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Educational Linguistics

Bedrettin Yazan
Nathanael Rudolph Editors

Criticality, Teacher
Identity, and (In)
equity in English
Language Teaching
Issues and Implications
Educational Linguistics

Volume 35

Series Editor
Francis M. Hult, Lund University, Sweden

Editorial Board
Marilda C. Cavalcanti, Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Brazil
Jasone Cenoz, University of the Basque Country, Spain
Angela Creese, University of Birmingham, United Kingdom
Ingrid Gogolin, Universität Hamburg, Germany
Christine Hélot, Université de Strasbourg, France
Hilary Janks, University of Witwatersrand, South Africa
Claire Kramsch, University of California, Berkeley, U.S.A
Constant Leung, King’s College London, United Kingdom
Angel Lin, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
Alastair Pennycook, University of Technology, Sydney, Australia
Educational Linguistics is dedicated to innovative studies of language use and
language learning. The series is based on the idea that there is a need for studies that
break barriers. Accordingly, it provides a space for research that crosses traditional
disciplinary, theoretical, and/or methodological boundaries in ways that advance
knowledge about language (in) education. The series focuses on critical and
contextualized work that offers alternatives to current approaches as well as
practical, substantive ways forward. Contributions explore the dynamic and multi-­
layered nature of theory-practice relationships, creative applications of linguistic
and symbolic resources, individual and societal considerations, and diverse social
spaces related to language learning.
The series publishes in-depth studies of educational innovation in contexts
throughout the world: issues of linguistic equity and diversity; educational language
policy; revalorization of indigenous languages; socially responsible (additional)
language teaching; language assessment; first- and additional language literacy;
language teacher education; language development and socialization in non-­
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More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/5894


Bedrettin Yazan • Nathanael Rudolph
Editors

Criticality, Teacher Identity,


and (In)equity in English
Language Teaching
Issues and Implications
Editors
Bedrettin Yazan Nathanael Rudolph
Department of Curriculum and Instruction Department of English
The University of Alabama Mukogawa Women’s University
Tuscaloosa, AL, USA Nishinomiya-shi, Hyogo-ken, Japan

ISSN 1572-0292     ISSN 2215-1656 (electronic)


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Foreword – Conceptualizing and Approaching
Identity and Inequity: An Account of a Shifting
Paradigm

Today we live in a world of divisions… A world that is constantly and rigidly being
divided by linguistic, social, racial, geopolitical, religious, and intellectual fault
lines, contributing to fragmentation, instability, and uncertainty, perhaps to the
extent that we lose the very essence of who we are as individuals and what we do as
professionals. These fault lines across people, nations, and worldviews create and
solidify pervasive divides such as “us” versus “them,” “inside” versus “outside,” and
“center” versus “periphery.” More and more, these divisive borders and boundaries
we live by lead us to a point where the world, and its inhabitants, are defined by
dichotomies, antinomies, juxtapositions, and mutually exclusive categorical sys-
tems. This discourse of division is increasingly palpable in the tension between the
“modern” and “late/postmodern.”
Today we live in a world of essentializations… A Naisbittian world in which we
are drowning in information, generalizations, and stereotypes, but starved for
knowledge, synthesis, and appreciation of individuals’ negotiations of personal and
professional identities. Perpetuated by the invisible hand of neoliberal capitalism,
knowledge societies, technological innovations, human flows, and related modern-
istic practices, these artificial chasms are in conceptual and outright conflict with
movement, exchange, and hybridity, and stand out as faux windmills. Therefore, we
often come across people, institutions, and institutionalized policies and practices
blind, insensitive, or resistant to superdiversity and individuals’ contextualized
accounts of being and becoming.
Today we live in a world of imagination… A world that is constantly (re-)envi-
sioned by those who believe in the multiplicity of alternatives and strive to create a
space for dialogue, conversation, negotiation, and mediation in an increasingly
divided world. Ultimately, these efforts emerge as viable alternatives, problematiz-
ing and reconstructing dichotomous rhetoric, conceptualizations, and practices, in
the interest of affording space for greater diversity, complexity, and hybridity occur-
ring around the world.
In a world characterized by divisions and essentialization, it would be naïve to
think that the “field” of English language teaching (ELT) would be immune to, and
unaffected by, these patterns with glocal significance. More specifically, the field

v
vi Foreword – Conceptualizing and Approaching Identity and Inequity…

has been witnessing a constant tussle between modernistic, static, essentialized, and
idealized borders and late/postmodern efforts to reconstruct language ownership,
learning, use, and instruction sensitive to context, border crossing, and hybridity.
For decades, the fundamental pillars constituting ELT, as an activity, profession,
and bona fide area of scholarly inquiry, have been under the decisive and destructive
influence of essentialization and idealization. This manifests in dichotomies of
identity as “native speaker (NS)” versus “non-native speaker (NNS)” and, concomi-
tantly, “native English (Speaker) Teacher (NEST)” and “non-native English
(Speaker) Teacher (NNEST).” Such conceptualizations not only create mutually
exclusive binaries of being and becoming but also purport to portray a priori expec-
tations, lived experiences situated at the nexus of idealization and essentializations,
both in the dominant (mainstream) and even in the critically oriented scholarship.
Through the lens of dominant (mainstream) and critically oriented work, on one
hand, NSs/NESTs are considered to be Caucasian, Western, and generally male,
living in urban spaces, and endowed with the privilege of linguistic, cultural, and
pedagogical authority to serve as the benchmark by which different facets of ELT
enterprise (e.g., theory, research, learning, teaching, publishing, instructional mate-
rials, assessment, teacher training and hiring practices) might be measured. On the
other hand, NNSs/NNESTs are referred to as individuals whose linguistic and peda-
gogical capabilities as language users and teachers are boxed into the prefix of
“non-” and defined in relation to their NS/NEST “other” and therefore are always
associated with discrimination and marginalization crushing souls, professional
identities, and personas, one teacher at a time…These conceptualizations coded into
the DNA of ELT in the form of institutionalized policies, structures, and practices
around the world have recently caused a great discontent and resistance among ELT
professionals who organized themselves around transformative ideas and ideals of
the “NNEST movement.” Building upon the practices of awareness, advocacy, and
activism, the movement has claimed to aim a discourse of empowerment and legiti-
macy with a goal toward contributing to a more democratic, participatory, equitable,
professional, and egalitarian future for ELT.
More recently, we have been witnessing a promising line of scholarship influ-
enced by waves of postmodern and poststructural orientation to reconceptualize
decontextualized, unidirectional, essentialized, and universal orientations to indi-
viduals’ experiences, histories, and negotiation and imagination of identities as lan-
guage users and teachers. What makes this body of scholarship “promising” lies
with the efforts to move beyond oversimplified approaches to the discourse of
“native speakerism” and the attempts to portray the complexity of identities as lan-
guage users and teachers (and thereby related experiences of privilege and margin-
alization) in such a dynamic, glocally and fluidly constructed manner across time
and space. As a result, we are moving towards to a broader and deeper understand-
ing and appreciation of sociohistorically situated and contextualized accounts of
translinguistic and transcultural identity negotiations, beyond oversimplified and
essentialized categories or regimes of “truth” defining what a teacher can/should do
and experience. This desire to provide space for more complexity “challenges” both
dominant (mainstream) and critically oriented, dominant approaches employing
Foreword – Conceptualizing and Approaching Identity and Inequity… vii

binaries. Ultimately, this necessitates localized, fine-grained, robust, and systematic


descriptions and analyses of how such constructs (e.g., “identity,” “marginaliza-
tion,” “privilege,” etc.) are negotiated in the glocal enterprise of ELT and societies
therein. It is exactly this point that the current volume embarks upon the task of
shedding more light.
In a world dominated by divisions and essentialization, this volume co-edited by
Bedrettin Yazan and Nathanael Rudolph stands out as an impressive work of imagi-
nation, and offers a fresh and compelling alternative to addressing the issues of (in)
equity, marginalization, and privilege in diverse teaching contexts. These two
visionary souls have gathered contributors from a wide variety of backgrounds,
worldviews, and contexts to create intellectual spaces and opportunities for dia-
logue. They strategically situated their work at the critical nexus of “postmodern
and poststructural scholarship” calling for moving beyond discourses and rhetoric
of essentialization and idealization and “the NNEST movement and research” aim-
ing to renegotiate and transform the fundamental premises of ELT.
This volume is impressive for several reasons. First and foremost, the co-editors
managed to construct this project and the volume, as an intellectual space where a
great diversity of contributors, contexts, conversations, realities, perspectives, and
worldviews coalesce into a mosaic of meanings. The multiplicity in “meanings” is
particularly important to serve as a testament to diversity and fluidity of the con-
structs (e.g., (in)equity, marginalization, and privilege) and sense-making processes
to understand them. The individual chapters provide contextualized and fluid
accounts and manifestations of privilege and marginalization in the field of ELT and
thereby attempt to portray a more fine-grained spectrum of grays in a world dichoto-
mously constructed by black and white. Furthermore, this work came at a very
interesting moment in the short yet rich history of the NNEST movement and
research, which is at a new crossroads of change and transformation. The concepts
highlighted in the text, “diversity,” “multiplicity,” and “fluidity,” will serve as funda-
mental threads running through the awareness, advocacy, and activism pillars of the
movement. Therefore, this volume will be instrumental in terms of shaping the
direction of criticality. For these reasons combined, this book is a fresh breath of air
amidst the world of divisions and essentialization in the “field” of ELT as well as in
the dominant (mainstream) and critically oriented lines of inquiry. Thus, it offers
accounts of imagined and fluidly constructed alternatives transcending borders and
boundaries to leave us with hope and directions for the future.

