Fighting Back Against the Reveal: Spanish Teachers Perform Nonnative Speakerness in View of School Administrators

• In Event: Second Language Research SIG Business Meeting

Abstract

This paper focuses on tensions nine non-native teachers of Spanish in grades 6-16 in Georgia (US) public schools confronted while performing their second language identities in the presence of school administrators. In performance-based focus groups (PBFGs) influenced by Brazilian director and activist Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed, participants created and performed scenes based on their own experiences in which they believed their school administrators expected the teachers to act like native speakers, that is, to have the linguistic and cultural knowledge of the ideal native speaker. Boal’s theatrical techniques allowed participants to act out alternative strategies to combat feelings of inadequacy and insecurity upon being negatively revealed and subjected as non-native speakers. While their status as non-native speakers in a field where the figure of the native speaker is foundational was viewed as oppressive, participants called on other privileged identities to reassert their authority as Spanish speakers and teachers and to safeguard their professional reputations and their second language identities.

Author

• Jennifer Wooten, University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill