The ghost of nativespeakerism: The case of teacher classroom introductions in transnational contexts

Abstract

Although the field of TESOL has attempted to move beyond the essentialistic and simplified identity category of native and nonnative labels, the ideological domination of nativespeakerism continues to be one of the most deeply embedded discourses that many nonnative English speaker teachers (NNESTs) have drawn on when teaching outside their home countries. This article describes the effects of nativespeakerism on teacher classroom introductions (TCIs) of one NNEST who recently crossed borders from Indonesia to the United States, which I refer to as a transnational English teacher or a TET. I employ an autoethnography approach alongside Bakhtin’s (1984) conceptualization of the other to describe hidden narrative voices (Mizzi, 2010) in the process of constructing a viable professional identity in a transnational context. Ellis and Adams (2014) stated that “the stories of a particular life can provide a useful way of knowing about general human experience” (p. 255). The “particular life” experience I would like to explore through this article is my classroom introductions in two different contexts, Indonesia and the United States, mediated by three different student populations: Indonesian, international, and native English speaker (NES) students. My intention in bringing such a seemingly simple act as a teacher introduction into existing conversation on native/non‐native‐ness is to put forward an idea that for many TETs, the negotiation of NNEST identities starts even before they step into the classroom and this functions as “a form of argument” (Maclure, 1993, p. 12) to project the most viable teacher identity.