Linguistic whitening in english as a foreign language teachers' practices in a private and a public university in Bogotá

Abstract

Native-speakerism is an issue evidenced in “many different areas of professional life, from employment policy to the presentation of language” (Holliday, 2009 cited in Lowe, 2020), which is also seen in the English as a Foreign Language (EFL) field. As a consequence of this issue, non-native English-speaking Teachers (NNEST) may accommodate the way they speak the language to change how they are perceived, recurring in what in this study is described as linguistic whitening. Researchers aimed to identify the English teachers’ practices that might evidence linguistic whitening. For doing so, a qualitative research method was used, alongside interviews and observations that took place at a private and a public university in Bogotá, where five in-service English teachers participated. Findings indicate that linguistic whitening is reflected in both university teachers’ practices, which respond to conceptions related to the native-speaker fallacy.