The native speaker and nonnative speaker debate: what are the issues and what are the outcomes?

Abstract

In this paper I examine the notions “native speaker” and “non-native speaker”. In the first part, I review the literature on the notions that was sparked off by Coulmas’ (1981) collection of articles, followed by Paikeday’s (1985) debate with different linguists, and continued in the 90s with Davies’ text (1991). The year 1995 marks the publication of three articles published in one issue of the Journal of Pragmatics in which voices of scholars from the East exchange views with some Western researchers on the issue of nativity and non nativeness. In the second part, I point to the outcomes of the debate that have brought about a reevaluation of the non-native speaker concept and have contributed to the modification or correction of views with regard to the notion “native speaker”. Despite a critical revision, the notion has survived the debate, but is employed with more care and without an exclusionary stance by those who use the term in the fields of linguistics, applied linguistics and in the area of Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL). In the third and final part of the article, I first present a personal narrative with respect to the terms “native speaker” and “non native speakers” and secondly, set out some implications for the role of English for Brazil in the ensuing years. My objective here is to present the state of the art with respect to the history of thinking about the complex term “native speaker” in language studies. Therefore, I will not approach the topic based on data-based empirical research that might very likely be the subject of another study.Key words: native speaker, non native speaker, full replication, failed replication, standard language ideology.