The linguistic classification of English speakers from outer-circle countries, such as India, Malaysia, and Singapore, is often ambiguous because the Englishes they speak are considered different from interlanguages yet are not considered native varieties. This study investigates whether outer-circle speakers can be viewed as equivalent to speakers of mother-tongue varieties in terms of their ownership of English (Norton, 1997), that is, the degree to which they project themselves as legitimate speakers with authority over the language. An Acceptability Judgment Task was used to elicit and record talk among pairs from inner-and outer-circle countries while they judged 24 sentences. Drawing upon Zimmerman's (1998) concepts of discourse identities and situated identities, Goffman's (1981) concept of footing, and Scollon's (1998) distinctions among the receptor roles, the analysis demonstrates the linguistic cues that indexed expressions of ownership through (a) references to the speakers' own English usage, (b) human subject pronouns, and (c) the modal can. The results reveal variation in degrees of ownership among both groups, but similarities across outer-and inner-circle groups.T he act of labeling speakers as belonging to the categories native speaker (NS) and nonnative speaker (NNS) implicitly underlies much of what TESOL professionals do. Rather than treating these as subjective categories, researchers have often applied them uncritically to the study of TESOL and English language learning despite concerns raised by researchers investigating phenomena associated with World Englishes. This study reports the results of research investigating the concept of ownership that derives from Norton's (1997) theoretical stance
In postcolonial 2 contexts such as Tanzania, there is great potential for language mixing to illuminate the current symbolic value of English and Swahili. Tanzania provides a particularly interesting case because of drastic changes in official policy and in public attitudes toward English and the West in the past 30 years. Since gaining independence from Britain in 1961, Tanzania has shifted from socialism, economic autonomy, and what can be broadly characterized as an antiEnglish language policy to capitalism, economic liberalization, and institutionalized Swahili-English bilingualism (Blommaert 1999:93-98). These economic, political, and linguistic shifts have significantly altered the sociopolitical context in which language mixing is produced and interpreted.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.