Despite its imprecision, the native–nonnative dichotomy has become the dominant paradigm for examining language teacher identity development. The nonnative English speaking teacher (NNEST) movement in particular has considered the impact of deficit framings of nonnativeness on “NNEST” preservice teachers. Although these efforts have contributed significantly towards increasing awareness of NNEST‐hood, they also risk reifying the notion that nativeness and nonnativeness are objectively distinct categories. This article adopts a poststructuralist lens to reconceptualize native and nonnative speakers as complex, negotiated social subjectivities that emerge through a discursive process that the author terms (non)native speakering. It then applies this dynamic framework to analyze “narrative portraits” of four different archetypical language teachers, two of whom seem to fit neatly into (non)native speakerist frames of language and culture and two of whom deviate from them. It then reflects on how these preservice teachers negotiate, re‐create, and resist the produced (non)native speaker subjectivities, and considers the complexity, fluidity, and heterogeneity within each archetype. In the conclusion, the author consider implications of (non)native speakering as a theoretical and analytical frame, as well as possible applications of the data for teacher education.

The "NNEST Movement" has been instrumental in documenting the privilege of native speakers, the marginalization of their nonnative counterparts, and the factors that may influence an individual falling into one category or another. More recently, scholars have adopted a poststructuralist orientation toward language and identity that resists dichotomized framings of language and language users. This article extends the poststructuralist orientation to consider how and why such abstract idealizations of native and nonnative speakers-what I term (non)native speakered subjectivities-emerged historically and are continuously reified and (re)produced through everyday discourse. Throughout this discussion, I weave illustrative examples from a participant in a semester-long ethnographic study that took place in a graduate teacher education program. In the conclusion, I consider implications for future theorizations of (non)native speakering as well as possibilities for increasing equity in the field of ELT.

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