Middle East Technical University Ali Fuad Selvi


Northern Cyprus Campus
Nicosia, Cyprus
June 26, 2016
Contents

I ntroduction: Apprehending Identity, Experience, and (In)equity


Through and Beyond Binaries������������������������������������������������������������������������    1
Bedrettin Yazan and Nathanael Rudolph

Part I Problematizing and Reifying Binaries: Conceptual Transitions


 localization, English as a Lingua Franca and ELT: Reconceptualizing
G
Identity and Models for ELT in China����������������������������������������������������������   23
Fan (Gabriel) Fang
 ower and Ownership Within the NS/NNS Dichotomy ������������������������������   41
P
I-Chen Huang
 eachers’ Identities as ‘Non-native’ Speakers: Do They Matter
T
in English as a Lingua Franca Interactions? ������������������������������������������������   57
Yumi Matsumoto
 he (Re)Construction of Self Through Student-Teachers’ Storied
T
Agency in ELT: Between Marginalization and Idealization������������������������   81
Alvaro Hernán Quintero and Carmen Helena Guerrero
 nglish, Identity and the Privileging and Marginalizing
E
of Transculturality ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 103
Tamara M. Chung Constant and Haiying Cao

Part II Towards Destabilizing Binaries: Problematizing Essentialization


and Idealization
“ What Should I Call Myself? Does It Matter?” Questioning
the “Labeling” Practice in ELT Profession �������������������������������������������������� 125
Christine Manara
 ccepting and Circumventing Native Speaker Essentialism ���������������������� 141
A
Robert Weekly

ix
x Contents

“ I Speak How I Speak:” A Discussion of Accent and Identity Within


Teachers of ELT ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 163
Alex Baratta
 peakerhood as Segregation: The Construction and Consequence
S
of Divisive Discourse in TESOL �������������������������������������������������������������������� 179
Damian J. Rivers
“ Legitimate” Concerns: A Duoethnography of Becoming ELT
Professionals ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 199
Amber N. Warren and Jaehan Park
 ignificant Encounters and Consequential Eventualities: A Joint
S
Narrative of Collegiality Marked by Struggles Against
Reductionism, Essentialism and Exclusion in ELT�������������������������������������� 219
Masaki Oda and Glenn Toh
 xploring Privilege and Marginalization in ELT: A Trioethnography
E
of Three Diverse Educators���������������������������������������������������������������������������� 237
Antoinette Gagné, Sreemali Herath, and Marlon Valencia
 oing and Undoing (Non)Nativeness: Glocal Perspectives from
D
a Graduate Classroom ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 257
Geeta A. Aneja
 ssentialization, Idealization, and Apprehensions of Local Language
E
Practice in the Classroom�������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 275
Nathanael Rudolph
Contributors

Geeta A. Aneja Educational Linguistics Division, Graduate School of Education,


University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA
Alex Baratta Manchester Institute of Education, The University of Manchester,
Manchester, UK
Haiying Cao English Department, The School of English Studies, Zhejiang
International Studies University, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China
Tamara M. Chung Constant College of Education, University of Massachusetts,
Amherst, Amherst, MA, USA
Fan (Gabriel) Fang English Language Centre, College of Liberal Arts, Shantou
University, Shantou, Guangdong, China
Antoinette Gagné Department of Curriculum, Teaching and Learning, Ontario
Institute for Studies in Education, The University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada
Carmen Helena Guerrero Facultad de Ciencias y Educación, Universidad
Distrital Francisco José de Caldas, Bogotá, Colombia
Sreemali Herath Institute for English, The Open University of Sri Lanka, Nawala,
Nugegoda, Sri Lanka
I-Chen Huang Department of English, Wenzao Ursuline University of Languages,
Kaohsiung, Taiwan
Christine Manara Applied English Linguistics Postgraduate Program, Faculty of
Language and Education, Atma Jaya Catholic University Indonesia, Jakarta,
Indonesia
Yumi Matsumoto Educational Linguistics Division, Graduate School of
Education, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA

xi
xii Contributors

Masaki Oda Center for English as a Lingua Franca, Tamagawa University, Tokyo,
Japan
Jaehan Park Division of Arts and Humanities, Pennsylvania State University,
Abington College, Abington, PA, USA
Alvaro Hernán Quintero Facultad de Ciencias y Educación, Universidad Distrital
Francisco José de Caldas, Bogotá, Colombia
Damian J. Rivers Faculty of Systems Information Science, Center for Meta-­
Learning, Future University Hakodate, Hakodate, Hokkaido, Japan
Nathanael Rudolph Department of English, Mukogawa Women’s University,
Nishinomiya-shi, Hyogo-ken, Japan
Glenn Toh Center for English as a Lingua Franca, Tamagawa University, Tokyo,
Japan
Marlon Valencia Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures, Faculty of
Arts, Ryerson University, Toronto, ON, Canada
Amber N. Warren Literacy, Language & Culture, College of Education, University
of Nevada, Reno, NV, USA
Robert Weekly Centre for English Language Education, University of Nottingham
Ningbo, Ningbo, China
Bedrettin Yazan Department of Curriculum and Instruction, The University of
Alabama, Tuscaloosa, AL, USA
Abbreviations

CLT Communicative Language Teaching


EAP English for Academic Purposes
EFL English as a Foreign Language
EIL English as an International Language
ELF English as a Lingua Franca
ELT English Language Teaching
ESL English as a Second Language
ESOL English for Speakers of Other Languages
IELTS International English Language Testing System
L1 First Language
L2 Second Language
LFE Lingua Franca English
NET; NEST Native English (Speaker) Teacher
NNET; NNEST Non-Native English (Speaker) Teacher
NNS; NNES Non-Native English Speaker
NS; NES Native English Speaker
TESOL Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages
TOEFL Test of English as a Foreign Language
TOEIC Test of English for International Communication
WE World Englishes

xiii
Introduction: Apprehending Identity,
Experience, and (In)equity Through
and Beyond Binaries

Bedrettin Yazan and Nathanael Rudolph

Abstract The negotiation of privilege and marginalization in the field of English


language teaching (ELT), traces back to the field’s sociohistorical construction in
and through the British and American colonial agenda of linguistic, cultural, eco-
nomic, political, religious, educational and ethnic imperialism (Pennycook A The
myth of English as an international language. In: Makoni S, Pennycook A (ed)
Disinventing and reconstituting languages. Multilingual Matters, Clevedon, pp
90–115 (2007)). ELT was a vehicle by which to privilege British and American
colonizers, and create colonial subjects modeled after their own image
(Kumaravadivelu 2003; Pennycook 2010). Thus, ELT was predicated upon fluidly
intertwined binaries of being, including colonizer/colonized, and Native Speaker
(NS)/Non-Native Speaker (NNS). These categories were value-laden, affording lin-
guistic, cultural and academic authority and “superiority” to individuals associated
with the category of “NS,” while Othering the identities of individuals grappling
with the epistemic and actualized violence of colonialism (NNSs) (see
Kumaravadivelu 2016). As “local” teachers began to enter the classroom, an addi-
tional binary emerged -Native English Speaker Teacher (NEST)/Non-Native
English Speaker Teacher (NNEST)- privileging “NESTs” over “NNESTs,” as
teachers were collectively responsible for targeting an “idealized nativeness” con-
flated with the identity of an idealized colonizer. “NNESTs’” use of “local” lan-
guage in the classroom to facilitate learning, was countered by the discourses of the
monolingual principle (Howatt 1984), or notion that learning, and learning through,
“English,” exclusively, was ideal for maximizing student growth (Hall and Cook
2012). The worldview underpinning this principle marginalized the identities of all
individuals whose negotiation of being and becoming did not correspond with that
of the idealized “superior.”

B. Yazan (*)
Department of Curriculum and Instruction, The University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, AL, USA
e-mail: byazan@ua.edu
N. Rudolph
Department of English, Mukogawa Women’s University, Nishinomiya-shi, Hyogo-ken, Japan
e-mail: najoru13@mukogawa-u.ac.jp

© Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature 2018 1


B. Yazan, N. Rudolph (eds.), Criticality, Teacher Identity, and (In)equity
in English Language Teaching, Educational Linguistics 35,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-72920-6_1
2 B. Yazan and N. Rudolph

The negotiation of privilege and marginalization in the field of English language


teaching (ELT), traces back to the field’s sociohistorical construction in and through
the British and American colonial agenda of linguistic, cultural, economic, political,
religious, educational and ethnic imperialism (Pennycook 2007). ELT was a vehicle
by which to privilege British and American colonizers, and create colonial subjects
modeled after their own image (Kumaravadivelu 2003; Pennycook 2010). Thus,
ELT was predicated upon fluidly intertwined binaries of being, including colonizer/
colonized, and Native Speaker (NS)/Non-Native Speaker (NNS). These categories
were value-laden, affording linguistic, cultural and academic authority and
“superiority” to individuals associated with the category of “NS,” while Othering
the identities of individuals grappling with the epistemic and actualized violence of
colonialism (NNSs) (see Kumaravadivelu 2016). As “local” teachers began to enter
the classroom, an additional binary emerged -Native English Speaker Teacher
(NEST)/Non-Native English Speaker Teacher (NNEST)- privileging “NESTs” over
“NNESTs,” as teachers were collectively responsible for targeting an “idealized
nativeness” conflated with the identity of an idealized colonizer. “NNESTs’” use of
“local” language in the classroom to facilitate learning, was countered by the
discourses1 of the monolingual principle (Howatt 1984), or notion that learning, and
learning through, “English,” exclusively, was ideal for maximizing student growth
(Hall and Cook 2012). The worldview underpinning this principle marginalized the
identities of all individuals whose negotiation of being and becoming did not
correspond with that of the idealized “superior.”
Time marched on, with colonialism morphing into, and being reified in, the post-
colonial and the late-/postmodern in context-specific ways. During this transition,
Noam Chomsky (1965) proposed the notion of an idealized native speaking/hearing
member of a homogenous speech community, as a linguistic abstraction upon which
to theorize regarding language acquisition and use. Chomsky was by no means the
father of idealized nativeness, and he vehemently denies responsibility for the
resulting detrimental consequences for stakeholders in ELT (see Wu 2010). Yet,
scholars in ELT subsequently inscribed the Chomskyan “NS” with essentialized2
“normative” linguistic and cultural knowledge, skills, thinking and behavior, and as
the idealized yardstick by which the ownership of English might be ascertained, and
learner, user and instructor value might be assessed. Mainstream and “critical”
scholarship has generally both alluded to and explicitly apprehended this idealized
“individual” as Western, Caucasian, middle to upper class, urban dwelling, usually
male, and often monolingual (Amin 1997; Braine 1999, 2010; Cook 1999; Kubota

1
When employing the term discourses in this introduction, we are referring to the notion of “com-
plex interconnected webs of modes of being, thinking, and acting. They are in constant flux and
often contradictory. They are always located on temporal and spatial axes, thus they are historically
and culturally specific” (Gannon and Davies 2007, p. 82).
2
Here, we define essentialization as the discursive construction (and/or acceptance and promotion)
of borders demarcating “Self-Other,” “Us-Them” “purity-impurity”, “correctness-incorrectness,”
and “valuable-not valuable,” relating to “language,” “culture,” “place,” and “identity” (Rudolph
2016a, b; Rutherford 1990) These borders frame, whether intentionally or unintentionally, who
individuals “are,” and “can” and/or “should” become (Rudolph 2016b). We explore essentializa-
tion further, in latter portions of this introduction.
Introduction: Apprehending Identity, Experience, and (In)equity Through and Beyond… 3

1998; Motha 2006), and juxtaposed (implicitly and explicitly) against an idealized,
essentialized “non-native speaker” (NNS), whose plight it was to journey towards
“idealized nativeness.” The discourses implicated in the construction of the “ideal-
ized NS” thus contributed to dominant, mainstream conceptualizations of, and
approaches to, theory, inquiry, teacher identity and training, materials creation,
instruction, assessment, and hiring practices within the “field” of ELT (Leung 2005).

