What Makes a Native Speaker?: Nativeness, Ownership, and Global Englishes

There are at least two visions of the global use of English. Globalized English refers to a homogeneous, homogenizing, and standardized linguistic model derived from one or more of the historically anglophone countries and imposed on students and professionals learning or speaking English as a second (or third or fourth) language. The term global Englishes refers to a multiplicity of distinct but mutually intelligible dialects or strands of English adapted to the specific locale and usage of a given population. Examples include Singlish (Singapore), Turklish (Turkey), and varieties of Eurenglish (various European contexts). This second view opens avenues of agency and ownership unavailable when global standardized English is imposed as an ideal. The existing linguistics hierarchy of native English speakers over nonnative speakers breaks down. This article explores the native/nonnative distinction as expressed in the experiences of postcolonial writers as well as of teachers and learners of English. Literary authors discussed include Amitav Ghosh, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, and Michael Harnett. Case studies from the English-as-a-second-language classroom are borrowed from the fields of scholarship known as TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) and TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language).