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THE TOPIC of this article is one about which I have worried a great deal for many years. I believe that the subject is central to what we do as a profession, to our sense of who we are and what we should be, and to the future of departments of foreign languages. Let me begin with a brief scenario.
Imagine and MLA meeting and spacious suite at the convention hotel. Members of a department of foreign languages are interviewing junior candidates for a position in their department. Paul Fletcher, the most brilliant student of the country's leading experts in a key of literature, enters the room. Though a bit nervous, he conducts himself well. He answers questions about his reseach, he tactfully avoids taking sides on a current controversy in the field, and describes and presents syllabi for a set of exciting courses. The final question is ask in the foreign language. Both the members of the department and the candidate know that this is a test. The job announcement carefully stated that native or near-native proficiency in the language is required. Paul valiantly attempts to answer the question with the same confidence that he exhibited in English. His uneasiness, however, is obvious. He has a very slight accent, and he hesitates and self-corrects a number of times. Even so, his response are detailed and complete, although delivered in relatively simple syntactic structures.
Paul Fletcher, like many other graduate students in the foreign languages, is an American who majored in the foreign language, studied abroad for a year, completed a graduate program, and spent time in the foreign setting. He is not, however, indistinguishable from a native speaker.
For members of the department carrying out the interview, the question is, How nativelike must a near-native be? If near-native proficiency is a job requirement, what standards should the department members apply in evaluating the language abilities of future assistant professors? Should the interviewers be guided by the evaluation of their native-speaking colleagues? Should they rely on their own sense of the candidates' ability to teach in the target language? Or should they simply ignore the matter entirely?
In Paul's case, members of the department argued for many months. Interestingly enough, faculty members who liked Paul's work (and this group included both native and non-native-speaking members of the department) found his foreign language ability to adequate. Faculty prescriptivists, faculty members who did not like Paul's work, and faculty members who simply opposed the appointment in the first place vigorously criticized his language ability. They argued strongly that he would be unqualified to teach even basic language courses. The latter faculty group also included both native and nonnative speakers.
As you may gather, the purpose of this article is to suggest that the notion of near-native ability as it is currently used in the foreign language profession must be examined carefully. Most job announcement state clearly that it is what members of the profession want in young colleagues. It is less clear what both native and near-native ability mean in practice.
From the point of view of the field of linguistics, the concept of the native speaker is both important and complex. Florian Coulmas, for example, points out that linguists of every conceivable theoretical orientation agree that the concept of the native speaker is fundamental. For some linguists, native speakers are the essential source of linguistic data. For others, the principal goal of the linguists is to describe a language in a way that makes explicit the innate ability (competence) of such native speakers.
In spite of the centrality of native speakers in linguistic research, however, there has been much disagreement about the use of native speakers in both fieldwork and theory building. Regardless of the position taken on the use of native speakers for linguistic research, though, the sense that native speakers are fundamentally different from nonnative speakers underlies every discussion of the concept.
In the popular mind, the concept of the native speaker is less complex than the encountered in the field of linguistics. For most people, a native speaker is one who can function in all settings in which other native speakers normally function. Moreover, to be considered fully native, a speaker must be indistinguishable from other native speakers. When interacting with the individual, other native speakers should assume that he or she acquired the language from infancy.
But the issue is not simple. As Claire Kramsch has pointed out in her recent guest column in PMLA , “Originally, native speakership was viewed as an uncontroversial privilege of birth. Those who were born into a language were considered its native speakers, with grammatical intuitions that nonnative speakers did not have.” Kramsch argues, however, that a closer examination of the concept reveals that it has often been linked to social class and to education. She maintains that the native speaker norm that has been recognized by foreign language departments in this country is, in fact, that of “the middle-class, ethnically dominant male citizenry of nation-states” (363). By implication, the language of those who do not belong to the middle class of such nations has been considered suspect.
As I pointed out in an article published in the ADFL Bulletin in 1991, issues of native ability, language, ethnicity, and class are quite complex in American departments of foreign languages. Let us consider for a moment the case of departments in which the “stars” are native speakers of European origin who have come to this country as adults. Often there is a tendency for such faculty members to belittle the linguistic abilities of those Americans in the department who have elected to make the teaching and study of a foreign language their career. In those departments, so-called near-native ability in the target language is not enough. The underlying belief is that only those persons who have grown up in the original culture and who have learned the language in the course of primary socialization can truly understand both the foreign literature and its culture.
