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dealing with language ability . Most researchers they continue, rely on the
assumption that there is a common understanding of what a native speaker is (2001:
275). Precisely, there is their problem. The assumption Escudero and Sharwood
Smith seem to be making is that we already know what is meant by core features of
native speaker. But we don t. No doubt what they are proposing is reaching towards
some consensus as to what the criteria for the core might be. But native speakers are
not birds we could offer the headline: Words Not Birds. The term native speaker is
used in different ways which may in part explain why definition is difficult.
4 MAGNITUDE ESTIMATION
A way round the definition problem may be to acknowledge that we can at least agree
on who is a non-native speaker (NNS). This in essence is the approach Sorace takes
in the experiments she has reported in a number of papers (Sorace 2003). What
she does is to study advanced NNS (whom she terms near-natives) judgements of
grammatical acceptability using magnitude estimation. This methodology, which
she has pioneered with colleagues and students for interlanguage grammars, is a
highly sensitive and reliable technique for the measurement of change and therefore
for establishing stages in the development of an interlanguage grammar. Her
conclusion, based on experiments with a number of languages, is that even learners
who are capable of native-like performance often have knowledge representations
that differ systematically from those of native speakers (Sorace and Robertson 2001:
267). In other words, there is an absolute distinction between NSs and NNSs, a gap
that can never be bridged (but see Birdsong 2004). Although I have suggested that
Sorace s approach is unlike that proposed by Escudero and Sharwood-Smith, in
fact they are not so different. Sorace s magnitude estimations are not a world away
from prototypes; and although her study is of near-natives, she needs for all her
experimental studies to obtain comparative judgements also for native speakers. She
uses students drawn from secondary schools and universities. Now what Sorace,
unlike Escudero and Sharwood-Smith, does is to take for granted that we know
what/who a native speaker is. Does she therefore avoid the failure to define which
Escudero and Sharwood-Smith grapple with? I think not: in the first place, her NNS
studies provide results not unlike prototypes and in the second place her choice of
educated NS subjects biases her claims for the knowledge representations of NSs.
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The applied linguistics challenge 153
5 BARTH ON BOUNDARIES
Let me turn now to a very different approach to categorisation: the anthropological.
Frederik Barth, discussing ethnic groups and boundaries, argues that:
Socially relevant factors alone become diagnostic for membership not the overt
objective differences which are generated by other factors. It makes no difference
how dissimilar members may be in their overt behaviour if they say they are A,
in contrast to another cognate category B, they are willing to be treated and let
their own behaviour be interpreted as A s and not as B s; in other words, they
describe their allegiance to the shared culture of A s.
(Barth 1969: 15)
This, claims Barth, follows from what he regards as the primary criterion of
ethnicity: self-ascription: ethnic groups are categories of ascription and identi-
fication by the actors themselves, and thus have the characteristics of organizing
interaction between peoples (ibid: 10).
No doubt this explains why public statements such as the following on a
university notice-board are thought to be acceptable: Native Speakers of English
wanted for an experiment in the Speech Laboratory. 5 fee offered. Self-ascription
then wins you 5. What Barth is saying is that social categories are defined by their
boundaries, not by what they contain: socially relevant features alone become
diagnostic for membership, not the overt objective differences which are generated
by other factors (ibid: 15). No prototype gradation here, then, no criteria to
differentiate core and periphery membership. Now from a social point of view, such
a challenge to our concern with the native speaker deserves close attention. After all,
social membership, membership of groups is accepted, taken for granted. There are
exceptions, but in general, boundaries are maintained and the assumed norms within
them followed, national, gender and (less often perhaps) religious.
We take it for granted that we belong to communities within those boundaries,
communities of whose members we have very little personal knowledge or contact.
They are indeed, as Anderson (1991) remarked of the nation, an imagined
community . Can the same be said of the native speaker? When we say we are native
speakers of X what exactly do we mean, other than our acceptance of a particular
community membership? As Escudero and Sharwood-Smith ruefully remark, we are
quite uncertain as to what we mean: we gloss over a definition, assuming that we
know that we are all talking about the same thing. When Sorace investigates her
near-natives it is noticeable that the NSs she uses as her controls are all educated and
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