Breaking the Chain of the Nativist/Owner Metaphor in World Englishes

Since the inception of Kachru’s (1976) “three circles” model of World Englishes, the field has struggled with the relation between British and American Englishes and second and third circle innovations such as Hinglish, Singlish, Japlish, etc . Despite efforts from many scholars to approach all Englishes as relatively equal, “native speaker/standard” forms of British and American English continue to be the benchmarks of proficiency, and standard English competency an avenue to economic and political advantage, a situation Phillipson (1992) labels “linguistic imperialism.” Challenging this imperialistic dichotomy is necessary if we are to find ways to “decolonize” (Bhatt, 2001, p. 544) the study, teaching, and perception of World Englishes. This article uniquely applies Conceptual Metaphorical Analysis of the native speaker/owner metaphor that sustains this situation, interpreting it through what Lakoff and Johnson (1980) refer to as metaphorical “entailments” ( Metaphors we live by, p. 9), associations that enable the dominant metaphor. This article illustrates how we can break this chain of entailments by displacing the fictional standard of the native speaker, deconstructing the notion that English as an object one can own, and exposing the mistaken belief that there is or ever has been such a thing as “standard English.” The final section offers some alternatives to the native speaker/ owner metaphor that open the possibility that English belongs to both no one and everyone.


Introduction
The study of World Englishes began in earnest with B.B. Kachru's (1976) article "Models of English for the third world: white man's linguistic burden or language pragmatics?" published in TESOL Quarterly. A glimpse at the title alone indicates metaphorical battle lines had been drawn. English had become a global phenomenon because of territorial expansion by the British Empire, as well as the later expansion of and influence of the US. By 1976, British English was no longer just the province of elite members of various post-colonial peoples. US economic and media influence also expanded the use of so-called American English. Various unique forms of English, from pidgins to full creoles, had developed in countries formally under British rule or American influence. Many colonized countries had no universal language of their own, so many adopted English as a lingua franca when they won independence. Kachru prophetically anticipated a global tension between what Phillipson would later term "linguistic imperialism" and the "pragmatic" and positive potentialities in English as an international lingua franca.
Historically, in the British Empire, English served as a bridge language between privileged members of colonial peoples, identified for that privilege by the ruling forces for political and practical reasons. English became a language of power and access, and began to move through what Kachru conceptualized as three circles of influence. The first, "inner" circle, are areas where English was and is the primary and dominant language, such as the US, Australia, and Great Britain. The "outer circle" refers mostly to areas colonized by English speaking peoples, such as Nigeria, India, and Singapore. As a result of the rise of English as a language of access and influence, English moved into a third circle, the "expanding" circle (Kachru 1985, p. 12). Many other countries, such as China, Japan, and Brazil, as well as many nations in Europe, adopted English as part of the educational practices and as a lingua franca. In each of these environments, unique versions of English began to develop. The era of "Englishes" had begun, and with it a battle over the nature of English framed, mostly in a native speaker/owner metaphor.
Despite efforts from many scholars to approach all Englishes as equal, "standard" forms of British and American English continue to be the benchmarks of proficiency, and competency in them seen an avenue to economic and political advantage, a situation Phillipson labels "linguistic imperialism." Challenging this imperialistic dichotomy is necessary if we are to find ways to "decolonize" (Bhatt, 2001, p. 544) the study, teaching, and perception of World Englishes.
In order to do so, this article describes a dominant nativist/ownership metaphorical entailment that sustains "linguistic imperialism," as well as its impact on how most of us understand and talk about World Englishes. It then discusses how proponents of World Englishes could re-frame our understanding of English outside that metaphorical framework. At issue in this article is the fact that though they interpret the role and nature of English in polar opposite perspectives, both those who maintain the necessity and reality of "native" and "standard" Englishes, and those who support alternate perspectives, may not be able to fully articulate Englishes outside the a nativist/owner territorial metaphor proven to be a barrier to learners of English, to progress in our thinking about Englishes, and to progress in our understanding and acceptance of language innovations.
For instance, as Kachru (1983) notes, in terms of language learning, we often distinguish between a mistake/error and a deviation/feature. While he suggests framing those terms within the context, within the "'un-English' linguistic and cultural setting in which the English language is used" (p. 159), even the most well-meaning of scholars continue to resort to British or American, i.e. "native" standards to define the differences. As Saracini (2015) vividly remarks, many "imagine" that British and American people remain the "sole judges of the 'distortions' produced by hundreds of millions of speakers of English around the world" (p. 96).
This article offers that English has never been, and should never be, seen as the property of anyone. Neither its history nor its constitution support this idea. After challenging the basis for the native speaker owner metaphor. It features a few alternate framings based in a shift from perceiving language as "standardized system" to a "social and cultural practice" (Kramsch 1997). One such alternative is Englishes as a "continuum" similar to those used for levels of dialect (Mufwene, 1994(Mufwene, , 1997Platt,1975;Platt & Weber,1980;Platt et al.,1984) or levels of intelligibility (Nelson, 1984(Nelson, , 1995, Smith & Nelson (1985), and Smith (1992). Another is Saracini's (2015) concept of English as analogous to "open-source" software (p. 66). These two summary metaphors at least exemplify how changing the metaphor can change our perception of Englishes productively. They depict English as something in constant flux and available for use, not as something any person or nation can own. Through such metaphors we may be able to escape antiquated notions of the primacy of native speakers and standardized dialects to open new possibilities for the study, use, and teaching of English worldwide.
