Agency and Marginalization

NATHANAEL RUDOLPH

­Framing the Issue

In globalized English-language education and its contributing disciplines, the

Chomskian (1965) idealized native speaker (NS), a linguistic abstraction, serves as the
prevailing foundation upon which language learning, use, and instruction are imag-
ined and approached. The idealized NS has been dichotomously juxtaposed against
an idealized, essentialized “non-native speaker” (NNS), who supposedly possesses
an incomplete and therefore deficient linguistic and cultural “knowledge” of the
“language.” Critically oriented scholarship has argued that the idealized NS has been
constructed as Western, Caucasian, and most often male. This “individual” has, in
turn, been inscribed with essentialized linguistic and cultural knowledge and behav-
ior, and actualized as the yardstick by which English-language learner, user, and
instructor proficiency might be assessed. Scholarship has challenged the idealized
NS “construct” for reasons both critical and practical, by documenting and referring
to the emergence of postcolonial Englishes, the use of English as a lingua franca
between individuals from diverse linguistic, cultural, ethnic, and national back-
grounds, and the use of English as an intra- and international language. Such work
has called for the reconceptualization of language ownership and use, and as a result,
has challenged decontextualized, NS-centric approaches to language education.
Additionally, scholars have attempted to apprehend both the potential for, and mani-
festations of, privilege and marginalization resulting from the centrality of this “NS
construct.” This has led to conceptual and discursive attention to the identities and
experiences of “non-native” English-speaking teachers (NNESTs). Work employing a
critical lens has conceptualized and explored teachers’ agency, or capacity for and
actualization of discursive change, and therefore how inequity might be addressed in
global English language teaching (ELT). Critical approaches to the nature and origin
of the NS construct and resulting inequity are, however, far from homogeneous.
Scholars have utilized a variety of conceptual frameworks, knowingly and unknow-
ingly grounded in diverse ontological and epistemological commitments and corre-
sponding conceptualizations of “self,” “identity,” and “experience,” which have

The TESOL Encyclopedia of English Language Teaching, First Edition.

Edited by John I. Liontas (Project Editor: Margo DelliCarpini).
© 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2018 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
DOI: 10.1002/9781118784235.eelt0004

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 2 Agency and Marginalization

resulted in fundamentally different conceptualizations of privilege and marginaliza-

tion, and, as a result, the possibility for and shape of agency (Ahearn, 2001).

­Making the Case
In conceptualizing and approaching the effects of the “NS construct,” some criti-
cally oriented work has imagined the “field” of ELT as largely monolithic. Within
this field, there exist static binaries comprised of apposed categories of identity,
including NS/NNS, and native English speaker teacher (NEST)/NNEST. These
categories are, in turn, inscribed with corresponding experiences that are pur-
ported to be largely uniform in nature. NSs are afforded ownership of English,
leading to what Phillipson (1992) refers to as the NS fallacy: the idea that NSs are
privileged as better teachers by nature. NNSs and NESTs, in contrast, are margin-
alized, rendered deficient due to their non-native status. The actualization of this
privilege and marginalization, flowing from the West into the global field, is what
Holliday (2006) termed native speakerism. Native speakerism, through this lens,
may result in discrimination toward NNESTs in hiring practices and in their
inclusion in professional activities, as well as their being viewed and treated as
less than professionally desirable by their peers, by other stakeholders in English-
language education and the societies in which such education is situated, as well
as in their own eyes. Through such a lens, agency, in line with Modernist tradi-
tion, implicitly entails individuals’ rational ability to apprehend universal truths
underpinning “self” and the human experience, above and beyond social struc-
ture. This includes the “recognition” that there is a fundamental difference, and
therefore a nontraversable divide, between NSs/NNSs and NESTs/NNESTs. For
NNESTs, this “reality” may be something to lament, come to terms with, and
embrace. Within this conceptual framework, scholars have explicitly argued that
NNESTs (and NESTs, in support) may assert agency by advocating for awareness
of inequity in professional activities and in the workplace, relating to the benefits
of being a NNEST, which includes their experience learning English as an addi-
tional language, and fluency in their mother tongue, which they may share with
their students. NESTs and NNESTs may therefore complement each other, to
varying degrees, as professionals endowed with strengths and weaknesses
according to their categorical affiliations. Further scholarship apprehends “self”
and meaning as constructed in and through interaction. Scholars, utilizing strains
of social constructivist and postcolonial theory, have conceptualized NNESTs as
“Others” marginalized by institutionalized power within societies. Though seem-
ingly detached from Modernist notions of “self” existing apart from social inter-
action, such work nevertheless employs largely fixed, universal, binaries of
identity (e.g., privileged/marginalized, NS/NNS, and NEST/NNEST), as well as
of place (e.g., core/periphery, West/beyond), in its conceptualization of and
approach to power and inequity within the “field” of ELT. Thus, individuals,
whether “native” or “non-native,” may assert agency in challenging universal-
ized, systemic native speakerism, and the resulting inequity affecting NNESTs,

