Article published in:
World Englishes – Problems, Properties and Prospects: Selected papers from the 13th IAWE conferenceEdited by Thomas Hoffmann and Lucia Siebers
[Varieties of English Around the World G40] 2009
► pp. 385–406
A discourse-historical approach to the English native speaker
Stephanie Hackert | University of Angsburg
The concept of the native speaker, once viewed as “a common reference point for all branches of linguistics” (Coulmas 1981: 1), has increasingly come under criticism, particularly in connection with the study of World Englishes, where it has been pointed out that, while there may be linguistic differences between native and non-native speakers of English, the native speaker is really a political construct carrying a particular ideological baggage. The following paper presents a close reading of Marsh (1859), the text in which the term first occurs, in order to retrace some of the discourses surrounding the concept’s emergence. It will be shown that, just like its contemporary counterpart, the 19th-century English native speaker was employed to “other” particular speaker groups and assert ownership over the language.
Published online: 23 September 2009
https://doi.org/10.1075/veaw.g40.23hac
https://doi.org/10.1075/veaw.g40.23hac
Cited by
Cited by 2 other publications
Turnbull, Blake
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 28 june 2022. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.