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ELSEVIER Journal of Pragmatics 27 (1997) 225-231

Discussion note

Linguistics and the myth of nativity"

Comments on the controversy
over 'new/non-native Englishes'
Kanavillil Rajagopalan
Departmento de Lingiiistica, Instituto de Estudos da Linguagem, Universidade Estadual de Campinas.
Caixa Postal 6045, Campinas, S.P., 13081-970, Brasil

Received March 1996

Abstract
This paper is an attempt to take a fresh look at the controversy over the theoretical status
of the so-called 'new/non-native' Englishes (JoP 24(3) 1995). I argue that, when all is said
and done, what the participants in the debate do succeed in foregrounding is the untenability
of the category called 'native speaker' in the world of practical affairs. I also suggest that the
frequent and unquestioning appeal to the category may turn out to be motivated by an insidi-
ous ideological agenda (albeit, hopefully unwittingly entertained by those who defend it).

English has native speakers. And that seems to be the problem ...
Hartmut Haberland (1989: 935)

1. Introduction

The controversy sparked off by the fascinating and provocative paper jointly
signed by Rajendra Singh, Jean D'Souza, K.P. Mohanan and N.G. Prabhu on the
politically charged question of the so-called 'new/non-native varieties' of the Eng-
lish language (Singh et al., 1995; Afendras et al., 1995; Singh, 1995) has undoubt-
edly succeeded in foregrounding a really thorny issue in theoretical linguistics. I
shall call it the 'myth of nativity'. Lest I should be misunderstood on this, let me
straight away make a pre-emptive remark. By calling something a myth, one is not,
I think, necessarily disparaging or belittling it, though in our age of excessive enthu-
siasm for science and faith in its infallibility there may indeed be a strong tendency
to think that myths are the kind of stuff nonsense and pre-scientific gibberish are

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226 K. Rajagopalan /Journal of Pragmatics 27 (1997) 225-231

made of. I for one wholeheartedly subscribe to the view that myths are the cement-
ing forces at work in the overall network of beliefs one may call one's 'world-view'.
This means that a scientifically respectable world-view' may jolly well harbour sci-
entifically respectable myths. In my view, nativity is a scientifically respectable
myth in so far as the Science of Language or Linguistics is concerned. By calling
nativity a myth, the point I wish to make is rather that the tradition of modem lin-
guistic theory is predicated upon it. Indeed, modem linguistic theory is so permeated
by the presence of this myth that one seldom pauses to take note of it except of
course when theoreticians find themselves at loggerheads when trying to assess its
practical effects.

2. The myth of nativity

The concept of nativity is one of the founding myths of Modem Linguistics. Like
all other myths, nativity is not an isolated or a singleton belief, but a host of related
and mutually supporting beliefs that are typically not interrogated from within the
disciplinary boundaries. At a bare minimum, it has to do with a belief in the exis-
tence of the native speaker of language, someone who knows his/her language and
knows it perfectly well - and who can therefore be invoked as the ultimate authority
and arbiter in matters of judgement over grammaticality, etc. But this native is just
the visible tip of a gigantic metaphysical iceberg. Later we shall make an attempt at
sizing up the iceberg.
Though the idea of the native speaker of a language may appear to be unexcep-
tionable as far as it goes, problems begin to crop up as soon we try to bring it down
from the Olympian heights of high-falutin' theory, where the concept was conceived
and nurtured, to the valley of practical concerns below. To begin with, note that the
native speaker was defined as the one who knows her/his language. What do we
mean by language here? Well, by language we mean, damn it, that which the native
speaker knows qua native speaker. Of course, such circular definitions are not only
not a problem at the dizzy heights of pure theory, they are hailed as what makes a
theory leak-proof.
But it so happens that it is, as I said, a totally different story on the valley down
below, where the linguists are forced to come to terms with real-life issues. Whereas
the theoretical linguist may be quite happy talking about language in its generic or
abstract sense, those with more immediate and practical concerns are more interested
in looking at language with a preceding indefinite article. They are, for instance,
interested in finding out, say, where exactly Hindi ceases to be and Urdu takes over,
or, in what sense, Spanish may be claimed to have replaced Guarani as someone's
mother-tongue, or, what considerations would authorise the linguist to say that the
speech of a Venetian and that of a Neapolitan should be considered simple variations
of one and the same language, namely, Italian. As Yngve (1971: 30) put it ironically
a quarter of a century ago, "Most linguists have been in the habit of averting their
eyes as if ashamed to look at real people, or as if they thought it not quite a polite
and dignified thing to do".
 K. Rajagopalan / Journal of Pragmatics 27 (1997) 225-231 227

