Both the concept of a “native speaker/signer” and the term itself have been critiqued and problematized across fields such as linguistic anthropology, second language acquisition, and English language teaching. However, within less peripheralized disciplines of linguistics, this term is often used uncritically, with some disciplines centering the behavior and knowledge of “native speakers” as the main object of inquiry. We argue that the term “native speaker/signer” is a colonial analytic that reifies the connection between named languages and nation-states, essentializes language in identity formation, and produces harmful consequences. Given that previous work has problematized the notion of a “native speaker” and enumerated its pitfalls (e.g., Holliday 2006, Love &amp;amp; Ansaldo 2010), we seek to understand how the term became and continues to be naturalized and why it is still used today; a historical approach is crucial to understanding both the colonial roots and the transformation of the term. We track the evolution and proliferation of “native speaker” from its inception, trace its role in linguistic theory, and note how it has been critiqued in linguistic anthropology. Looking forward, we emphatically do not propose substituting the term “native speaker” with other discrete labels that have similar colonial ideological underpinnings such as “L1 speaker." Rather, we argue that linguists must interrogate the role of this concept and its associated theoretical baggage. We anticipate that moving away from this term and the ideas surrounding it will (a) lead to more specified hypotheses about how particular types of language experience might affect linguistic knowledge/behavior, (b) encourage analyses which take into account the diverse linguistic repertoires held by all language users, (c) force our theoretical approaches to center non-normative language use, and (d) be one step towards a more inclusive discipline. 

Towards a Linguistics Free of "Native Speakerhood"

Abstract Not everything is known about how children develop language. It is understood that parents don’t teach their kids language—that’s just not how it works because language development is much more natural than that. But researchers act like parents do teach their kids language. They say some parents are better at teaching language and some kids are better at learning it. Some researchers even claim certain parents are so bad at language that their kids will hear 30 million fewer words by the time they enter school. That’s 30 million fewer words for kids to learn from, they say. This is called the language gap, and it’s completely ridiculous. Worse, it’s straight-up racist. Time after time, language gap research claims that racialized kids and families are the ones not doing language right, while the language of middle- and upper-class white people should be imitated. This is all just another way to protect white supremacy in a settler-colonial country. 

Decolonizing (Psycho)linguistics Means Dropping the Language Gap Rhetoric

Abstract This chapter discusses the implications of privileging value-based political research agendas in linguistics and affirms the impossibility of neutral and objective scientific linguistic research. Instead, the author argues that linguists must cultivate a practice of transparency, noting not only their positionalities but also in their political motivations, relationships with the language communities they investigate, and ensuring access to investigative work beyond the academy. In this way decisions about research questions, frames, and interpretations become clearer. Using the traditions of research on African American language (AAL) as a case study, the author argues that linguistic researchers must become transparent about the political goals of their research in order to progress the field in ways that disrupt colonial frames of power. Specifically, the ways in which political transparency has been enacted as Black feminist praxis is reviewed, and several provocations are provided toward a transparency-based approach in linguistics that resists formerly constructed categorizations of linguistics as either theoretical or social. Finally, the chapter discusses the benefits of this practice through an example of a value-based research project, which applied African American English (AAE) research traditions to an exploration of Dominican language practices. Through this application, the author argues for a Hemispheric Black Community of Practice approach to the study of Caribbean Spanish, ultimately destabilizing the generative and variationist approaches that have dominated the study of Caribbean Spanish in linguistic traditions. Este capítulo analiza las implicaciones de privilegiar las agendas de investigación basadas en valores políticas en el campo lingüístico y afirma la imposibilidad de una investigación lingüística científica neutral y objetiva. En cambio, la autora argumenta que los lingüistas deben cultivar una práctica de transparencia, teniendo en cuenta no solo sus posiciones (ver Lin 2015; Clemons y Lawrence 2020 para referencia a estas llamadas) sino también sus motivaciones políticas, relaciones con las comunidades lingüísticas que investigan y garantizar acceso al trabajo más allá de la academia. De esta manera, las decisiones sobre las preguntas de investigación, los marcos teóricos y las interpretaciones se vuelven más claras. Utilizando las tradiciones de investigación sobre la lengua afroamericana (AAL) como estudio de caso, la autora aurgumenta que los investigadores lingüísticos deben practicar una ética de transparencia sobre los objetivos políticos de sus investigaciones. Así podemos progresar en el campo de manera que rompa los marcos coloniales de poder. 

Apolitical Linguistics Doesn’t Exist, and It Shouldn’t

Abstract This chapter describes the work of three linguists working in communication departments at two community colleges in the City University of New York system (CUNY) to counter deficit approaches toward dialectal variation in the field of communication studies (and beyond). The authors’ approach includes professional presentations, curricular redesign, identifying linguistic discrimination in textbooks, and conducting professional development workshops and seminars. They believe that the things they are doing are easily reproducible, so they are shared in this chapter in the hopes that more people will get actively involved in reducing/eliminating such harmful classroom pedagogies that involve deficit views of dialectal and accent variation in educational settings. 

An Interdisciplinary Approach to Language Activism from Community Colleges

Abstract In this chapter the authors argue that syntacticians and the field of syntax have for too long avoided engaging with the colonial legacies and the implicit racist assumptions that have shaped the discipline. They take three key areas which relate to syntax—teaching, research, and citation practices—and explore the ways in which these have been intricately tied up with, or curtailed as a result of, dominant narratives about language, global hierarchies, the idealised “native-speaker,” and language as a disembodied object. The authors present a case study of citation practices in Bantu linguistics, where there is an underrepresentation of African scholars in the literature. Beyond the critiques that can be directed at the discipline, as scholars who work in this field, the authors argue that there can and must be a decolonial syntax. They provide practical steps for action in the form of provocations which they urge scholars to engage with, reflect on, and implement within their praxis. 

Towards a Decolonial Syntax

This chapter centers and uplifts the languaging of autistic people using a Crip Linguistic framework. Crip Linguistics is a recent theoretical framework that combines disability theories with linguistics. It is the extension of several existing linguistic frameworks, such as embodied sociolinguistics (Bucholtz &amp;amp; Hall, 2016) and critical applied linguistics (Pennycook, 2021). The term Crip in Crip Linguistics comes from the verb cripped or to crip, which means to make non?normative (see McRuer, 2006). Crip Linguistics was defined in depth in Henner and Robinson (2021). To sum, Crip Linguistics is a way for linguistics to analyze disability as a variationist perspective in languaging. It asks linguists to understand that language cannot be disordered, but bodies can be disordered in a way that affects languaging. And often, how people perceive disordered bodies make them think that the language produced by those bodies is disordered (when it’s not). 

How to train your abled linguist: A Crip Linguistics perspective on pragmatic research

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How to train your abled linguist: A Crip Linguistics perspective on pragmatic research