The effect of racialization on EFL learners’ conceptualizations of the native speaker construct

This study draws upon Flores and Rosa’s (2015) raciolinguistic ideologies to investigate the extent to which racialization shapes EFL learners’ conceptualizations of the native speaker construct through an experimental design. Three hundred and fourteen university students studying at English-medium universities in Turkey were invited to take an online matched guise test. They were assigned to either the control group or the experimental group randomly. The participants in the control group were presented with photos of women in their late 20s, accompanied by 30-second speech samples recorded by White, Midwestern American women. In the experimental group, the same speech samples were accompanied by photos of similarly-aged women from racially minoritized backgrounds. Two of them were Black, two East Asian, and two South Asian. The participants were asked to respond to 14 statements about each speaker on a five-point Likert scale. The statements were created based on the various qualities commonly referred to in the literature when defining native English speakers. They referred to both linguistic factors such as fluency, intelligibility, age of language acquisition, intuitions about grammar, etc., and non-linguistic factors such as citizenship of an Anglophone country, birthplace, etc. The results revealed that the participants rated the speakers in the control group (White speakers) as significantly more “native” than the speakers of color. This study contributes to the TESOL literature by providing empirical evidence of the racialized nature of the term ‘native English speaker.’U of I OnlyAuthor requested U of Illinois access only (OA after 2yrs) in Vireo ETD syste