On the notions “native”/”nonnative”: a dangerous dichotomy for World Englishes?

Abstract

A number of writers (Singh et al.,1995; Rajagopalan, 1997) have argued
convincingly that the notion ‘native speaker’ can be racist and exclusive,
bestowing privilege and power based on the accident of nativity in a specific
locale. I argue that the concept is still useful in the field of applied linguists and
language studies provided that researchers clarify the ambiguity of the term.
I propose following typology for clarification of the concept: the (a) ‘age of
acquisition native’, (b) ‘loyalty native’, (c) ‘objective-proficiency native’ (d)
the Chomskyan ‘ideal native speaker’, (e) ‘blood native’ and (f) the ‘historicalantecedence-
native’.