Being a native speaker does not, however, necessarily save a foreign language faculty member from being looked down on by his or her colleagues. Because the notion of which language variety is prestigious or considered correct varies considerably, being a native speaker does not automatically mean acceptance as a worthy colleague. Depending on which group is in power, the only valued members of the faculty may be those who speak, for example, Madrid Spanish or Parisian French. Speakers of other varieties of the target language (no matter how indigenous or genuine it may be in certain parts of the world) would be considered faulty models for language teaching. For instance, speakers of Caribbean Spanish or Canadian French are frequently thought of as undesirable additions to departments of Spanish or French if their speech betrays their geographical origin.
The judgment of what is bad or inferior language is, again, directly related to the views held by the group in power. Sometimes, in fact, all native speakers of the language may be found to be using the wrong type of language. The situation occurs, for example, when the majority of the members of the department are American nonnative speakers of the target language who normally teach their literature courses in English. Because they themselves do not speak the language well or keep up with the ever-changing native norms governing speech, they tend to judge native-speaker performance from an idealized, unrealistic perspective and to consider unqualified all who appear not to function according to textbook standards. In these departments, the target language seldom reflects the growth and dynamism that it displays in its natural setting. Instead, it is subjected to rigid controls based on the belief that all change is either unnecessary or simply not typical of the “best” usage. Clearly, then, members of foreign language departments who are identified as belonging to the “despised” or “excluded” minority can vary greatly. Even if one doesn't consider the variables of race and ethnic background, it is obvious that marginal status is easily achieved.
The situation becomes even more complex when one considers the place of ethnic-language speakers in departments of foreign languages. By ethnic-language speakers I mean American-born, second-, third-, or even fourth-generation members of immigrant families who have developed their original competence in the ethnic language. This group includes Spanish speakers of Mexican American and Puerto Rican backgrounds, northern New England francophones, Portuguese speakers from Massachusetts, French speakers from Louisiana, and so on. These speakers of immigrant languages are often considered undesirable in our departments. They supposedly speak the wrong kind of language, and their class backgrounds clash directly with those of faculty members who were raised in foreign countries.
Because of the complexity surrounding the question of native ability, then, and the politics that surround these complexities in our departments, it is not surprising that the construct of near-native ability is, itself, extraordinary complex. To examine this construct fairly, let us stand back for a moment and consider why foreign language departments have an interest in the language ability of heir faculty members.
What is clear is that foreign language departments carry out intellectually work in languages other than English. It is logical to expect that most, if not all, members of the faculty will be able to carry out such work in the language of the field and, additionally, that they will be able to teach in the target language and to serve as models of language for their students. In some departments, it is also expected that young assistant professors will be able to teach the language itself as a subject.
The question, then, becomes, How near-native must an individual be in order to carry out intellectual work in the target language, to lecture in the language, and to teach the language itself to undergraduate students?
To my knowledge, no research has been done on the question of what kinds of language proficiencies are required in order to work in the area of literary and cultural studies. A description of the demands made on language ability by the reading of texts, by research on social contexts surrounding text production, and so on does not currently exist. We have no evidence, for example, that creditable “readings” of foreign language texts demand excellent control of the structure of the spoken language. What is needed is careful research in this area, to help us understand not only what kinds of proficiencies to expect in our colleagues but also how we—as departments of foreign languages—can develop these same proficiencies in our own students.
Research on the language abilities in order to lecture in a foreign language on a relatively narrow set of topics is also not available. A commonsense view would hold that, to lecture in a language in an academic setting to both graduate and undergraduate students, some of whom may be native speaking, instructors must be able to use the registers of the language considered appropriate for such teaching—to present information to persons who have little or no background in the subject, to explain, to simplify, to offer examples, to make links to other kinds of knowledge, and so on. Additionally, the instructors should be able to respond to questions, to read between the lines to determine the real messages being sent by students, and to manage classroom discussions. Finally, they should be able to correct both the content and the form of the written work produced by the students.
As will be noted, many of the elements I have listed above (e.g., the ability to read between the lines) go well beyond language. So too does the ability to present information to people who have little or no background in a subject. What we still cannot evaluate is the effect, on graduates and undergraduates, of a professor who is less than nativelike in the language and is an excellent teacher, in comparison with the effect of true native who has limited abilities as a classroom instructor.