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 Agency and Marginalization 3

via participation in institutionalized movements and scholarly activities such as

presenting and publishing, and advocacy in and beyond the workplace. The
assertion of such agency involves contending for a field wherein teachers are val-
ued for their NEST/NNEST-ness, as well as for their professional training and
experience. Stakeholders in English language education, drawing upon this con-
ceptual lens, might also assert agency in order to facilitate a move beyond termi-
nology associated with proficiency and deficiency predicated upon the NS
construct, which affords individuals privilege or marginalization. Social construc-
tivist, postcolonial, postmodern, and poststructural scholarship has problema-
tized essentialized categories of identity, critical and otherwise, contending they
do not and cannot account for movement within and across linguistic, cultural,
ethnic, national, economic, academic, professional, and gender-related borders of
being and doing in communities and interaction, thus limiting or dispensing with
discursive space for what might or should be possible, experientially. Postcolonial,
postmodern, and poststructural work challenging essentialization conceptualizes
“self” and therefore identity, as dynamically negotiated and constructed within
and across linguistic, cultural, ethnic, national, economic, academic, professional,
and gender-related borders of identity. Essentialized borders defining the bounds
of binaries including Self/Other, normal/abnormal, correct/incorrect, and desir-
able/undesirable in communities, societies, “nations,” and ELT, are constructed
in the interplay of glocal (fluidly local-global) discourses of being and becoming.
These discourses are established, appropriated, and maintained by individuals
and groups, in the interest of power. In and through their ongoing experiences
negotiating a sense of “self” or subjectivity (Weedon, 1997), individuals accept,
patrol, challenge, and traverse these borders in, very often, contradictory ways
(Davies, 1991). Such individuals position themselves and are positioned discur-
sively, in ongoing fashion, through written and spoken interaction. Such scholar-
ship posits that privilege and marginalization are fluidly, glocally, and contextually
constructed, and are potentially experienced in varied ways by all teachers within
and across essentialized categories of being, thus challenging the notion of uni-
form categories of identity and experience. “Native speakerism” therefore relates
to the establishment and maintenance of linguistic and cultural authority con-
nected to the ownership, use, and instruction of English, and the bounds of com-
munity membership and corresponding authority in the context in which the ELT
is constructed and situated. The “NS construct,” native speakerism, and “the NS
fallacy,” as well as the “field of ELT,” are therefore glocally constructed, and con-
text-specific (Rudolph, Selvi, & Yazan, 2015). Through this lens, an individual’s
ongoing negotiation of identity shapes, and is shaped by, discursive interaction.
Although there is no discursive separation between the “individual” and “collec-
tive,” individuals nevertheless may make choices with degrees of authority, when
positioning themselves in their negotiation of discourses and the borders of iden-
tity. Agency is an individual’s ability to problematize, confront, challenge, and
seek to change discourses, so as to alter how one positions oneself or is positioned
(Davies, 1991). Stakeholders in ELT may assert agency in professional activities
and in the workplace, in a manner that attends to the glocal discourses implicated

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 4 Agency and Marginalization

in constructing borders of being and becoming, within ELT and the context in
which it is situated. This agency might be asserted by all teachers, as through a
postcolonial, postmodern, and poststructural lens, seeking to move beyond
essentialization in the apprehension of identity, all teachers may potentially expe-
rience a context-specific fluidity of privilege and marginalization.

