© The Author 2007. Published by Oxford University Press; all rights reserved.
Response to ‘ELT and "the spirit of the times"’
Adrian Holliday is Professor of Applied Linguistics at Canterbury Christ Church University. He supervises doctoral research in the critical sociology of ELT and has published in the areas of intercultural communication and qualitative research methodology. He was a British Council teacher in Iran in the 1970s and a university curriculum developer in Egypt and Syria in the 1980s
Email: adrian.holiday{at}canterbury.ac.uk
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Abstract |
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It is important to distinguish superficial political correctness from the need to address destructive phenomena such as cultural chauvinism directed at ‘non-native speakers’. Because of the deep-rooted and often hidden nature of this chauvinism, evidence for its existence is not straightforward, but derives from a broad range of interconnected data. This evidence is supported by sociological facts concerning the ideological nature of professions and the position of ELT within an unequally structured postcolonial world. At the same time, the assertion that much of our practice is chauvinistic is not an attempt to disqualify it, but to bring greater awareness to its practice and the discourses which underpin it. Ironically, the hegemonic political correctness which Waters critiques may be more deeply rooted in English-speaking Western ELT's established desire to ‘liberate’ ‘non-native speakers’ who do not need liberating, than in acting against chauvinistic attitudes towards them.