Practical and empirical questions of the sort raised in the foregoing paragraph are
indeed ideal test-cases for postulates and constructs churned out by one's theory. But
then, every time there is a mis-match between what the theory promises and the
practice delivers, the standard ploy has been that of either changing the subject or
saying that a number of other factors intervene between theory and practice, so that
a few isolated 'facts' cannot be bandied about as sounding the knell of the theory.
Fixing the exact boundaries of a real language (the one, that is, with a preceding
indefinite article) has always been a vexatious, indeed embarrassing, task before the
theoretical linguist who has typically preferred to side-step the whole issue (cf. Har-
ris, 1981). As Ferguson and Gumperz (1960: 2) have remarked: "... most defini-
tions of language in vogue among linguists today are more concerned either with set-
ting off speech behaviour from other human activity or with setting off linguistic
systems from other semiotic systems than they are with defining the limits of single
languages". The only comment I can think of making on this absolutely accurate
statement is that its validity continues intact despite the lapse of at least three
decades and a half since the passage was written. It is interesting to observe at this
juncture that the authors of many introductory texts frequently make as if they are
about to discuss languages in their concrete sense. Thus witness the following obser-
vation by Moulton (1969: 4): "Linguistics is the branch of learning which studies
the languages of any and all societies: how each language is constructed; how it
varies through space and changes through time; how it is related to other languages;
how it is used by its speakers" But, alas, no sooner have these writers made the ini-
tial, highly promising move, than they switch gears all of a sudden. Thus hot on the
heels of the passage just quoted, we find the rather unexpected about-face: "Funda-
mental to all branches of linguistics is the basic question: What is language?"
The reason why the case of the so-called 'new/non-native' Englishes is particu-
larly interesting is that, whatever else one may say about it, one cannot in dead
earnest call it an isolated case. It may indeed turn out to be the case that English is a
language regularly used by more people who would be denied the status of native
speakers according to conventional wisdom than by those who would be considered
its legitimate 'owners'. According to one estimate, the proportion is roughly two to
one (Quirk, 1985:1 ; Ha berland, 1989: 928). Now, as in each one of the other cases
referred to above, there is nothing all that surprising about the view that the label
'new/non-native' is at best a misnomer and at worst one that harbours potentially
dangerous agendas (more on this later). If, as we have already seen, the idea of 'a
language' is itself so nebulous and fuzzy, why should we expect the idea of 'a
speaker of a language' to be any clearer? After all, an abstract language can be spo-
ken only by abstract speakers. And, needless to say, the quest for abstract speakers
in the real, work-a-day, world is destined to be a wild goose chase.
It is not difficult to see why native speakers - with all the supra-human attributes
that the theoretical linguist has bestowed upon them - are an impossible species in
the real world. The native speakers of the sort dreamed up by the Generativists are,
by their own confession, ideai' language users, who know their language perfectly
well. They are, in other words, distinguished by a definitional attribute one is nor-
mally reluctant to vouchsafe ordinary, mortal, humans: the native never errs (call it
228 K. Rajagopalan / Journal of Pragmatics 2 7 (1997) 225-231

the apotheosis of the native in contemporary linguistics). The world inhabited by