1 Critical Challenges

Flows of people, ideas, goods, technology, and money (Appadurai 2000), manifest-
ing in different degrees and combinations, both predated and marked the colonial
period, and have continued to the present. This movement, at times in concert with
discourses of neocolonialism and neoliberalism, has contributed to ongoing innova-
tion, in terms of being and becoming around the globe, with the ownership, learn-
ing, use, instruction, and spread of “English” (as well as the spread of the myth of
its ubiquitous utility) being no exception (Pennycook 2007). Indeed, new users,
uses, functions, varieties, and contexts of “English” have emerged in the fluid, dis-
cursive interaction of “local” – “global,” as seen in the appearance of postcolonial
World Englishes, and in the interaction between individuals hailing from differing
backgrounds via “English” as a multilingua franca (Jenkins 2015).
During the last few decades, critical scholarship has problematized, both piece-
meal and holistically, the sociohistorical construction, perpetuation and mainte-
nance of discourses of superiority-inferiority shaping ELT, resulting in
problematization of dominant, mainstream, deficit-oriented binaries of identity
(NS/NNS; NEST/NNEST). Critically-oriented scholars have concomitantly
wrestled with apprehending and attending to the ever-emergent complexity of
identity and interaction. The divergent worldviews underpinning such criticality3
have resulted in very different conceptualizations of identity, experience, (in)equity,
advocacy, and interaction (Yazan and Rudolph 2018). In other words, there exists
diversity within “criticality,” in terms of what scholars are problematizing (or not),
and advocating for, conceptually, and what the resulting implications are for inquiry
and practice.4 Additionally and very importantly, this diversity shapes how scholars
attend to other lenses within the “critical” landscape.

3
Here, we draw upon Pennycook’s (2001) conceptualization of “criticality” within the field of
applied linguistics, which “involves a constant skepticism, a constant questioning of the normative
assumptions of applied linguistics. It demands a restive problematization of the givens of applied
linguistics and presents a way of doing applied linguistics that seeks to connect it to questions of
gender, class, sexuality, race, ethnicity, culture, identity, politics, ideology, and discourse. And cru-
cially, it becomes a dynamic opening up of new questions that emerge from this conjunction” (p. 10).
4
We must also note, here, that scholars both positioned and positioning themselves as “critically-
oriented,” are negotiating participation in criticality in dynamic ways. Thus during the span of their
professional lives, authors’ work may be situated within divergent approaches to identity and inter-
action, in line with their negotiation of personal-professional identity.
4 B. Yazan and N. Rudolph

1.1 J uxtaposed Nativeness: Critically-Oriented, Deficit


Binaries

One critical approach to addressing dominant, mainstream, deficit-oriented binaries


of identity, involves the retention of idealized nativeness. Rather than rendering
“non-natives” deficient as per the “idealized NS” of English, work by scholars
including Medgyes (1992, 1994, 2001), juxtaposes idealized nativeness in English
against the local, idealized non-nativeness of “NNESTs.” This lens values
“NNESTs’” lived experiences learning English, and their “own/native/first/local”
language, which affords them the means to, in theory, better connect with their
students, personally and professionally. In valuing the use of local language/s, and
moving away from the monolingual principle, this lens also juxtaposes “non-­
nativeness,” as “NESTs” cannot and/or should not, employ the local language/s.
Thus, both “NESTs” and “NNESTs” are “superior” and “inferior,” and can and/or
should work together symbiotically, in order to equip English language learners to
become “native like.”
When addressing (in)equity, scholarship employing the lens of juxtaposed
nativeness problematizes the privilege “NESTs” are afforded, and the marginalization
“NNESTs” experience, due to ELT predicated exclusively on idealized nativeness
in English. Therefore, this lens views identity and experience categorically, and the
“NS/NEST” and “NNS/NNEST” categories are left largely undertheorized and
unpacked. Studies conceived through this lens, however, appear to be referring to a
“local NNEST” when discussing the “value” of juxtaposed nativeness, which results
in a new binary distinction within the category of “NNEST” (see Rudolph, chapter
“Essentialization, Idealization, and Apprehensions of Local Language Practice in
the Classroom”, this volume).

1.2 “Moving Beyond the Idealized NS of English”

A second critical approach problematizes mainstream and critically-oriented deficit


models predicated upon an “idealized NS of English” (e.g., Braine 2010; Kamhi-­
Stein 2016; Mahboob 2010). One key (at times implied, and in others, explicitly
stated) facet of this lens, is that it draws upon social constructivist, postcolonial,
postmodern, and poststructural theory and inquiry, in order to:
1. account for the complex, dynamic, sociohistorical, contextualized negotiation of
trans–/multi/pluri- linguistic and cultural identity and interaction around the
globe (e.g., Canagarajah 2007; Cenoz and Gorter 2013; Higgins 2011; Kubota
2013; Lin 2013);
2. problematize English language education predicated upon essentialized and ide-
alized nativeness in English (e.g., Kramsch 2014; Leung 2005);
Introduction: Apprehending Identity, Experience, and (In)equity Through and Beyond… 5

3. reconceptualize language ownership, learning, and use, in accordance with such


movement and hybridity (e.g., Canagarajah 2006, 2007; Kramsch 2008, 2012);
4. promote the cultivation of learning spaces and practice attending to learners’,
users’, and instructors’ negotiations of identity and interaction (e.g., Canagarajah
2013; Creese and Blackledge 2010; Jain 2014; May 2014; Motha et al. 2012).
While acknowledging and attending to movement, complexity, hybridity and
diversity, this approach does not do away, however, with categorical apprehensions
of identity, embedded within binaries (Rivers 2016; Rudolph et al. 2015). Instead,
the category of “NNEST” is imagined as a one of “multilingualism, multiculturalism,
and multinationalism” (Mahboob 2010, p. 15), and of marginalization, as according
to Aslan and Thompson (2016), “it is NNESTs who are discriminated against in the
profession” (p. 2).
Through this “NNEST Lens” (Mahboob 2010), Native speakerism (Holliday
2005, 2006), or the idealized “NS construct” as an actively perpetuated discourse, is
viewed as a ubiquitous and stable truth originating in the West, and shaping the
globalized field of ELT, leading to the professional privileging of NSs/NESTs
whose identities correspond with the NS construct, and marginalization of the
identities and abilities of NNSs/NNESTs. Through this lens, privilege is bolstered
by the ever-perpetuated, universalized NS fallacy (Phillipson 1992), or notion that
NSs whose identities corresponded with the idealized NS might, practically and/or
theoretically, serve as better teachers. Thus, via the NNEST lens, privilege and
marginalization are categorically experienced, in a universal and largely uniform
fashion, around the globe. Though ascribing complexity, hybridity and diversity to
“NNESTs,” however, the category is left largely undertheorized, while that of
“NESTs” remains unpacked and/or essentialized (Houghton and Rivers 2013;
Llurda 2016; Rivers 2014, 2016; Rivers and Houghton 2013; Rudolph et al. 2015).
Scholars employing the NNEST lens have called for critical attention to the
“NNEST experience” in the global field of TESOL, in terms of scholarship and
professional activities, in the interest of the acknowledgement and challenging of
NEST privilege and NNEST marginalization (e.g., Braine 2010; Brutt-Griffler and
Samimy 1999; Kamhi-Stein 2016; Mahboob 2010) for a more equitable ELT
profession. In concert with the work and efforts of scholars employing the lens of
juxtaposed nativeness, this critical call, and the response it has cultivated, has been
labeled the “NNEST Movement” (Selvi 2014, 2016). As part of the appeal for
attention to (in)equity and to the complexity of identity and interaction, scholars
drawing upon the NNEST lens have also envisioned practice “beyond the idealized
NS of English.” Scholarship has focused on how “NNESTs” might attend to and
draw upon their and their students’ identities in the classroom, in tailoring learning
to students, affording them ownership of English, and an opportunity to instill in
them a sense of pride and of value, within and beyond the classroom (Mahboob and
Lin 2016). This has necessarily included reconceptualization of the nature and
purpose of local language use in classroom practice. As with the lens of juxtaposed
nativeness, scholarship conceived through the NNEST lens approaches “NNESTs’”
use of local/native/own/first language. In doing so, this work implicitly and explicitly
6 B. Yazan and N. Rudolph

distinguishes, purposefully or otherwise, between “local” and “non-local”


“NNESTs” in reference to the use of local language in the classroom (e.g., Mahboob
and Lin 2016 2018; Tatar and Yildiz 2010), as with scholarship conceptualized via
the lens of juxtaposed nativeness.
There is, additionally, an emergent body of literature that purports to draw upon
postcolonial, postmodern and poststructural theory in approaching both identity and
interaction, yet retains the vestiges of binaries when theorizing (in)equity (e.g.,
Lowe and Kiczkowiak 2016; Swan et al. 2015). Such tension can be seen within, for
example, the literature being drawn upon, which may simultaneously include
references to the lens of juxtaposed nativeness, NNEST lens, and destabilization of
binary approaches to identity, experience, (in)equity and interaction. Here, we
situate such literature within the NNEST lens.

1.3 Problematizing Binaries

Recent scholarship, drawing upon social constructivist, postcolonial and postmod-


ern theory, is providing a different approach by which to apprehend identity, experi-
ence and (in)equity, and to attend to moving beyond the deleterious effects of
essentialization and idealization, in and beyond the classroom. One line of
scholarship (e.g., Faez 2011a, b; Higgins 2003; Park 2012; Sayer 2012) apprehends
identity as dynamically, contextually and discursively negotiated. Such work
focuses on deconstructing the discursive local-global construction and perpetuation
of categories of essentialized and idealized “nativeness” and “non-nativeness” in
English, in terms of learner, user and instructor identity, and problematizing the use
of categories of being, inscribed with presupposed experiences and characteristics
and situated with binaries, as potentially essentializing individuals’ lived experiences
negotiating identity, and therefore stripping them of “voice.”

1.4 Problematizing Essentialization and Idealization

Further scholarship, drawing upon postmodern and poststructural theory5 to recon-


ceptualize identity, experience and interaction, is seeking to problematize the con-
textualized construction and perpetuation of essentialization and idealization, in
terms of identity and interaction, both within ELT and the settings in which it is
located (Rudolph 2016a, 2018a). Scholarship in this vein, asserts that apprehending

