English nativeness and non-nativeness: the attitudes of Italian students and PhD candidates

With so-called ‘non-native’ speakers (NNES) having long surpassed in number ‘native’ speakers (NES), English has become the global lingua franca in many fields, from business and education to the Internet and social media. According to the Global Englishes framework, this should provide “a form of linguistic parity”, placing “everyone on the same footing” (Modiano, 2024); in other words, NNES are not to be considered inferior to NES, or ‘failed’ native speakers (see Boonsuk et al., 2021). Nevertheless, it appears that the notion that the English language ‘belongs’ to Inner Circle-born people is deeply rooted in NNES’s minds, especially in the Italian context (Bagni, 2022). This study had the goal of observing the attitudes held by Italians towards ‘native’ and ‘nonnative’ English, and in particular towards English spoken with their own Italian accent. University students and PhD candidates participated in semi-structured interviews, which were then analysed with the Grounded Theory Method (Glaser and Strauss 1967/1999) to observe the recurring themes emerging from the narratives, and later enriched by observing the subjects' changing self-positioning, according to Harré’s Positioning Theory (Harré & van Langenhove, 1999). The participants displayed positive attitudes towards NES, who were seen as the only representatives of the ‘real use’ of the language, and the best-suited to teach it. More nuanced, but ultimately mostly negative attitudes were displayed towards NNES and Italian speakers, whose marked national accent was taken to represent lack of skills. Interestingly, the respondents were often unable to separate nativeness from proficiency, e.g. equating a native-like accent to fluency. The prestige attributed to nativeness not only causes the respondents to feel inadequate and anxious when having to speak English, but might also shifts the focus away from communication skills, which are arguably more useful in preparing learners to interact with others (mostly NNES) in the real world.