Events
What it means to be a 'speaker'
Maya Abtahian
University of Rochester
Tuesday, November 18, 2025
12:30 p.m.–2 p.m.
Humanities Center, Conference Room D
In this talk I will consider what it means to be a speaker (native speaker, heritage speaker, authentic speaker), in the context of language shift scenarios. While the notion of the ‘native speaker’ has been critiqued on many fronts (Davies 2003), not least for perpetuating essentialist ideologies over linguistic reality (Kutlu et al 2025), definitions of speakerhood based on competence and proficiency are central to how individuals define the process of language shift for themselves as well as how researchers define the process (e.g in terms of either communities or individuals becoming less proficient in a particular language and more proficient in another). These definitions depend both on ideologies of what it means to be a speaker as well as external assessments of proficiency. Thus the concept of speakerhood is central to an ecological perspective on language shift, and to understanding the intersecting roles of speakers and communities in the process of shift. Moreover, if we take as axiomatic that the concept of a speech community rests on the details of the equation between speakers’ shared linguistic knowledge and social membership (Patrick 2004: 576), then it makes sense that we should build into our models accurate analyses of that linguistic knowledge, which includes both etic and emic measures of speakerhood. I draw on work in different types of communities undergoing shift in Belize, Indonesia, and the United States to address questions of competence, proficiency, and identity in a range of types of linguistic ecologies, building from a core belief that bringing speaker ideologies into our descriptions of their language use in a systematic way helps us understand how language is used and changes.