5
Ontological and epistemological diversity can be found within “poststructural” scholarship.
Some scholars contend for the complete deconstruction of “self” (Procter 2004). We, the Editors,
draw on poststructural theory that apprehends “self” as discursively negotiated, and subjectivity
and positionality as apprehensible and worthwhile pursuits. Additionally, as noted by Agger (1991)
there is conceptual overlap between postmodern and poststructural theory.
Introduction: Apprehending Identity, Experience, and (In)equity Through and Beyond… 7

and addressing identity and corresponding experience, involves contextualized


attention to individuals’ ongoing negotiation of discursive positioning and being
positioned (Davies and Harré 1990; Davies 1991) in the intersectionality of fluid,
local-global linguistic, cultural, ethnic, socioeconomic, religious, political,
educational, geographical, professional, and gender-related discourses (e.g., Aneja
2016a, b; Higgins 2011; Houghton and Rivers 2013; Kubota 2011, 2013; Menard-­
Warwick 2008; Motha 2014; Motha et al. 2012; Park 2015, 2017; Pennycook 2007;
Rivers 2014, 2016; Rivers and Houghton 2013; Rivers and Zotzmann 2016; Rudolph
2016a, b). These discourses, dominant and critical, construct essentializing discur-
sive “borders” of who individuals “are,” and “can” and/or “should” be or become,
both in terms of the ownership, learning, use and instruction of English in ELT, and
of community membership in the context in which the ELT is constructed and
located (Houghton and Rivers 2013; Rudolph et al. 2015). Such borders assign,
afford, limit, and eliminate space for identity. When apprehending, affirming, prob-
lematizing, challenging, reifying and crossing such borders, individuals negotiate
subjectivity (Weedon 1997), or “self,” in motion (Davies et al. 2004), in ways that
may “appear,” and be, contradictory. Though “self” is discursively constituted in
interaction with others (Anderson 2009; Davies and Petersen 2005; Yazan 2017),
individuals may nevertheless trouble discourses (Vaughan 2004), not do so, or do
the opposite, in varying degrees and combinations. This is the assertion of agency
(Davies 1991, p. 51).
In line with postmodern and poststructural commitments, the idealized “NS con-
struct” may be apprehended as contextually constructed at the interstices of local-
global discourses of identity (Yazan 2018). “Native speakerism,” through such a
lens, is the contextualized local-global discursive creation, limitation, and/or elimi-
nation of space for individuals’ negotiations of being and becoming, both within a
given “context” and ELT therein (e.g., Rivers 2014), which may result in diverse
manifestations of fluid privilege-marginalization within and across “categories” of
being, in and beyond the classroom (Rudolph 2016b). Likewise, the “native speaker
fallacy” is also a product of local-global discourses, and may manifest (or not) in
diverse ways both within and across “contexts” (Rudolph et al. 2015; Rudolph
2018b). In conceptualizing “the NS construct,” “native speakerism” and “the NS
fallacy” in such a way, such postmodern and poststructural work is advocating for
the notion that, “apprehending and addressing constructions of ‘nativeness’ in
‘English,’ and manifestations of privilege-marginalization, requires broadening the
conceptual scope of criticality beyond ‘moving beyond the idealized NS of English’”
(Rudolph 2018b). Very recent scholarship is therefore challenging criticality that
problematizes binaries, to seek apprehend and describe “identity,” “experience,”
“(in)equity and “interaction” in manners that are conceptually consistent with their
underpinning ontological and epistemological commitments, which may indeed
include a move away from terms with conceptual baggage from other lenses, such
as “native speaker” construct; −ism; fallacy (see Rivers 2016; Rudolph 2016b,
2018b). Regardless of the continued or discontinued use of such terms, postmodern
and poststructural scholarship seeking to “problematize essentialization and ideal-
ization” is united in contending the following: all learners, users, and teachers may
8 B. Yazan and N. Rudolph

potentially experience degrees of fluid privilege-­marginalization relating to their


identities, talents, training and experiences, as per essentialized binaries of Self-
Other within a given setting, and Self-Other in terms of a given context and the
“world beyond.”
There is an important caveat that must be noted at this juncture. While some
scholars have chosen to contextually apprehend, problematize, and deconstruct
binaries within and beyond ELT in their entirety (e.g., Kubota 2011, 2013; Rivers
2014, 2016; Rudolph 2016a), others have focused on deconstruction of locally-­
globally constructed binaries of identity through the lived experiences of a specific
“group” of individuals (e.g., Park 2015, 2017; Rivers and Ross 2013). Collectively,
such inquiry, however, lends to the destabilization of binary approaches to identity,
experience, (in)equity and interaction.
Destabilizing Critically-Oriented Binaries Problematizing essentialization and
idealization involves destabilization of binary approaches to criticality, for a number
of reasons. First, such work contends that the use of static binaries does not and
cannot afford discursive space for individuals’ accounts of negotiating identity
within and across borders of being and doing (Houghton and Rivers 2013; Rivers
and Houghton 2013; Rivers 2014, 2016; Rudolph 2016a, b; Rudolph et al. 2015).
The essentialization of identity and experience may lead to a failure to capture the
fluidity of lived privilege-marginalization, and therefore, to the outright devaluation,
ignoring, invalidation, or even suppression of dissenting voices (Park 2017; Rivers
2014, 2016; Rudolph 2012; Rudolph et al. 2015). Second, treating the “NNEST
experience” as shared and largely uniform, has essentialized the complexity of
contextualized, local-global negotiations of privilege-marginalization, and the
diverse educational settings and institutions therein. This has been exacerbated, we
contend, by the fact that scholarship through the NNEST lens and critically-oriented
deficit lens, has tended to draw upon the same select body of literature when
constructing the contention that “NNESTs” are “universally marginalized,” which
has produced an essentialized framework that lumps teaching locales and experiences
at all levels, within and across contexts, together (see Moussu and Llurda 2008;
Rivers 2016; Rudolph et al. 2015).
Scholarly work that is rooted in categorical conceptualizations of identity, and
privilege and marginalization, and yet draws upon sociocultural, postcolonial,
postmodern and poststructural theory in approaching inquiry and practice, has both
indirectly and directly responded to the concept of fluidity between privilege-­
marginalization. An article by Lowe and Kiczkowiak (2016), for instance, asserts
that, though “NESTs” and “NNESTs” may experience a certain fluidity of privilege-­
marginalization, there exist degrees of what might be considered “real,” “authentic”
or “noteworthy” experiences in terms of the marginalization “NESTs” may face in
ELT and the society in which it resides. In an article conceived through a
“poststructural” lens, examining the lived experiences of “Caucasian, western
males” in ELT in Japan, Appleby (2016) notes wrestling, ethically, with sharing
these individuals’ accounts of negotiating fluid privilege-marginalization, as their
Introduction: Apprehending Identity, Experience, and (In)equity Through and Beyond… 9

privilege may potentially outweigh or override their incidental experiences with


“marginalization,” when positioned as “Other” within Japanese society.
We assert, however, that, through a postmodern and poststructural lens, all
accounts of fluid privilege-marginalization contribute to apprehension of
contextualized, local-global constructions of Othering, within communities and
societies, and ELT therein, as through such a lens, there is no separation between
local-global, the classroom-beyond, nor the personal-professional (Rudolph 2016b).
In the university context in Japan to which Appleby refers, for example, scholars
have contended that professional space has been created for “NESTs” whose
identities correspond with that of the idealized NS, and, in a majority portion, for
“NNESTs/Native speakers of Japanese (NJSs)”, while other “NESTs” and “non-­
Japanese NNESTs” find space severely limited or eliminated (Houghton and Rivers
2013; Rivers 2014, 2016; Rivers and Ross 2013; Rivers and Zotzmann 2016;
Rudolph 2012, 2016a, b, 2018b; Toh 2014, 2015a, b, 2016). The categorically
juxtaposed and essentialized nativeness “privileging” “NESTs” and “NJSs,” may, at
the same time, “marginalize” their “non-nativeness,” thus leading to such teachers
experiencing fluid privilege-marginalization (Rivers 2014, 2016; Rudolph 2018a, b,
chapter “Essentialization, Idealization, and Apprehensions of Local Language
Practice in the Classroom”). Thus, teachers’ personal and professional negotiations
of translinguistic and transcultural identity and community membership, may be
devalued, ignored, or actively Othered (Rivers 2014, 2016; Rudolph 2012, 2018b;
Simon-Maeda 2011). Additionally, teachers may find themselves required to draw
upon their translinguistic and transcultural identity in the workplace, yet discouraged
or even prompted to do so in the classroom, in line with contextualized, essentialized
constructions of the bounds of identity and interaction (Rivers 2016; Rudolph 2012,
chapter “Essentialization, Idealization, and Apprehensions of Local Language
Practice in the Classroom”, this volume).
Scholarship seeking to problematize essentialization and idealization, further
destabilizes the critical binary-oriented move to assign the use of “local language/s”
to the “NNEST” category. Within relation to the binary of critically juxtaposed
nativeness, the issue is with the use of local language/s being assigned to one
category of teacher (NNEST) and, in fact, to “local” teachers therein, while assigning
ownership of English to those individuals whose identities correspond with the
“idealized NS construct.” The NNEST lens, meanwhile, draws upon social
constructivist, postcolonial, postmodern and poststructural theory challenging
essentialized and idealized constructions of language ownership, learning, use and
instruction, and yet essentializes lived experience, training, knowledge, skills, and
identity, while affording the border crossing complexity of identity and interaction
to “NNESTs,” categorically. This also includes assignment of the ownership of
“local language/s” to “NNESTs,” though, as mentioned above, the literature
distinguishes implicitly and explicitly between “local” and “non-local” “NNESTs,”
creating a binary within the category. Thus, the NNEST lens may potentially reify
the categorical division and assignment of idealized nativeness, and in the process,
limit and/or eliminate personal-professional space for all teachers to attend to the
10 B. Yazan and N. Rudolph

complexity of identity and interaction both within and beyond the classroom. For
scholars including Yoo (2014), this has led to the proposed replacement of one form
of idealization (the “idealized NS”) with another, with an “idealized NNEST” (an
unpacked theoretical abstraction) as the “ideal” teacher.
Through a postmodern and poststructural lens, apprehending the negotiation of
identity -of positioning and being positioned- involves attending to individuals’
contextualized, local-global, negotiations of linguistic, cultural, ethnic,
socioeconomic, religious, political, educational, geographical, professional, and
gender-related discourses, and of fluid privilege-marginalization. Critical, binary-­
oriented approaches to identity have both afforded and prompted little to no space,
or need, for learners, users, and instructors to attend to their own positionality.
Positionality is both a deeply personal and political issue that, while extremely
sensitive, we regard as a necessary topic to be addressed in and beyond the field of
ELT.
Finally, as noted by Rivers (2016) and Rudolph (2016a), critically-oriented bina-
ries can be co-opted by localized discourses of essentialization and idealization.
This may result in criticality being discursively commandeered to reinforce
constructions of, and agendas for, binaries of Self-Other that serve to privilege and
marginalize, in theory and in practice. Thus, critical discourse intended to
“empower,” may become a discursive vehicle to Other. “Criticality,” through the
lens of juxtaposed nativeness and the NNEST lens, we contend, is hampered by
conceptual contradictions, with real-world consequences for attending to (in)equity
in and beyond the classroom, and approaching practice.

