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when i’m saying we need to stop reifying the term native speaker in elt, i’m not saying we need to ban it from our vocabulary. i’m saying we need to recognise the ways that use of the term reinforces social hierarchies, and resolve to use it in a more critical way. examples: 
1. stop describing ourselves as native speakers on our cvs, on job applications or at interview. we know what that does; it’s a direct appeal to the recruiter to recognise our linguistic competence over someone educated outside the anglosphere or with a non-anglo name.
this also goes for mentioning our anglosphere upbringings when the recruiter asks us to tell them a little about ourselves. we’d be kidding ourselves to assume that that doesn’t somehow play into discourses about where the right kinds of english are learned and used, and by whom.
2. the next time you want to use native speaker in conversation, ask yourself what you really mean: a lifelong user of english? someone monolingual? university educated? someone who can replicate certain high-status or internationally recognised registers? be specific.
half the time you’ll realise native speaker was too broad anyway, and your argument will benefit from the added specificity. other times, you’ll realise you were talking about native speaker *recognition*; then you can stop euphemising, just say racism/classism/ableism and go.
3. whenever you perceive the term native speaker in use, think not about who that term includes but rather who is being deliberately excluded by this discourse *and for what strategic purpose*. then call out those power dynamics as loud as you f/king dare to anyone who’ll listen.
i know it’s hard in meetings, or when your boss (or whoever) is there. i know it’s hard to push back, however gently, when you have something to lose. but it’s a thousand times harder for the teachers labelled non-native who are f/ked over by this hierarchy every goddamn day.
thank you for coming to my ted talk. if you have any questions or what-about-isms then kindly refer to the extensive literature on this topic, which dates back to the early nineties and continues to be ignored or glossed over by a large number of teachers in the field. </thread>