Moreover, we have little information about the impact of “deviant,” or non-nativelike, language on early learners of a foreign language. Many myths abound. There is fear that students will become confused if their instructors uses an ungrammatical form. As Diane Larsen-Freeman and Michael Long point out, however, there is almost no research on the effects of experience with natives and non-natives on second language acquisition. What we do know is that—in a natural setting—most native speakers, when addressing language learners, use “foreigner talk,” a slightly modified and sometimes ungrammatical version of the language. This too is “deviant” input for the learner, as is group work with language-learning peers who themselves produce a flawed version of the target language.
The question here, then, is how good is good enough. Does the second language acquisition environment require an instructor who is largely indistinguishable from a native speaker in regard to phonology, syntax, morphology, semantics, and pragmatics, or does it demand an enthusiastic, committed individual who is likely to motivate young undergraduates to pursue further language study? In an ideal world, language teachers would be inspiring, enthusiastic, and—I might add—knowledge about second language acquisition. Indeed, many of us in the language-teaching field would maintain that in understanding of how language is acquired, a commitment to providing a broad set of language experiences for students, and a deep awareness of one's own language limitations might be more important than perfect or almost-perfect native speaker abilities.
A complete research agenda, focusing on the examination of the construct of near-native ability, might include the following:
This is clearly an ambitious agenda. There is much to be done in examining the notion of near-native ability in our profession. A more important and immediate question might be, How much does this notion affect us on an everyday level? To be truthful, I expect that the answers will vary a great deal.
I suspect that in hiring young assistant professors, most departments find themselves weighing personal characteristics, scholarship, and the like, in addition to language competence. In some cases, differences in language abilities may be used only to distinguish between two equally qualified candidates. The fact remains, however, that judgments about candidates' language abilities made by literature professors in departments of foreign languages are largely impressionistic. Each professor brings to the task of evaluating language proficiency different criteria and different expectations. Two equally competent native-speaking members of the faculty, for example, may disagree profoundly about the fluency and accuracy of a particular candidate. Not surprisingly, it is difficult for the chair of the department to reconcile vastly different conclusions based on the identical sample of language performance.
The chair, of course, could ask that the candidate be “tested,” using some professionally recognized examination. Unfortunately, there are no available tests of foreign language proficiency that can establish the linguistic range of particular individuals across a broad spectrum of occupations and professions. There are certainly no instruments available that even pretend to measure a person's ability to carry out original research on foreign language texts or to lecture to both graduates and undergraduates in the target language. Although such tests could be constructed, it is unlikely, I would argue, that test scores and rankings could persuade members of foreign language departments to set aside their own judgments of their future colleagues' language abilities.
What we have in the profession, then, is a dilemma. Near-native ability is largely in the eyes of the beholder. As a construct, it is both difficult to define and difficult to defend. It may well be, however, that in our hiring practices we have learned how to negotiate around this issue and have come recognize when objections to a particular candidate are a question of language competence as opposed to a question of politics. The issue is not quite so simple for the PhD students we are preparing to compete in a highly constricted job market. PhD-granting foreign language departments have many obligations to the Paul Fletchers of the world. If our PhD students are to be judged on their language proficiency, we cannot pretend that we have no responsibility in helping them to develop the language skills they will need in order to carry out their obligations as members of language- and literature-teaching departments.
There is much, however, that we do not know about how near-native ability is produced. The second language acquisition literature is limited in what it can offer us, because it has not approached the from precisely this perspective. We do know that in order for students even to get past an interview, they must sound confident and fluent. They must defend an opinion, seem appropriately deferential in the terms of the target culture, and present themselves authentically in the target language. This is a tall order indeed.
The question we must ask ourselves is whether the PhD curriculum enables students to develop such proficiencies. The challenges are many. In most departments, courses designed to develop language are limited to the first two or three years. Attention is seldom given to evaluating the language strengths and weaknesses of future PhD students. For the most part, they are expected to take care of their continued language learning on their own. Although we often suggest to weak students that they spend a year or more in a country where the language is spoken, we seldom make clear to them the kinds of language experiences to seek out, during their stay abroad, that can directly help them develop needed skills.
In some graduate departments, the problem is completely avoided. Only those students considered to be already near-native are admitted for graduate study. All too often, however, the policy of giving preference to highly proficient graduate students results in large numbers of students who are foreign nationals and who have been educated in their own countries in the target language. As is evident, the implications for American departments of foreign languages of such enrollment and admissions policies are many. I am not the first to suggest that these policies and their consequences need to be examined closely and evaluated carefully over time.