­Pedagogical Implications

Divergent worldviews underpinning conceptualizations of “self,” “identity,” and

experience, of privilege and marginalization, and of agency, lead to varied
approaches to classroom practice. Scholarship approaching inequity and agency
through the lens of critically oriented binaries proposes that teachers and teacher
educators might assert agency in seeking to both implicitly and explicitly foster
students’ critical awareness (whether they are “NSs” or “NNSs”) of the “NNS/
NNEST experience” and “NEST experience” resulting from the universalized
influences of native speakerism upon the “field” of ELT. If the guiding teacher or
teacher educator is a NNEST, this may include sharing experiences of learning,
using, and teaching English, and encouraging students to do so likewise. If the
teacher education classroom includes “NESTs” and “NNESTs,” instructors would
seek to foster collaboration, and ultimately, a shared sense of community between
these individuals. Preservice/in-service NNESTs might be encouraged to see per-
sonal and professional value in their NNEST-ness, while NESTs would ideally be
encouraged to be allies and advocates. Both preservice/in-service NNESTs and
NESTs might also be afforded knowledge of and inroads into professional activi-
ties addressing inequity and the “NNEST experience,” such as institutionalized
interest sections. Alternately, approaches to inequity and agency in classroom
practice, informed by postcolonial, postmodern, and poststructural theory, would
avoid telling language learners and preservice/in-service teachers “who they are”
and “what they are experiencing.”
Instead, moving beyond the idealized NS construct would involve drawing
upon, in the classroom, the lived experiences of all learners to negotiate identity,
in the interest of providing such individuals space for agency conceptualizing
and approaching inequity. Instructors might provide both preservice/in-service
teachers and English-language learners with space to explore and deconstruct
contextualized, glocally constructed manifestations of the “NS construct,” native
speakerism, and “the NS fallacy,” entailing the establishment, perpetuation, and
maintenance of essentialized borders of being and becoming, with relation both
to English-language ownership, use, and instruction, and membership in their
“local” communities. Teachers and teacher educators would assert agency in
seeking to cultivate, in the classroom, students’ apprehension and addressing of
inequity beyond essentialized categories of identity. Acknowledgment of these
diverse conceptualizations of agency and marginalization within the field of ELT
might necessarily prompt teachers and teacher educators to consider a few key
implications when approaching the classroom. These implications include: (a)

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 Agency and Marginalization 5

the need for conceptual clarity in the employment of academic terminology, in

acknowledgment of the ontological and epistemological variety found within the
“field”; (b) teacher recognition and utilization of diversity within the classroom,
relating to views of self, identity, experience, privilege, marginalization, and
agency; (c) the creation of space for student voice in the classroom, and the need
to draw upon learners’ lived experiences negotiating identity, in the construction
of course contents and objectives; (d) the need for teacher reflexivity, and profes-
sional development, in shaping their approaches to inquiry and practice in the
classroom; and (e) the necessity for teachers to be critically pragmatic when con-
structing and actualizing their conceptual framework in and through their peda-
gogy. Ahearn (2001) argues for members of the academic community to reflexively
attend to the meaning underpinning their use of terminology such as “agency,”
in the interest of conceptual clarity and the cultivation of professional debate and
discussion, as there exists a plethora of conceptual frameworks shaping the
words individuals wittingly and unwittingly employ. Similarly, ELT profession-
als might be encouraged to ground their use of words such as “privileged,” “mar-
ginalized,” or “agency” in conceptually apprehensible frameworks. This may
serve to establish a transparent discursive point from which teachers can dia-
logue with other stakeholders in ELT, whether they are students, colleagues,
administrators, policy makers, or parents. Teachers and teacher educators might
additionally assume conceptual heterogeneity in terms of how their students
(whether preservice/in-service teachers or language learners) imagine and
apprehend terminology. As a range of approaches to self and identity exist in and
beyond the ELT literature, so too may students embody an array of ontological
and epistemological commitments undergirding their views of self and identity.
Though sharing elements of identity and experience in common, students may
nevertheless be negotiating an innovative sense of being and doing. As such, they
may apprehend privilege and marginalization, and the nature of and potential
for agency, in divergent ways. Affording students the opportunity to draw upon
and share their lived experiences conceptualizing and negotiating identity, may
both invite them into membership in the classroom community, as well as pro-
vide them opportunities to shape others and be shaped by classroom discourse.
As the classroom and the context in which it is located are intertwined, teachers
and students may find themselves conceptualizing and confronting linguistic,
cultural, ethnic, national, religious, political, socioeconomic, gender-related, and
ideological tensions flowing in and out of ELT and the setting in which it is
located. Teachers and teacher educators are therefore charged with negotiating
and co-constructing with their students space for dialogue in the classroom, in
ongoing fashion. This accordingly involves drawing upon learners’ and teachers’
translinguistic and transcultural lived experiences negotiating being and becom-
ing within and beyond the classroom. As each group of students may differ,
teachers would necessarily be self-reflexive in their approach to the classroom,
dynamically attending to student interactions with course contents and with
each other. Teachers and teacher educators need to be flexible in their approach
to cultivating learning in the classroom, ready to alter the direction of course

