The Changing Face of the “Native Speaker”

Know about the book -

The Changing Face of the “Native Speaker” is written by Nikolay Slavkov and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. It's available with International Standard Book Number or ISBN identification 1501512358 (ISBN 10) and 9781501512353 (ISBN 13).

The notion of the native speaker and its undertones of ultimate language competence, language ownership and social status has been problematized by various researchers, arguing that the ensuing monolingual norms and assumptions are flawed or inequitable in a global super-diverse world. However, such norms are still ubiquitous in educational, institutional and social settings, in political structures and in research paradigms. This collection offers voices from various contexts and corners of the world and further challenges the native speaker construct adopting poststructuralist and postcolonial perspectives. It includes conceptual, methodological, educational and practice-oriented contributions. Topics span language minorities, intercomprehension, plurilingualism and pluriculturalism, translanguaging, teacher education, new speakers, language background profiling, heritage languages, and learner identity, among others. Collectively, the authors paint the portrait of the "changing face of the native speaker" while also strengthening a new global agenda in multilingualism and social justice. These diverse and interconnected contributions are meant to inspire researchers, university students, educators, policy makers and beyond.