Epiphanies of the Deathless Native User's Manifold Avatars: A Post-Colonial Perspective on the Native Speaker

Abstract

Reacting to a help wanted advertisement in a Singapore newspaper stating "only native speakers/Caucasians" need apply, it is suggested that "native speaker" is a post-colonial means of exclusion. It is observed that new varieties of English (Nigerian, Indian, Lankan English) are rule-governed systems in their own right, equal to any other variety of English or other language. Further, mainstream sociolinguistics is identified as driven to simplistic essentialism, preventing it from being able to adequately handle "entities," eg, "speech community" or "class," due to its "entrapment in empiricist, positivistic, scientific discourse." It is suggested that the assumption be reconsidered in language studies that the directionality of the flow of ideas must be from the mainstream dominant centers to the post-colonial outposts. B. Gadalla.