ELF research can liberate the Japanese from native-speakerism

Abstract

Professor Kumiko Murata and her colleagues have brought ELF research to ELT in Japan. Yet it is not easy to remove from the Japanese minds native-speakerism, the residue of the awe and adoration they felt to the advanced Western civilization when Japan opened doors to the world 150 years ago. The mindset is still extant while Japan has grown into the third economic world power. ELF research can help liberate the Japanese from this native-speakerism by informing that more than 80% of English users worldwide are “non-native speakers”, that the interactions occur in the multi-linguacultural settings, and that “non-native speakers” can contribute more to regularizing and generalizing English towards more efficient means of communication than native speakers who are not necessarily aware of how the language works. Japanese should use their own grammatically acceptable and communicatively efficient form of English, making use of their linguacultural repertoire rather than being copycats of native speakers.