The notion of near-native ability is deeply embedded in the culture of foreign language departments. Most of us view it from a commonsense perspective. Indeed, I would wager that many of my readers wondering why I think it is an issue worth their attention at all. Of course the faculty members of a language department must be able to function in the target language!
As I pointed out, I have no quarrel with this perspective. My concern is with the unquestioned acceptance of a language policy and its implementation in the absence of reseach evidence that such near-native ability, as variously defined, is (1) commonly acquired, (2) essential to the carrying out professional duties in teaching and research, and (3) designed to bring about the creation of the strongest and best foreign language departments.
In suggesting that the entire concept needs to be examined, I am influenced by researchers who, working in the context of critical language study (e.g., Fairclough, Awareness and Power ; Tollefson), have demonstrated that language is never simply neutral. Indeed, they have strongly argued that language conventions and language practices are invested with power relations and ideological processes of which people are often unaware. What is evident from the work these scholars is that language—in spite of our best intentions—contributes to the domination of some people by others. Ideologies about language—that is, commonsense notions about what is correct, appropriate, and necessary—directly depend on structures of power.
The notion of near-native ability and the language policy operating in most departments of foreign languages today are, in fact, the institutionalization of language for the purpose of making distinctions among different groups of individuals on the basis of accidental characteristics. As James Tollefson points out, such policy is one mechanism for locating language within social structure in such a way that it determines who has access to political power and economic resources.
As a profession, we may decide that distinctions between the “right” and “wrong” kinds of speakers are indeed vital to what we do. However, we should reach such a conclusion only after we carefully examine the notion of near-native ability as an indicator of professional competence.
The truth of the matter is that learning a foreign language is the project of a lifetime. As one scholar put it:
In the beginning it has to be like a love affair. It comes at the time in life, adolescence or early youth, when the individual is seeking an ideal fulfillment which will complete the ego's secret view of itself.… No sane explanation can account for this profession, this demonic, urge, that impels the student, not only to seek an unpopular undergraduate major (that would be just a passing aberration, later corrected in graduate school or professional life), but to choose to pursue an ill-defined goal, to persist through years of graduate study, to haunt the doubtful corridors of the job market, and finally to embrace a life in the classroom where, once arrived, the individual can enjoy an alienation from native culture and a second-class citizenship in an adopted one. (Dudley 57–58)
More important, perhaps, Edward Dudley reminds us that becoming a member of our profession is not without extraordinary costs. As if anticipating our examination of the concept of near-native fluency, Dudley adds:
It should be recognized that the pursuit of native fluency imposes a condition of perpetual slavery to a goal that can never be possessed. Nor can it be pretended to without constantly dedication to the maintenance of skills, equal in difficulty to the daily drudgery of a concert pianist, a prima ballerina or an operatic athlete. (58)
I know that there are many equivalents of concert pianists and prima ballerinas among my readers, many individuals who have dedicated their lives to the continued study of the language they teach. There is much that we can learn from each other. I would ask you to initiate conversations with your colleagues about their own near-native abilities. Ask them to share with you how they became near-native. Find out how they have managed to maintain language abilities over time and how practices of what I call linguistic one-upmanship in their departments have affected them in their professional lives.
The construct of near-native ability is fundamental to our future as a profession. I hope that you will join me in examining it and in exploring its many implications in your own departments.
The author is professor in the School of Education and in the department of Spanish and Portuguese at Stanford University. This article is based on her keynote presentation at ADFL Summer Seminar West, 26–28 June 1997, in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
Coulmas, Florian. A Festschrift for Native Speaker . The Hague: Mounton, 1981.
Dudley, Edward. “Profess and Confess: Reflections on a Cultural Displacement.” American Attitudes toward Foreign Languages and Foreign Cultures . Ed. Dudley and P. Heller. Bonn: Grundmann, 1983, 57–67.
Fairclough, Norman. Critical Language Awareness . London: Longman, 1992.
———. Language and Power . London: Longman, 1989
Kramsch, Claire, “The Privilege of the Nonnative Speaker.” PMLA 112 (1997):359–69.
Larsen-Freeman, Diane, and Long, Michael H. An Introduction to Second Language Acquisition Research . London: Longman, 1991.
Tollefson, James W. Planning Language, Planning Inequality: Language Policy in the Community . London: Longman, 1991.
Valdés, Guadalupe. “Minority and Majority Members in Foreign Language Departments: Toward the Examination of Established Attitudes and Values.” ADFL Bulletin 22.2 (1991):10–14. [Show Article]
© 1998 by the Association of Departments of Foreign Languages. All Rights Reserved.
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