Event

Title: Imagining and creating a Linguistics without "nativeness".

Abstract:  What's a "native speaker/signer"? We know that language users and linguists-as-language-users have sometimes strong intuitions about who counts and who doesn't (D'Onofrio 2019, Faez 2011, Ramjattan 2019). However, when we dig into these ideologies and their origins, problematic and often contradictory assumptions surface (Hackert 2012, Bonfiglio 2010, Dewaele et al. 2021, Grammon & Babel forthcoming). This talk considers a linguistics which does not center the concept of "nativeness". What will we gain? What might we lose? What are challenges which might arise, and how can we move past them? This talk brings together some recent -- highly collaborative -- work on this topic to argue that theory and practice within linguistics is better when we don't center the "native speaker/signer" construct (Cheng & Namboodiripad in prep., Upreti & Namboodiripad in prep., Namboodiripad, Kutlu, et al. under revision, Birkeland et al. under revision, Gibson et al. 2024, Cheng et al. 2022, Namboodiripad & Henner 2022, Cheng et al. 2021). I also discuss work with the Role Collective (https://rolecollective.github.io/) where we are working toward more accurate and just characterizations of language experience in academia and beyond.