ELTWeekly Vol. 5 Issue#42 | December 16, 2013 | ISSN 0975-3036
After problematizing the authority of the native speaker in second language acquisition research, applied linguists are now questioning the very notion of standard national language as an appropriate object of study (Canagarajah 2007, Cenoz & Gorter 2010). More important than learning the elements of one whole symbolic system, they argue, is the necessity of learning to move between languages and to understand and negotiate the multiple varieties of codes, modes, genres, registers and discourses that students will encounter in the real world. It is also necessary to take advantage of the increasingly multilingual composition of language classes and to draw on the students’ multilingual competences, even if they are learning one language. Moving between languages, however, not only requires a symbolic competence that still needs to be operationalized in the traditionally monolingual communicative language classroom (Kramsch 2008), but it raises questions about the authenticity and the legitimacy of the multilingual speaker. Ilan Stavans was brutal about it: “Language makes us able to fit into a context. And what is there to be found in the interstices between contexts? Not silence — oh, no. Something far less compelling: pure kitsch.” (Stavans 2001:250). To what extent do L2 learners have to be concerned about kitsch, inauthenticity, and imposture in our late modern era or have these notions become irrelevant now that “the native speaker is dead”?
After surveying current conceptions of multilingualism in applied linguistics, this paper will explore the new faces of authenticity and legitimacy, and ultimately trust in the use of language in multilingual contexts.