2 Prompting “Criticality”...

Conceptually, critical scholars, regardless of lens, all express the desire to appre-
hend, problematize and address inequity. Yet, approaches to addressing “inequity”
are far from shared. Scholarship, underpinned by postmodern and poststructural
theory, is calling for critical scholars, regardless of lens, to clearly outline how they
conceptualize, attend to, and seek to move beyond, inequity. This, we assert, is a
necessary first step toward apprehending tensions and commonalities in criticality,
as well as discursive points of departure. Postmodern and poststructural theory is
also prompting the field of ELT to view the necessity of apprehending how privilege
and marginalization are fluidly, contextually, and sociohistorically negotiated, in
order to reconcile criticality with theory, inquiry and practice exploring the
complexity of identity and interaction. This includes critical scholars’ attention to
their own positionality. Finally, the lens of problematizing essentialization and
idealization affords discursive space for all individuals’ personal-professional
accounts of negotiating identity, which we contend has been alternately devalued,
overlooked, downplayed, ignored, and actively marginalized, both by mainstream
and critically-oriented binaries.
Introduction: Apprehending Identity, Experience, and (In)equity Through and Beyond… 11

3 This Volume

The following edited volume is chronotopic (Blommaert 2015) in that it is a non-­


linear, intertextual (Allen 2011) and sociohistorically-situated construction of time-­
space, and underpinned by postmodern and poststructural commitments. It originally
represented an effort to: (1) provide discursive space for apprehending identity,
experience, (in)equity and interaction beyond binaries of identity, whether dominant
and mainstream or dominant and critically-oriented, (2) contribute toward laying
the conceptual and empirical foundation for scholarship seeking to problematize
essentialization and idealization in the field of ELT, (3) afford researchers and
researcher-practitioners whose voices may be overlooked, denigrated or silenced,
discursive space to negotiate participation in criticality, and (4) begin to explore the
implications problematizing essentialization and idealization, through a postmodern
and poststructural lens, might hold for attending to the complexity of identity and
interaction in and beyond the classroom, in terms of practice.
In conceptualizing and approaching the volume, we the Editors asked potential
authors to problematize essentialization and idealization, and explore the fluidity of
privilege-marginalization, in the field of ELT. We noted that the book would be
framed by postmodern and poststructural theory. In receiving dozens of abstracts,
invited and otherwise, we quickly realized that the majority of possible contributors
were drawing upon the above-mentioned binary-oriented lens of “juxtaposed
nativeness” and the “NNEST lens,” when conceptualizing and approaching
“essentialization and idealization.” The abstracts we chose to move forward with in
constructing the volume, provided by a diverse group of authors, were those that
collectively demonstrated the potential for destabilizing binary-oriented approaches
to identity and interaction.
During the manuscript submission and editing process, we prompted authors to
reflect upon the postmodern and poststructural commitments underpinning the
volume. At times, this involved prompting authors to reflexively attend to how the
ontological and epistemological commitments underpinning their work aligned
with their conceptual frameworks for and approaches to identity and interaction.
Additionally, we found ourselves charged with revisiting our own conceptualization
of the nature and purpose of the volume. This can be seen, in particular, in the fact
that we have retained chapters whose contents may at times, implicitly or explicitly,
militate against aspects of the original framework for, and goals of, the book, and
even challenge the manner in which the contents of the above introduction are
constructed. As a result, a fifth purpose for the volume emerged, which, in fact, gave
shape to the content of the introduction above: to prompt critical scholars within and
beyond the edited volume, towards reflexivity, conceptual clarity and congruence,
and dialogue.
In approaching the volume and interacting with authors, we learned that critical-
ity seeking to problematize binary approaches to conceptualizing and attending to
identity, experience and (in)equity (whether mainstream and native speaker-centric,
or critically-oriented), must necessarily attend their sociohistorical and ongoing
12 B. Yazan and N. Rudolph

construction in the contextualized and chronotopic negotiation of pre-colonial,


colonial, postcolonial, neocolonial, neoliberal, late modern and postmodern
discourses of identity, in ELT and the contexts in which it is located. Failing to
attend to the ongoing discursive construction, perpetuation and maintenance of
categorical apprehensions of identity, may result in glossing over the contextualized
complexity of ongoing, negotiated tensions between modern, late-modern and
postmodern discourses of identity and interaction within and beyond the field of
ELT (see Canagarajah 2016; Kramsch 2014; Kubota 2014; Selvi and Rudolph 2018;
Shin and Kubota 2008). Scholars seeking to challenge binary-oriented lenses, may
be pointing stakeholders in ELT toward a paradigm shift they may find uncomfortable
or threatening. This may be linked to the ways individuals position themselves and
others, and are positioned, within and beyond ELT. This may be due to the nature
and source of critical voice (e.g., researchers and researcher-practitioners positioned
as “privileged” by binary-oriented discourses), which may prompt individuals to
believe criticality is being co-opted and is therefore under threat. Additionally,
interrogating binaries within criticality may threaten the linguistic, cultural,
academic and professional authority of individuals within ELT and the context in
which it is situated, who derive authority from categorical juxtapositions of identity.
In any case, understanding and problematizing binaries is a political affair inscribed
with tensions fluidly intertwined with negotiations of positionality “beyond” ELT.

3.1 Content and Organization of the Volume

The chapters in this volume represent contextualized, sociohistorical accounts of


researchers, researcher-practitioners, teacher educators, and students apprehending
and attending to positionality, and essentialization and idealization in the field of
ELT, and, in varying degrees, to privilege-marginalization and its fluidity. Readers
will soon note that there exist conceptual tensions within and across chapters, as
well as within the foreword to this volume. At times, this tension arises from
manifestations of conceptual incongruity between ontological and epistemological
commitments, conceptual frameworks (including theoretical approaches and
literature reviews), and approaches to inquiry and practice. This may relate to an
author’s use of postcolonial, postmodern and poststructural theory to apprehend
interaction, while drawing upon binary-oriented scholarship to conceptualize
learner, user and instructor identity. This may also result in very different meaning
poured into the notion of problematizing essentialization and idealization, in inquiry
and practice. Additionally, the diverse array of authors herein, have negotiated
identity and participation in criticality in unique, contextualized ways, and represent
a divergence of training, knowledge, experience and status.
We the Editors have chosen to organize the volume into two parts: (I)
Problematizing and Reifying Binaries: Conceptual Transitions, and (II) Towards
Destabilizing Binaries: Problematizing Essentialization and Idealization. Part I of
Introduction: Apprehending Identity, Experience, and (In)equity Through and Beyond… 13

the volume is inscribed with conceptual tension, as authors wrestle with


apprehending, problematizing, utilizing and reifying binaries of identity, in light of
postcolonial, postmodern and poststructural theory. Part II of the volume, though no
less inscribed with tension, explores apprehending identity, experience, (in)equity
and interaction beyond categories embedded within binaries. As scholars framing
the volume through the lens of postmodern and poststructural theory, we note that
approaching the content of chapters in the volume in sections, may essentialize their
complexity. In line with how the above introduction is written, however, this
approach to organization provides the reader with a framework for interacting with
the texts.
Part I: Problematizing and Reifying Binaries: Conceptual Transitions In the
first portion of the volume authors wrestle with apprehending, problematizing,
utilizing and reifying binaries of identity, in light of postcolonial, postmodern and
poststructural theory. In chapter “Glocalization, English as a Lingua Franca, and
ELT: Reconceptualizing Identity and Models for ELT in China”, Fan (Gabriel) Fang
uses autoethnography and narrative inquiry to weave his own account of identity
negotiation with the accounts of four Chinese EFL teachers who have had education
outside China, and explores Chinese EFL teachers’ positioning through encounters
of privilege and marginalization. In chapter “Power and Ownership Within the NS/
NNS Dichotomy”, I-Chen Huang reports on a study that juxtaposes her own
narrative as a language user in relation to the “idealized NS,” with interview-based
accounts of 27 college students in Taiwan. Huang discusses the role of power and
ownership inscribed with the dichotomous categories of NS/NNS in the dynamic,
ever-evolving construction of identities as legitimate English language users. In
chapter “Teachers’ Identities as ‘Non-native’ Speakers: Do They Matter in English
as a Lingua Franca Interactions?”, Yumi Matsumoto examines multilingual
interactions in a writing classroom at a US university to explore the impact of a
teacher’s assumed identity of NNESTs on English as a lingua franca (ELF)
communication. Her findings highlight the performative nature of identity
negotiation and challenge the presupposed and essentialized characteristics of a
teacher that come with the label of ‘NNEST.’ In chapter “The (Re)Construction of
Self Through Student-Teachers’ Storied Agency in ELT: Between Marginalization
and Idealization”, Alvaro Hernán Quintero and Carmen Helena Guerrero present a
narrative inquiry that explores pre-service teachers’ experiences of identity
development in an English Language Teacher Education Program in Colombia. The
authors discuss how pre-service teachers negotiate multiple ways of being and
reconstruct their identities as they navigate the marginalizing conditions in their
contexts. In chapter “English, Identity and the Privileging and Marginalizing of
Transculturality”, Tamara Chung Constant and Haiying Cao present an
autoethnographic account of their individual negotiations of privilege and
marginalization through postcolonial feminist lenses. Chung Constant deconstructs
the essentialization of categories of identity, while Cao wrestles fluidly with a desire
to problematize essentialization and yet retains such a lens to apprehend her lived
experiences positioning herself and being positioned.
14 B. Yazan and N. Rudolph

Part II: Towards Destabilizing Binaries: Problematizing Essentialization and


Idealization The second portion of this volume represents a move towards appre-
hending identity, experience, (in)equity and interaction beyond categories embed-
ded within binaries. As with the first portion of the book, these chapters may appear
contradictory at times, and inscribed with conceptual tension. Yet they represent a
step towards problematizing essentialization and idealization. In chapter ““What
Should I Call Myself? Does It Matter?” Questioning the “Labeling” Practice in ELT
Profession”, Christine Manara challenges “labeling games” in the ELT profession
and industry, with an autoethnographic account of the phases of her identity (re)
construction in different contexts while interacting with and responding to the labels
embedded in the discourses of ELT. Chapters “Accepting and Circumventing Native
Speaker Essentialism” and “‘I Speak How I Speak:’ A Discussion of Accent and
Identity within Teachers of ELT” present studies by Robert Weekly and Alex
Baratta, whose work destabilizes categorical apprehensions of identity, experience
and (in)equity. In chapter “Accepting and Circumventing Native Speaker
Essentialism”, Robert Weekly presents his findings of a qualitative study on the
ways in which eleven multilingual South-Asian English language teachers negotiate
their encounters of prejudice (positioned as “inauthentic” native speakers of English)
when living in Leicester, England and working in an ESOL program. Chapter ‘I
Speak How I Speak:’ A Discussion of Accent and Identity within Teachers of ELT”
includes Alex Baratta’s discussion of ESL teachers’ identity negotiation and posi-
tioning with regards to their accent as English users. He interrogates the deleterious
impacts of accentism or privileging and marginalization of certain accents upon
ESL teachers’ identities and the efforts of inclusivity in the field of ELT.
Chapters “Speakerhood as Segregation: The Construction and Consequence of
Divisive Discourse in TESOL”, ““Legitimate” Concerns: A Duoethnography of
Becoming ELT Professionals”, “Significant Encounters and Consequential
Eventualities: A Joint Narrative of Collegiality Marked by Struggles Against
Reductionism, Essentialism and Exclusion in ELT” and “Exploring Privilege and
Marginalization in ELT: A Trioethnography of Three Diverse Educators” explore
researcher-practitioner accounts of problematizing and moving beyond binary-­
oriented essentialization and idealization in the field of ELT. In chapter “Speakerhood
as Segregation: The Construction and Consequence of Divisive Discourse in
TESOL”, Damian Rivers questions the ways in which divisive discourses are con-
structed and maintained in the field of ELT through binary categories, discusses the
fluidity of status privilege and status marginalization, and prompts criticality
towards reflexivity and transformation. In chapter ““Legitimate” Concerns: A
Duoethnography of Becoming ELT Professionals”, Amber Warren and Jaehan Park
present the findings of their duoethnography that juxtaposes and explores each
author’s accounts of marginality and acceptance they faced integral to the contours
of their identity development as ELT professionals. Chapter “Significant Encounters
and Consequential Eventualities: A Joint Narrative of Collegiality Marked by
Struggles against Reductionism, Essentialism and Exclusion in ELT” presents
Masaki Oda’s and Glenn Toh’s combined critical historical narrative as colleagues
at the Tamagawa University Center for English as a Lingua Franca. Drawing from
Introduction: Apprehending Identity, Experience, and (In)equity Through and Beyond… 15