these ideal speakers is also too ideal to have even a remote resemblance to the world
we ordinary humans live in. It is the Paradise on earth, one where there are no con-
flicts, where language functions as the transparent medium of communication
between persons who act co-operatively and in the common interests of one and all.
However, as Mey (1987) has convincingly argued, such a Utopian world is as much
a figment of idealist imagination let loose as is the idea of the complacent native
speaker, a being self-sufficent unto itself. The pre-Chomskyans, the so-called Struc-
turalists, it is true, stopped short of looking upon the natives as demi-gods, prefer-
ring, instead, to see them as ordinary humans. But in their approach too, one easily
detects a certain awe and respect for the native, a feeling systematically manifested
in the form of a desire to keep intact the purity of the native, to protect the native
from 'contamination' from the civilised world (the one represented by the linguist).
The native that Quine's 'jungle linguists' were after was, in the final analysis, none
other than the Noble Savage in flesh and blood. Once again, the theory promised
what the practice could not comply. For, strictly speaking, a native answering to
such a rigorous requirement as total immunisation against contamination by an alien
culture, is unavailable for any sort of direct contact. Because the moment you have
identified one and succeeded in making your first contact, you no longer have a
native in the required sense - the very first contact with y o u , an alien, will have
robbed the native of all his/her original native innocence.

3. The quest for the 'non-native'

It is not at all surprising that in the absence of viable and fool-proof criteria for
identifying a native, the search for the non-native too turns out to be another wild
goose chase. To the extent that it denotes a category of exclusion (complement set),
the membership of this class can only be determined by first being able to tell how
one should go about identifying a native in the first place - a task by no means sim-
ple except when one is operating at the Olympian heights of pure theory. To claim,
as Trudgill (cf. Afendras, 1995: 317) in fact does, that the native/non-native distinc-
tion may turn out to be a matter of gradience rather than a categorical one at best
amounts to a confession that the world of practical affairs is, alas, not so neat and
orderly as the theory would predict and one might wish it were. The real issue
remains unaltered. It has to do with the myth that purity and authenticity are not
merely theoretical constructs but hard facts to be come across in the real world.
Thus one can only sympathise with Coulmas when he says (Afendras, 1995:
317): "For the past 15 years or so I have been haunted by the native speaker who
seems to be elusive, changing identities (including sex) at will as he/she/it jumps
from one paper to another". (By the way, the comment is a far cry from what he had
to say, apropos of the very same enigmatic native speaker, a decade and a half ear-
lier (Coulmas, 1981: 1): "As there is no way of doing linguistics without taking
account of him, he can be conceived as a common reference point for all branches of
linguistics".) So it turns out that the native speaker is a piece of phantasmagoria that
 K. Rajagopalan / Journal of Pragmatics 27 (1997) 225-231 229

exists only in the dream-world of the theoretical linguist. Thus Trudgill's claim that
"The difference between native and non-native speakers ... is a real and vital differ-
ence as far as linguistic theory and practice are concerned, and not one we should
pretend does not exist" (Afendras et al., 1995: 317) must be taken with a pinch of
salt and a generous one at that. That the enterprise of theoretical linguistics is wed-
ded to the concept of native speaker is quite true. What practical utility the distinc-
tion between native and non-native speakers has is, however, far from clear. In point
of fact, the very existence of controversies such as the one he finds himself dragged
into would seem to show that the distinction is problematic, to say the least.
The reason why the 'non-native' as well as the more enigmatic 'near-native' are
elusive creatures in the world we live in is that the putative 'native' who must in
both cases act as a foil is, as Coulmas notes, only an imaginary theoretical 'reference
point' (or, should we rather say, a 'vanishing point'?) - a veritable chimera - and
not somebody you should expect to greet in Dover, Denver, or Dundee. Thus when
Mohanan (cf. Singh et al., 1995: 288) affirms so confidently that "The term 'non-
native variety' refers to a perfectly legitimate concept in linguistics as a domain of
enquiry", one is left wondering what sort of legitimacy he is claiming for the term
other than that which accrues from the weight of a formidable tradition -
respectable, no doubt but, all the same, by no means self-evident or conclusive.
Note, incidentally, that Trudgill's point that "'non-nativeness' does not inhere in the
variety but in the speakers" does not come out any better for the reason that, as we
have already seen, the identities of both 'language' (and with it, dialect, variety and
all the rest) and 'native speaker' are mutually implicated in each other. Saleemi in
fact concedes this point when he says (cf. Afendras et al., 1995: 31) that "The native
or non-native varieties of English are valid linguistic entities only to the extent that
'a language L' and 'a particular variety of L' are legitimate linguistic concepts".
However, after invoking the authority of none other than Noam Chomsky to suggest
that legitimacy may be woefully wanting in both cases, the author goes on to plead
for the maintenance of the distinction on "developmental-linguistic terms".

