"You Don't Look Like a Professor": An Autoethnographic Study of how Racial Identity, Legitimacy and Language Intersect at a Canadian Higher Education Writing Centre

With the rapid spread of English as a lingua franca, the number of non-native English teachers far exceeds that of native English-speaking teachers worldwide. In recent years, there has been considerable debate on what characteristics represent the ideal English speaker qua language teacher, mostly revolving around the notion of the native speaker. English, with a colonial history and as an imperial legacy, has created the native speaker-non-native speaker dichotomy, a hegemonic construct that assumes a monocultural and monolingual lens as a frame of reference. It has thus become challenging for non-native English-speaking teachers to teach English and questions of identity and legitimacy of non-native English-speaking teachers and their students have become central to these debates. This dissertation contributes to this broader discussion through an autobiographic ethnography of the challenges confronting a non-native English-speaking instructor at a Canadian higher education Writing Center. My experience, examined through the prism of a case study, highlighted the intersections of power, race, and ideology as they relate to issues of identity and legitimacy of non-native English-speaking teachers. To illuminate my research problem, I employed two conceptual frameworks -- Critical Race Theory and Bourdieus concepts of cultural capital and legitimate language. My methodology employs various approaches, including reflective journal entries on my teaching experience at the Writing Center, autobiographic interviews with my six native and non-native English-speaking students, and field notes of my six respondents about their perceptions of me as their non-native English instructor.
My findings reveal that questions of identity and legitimacy of non-native English-teachers are complex and dependent on the power, race, and ideology of both the students and the instructors. My students demonstrated initial resistance in accepting my identity as a non-native English-speaking teacher and also questioned my legitimacy and knowledge; however, their perceptions about me also evolved over time, eventually shifting to appreciation and acceptance. My findings also uncovered the limited exposure students have to non-native English-speaking instructors and to diverse teachers, thus raising fundamental questions about the role of universities in challenging racism and implementing ethical internationalization to tackle global hierarchy and hegemony.