vignettes including their significant work-related encounters, Oda and Toh demon-
strate the impact of cultural-political discourses of ELT upon “ongoing contesta-
tions, contradictions, inconsistencies and disjunctions” teachers confront when
seeking to humanize and transform their discursive and practical spaces. In chapter
“Exploring Privilege and Marginalization in ELT: A Trioethnography of Three
Diverse Educators”, Antoinette Gagné, Sreemali Herath, and Marlon Valencia pres-
ent a trioethnographic inquiry in which they challenge and deconstruct the ELT
ideologies in different glocal contexts that maintain binary identity categories and
essentialize the experiences of privilege and marginalization.
Chapters “Doing and Undoing (Non)nativeness: Glocal Perspectives from a
Graduate Classroom” and “Essentialization, Idealization, and Apprehensions of
Local Language Practice in the Classroom” attend to the destabilization of dominant
and critically-oriented binaries in (and beyond) the classroom, in the interest of
problematizing essentialization and idealization. In chapter “Doing and Undoing
(Non)nativeness: Glocal Perspectives from a Graduate Classroom”, Geeta Aneja
develops (non)native speakering as a poststructural concept to understand teachers’
(non)native speakered subjectivities and negotiation and reification of their identities
through daily interactions. Drawing from qualitative data, Aneja discusses
possibilities to resist and dis-invent binary approaches to teacher identity through
teacher education classroom practices. Finally, in chapter “Essentialization,
Idealization, and Apprehensions of Local Language Practice in the Classroom”,
Nathanael Rudolph provides a poststructural ethnographic account of 16 Japanese
university students and their teacher (himself), apprehending and deconstructing the
bounds of local language (Japanese) practice in one department of English, as
intertwined with binary-oriented discourses of “idealized Japaneseness-Otherness”
and “idealized native English speakerness-Otherness.” Rudolph contends that the
study challenges scholars participating in criticality, to reflect upon how critical
approaches to identity and interaction may create, limit and/or eliminate learner,
user and instructor space for being and becoming, and potentially bolster and/or
reify discourses of idealized nativeness and community membership, contextually.
In closing, we would like to note that, in addition to the wide array of profession-
als and conceptual frameworks within the volume, there is also diversity in terms of
the scholarly use of English. We ground this purposeful decision to avoid the
“homogenization” of language within the chapters, in the ontological and episte-
mological commitments underpinning the volume, which problematize language
practice (Pennycook 2010) predicated upon essentialized and idealized nativeness.

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for fear to make an enemy. But, on the other hand, it was
complained that he was bitter and harsh, that his zeal burned with
too hot a flame. It is so difficult, in evil times, to escape this charge!
for the faithful preacher most of all. It was his merit, like Luther, Knox
and Latimer, and John Baptist, to speak tart truth, when that was
peremptory and when there were few to say it. But his sympathy for
goodness was not less energetic. One fault he had, he
overestimated his friends,—I may well say it,—and sometimes vexed
them with the importunity of his good opinion, whilst they knew better
the ebb which follows unfounded praise. He was capable, it must be
said, of the most unmeasured eulogies on those he esteemed,
especially if he had any jealousy that they did not stand with the
Boston public as highly as they ought. His commanding merit as a
reformer is this, that he insisted beyond all men in pulpits—I cannot
think of one rival—that the essence of Christianity is its practical
morals; it is there for use, or it is nothing; and if you combine it with
sharp trading, or with ordinary city ambitions to gloze over municipal
corruptions, or private intemperance, or successful fraud, or immoral
politics, or unjust wars, or the cheating of Indians, or the robbery of
frontier nations, or leaving your principles at home to follow on the
high seas or in Europe a supple complaisance to tyrants,—it is a
hypocrisy, and the truth is not in you; and no love of religious music
or of dreams of Swedenborg, or praise of John Wesley, or of Jeremy
Taylor, can save you from the Satan which you are.
His ministry fell on a political crisis also; on the years when
Southern slavery broke over its old banks, made new and vast
pretensions, and wrung from the weakness or treachery of Northern
people fatal concessions in the Fugitive Slave Bill and the repeal of
the Missouri Compromise. Two days, bitter in the memory of Boston,
the days of the rendition of Sims and of Burns, made the occasion of
his most remarkable discourses. He kept nothing back. In terrible
earnest he denounced the public crime, and meted out to every
official, high and low, his due portion.[159] By the incessant power of
his statement, he made and held a party. It was his great service to
freedom. He took away the reproach of silent consent that would
otherwise have lain against the indignant minority, by uttering in the
hour and place wherein these outrages were done, the stern protest.
But whilst I praise this frank speaker, I have no wish to accuse the
silence of others. There are men of good powers who have so much
sympathy that they must be silent when they are not in sympathy. If
you don’t agree with them, they know they only injure the truth by
speaking. Their faculties will not play them true, and they do not wish
to squeak and gibber, and so they shut their mouths. I can readily
forgive this, only not the other, the false tongue which makes the
worse appear the better cause. There were, of course, multitudes to
censure and defame this truth-speaker. But the brave know the
brave. Fops, whether in hotels or churches, will utter the fop’s
opinion, and faintly hope for the salvation of his soul; but his manly
enemies, who despised the fops, honored him; and it is well known
that his great hospitable heart was the sanctuary to which every soul
conscious of an earnest opinion came for sympathy—alike the brave
slave-holder and the brave slave-rescuer. These met in the house of
this honest man—for every sound heart loves a responsible person,
one who does not in generous company say generous things, and in
mean company base things, but says one thing, now cheerfully, now
indignantly, but always because he must, and because he sees that,
whether he speak or refrain from speech, this is said over him; and
history, nature and all souls testify to the same.
Ah, my brave brother! it seems as if, in a frivolous age, our loss
were immense, and your place cannot be supplied. But you will
already be consoled in the transfer of your genius, knowing well that
the nature of the world will affirm to all men, in all times, that which
for twenty-five years you valiantly spoke; that the winds of Italy
murmur the same truth over your grave; the winds of America over
these bereaved streets; that the sea which bore your mourners
home affirms it, the stars in their courses, and the inspirations of
youth; whilst the polished and pleasant traitors to human rights, with
perverted learning and disgraced graces, rot and are forgotten with
their double tongue saying all that is sordid for the corruption of man.
The sudden and singular eminence of Mr. Parker, the importance
of his name and influence, are the verdict of his country to his
virtues. We have few such men to lose; amiable and blameless at
home, feared abroad as the standard-bearer of liberty, taking all the
duties he could grasp, and more, refusing to spare himself, he has
gone down in early glory to his grave, to be a living and enlarging
power, wherever learning, wit, honest valor and independence are
honored.[160]
XIII
AMERICAN CIVILIZATION

To the mizzen, the main, and the fore


Up with it once more!—
The old tri-color,
The ribbon of power,
The white, blue and red which the nations adore!
It was down at half-mast
For a grief—that is past!
To the emblem of glory no sorrow can last!

