The Emergence of the English Native Speaker: A Chapter in Nineteenth-Century Linguistic Thought (Hackert)

At least since Chomsky (1965: 3) famously defined linguistic theory as "concerned primarily with an ideal speaker-listener, in a completely homogenous speech-community," the native speaker has been conceived of as "a common reference point for all branches of linguistics" (Coulmas 1981: 1). Over the past twenty-five years, however, dissatisfaction with the concept has grown, particularly in connection with the study of the so-called "World Englishes," which are often divided into "native" (e.g., British, American, or Australian Englishes) and "non-native" varieties, the latter often also summarized under the label "New Englishes" and denoting the increasingly autonomous forms of the language spoken especially in non-Western settings such as India, Singapore, or Nigeria. A number of researchers (cf. Singh 1998) have pointed out in this context that, while there may be linguistic differences between native and non-native speakers of English, these differences are not what matters, as the native speaker is really a political construct carrying a particular ideological baggage.

            The present study maintains that many of the associations that burden the native speaker and make the concept's application in the World Englishes context problematic have a long history. Employing a corpus of texts that extends from the mid-nineteenth century to just after World War I and includes not only the classics of the linguistic literature but also collections of lesser known periodical articles such as Harris (1995), it analyzes some of the discourses surrounding the emergence of the English native speaker. What this analysis shows is that the second half of the nineteenth century was a period in which people started to think differently about languages and their speakers. As a new term characterizing particular language users and setting them off from other groups, the native speaker provided an important way of conceptualizing and labeling a particular linguistic identity and drawing boundaries between some speakers and others. In sum, if we are to understand the ideology of the English native speaker today, we need to understand, as fully as possible, the historical origins of the assumptions and beliefs upon which it rests. 

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Prof. Dr. Stefanie Hackert, Institut für Englische Philologie, Ludwig-Maximilian-Universität München