Geeta Aneja | University of Pennsylvania (original) (raw)
Papers by Geeta Aneja
Citizen Sociolinguistics relies precisely on what traditional sociolinguistic methodology has tri... more Citizen Sociolinguistics relies precisely on what traditional sociolinguistic methodology has tried to avoid: speakers’ own awareness of their language and their conscious attempts to manipulate it. The examples in this chapter illustrate the power of this metalinguistic awareness and its related commentary to illuminate the social value people themselves put on their own language use (Rymes 2014). The chapter includes three topics, or flashpoints of metacommentary: the Roman dialect, the concept of the “Native Speaker” accent, and the highly institutionalized genre of the five paragraph essay. We conclude by theoretically situating Citizen Sociolinguistics within a history of sociocultural linguistics.
The “NNEST Movement” has been instrumental in documenting the privilege of native speakers, the m... more The “NNEST Movement” has been instrumental in documenting the privilege of native speakers, the marginalization of their nonnative counterparts, and the factors that may influence an individual falling into one category or another. More recently, scholars have adopted a poststructuralist orientation toward language and identity that resists dichotomized framings of language and language users. This article extends the poststructuralist orientation to consider how and why such abstract idealizations of native and nonnative speakers—what I term (non)native speakered subjectivities—emerged historically and are continuously reified and (re)produced through everyday discourse. Throughout this discussion, I weave illustrative examples from a participant in a semester-long ethnographic study that took place in a graduate teacher education program. In the conclusion, I consider implications for future theorizations of (non)native speakering as well as possibilities for increasing equity in the field of ELT.
Working Papers by Geeta Aneja
Book Reviews by Geeta Aneja
Anthropology & Education Quarterly, 2013
Language and Education, 2013
Journal Articles by Geeta Aneja
Though applied linguists have critiqued the concept of the native speaker for decades, it continu... more Though applied linguists have critiqued the concept of the native speaker for decades, it continues to dominate the TESOL profession in ways that marginalize nonnative English–speaking teachers. In this article, we describe a naturalistic study of literacy negotiations in a course that we taught as part of the required sequence for a TESOL teacher education program. The course had the explicit goals of (a) supporting preservice teachers, many of whom are nonnative English speakers, in challenging these native-speaker ideologies, and (b) introducing preservice teachers to translingualism as a framework for challenging these ideologies with their own students. We focus on one of the culminating projects, in which students developed their own projects that enacted the new understanding of language associated with translingualism. By looking closely at the journey of three students through this project, we shed light on the possibilities and challenges of bringing a translingual perspective into TESOL teacher education, as well as the possibilities and challenges confronted by preservice TESOL teachers who are nonnative English speakers in incorporating a translingual perspective into their own teaching. These case studies indicate that providing nonnative English teachers with opportunities to engage in translingual projects can support them both in developing more positive conceptualizations of their identities as multilingual teachers and in developing pedagogical approaches for students that build on their home language practices in ways that challenge dominant language ideologies.
Citizen Sociolinguistics relies precisely on what traditional sociolinguistic methodology has tri... more Citizen Sociolinguistics relies precisely on what traditional sociolinguistic methodology has tried to avoid: speakers’ own awareness of their language and their conscious attempts to manipulate it. The examples in this chapter illustrate the power of this metalinguistic awareness and its related commentary to illuminate the social value people themselves put on their own language use (Rymes 2014). The chapter includes three topics, or flashpoints of metacommentary: the Roman dialect, the concept of the “Native Speaker” accent, and the highly institutionalized genre of the five paragraph essay. We conclude by theoretically situating Citizen Sociolinguistics within a history of sociocultural linguistics.
The “NNEST Movement” has been instrumental in documenting the privilege of native speakers, the m... more The “NNEST Movement” has been instrumental in documenting the privilege of native speakers, the marginalization of their nonnative counterparts, and the factors that may influence an individual falling into one category or another. More recently, scholars have adopted a poststructuralist orientation toward language and identity that resists dichotomized framings of language and language users. This article extends the poststructuralist orientation to consider how and why such abstract idealizations of native and nonnative speakers—what I term (non)native speakered subjectivities—emerged historically and are continuously reified and (re)produced through everyday discourse. Throughout this discussion, I weave illustrative examples from a participant in a semester-long ethnographic study that took place in a graduate teacher education program. In the conclusion, I consider implications for future theorizations of (non)native speakering as well as possibilities for increasing equity in the field of ELT.
Anthropology & Education Quarterly, 2013
Language and Education, 2013
Though applied linguists have critiqued the concept of the native speaker for decades, it continu... more Though applied linguists have critiqued the concept of the native speaker for decades, it continues to dominate the TESOL profession in ways that marginalize nonnative English–speaking teachers. In this article, we describe a naturalistic study of literacy negotiations in a course that we taught as part of the required sequence for a TESOL teacher education program. The course had the explicit goals of (a) supporting preservice teachers, many of whom are nonnative English speakers, in challenging these native-speaker ideologies, and (b) introducing preservice teachers to translingualism as a framework for challenging these ideologies with their own students. We focus on one of the culminating projects, in which students developed their own projects that enacted the new understanding of language associated with translingualism. By looking closely at the journey of three students through this project, we shed light on the possibilities and challenges of bringing a translingual perspective into TESOL teacher education, as well as the possibilities and challenges confronted by preservice TESOL teachers who are nonnative English speakers in incorporating a translingual perspective into their own teaching. These case studies indicate that providing nonnative English teachers with opportunities to engage in translingual projects can support them both in developing more positive conceptualizations of their identities as multilingual teachers and in developing pedagogical approaches for students that build on their home language practices in ways that challenge dominant language ideologies.