Linguicism in U.S. Higher Education: A Critical Autoethnography

Abstract

This critical autoethnography discusses the emotional and cognitive dissonance encountered by the author, an international faculty member, during her professional journey at a large public research university in the United States. Despite being recognized for her scholarship as a promising researcher in the field of TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages), she has still encountered covert linguicism (Skutnabb-Kangas, 2012), a phenomenon ubiquitous in the English-dominant higher education context. This chapter discusses the ways in which the linguistic discrimination has shaped the author’s professional identity and how she exerts her agency as a teacher educator-researcher through critical reflexivity to promote legitimacy and self-efficacy in her professional community. By unpacking and problematizing the dominant discourse, such as native speakerism (Holliday, 2015), in English language teaching, this study aims to provide a nuanced understanding of the lived experience of a bilingual faculty member in a teacher education program in the United States.