AMERICAN CIVILIZATION
Use, labor of each for all, is the health and virtue of all beings. Ich
dien, I serve, is a truly royal motto. And it is the mark of nobleness to
volunteer the lowest service, the greatest spirit only attaining to
humility. Nay, God is God because he is the servant of all. Well, now
here comes this conspiracy of slavery,—they call it an institution, I
call it a destitution,—this stealing of men and setting them to work,
stealing their labor, and the thief sitting idle himself; and for two or
three ages it has lasted, and has yielded a certain quantity of rice,
cotton and sugar. And, standing on this doleful experience, these
people have endeavored to reverse the natural sentiments of
mankind, and to pronounce labor disgraceful, and the well-being of a
man to consist in eating the fruit of other men’s labor. Labor: a man
coins himself into his labor; turns his day, his strength, his thought,
his affection into some product which remains as the visible sign of
his power; and to protect that, to secure that to him, to secure his
past self to his future self, is the object of all government. There is no
interest in any country so imperative as that of labor; it covers all,
and constitutions and governments exist for that,—to protect and
insure it to the laborer. All honest men are daily striving to earn their
bread by their industry. And who is this who tosses his empty head
at this blessing in disguise, the constitution of human nature, and
calls labor vile, and insults the faithful workman at his daily toil? I see
for such madness no hellebore,—for such calamity no solution but
servile war and the Africanization of the country that permits it.
At this moment in America the aspects of political society absorb
attention. In every house, from Canada to the Gulf, the children ask
the serious father,—“What is the news of the war to-day, and when
will there be better times?” The boys have no new clothes, no gifts,
no journeys; the girls must go without new bonnets; boys and girls
find their education, this year, less liberal and complete.[161] All the
little hopes that heretofore made the year pleasant are deferred. The
state of the country fills us with anxiety and stern duties. We have
attempted to hold together two states of civilization: a higher state,
where labor and the tenure of land and the right of suffrage are
democratical; and a lower state, in which the old military tenure of
prisoners or slaves, and of power and land in a few hands, makes an
oligarchy: we have attempted to hold these two states of society
under one law. But the rude and early state of society does not work
well with the later, nay, works badly, and has poisoned politics, public
morals and social intercourse in the Republic, now for many years.
The times put this question, Why cannot the best civilization be
extended over the whole country, since the disorder of the less-
civilized portion menaces the existence of the country? Is this
secular progress we have described, this evolution of man to the
highest powers, only to give him sensibility, and not to bring duties
with it? Is he not to make his knowledge practical? to stand and to
withstand? Is not civilization heroic also? Is it not for action? has it
not a will? “There are periods,” said Niebuhr, “when something much
better than happiness and security of life is attainable.” We live in a
new and exceptionable age. America is another word for
Opportunity. Our whole history appears like a last effort of the Divine
Providence in behalf of the human race; and a literal, slavish
following of precedents, as by a justice of the peace, is not for those
who at this hour lead the destinies of this people. The evil you
contend with has taken alarming proportions, and you still content
yourself with parrying the blows it aims, but, as if enchanted, abstain
from striking at the cause.[162]
If the American people hesitate, it is not for want of warning or
advices. The telegraph has been swift enough to announce our
disasters. The journals have not suppressed the extent of the
calamity. Neither was there any want of argument or of experience. If
the war brought any surprise to the North, it was not the fault of
sentinels on the watch-tower, who had furnished full details of the
designs, the muster and the means of the enemy. Neither was
anything concealed of the theory or practice of slavery. To what
purpose make more big books of these statistics? There are already
mountains of facts, if any one wants them. But people do not want
them. They bring their opinion into the world. If they have a
comatose tendency in the brain, they are pro-slavery while they live;
if of a nervous sanguineous temperament, they are abolitionists.
Then interests were never persuaded. Can you convince the shoe
interest, or the iron interest, or the cotton interest, by reading
passages from Milton or Montesquieu? You wish to satisfy people
that slavery is bad economy. Why, the Edinburgh Review pounded
on that string, and made out its case, forty years ago. A democratic
statesman said to me, long since, that, if he owned the state of
Kentucky, he would manumit all the slaves, and be a gainer by the
transaction. Is this new? No, everybody knows it. As a general
economy it is admitted. But there is no one owner of the state, but a
good many small owners. One man owns land and slaves; another
owns slaves only. Here is a woman who has no other property,—like
a lady in Charleston I knew of, who owned fifteen sweeps and rode
in her carriage. It is clearly a vast inconvenience to each of these to
make any change, and they are fretful and talkative, and all their
friends are; and those less interested are inert, and, from want of
thought, averse to innovation. It is like free trade, certainly the
interest of nations, but by no means the interest of certain towns and
districts, which tariff feeds fat; and the eager interest of the few
overpowers the apathetic general conviction of the many. Banknotes
rob the public, but are such a daily convenience that we silence our
scruples and make believe they are gold. So imposts are the cheap
and right taxation; but, by the dislike of people to pay out a direct tax,
governments are forced to render life costly by making them pay
twice as much, hidden in the price of tea and sugar.
In this national crisis, it is not argument that we want, but that rare
courage which dares commit itself to a principle, believing that
Nature is its ally, and will create the instruments it requires, and more
than make good any petty and injurious profit which it may disturb.
There never was such a combination as this of ours, and the rules to
meet it are not set down in any history. We want men of original
perception and original action, who can open their eyes wider than to
a nationality, namely, to considerations of benefit to the human race,
can act in the interest of civilization. Government must not be a
parish clerk, a justice of the peace. It has, of necessity, in any crisis
of the state, the absolute powers of a dictator. The existing
administration is entitled to the utmost candor. It is to be thanked for
its angelic virtue, compared with any executive experiences with
which we have been familiar. But the times will not allow us to
indulge in compliment. I wish I saw in the people that inspiration
which, if government would not obey the same, would leave the
government behind and create on the moment the means and
executors it wanted. Better the war should more dangerously
threaten us,—should threaten fracture in what is still whole, and
punish us with burned capitals and slaughtered regiments, and so
exasperate the people to energy, exasperate our nationality. There
are Scriptures written invisibly on men’s hearts, whose letters do not
come out until they are enraged. They can be read by war-fires, and
by eyes in the last peril.
We cannot but remember that there have been days in American
history, when, if the free states had done their duty, slavery had been
blocked by an immovable barrier, and our recent calamities forever
precluded. The free states yielded, and every compromise was
surrender and invited new demands. Here again is a new occasion
which heaven offers to sense and virtue. It looks as if we held the
fate of the fairest possession of mankind in our hands, to be saved
by our firmness or to be lost by hesitation.
The one power that has legs long enough and strong enough to
wade across the Potomac offers itself at this hour; the one strong
enough to bring all the civility up to the height of that which is best,
prays now at the door of Congress for leave to move. Emancipation
is the demand of civilization. That is a principle; everything else is an
intrigue. This is a progressive policy, puts the whole people in
healthy, productive, amiable position, puts every man in the South in
just and natural relations with every man in the North, laborer with
laborer.
I shall not attempt to unfold the details of the project of
emancipation. It has been stated with great ability by several of its
leading advocates. I will only advert to some leading points of the
argument, at the risk of repeating the reasons of others. The war is
welcome to the Southerner; a chivalrous sport to him, like hunting,
and suits his semi-civilized condition. On the climbing scale of
progress, he is just up to war, and has never appeared to such
advantage as in the last twelvemonth. It does not suit us. We are
advanced some ages on the war-state,—to trade, art and general
cultivation. His laborer works for him at home, so that he loses no
labor by the war. All our soldiers are laborers; so that the South, with
its inferior numbers, is almost on a footing in effective war-population
with the North. Again, as long as we fight without any affirmative step
taken by the government, any word intimating forfeiture in the rebel
states of their old privileges under the law, they and we fight on the
same side, for slavery. Again, if we conquer the enemy,—what then?
We shall still have to keep him under, and it will cost as much to hold
him down as it did to get him down. Then comes the summer, and
the fever will drive the soldiers home; next winter we must begin at
the beginning, and conquer him over again. What use then to take a
fort, or a privateer, or get possession of an inlet, or to capture a
regiment of rebels?
But one weapon we hold which is sure. Congress can, by edict, as
a part of the military defence which it is the duty of Congress to
provide, abolish slavery, and pay for such slaves as we ought to pay
for. Then the slaves near our armies will come to us; those in the
interior will know in a week what their rights are, and will, where
opportunity offers, prepare to take them. Instantly, the armies that
now confront you must run home to protect their estates, and must
stay there, and your enemies will disappear.
There can be no safety until this step is taken. We fancy that the
endless debate, emphasized by the crime and by the cannons of this
war, has brought the free states to some conviction that it can never
go well with us whilst this mischief of slavery remains in our politics,
and that by concert or by might we must put an end to it. But we
have too much experience of the futility of an easy reliance on the
momentary good dispositions of the public. There does exist,
perhaps, a popular will that the Union shall not be broken,—that our
trade, and therefore our laws, must have the whole breadth of the
continent, and from Canada to the Gulf. But since this is the rooted
belief and will of the people, so much the more are they in danger,
when impatient of defeats, or impatient of taxes, to go with a rush for
some peace; and what kind of peace shall at that moment be easiest
attained, they will make concessions for it,—will give up the slaves,
and the whole torment of the past half-century will come back to be
endured anew.
Neither do I doubt, if such a composition should take place, that
the Southerners will come back quietly and politely, leaving their
haughty dictation. It will be an era of good feelings. There will be a
lull after so loud a storm; and, no doubt, there will be discreet men
from that section who will earnestly strive to inaugurate more
moderate and fair administration of the government, and the North
will for a time have its full share and more, in place and counsel. But
this will not last;—not for want of sincere good will in sensible
Southerners, but because Slavery will again speak through them its
harsh necessity. It cannot live but by injustice, and it will be unjust
and violent to the end of the world.[163]
The power of Emancipation is this, that it alters the atomic social
constitution of the Southern people. Now, their interest is in keeping
out white labor; then, when they must pay wages, their interest will
be to let it in, to get the best labor, and, if they fear their blacks, to
invite Irish, German and American laborers. Thus, whilst Slavery
makes and keeps disunion, Emancipation removes the whole
objection to union. Emancipation at one stroke elevates the poor-
white of the South, and identifies his interest with that of the Northern
laborer.
Now, in the name of all that is simple and generous, why should
not this great right be done? Why should not America be capable of
a second stroke for the well-being of the human race, as eighty or
ninety years ago she was for the first,—of an affirmative step in the
interests of human civility, urged on her, too, not by any romance of
sentiment, but by her own extreme perils? It is very certain that the
statesman who shall break through the cobwebs of doubt, fear and
petty cavil that lie in the way, will be greeted by the unanimous
thanks of mankind. Men reconcile themselves very fast to a bold and
good measure when once it is taken, though they condemned it in
advance. A week before the two captive commissioners were
surrendered to England, every one thought it could not be done: it
would divide the North. It was done, and in two days all agreed it
was the right action.[164] And this action, which costs so little (the
parties injured by it being such a handful that they can very easily be
indemnified), rids the world, at one stroke, of this degrading
nuisance, the cause of war and ruin to nations. This measure at
once puts all parties right. This is borrowing, as I said, the
omnipotence of a principle. What is so foolish as the terror lest the
blacks should be made furious by freedom and wages? It is denying
these that is the outrage, and makes the danger from the blacks. But
justice satisfies everybody,—white man, red man, yellow man and
black man. All like wages, and the appetite grows by feeding.
But this measure, to be effectual, must come speedily. The
weapon is slipping out of our hands. “Time,” say the Indian
Scriptures, “drinketh up the essence of every great and noble action
which ought to be performed, and which is delayed in the
execution.”[165]
I hope it is not a fatal objection to this policy that it is simple and
beneficent thoroughly, which is the tribute of a moral action. An
unprecedented material prosperity has not tended to make us Stoics
or Christians. But the laws by which the universe is organized
reappear at every point, and will rule it. The end of all political
struggle is to establish morality as the basis of all legislation. It is not
free institutions, it is not a republic, it is not a democracy, that is the
end,—no, but only the means. Morality is the object of government.
[166] We want a state of things in which crime shall not pay. This is
the consolation on which we rest in the darkness of the future and
the afflictions of to-day, that the government of the world is moral,
and does forever destroy what is not. It is the maxim of natural
philosophers that the natural forces wear out in time all obstacles,
and take place: and it is the maxim of history that victory always falls
at last where it ought to fall; or, there is perpetual march and
progress to ideas. But in either case, no link of the chain can drop
out. Nature works through her appointed elements; and ideas must
work through the brains and the arms of good and brave men, or
they are no better than dreams.

Since the above pages were written, President Lincoln has


proposed to Congress that the government shall coöperate with any
state that shall enact a gradual abolishment of slavery. In the recent
series of national successes, this message is the best. It marks the
happiest day in the political year. The American Executive ranges
itself for the first time on the side of freedom. If Congress has been
backward, the President has advanced. This state-paper is the more
interesting that it appears to be the President’s individual act, done
under a strong sense of duty. He speaks his own thought in his own
style. All thanks and honor to the Head of the State! The message
has been received throughout the country with praise, and, we doubt
not, with more pleasure than has been spoken. If Congress accords
with the President, it is not yet too late to begin the emancipation; but
we think it will always be too late to make it gradual. All experience
agrees that it should be immediate.[167] More and better than the
President has spoken shall, perhaps, the effect of this message be,
—but, we are sure, not more or better than he hoped in his heart,
when, thoughtful of all the complexities of his position, he penned
these cautious words.
XIV
THE EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION

AN ADDRESS DELIVERED IN BOSTON IN


SEPTEMBER, 1862

To-day unbind the captive,


So only are ye unbound;
Lift up a people from the dust,
Trump of their rescue, sound!

Pay ransom to the owner


And fill the bag to the brim.
Who is the owner? The slave is owner,
And ever was. Pay him.

O North! give him beauty for rags,


And honor, O South! for his shame;
Nevada! coin thy golden crags
With freedom’s image and name.

Up! and the dusky race


That sat in darkness long,—
Be swift their feet as antelopes,
And as behemoth strong.

Come, East and West and North,


By races, as snow-flakes,
And carry my purpose forth,
Which neither halts nor shakes.

My will fulfilled shall be,


For in daylight or in dark,
My thunderbolt has eyes to see
His way home to the mark.

