Trans-speakerism: a trioethnographic exploration into diversity, equity, and inclusion in language education

Abstract

In this article, we cast a critical eye over a culturally dominant ideology—native-speakerism. This ideology postulates that those deemed to be native English-speaking teachers (NESTs) are preferable over non-native English-speaking teachers (NNESTs), both as legitimate language models of English and as effective practitioners of western teaching methodologies (Holliday, 2006, 2018). We critique this by delving into our own experiences in Japanese higher education—those of a doctoral supervisor (Takaaki: NNEST) and two of his doctoral candidates (Matt and Joachim: both NESTs). We employed the research method of duoethnography (specifically trioethnography, in our case), which involves multiple researchers sharing their respective lived experiences concerning a specific phenomenon (Norris & Sawyer, 2012). Findings suggest that our academic lives and relationships were affected by our shared understandings of Global Englishes (Galloway & Rose, 2015), intercultural awareness (Baker, 2012), and professionalism (Coombe et al., 2020). The article provides evidence for the need to replace native-speakerism with the fresh ideology of trans-speakerism—a stance committed to advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion for all language speakers/teachers, irrespective of their first languages or cultures. It also suggests the use of new terms, global speakers/teachers of English (GSEs/GTEs), to refer to English speakers/teachers.