The fallacy of nativeness

Prensky’s (2001) dichotomy of Digital Natives and Immigrants suggests that those born and nurtured in the digital age have an inherent ability to function within and understand this world. Conversely, those individuals not socialised within this world from a young age are never able to achieve complete proficiency in their access to and skill with digital technology. The Natives/Immigrants conceptualisation draws on many metaphors from language learning and linguistics. Primarily, an assumption that ‘immigrants’ never obtain the skills required to pass as ‘natives’. In this blog, I argue that not only the Digital Natives/Immigrants concept is in itself inherently flawed, but that the underlying metaphor is equally flawed. I further aim to illuminate how dichotomies relating to nativeness are not representative of contemporary social life, they reproduce inequalities, and that they are ultimately best replaced with more suitable models.

Much contemporary work in the field of applied- and socio-linguistics has shunned the term ‘native-speaker’, which is grounded in several decades of the concept being critiqued from many angles. Despite this, Rampton (1990) showed that the term was as popular as ever and that scholarly work up to that point had not managed to reduce the ‘mystical’ properties of the ‘native-speaker’. Llurda (2009) showed that not much had changed twenty years later, and my own observation from the present is that the ‘native-speaker’ and ‘native-speakerism’ is as prevalent as ever in popular discourse.

The underlying critiques of the ‘native-speaker’ are multiple. ‘Native-speakers’ are presumed to have some kind of innate ‘mastery’ over a language, but in reality, variation within ‘native-speakers’ is great. Some ‘native-speakers’ are illiterate, while others are highly educated; some ‘native-speakers’ have an enormous mental lexicon, while others get by with something rather smaller (Dewaele, 2018). Also to be considered is that self-identified ‘native-speakers’ are not always viewed as ‘native-speakers’ by others (Abrahamsson & Hyltenstam, 2008). Much of this relates to social and regional variation within the same language.

Language is, in my view, better considered in terms of ‘repertoires’. Linguistic repertoires are sets of semiotic resources which a person is able to draw upon within an interaction. I was raised in Britain, and therefore would be a ‘native-speaker’ of English, but my repertoire in English is not all encompassing. I do not know the technical language one may use when describing something in a chemistry department, even though you may call that English. Equally, I do not know the language of baseball, nor the colloquial youth language used in many cities, nor the language used between air-traffic controllers. I cannot meaningfully participate in discussions within those environments because I do not possess that linguistic repertoire. Many of those who do indeed possess such a repertoire are in fact not ‘native-speakers’, yet are considerably more adept than I am at participating in such interactions.

The ideology that ‘natives’ are inherently better than ‘immigrants’ is a dangerous conceptualisation that reproduces inequalities within society. If one can never go from ‘immigrant’ to ‘native’ then what is the point of even trying if you will be considered inferior anyway? Something which is acquired without effort (i.e. a ‘native’ accent) should not be considered ultimately superior to something attained with effort (i.e. ‘non-native’ linguistic abilities). This line of thinking can be extrapolated to the Digital Natives/Immigrants dichotomy. If you are already a Digital Native then surely you do not need to attempt to improve your digital literacies? While, if you are a Digital Immigrant, no amount of effort will lead to you passing as a Digital Native.

My own experience with teaching people of various ages indicates that those born into the digital world are not inherently capable of understanding or using digital tools, while equally, many who grew up in the pre-digital age are rather competent in a diverse repertoire of digital literacies. This would then suggest that the Digital Natives/Immigrants dichotomy does not hold true. It is probable that on average, the students I have in their early 20s are more likely to be highly competent in certain forms of social media, as well as in using digital technology to assist with their everyday lives than those who are much older. Using White and Le Cornu’s (2011) conceptualisation, these younger individuals would be ‘resident’ within these digital literacies, while the older individuals would generally be ‘visitors’. However, these literacies are not the same literacies which we draw upon in the academic domain. Proficiency with Snapchat does not confer proficiency in searching academic databases. Proficiency with GoogleMaps does not confer a knowledge of Canvas. Proficiency in writing quick chat messages does not confer the ability to write extensive academic texts. Digital literacies in this sense are better plotted on a scale from personal to academic, as suggested by White (2014).

Ultimately, I see the Digital Natives/Immigrants dichotomy as being unrepresentative of contemporary digital society. Instead the scale of Resident – Visitor proposed by White and Le Cornu would seem to present us with a more accurate view. Equally, the additional plotting of a scale from Personal – Institutional allows for a multidimensional perspective on digital literacies when considering teaching and learning in the modern world.

References

Abrahamsson, N., & Hyltenstam K. (2008). The robustness of aptitude effects in near-native second language acquisition. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 30. https://doi.org/10.1017/S027226310808073X

Dewaele, J. M. (2018) Why the dichotomy ‘L1 versus LX user’ is better than ‘native versus non-native speaker’. Applied Linguistics, 39(2). https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/amw055

Llurda, E. (2009). The decline and fall of the native speaker teacher, in Cook V. and Wei Li (eds.), Language Teaching and Learning.

Prensky, M. (2001). Digital natives, digital immigrants. On the Horizon 9(5).

Rampton B. (1990). Displacing the ‘native speaker’: Expertise, affiliation, and inheritance. ELT Journal, 44.

White, D. S. (2014). Visitors and residents. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kO569eknM6U

White, D. S., & Le Cornu, A. (2011). Visitors and Residents: A new typology for online engagement. First Monday, 16.
https://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/download/3171/3049