4. The nativity myth and the hidden ideological agenda

So far I have treated the myth of nativity in linguistics as an uncontested guiding

assumption that runs into deep trouble as soon as one attempts to test its validity
with reference to concrete cases. Before wrapping up my comments, however, I
would like to suggest that, far from being an innocuous assumption, the concept of
native speaker may, unbeknownst to those who swear by it (or so I would sincerely
like to think), harbour a potentially dangerous ideological agenda. This is because it
should not take one very long to realise that the quest for the pure native is part of a
larger agenda that in other epochs manifested i t s e l f - and in some quarters still does
- as the quest for the pure race. Indeed the parallel is alarmingly striking. As Gates
(1985: 4) has put it, 'race' is not "an objective term of classification" but "a dan-
gerous trope". Isn't there, one might ask, a possibility that the 'native' too runs the
risk of being used as a dangerous trope, an imaginary yardstick by dint of which to
230 K. Rajagopalan / Journal of Pragmatics 27 (1997) 225-231

exclude and discriminate against those who, for whatever reasons, fail to fit the stan-
dards of purity fixed in accordance with the dictates of someone's idealist fervour?
I personally have some difficulty in coming to terms with the opinion of those lin-
guists who concede on the one hand that the difference between the native and the
non-native is difficult to make in actual practice, but is, all the same, worth clinging
to, for theoretical reasons. Their position seems to be uncomfortably close to that of
an early defender of the factuality of race, Du Bois who, in an 1897 address to a
learned society, freely admitted on the one hand that when we "come to inquire into
the essential difference of races we find it hard to come at once to any definite con-
clusion" but went on to insist that "Nevertheless, in our calmer moments we must
acknowledge that human beings are divided into races" (Du Bois, 1897, cited in
Appaiah, 1985: 23).
The truth of the matter seems to be that such categories as race and native speaker
are the result of insidiously applying certain strategies of exclusion to a world that
no longer lends itself to such division into such neat compartments. Their continuing
attractiveness may ultimately have to do with their underlying ideological agenda
that turns out, upon careful inspection, to be that of passionately safeguarding the
alleged purity of the identities they seek to embody. This is why the controversy
over the native speaker is, in the final analysis, a matter of the politics of identity.
After drawing attention to the fact that the concept of identity in modern societies is
indissociable from that of interests, Goldstein and Rayner (1994: 367) make the fol-
lowing brilliant observation: "Identity disputes ... characteristically lack clear form.
They may simmer on and on without resolution, not just because identity claims are
poorly articulated, but because identity claimants often resist clarifying what they
really want, e v e n to t h e m s e l v e s " (italics mine).

5. Conclusion

That the concept of pure identity no longer has any useful role to play in our pre-
sent-day world marked by mass migration and cultural and ethnic intermixing at an
unprecedented scale (I shall not go into the question of whether the concept in ques-
tion e v e r had any useful role to play at any time in the history of mankind) is an
opinion increasingly voiced by scholars outside of linguistics. I am of the opinion
that the following words of Salman Rushdie (1989: 4) are particularly relevant to the
question we are looking at:

"Throughout human history, apostles of purity, those who claim to possess a total explanation, have
wrought havoc among mere mixed-uphuman beings. Like many millions of people, I am a bastard child
of history. Perhaps we all are, black, brown, and white, leaking into one another, as a character of mine
once said, like flavours when you cook.'"

To recall Rajendra Singh's piquantly naughty turn of phrase, this may be the "period
that allows the truth to leak through" (Singh, 1995: 328). I think the biggest merit of
the participants in the controversy over the 'non-native' speakers is that of having
 K. Rajagopalan / Journal of Pragmatics 27 (1997) 225-231 231

drawn attention of the linguists to the uncertainties surrounding one of their most
cherished categories.

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