THE EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION


In so many arid forms which states encrust themselves with, once
in a century, if so often, a poetic act and record occur. These are the
jets of thought into affairs, when, roused by danger or inspired by
genius, the political leaders of the day break the else insurmountable
routine of class and local legislation, and take a step forward in the
direction of catholic and universal interests. Every step in the history
of political liberty is a sally of the human mind into the untried Future,
and has the interest of genius, and is fruitful in heroic anecdotes.
Liberty is a slow fruit. It comes, like religion, for short periods, and in
rare conditions, as if awaiting a culture of the race which shall make
it organic and permanent. Such moments of expansion in modern
history were the Confession of Augsburg, the plantation of America,
the English Commonwealth of 1648, the Declaration of American
Independence in 1776, the British emancipation of slaves in the
West Indies, the passage of the Reform Bill, the repeal of the Corn-
Laws, the Magnetic Ocean Telegraph, though yet imperfect, the
passage of the Homestead Bill in the last Congress, and now,
eminently, President Lincoln’s Proclamation on the twenty-second of
September. These are acts of great scope, working on a long future
and on permanent interests, and honoring alike those who initiate
and those who receive them. These measures provoke no noisy joy,
but are received into a sympathy so deep as to apprise us that
mankind are greater and better than we know.[168] At such times it
appears as if a new public were created to greet the new event. It is
as when an orator, having ended the compliments and pleasantries
with which he conciliated attention, and having run over the
superficial fitness and commodities of the measure he urges,
suddenly, lending himself to some happy inspiration, announces with
vibrating voice the grand human principles involved;—the bravos
and wits who greeted him loudly thus far are surprised and
overawed; a new audience is found in the heart of the assembly,—
an audience hitherto passive and unconcerned, now at last so
searched and kindled that they come forward, every one a
representative of mankind, standing for all nationalities.
The extreme moderation with which the President advanced to his
design,—his long-avowed expectant policy, as if he chose to be
strictly the executive of the best public sentiment of the country,
waiting only till it should be unmistakably pronounced,—so fair a
mind that none ever listened so patiently to such extreme varieties of
opinion,—so reticent that his decision has taken all parties by
surprise, whilst yet it is just the sequel of his prior acts,—the firm
tone in which he announces it, without inflation or surplusage,—all
these have bespoken such favor to the act that, great as the
popularity of the President has been, we are beginning to think that
we have underestimated the capacity and virtue which the Divine
Providence has made an instrument of benefit so vast. He has been
permitted to do more for America than any other American man. He
is well entitled to the most indulgent construction. Forget all that we
thought shortcomings, every mistake, every delay. In the extreme
embarrassments of his part, call these endurance, wisdom,
magnanimity; illuminated, as they now are, by this dazzling success.
When we consider the immense opposition that has been
neutralized or converted by the progress of the war (for it is not long
since the President anticipated the resignation of a large number of
officers in the army, and the secession of three states, on the
promulgation of this policy),—when we see how the great stake
which foreign nations hold in our affairs has recently brought every
European power as a client into this court, and it became every day
more apparent what gigantic and what remote interests were to be
affected by the decision of the President,—one can hardly say the
deliberation was too long. Against all timorous counsels he had the
courage to seize the moment; and such was his position, and such
the felicity attending the action, that he has replaced government in
the good graces of mankind. “Better is virtue in the sovereign than
plenty in the season,” say the Chinese. ’Tis wonderful what power is,
and how ill it is used, and how its ill use makes life mean, and the
sunshine dark. Life in America had lost much of its attraction in the
later years. The virtues of a good magistrate undo a world of
mischief, and, because Nature works with rectitude, seem vastly
more potent than the acts of bad governors, which are ever
tempered by the good nature in the people, and the incessant
resistance which fraud and violence encounter. The acts of good
governors work a geometrical ratio, as one midsummer day seems
to repair the damage of a year of war.
A day which most of us dared not hope to see, an event worth the
dreadful war, worth its costs and uncertainties, seems now to be
close before us. October, November, December will have passed
over beating hearts and plotting brains: then the hour will strike, and
all men of African descent who have faculty enough to find their way
to our lines are assured of the protection of American law.
It is by no means necessary that this measure should be suddenly
marked by any signal results on the negroes or on the rebel masters.
The force of the act is that it commits the country to this justice,—
that it compels the innumerable officers, civil, military, naval, of the
Republic to range themselves on the line of this equity. It draws the
fashion to this side. It is not a measure that admits of being taken
back. Done, it cannot be undone by a new administration. For
slavery overpowers the disgust of the moral sentiment only through
immemorial usage. It cannot be introduced as an improvement of the
nineteenth century. This act makes that the lives of our heroes have
not been sacrificed in vain. It makes a victory of our defeats. Our
hurts are healed; the health of the nation is repaired. With a victory
like this, we can stand many disasters. It does not promise the
redemption of the black race; that lies not with us: but it relieves it of
our opposition. The President by this act has paroled all the slaves in
America; they will no more fight against us: and it relieves our race
once for all of its crime and false position. The first condition of
success is secured in putting ourselves right. We have recovered
ourselves from our false position, and planted ourselves on a law of
Nature:—
“If that fail,
The pillared firmament is rottenness,
And earth’s base built on stubble.”[169]

The government has assured itself of the best constituency in the


world: every spark of intellect, every virtuous feeling, every religious
heart, every man of honor, every poet, every philosopher, the
generosity of the cities, the health of the country, the strong arms of
the mechanic, the endurance of farmers, the passionate conscience
of women, the sympathy of distant nations,—all rally to its support.
Of course, we are assuming the firmness of the policy thus
declared. It must not be a paper proclamation. We confide that Mr.
Lincoln is in earnest, and as he has been slow in making up his
mind, has resisted the importunacy of parties and of events to the
latest moment, he will be as absolute in his adhesion. Not only will
he repeat and follow up his stroke, but the nation will add its
irresistible strength. If the ruler has duties, so has the citizen. In
times like these, when the nation is imperilled, what man can,
without shame, receive good news from day to day without giving
good news of himself? What right has any one to read in the journals
tidings of victories, if he has not bought them by his own valor,
treasure, personal sacrifice, or by service as good in his own
department? With this blot removed from our national honor, this
heavy load lifted off the national heart, we shall not fear
henceforward to show our faces among mankind. We shall cease to
be hypocrites and pretenders, but what we have styled our free
institutions will be such.[170]
In the light of this event the public distress begins to be removed.
What if the brokers’ quotations show our stocks discredited, and the
gold dollar costs one hundred and twenty-seven cents? These tables
are fallacious. Every acre in the free states gained substantial value
on the twenty-second of September. The cause of disunion and war
has been reached and begun to be removed. Every man’s house-lot
and garden are relieved of the malaria which the purest winds and
strongest sunshine could not penetrate and purge. The territory of
the Union shines to-day with a lustre which every European emigrant
can discern from far; a sign of inmost security and permanence. Is it
feared that taxes will check immigration? That depends on what the
taxes are spent for. If they go to fill up this yawning Dismal Swamp,
which engulfed armies and populations, and created plague, and
neutralized hitherto all the vast capabilities of this continent,—then
this taxation, which makes the land wholesome and habitable, and
will draw all men unto it, is the best investment in which property-
holder ever lodged his earnings.
Whilst we have pointed out the opportuneness of the
Proclamation, it remains to be said that the President had no choice.
He might look wistfully for what variety of courses lay open to him;
every line but one was closed up with fire. This one, too, bristled with
danger, but through it was the sole safety. The measure he has
adopted was imperative. It is wonderful to see the unseasonable
senility of what is called the Peace Party, through all its masks,
blinding their eyes to the main feature of the war, namely, its
inevitableness. The war existed long before the cannonade of
Sumter, and could not be postponed. It might have begun otherwise
or elsewhere, but war was in the minds and bones of the
combatants, it was written on the iron leaf, and you might as easily
dodge gravitation. If we had consented to a peaceable secession of
the rebels, the divided sentiment of the border states made
peaceable secession impossible, the insatiable temper of the South
made it impossible, and the slaves on the border, wherever the
border might be, were an incessant fuel to rekindle the fire. Give the
Confederacy New Orleans, Charleston, and Richmond, and they
would have demanded St. Louis and Baltimore. Give them these,
and they would have insisted on Washington. Give them
Washington, and they would have assumed the army and navy, and,
through these, Philadelphia, New York, and Boston. It looks as if the
battle-field would have been at least as large in that event as it is
now. The war was formidable, but could not be avoided. The war
was and is an immense mischief, but brought with it the immense
benefit of drawing a line and rallying the free states to fix it
impassably,—preventing the whole force of Southern connection and
influence throughout the North from distracting every city with
endless confusion, detaching that force and reducing it to handfuls,
and, in the progress of hostilities, disinfecting us of our habitual
proclivity, through the affection of trade and the traditions of the
Democratic party, to follow Southern leading.[171]
These necessities which have dictated the conduct of the federal
government are overlooked especially by our foreign critics. The
popular statement of the opponents of the war abroad is the
impossibility of our success. “If you could add,” say they, “to your
strength the whole army of England, of France and of Austria, you
could not coerce eight millions of people to come under this
government against their will.” This is an odd thing for an
Englishman, a Frenchman or an Austrian to say, who remembers
Europe of the last seventy years,—the condition of Italy, until 1859,
—of Poland, since 1793,—of France, of French Algiers,—of British
Ireland, and British India. But granting the truth, rightly read, of the
historical aphorism, that “the people always conquer,” it is to be
noted that, in the Southern States, the tenure of land and the local
laws, with slavery, give the social system not a democratic but an
aristocratic complexion; and those states have shown every year a
more hostile and aggressive temper, until the instinct of self-
preservation forced us into the war. And the aim of the war on our
part is indicated by the aim of the President’s Proclamation, namely,
to break up the false combination of Southern society, to destroy the
piratic feature in it which makes it our enemy only as it is the enemy
of the human race, and so allow its reconstruction on a just and
healthful basis. Then new affinities will act, the old repulsion will
cease, and, the cause of war being removed, Nature and trade may
be trusted to establish a lasting peace.
We think we cannot overstate the wisdom and benefit of this act of
the government. The malignant cry of the Secession press within the
free states, and the recent action of the Confederate Congress, are
decisive as to its efficiency and correctness of aim. Not less so is the
silent joy which has greeted it in all generous hearts, and the new
hope it has breathed into the world. It was well to delay the steamers
at the wharves until this edict could be put on board. It will be an
insurance to the ship as it goes plunging through the sea with glad
tidings to all people. Happy are the young, who find the pestilence
cleansed out of the earth, leaving open to them an honest career.
Happy the old, who see Nature purified before they depart. Do not let
the dying die: hold them back to this world, until you have charged
their ear and heart with this message to other spiritual societies,
announcing the melioration of our planet:—

“Incertainties now crown themselves assured,


And Peace proclaims olives of endless age.”[172]

Meantime that ill-fated, much-injured race which the Proclamation


respects will lose somewhat of the dejection sculptured for ages in
their bronzed countenance, uttered in the wailing of their plaintive
music,—a race naturally benevolent, docile, industrious, and whose
very miseries sprang from their great talent for usefulness, which, in
a more moral age, will not only defend their independence, but will
give them a rank among nations.[173]

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