Political Correctness Comes to ESL

Like many other branches of the humanities and social sciences, ESL –teaching English as a Second Language—has fallen into the hands of people who are rather more interested in politics than academics. I was sad to learn, at the latest conference of TESOL Arabia, that TESOL International has decided to ban any job ads from its publications that call for “native speakers of English.” This, apparently, is racist.

I am especially sad about this, because I may have had something to do with it.

It turns out that the article which has prompted this was written by my ex-wife: N. Amin (1997). Race and identity of the nonnative ESL teacher. TESOL Quarterly, 31, 580-583. In it, she relates all the difficulty and suffering she has experienced as an ESL teacher because her accent is considered non-standard—she was born and educated in India/Pakistan.

It is, I hope, not to ungentlemanly to mention that, to my own knowledge, her ethnicity has only been to her advantage while she was in Canada. Though she came from a wealthy background, she never met an affirmative action program that did not like her. And Ontario’s Welcome House, where she used to work, actually had a policy of hiring recent immigrants to teach other recent immigrants English. It was her ethnicity that got her work, not the other way around.

Perhaps the only hardship she ever encountered in this regard, frankly, was from me. I told her I thought she really should not be teaching ESL in Canada, because her accent was not a standard Canadian accent.

So I guess I personally am the systemic discrimination it is now necessary to root out of the field of ESL.

Certainly it is true that many ads around the world do call for “native English speakers.” And many campuses around the world pay a premium to get them. The question is, do they have a legitimate reason for wanting this, or is this racism?

It seems to me it is something a bit more like common sense. Anyone seeking to learn a new language ought also to target the dialect of that language that will be most intelligible to the other English speakers with whom he hopes to converse.

In Canada, that means Standard Canadian English. In most cases worldwide, that means either Standard American, or British RP. This is because the influence of movies, TV, radio, and popular music has made these the two more intelligible forms of English pronunciation worldwide.

Were sheer general intelligibility the only factor, Standard American English would be the clear leader, thanks to Hollywood, CNN, et al. But this introduces a second factor: prestige. Whether we think it right or wrong, nevertheless it is so that certain dialects have greater prestige, suggest greater education and higher social class to most listeners. This is of value to our learners. Therefore they have every right, as a practical matter, to desire to acquire such accents. Therefore we have every duty, if we care about the students, to teach them. In Canada, Standard Canadian English suggests you are well educated, and so confers greater prestige.

In addition to these considerations, linguists have clearly established, just in case it was not already obvious, that those who are less fluent in English—ESL students, say--are more easily thrown by variations from the “standard” pronunciation than those who are fluent. So if a teacher varies from the Standard Canadian accent they are hearing on TV and radio or from their boss at work, it is going to increase their burden in learning English exponentially.

It is therefore important for an ESL teacher, in order to be effective, to have or be able to imitate as closely as possible the standard dialect. It is an important job qualification.

As it happens, my second wife is also not a native speaker of English. I can testify to her constant complaints over those who speak “slang” English to her. English is her third language; though her own English is heavily “accented,” that is, at variance to the American or British standard, she cannot comfortably tolerate a similar level of variance in others.

But political correctness seems to demand that the best interests of recent immigrants –at least poor recent immigrants-- need to be sacrificed. As usual with political correctness and “affirmative action,” it takes from the poor and gives to the rich.