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 6 Agency and Marginalization

dialogue and/or its contents, in order to attend to student needs and goals and to
foster a sense of student membership in the classroom community. Teachers and
teacher educators must also be prepared for conflict that may potentially arise in
teacher–student and student–student interactions, as conceptualizations of iden-
tity, experience, privilege, marginalization, and agency are deeply rooted in
stakeholders’ fluid personal and professional negotiation of identity. Teachers
and teacher educators might further practice critical pragmatism (Pennycook,
1997) when approaching the classroom. Teachers may find themselves members
of a professional discourse community, located within a given context, in which
the ontological and epistemological commitments shaping their pedagogy con-
flict, in varying degrees, with those of the other stakeholders therein. Critical
pragmatism involves teachers’ apprehension of stakeholder expectations in their
professional setting, relating to notions such as objectives for learning, the param-
eters of teacher, teacher educator, and student identities and corresponding roles,
and permissible issues for exploration and deconstruction, while they at the same
time potentially seek transformative change in and through the classroom. The
problematization of constructions of English language education and conceptu-
alizations of user, learner, and teacher identity, and the actualization of reconcep-
tualized pedagogy, however well-intended, may be interpreted by stakeholders
in a given community as a threat to their linguistic, cultural, academic, and pro-
fessional authority. Teachers and teacher educators must dynamically attend to
their positionality and practice, in the interest of serving their students, preserv-
ing their professional integrity, and maintaining their source of income.

SEE ALSO: Empowerment of NNESTs; English as a Lingua Franca; Equity and

Inclusivity for NESTs and NNESTs; Idealization of Native Speakers and NESTs;
Identity and NNESTs; Identity and the Ownership of English; Native-Speakerism;
NNEST Lens: Implications and Directions; NNEST Movement

References

Ahearn, L. M. (2001). Language and agency. Annual Review of Anthropology, 30, 109–37.
Chomsky, N. (1965). Aspects of the theory of syntax. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Davies, B. (1991). The concept of agency: A feminist poststructuralist analysis. Social
Analysis, 30, 42–53.
Holliday, A. (2006). Native-speakerism. ELT Journal, 60(4), 385–7.
Pennycook, A. (1997). Vulgar pragmatism, critical pragmatism, and EAP. English for Specific
Purposes, 16, 253–69.
Phillipson, R. (1992). Linguistic imperialism. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
Rudolph, N., Selvi, A. F., & Yazan, B. (2015). Constructing and confronting native speakerism
within and beyond the NNEST movement. Critical Inquiry in Language Studies, 12(1), 27–50.
Weedon, C. (1997). Feminist practice and poststructuralist theory. Oxford, England:
Wiley-Blackwell.

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Suggested Readings

Archer, M. S. (2000). Being human: The problem of agency. Cambridge, England: Cambridge
University Press.
Norton, B. (2010). Language and identity. In N. Hornberger & S. McKay (Eds.), Sociolinguistics
and language education (pp. 349–69). Bristol, England: Multilingual Matters.

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