts of their English teaching and learning, but to also engage in pedagogies that have the possibility of transforming these contexts in ways that promote social justice and enhance social agency.