the native-nonnative paradigm and its implicational exclusivity of ownership is not only linguistically unsound and pedagogically irrelevant but also politically pernicious, as at best it is linguistic elitism and at worst it is an instrument of linguistic imperialism. English is being learned and used by millions of people in many parts of the world with no intention or opportunity in their lives of ever directly communicating with a so-called native speaker, and this fact alone shouldn't make their code in any way inferior. (paragraph 14) So why has the idea of the native speaker remained an issue in World Englishes? As the remarks from Davies (2017) above exemplify, the basic argument for the native speaker model is based in the need for "standards" by which we can measure English language "competency." As he notes, "The native speaker is necessary … international communication requires English, which in turn means very large scale programmes in the teaching and learning of English as a foreign language" (EFL) (p. 186). Stern (1983) finds that "The native speaker's 'competence' or 'proficiency' or 'knowledge of the language' is a necessary point of reference for the second language proficiency concept used in language teaching" (p. 341). Harmer (1991) believes that non-native speakers "need to get an idea of how the new language is used by native speakers" (p. 57). This dichotomy advances, however, the idea that "language learners" are defined "in terms of what they are not, at least not yet" (Kramsch, 1998, qtd in Cook, 1999). In addition, as Cook (1999) remarks, "one might add, not ever" to Kramsch's statement. Cook (1999), offers logical reasons why the very notion of the native speaker makes little sense: · "Native speakers are not necessarily aware of their knowledge in a formal sense." · "Many native speakers are unaware how their speech differs from the status form." · "Many native speakers are far from fluent in speech." · "Only native speakers who have an L2-and not necessarily all of them-possess the ability to interpret from one language to another." · "Native speakers … are free to disassociate themselves completely from their L1 community politically or socially" … "without giving up their native speaker status." (Adapted from Cook, 1999, p. 186) How could native speakers in any way provide a consistent standard?  speaks vividly to Cook's third point: "There are individual, social, and regional differences in English used at any given time and place, but these affect the so-called native speaker and the foreign learner alike. The errors made by the latter with reference to a particular variety of English cannot be shown to be different in kind from the errors made by the typical ill-educated, native-speaking freshman using the same variety of the language" (p. 392).
To avoid the native/non-native binary, scholars such as Davies (1996) and Rampton (1990) focus on the qualities of proficiency and expertise rather than whether or not one was born in a certain place. Davies (2017), however, as noted above, clings to the notion of at least an idealized native speaker: "the native speaker in its idealized representation as a prestige variety is needed as model and goal " (p. 190). He finds that the motives for "attacks" on the idea of the native speaker, "are almost all against the native speaker of English, which suggests that the issue is more political than linguistic, postcolonial, even racist in a world currently dominated by the necessity of English" (p. 185-6). However, other colonialist languages like Dutch and French have waned as dominant tongues, while English continues to influence, dominate, and obliterate other languages world-wide. It seems to be the only language presently capable of "linguistic imperialism" in a broad sense (though the enforced learning and use of Mandarin Chinese in China may be a close second). His association of the native speaker with "prestige" forms of language is also problematic.
In some ways, this throws us back to where we started. How do we define proficiency and expertise without the native speaker model? Though scholars like Kachru and Saracini suggest we look at the issue systematically, such as judging Hinglish by Hinglish standards, that practice has not caught on in much of the scholarly work, and especially in ESL, EFL, and other disciplines.
As Kramsch (1997) observes, the main problem is our conception language a "standardized system" rather than a "social and cultural practice." She continues, "Viewing language as a practice may lead to a discovery of how learners construct for themselves a linguistic and social identity that enables them to resolve the anomalies and contradictions they are likely to encounter when attempting to adopt someone else's language" (p. 360). Cook (2016) admits that because of these critiques and attempts, rather than disappearing from the stage, "second language acquisition researchers' reliance on the native speaker is now more covert." Despite critiques and attempts to replace it, "by and large research still falls back on the L2 user meeting the standard of native speakers: the monolingual perspective is seen in book titles like Incomplete Acquisition in Bilingualism (Montrul, 2008) or papers entitled 'Age of Onset and Nativelikeness in a Second Language' (Abrahamsson & Hyltenstam, 2009)." She vividly adds, "The native speaker is still the ghost in the machine" (p. 187).
Even advocates for change may apply a colonialist/imperialist property metaphor to language use, depicting English and its variations as things one can "own" and "master." For example, Canagarajah (2006a) observes that "to use a language meaningfully is to appropriate it and make its one's own" (p. 597). As he notes also in 2006, in his article "TESOL at Forty: What Are the Issues?", From the us/them perspective of the past (when language norms and professional expertise flowed unilaterally from the center to the periphery as the "native" speakers had the unchallenged authority to spell out orthodoxy for "nonnative" communities) we are moving to a we perspective that is more inclusive" (p. 27). The most effective way to establish this kind of inclusivity, however, is to fully displace the colonialist/imperialist native/owner chain of metaphorical entailments that may undermine the well-intended efforts of scholars to move beyond that mentality. In brief, we need to break the territorial basis for ownership in order to open the door for linguistic ownership, which is not actually about property but rather confidence. This kind of confidence can only some when the native speaker is displaced as the arbiter of language proficiency.
After discussing the displacement of the native speaker/owner metaphor, this article focuses on two alternate metaphors for the study of Englishes, both of which rest on the idea that language is not just about structures and rules, but about social practice, or social semiotics (Halliday, 1978;Kress, & Van Leeuwen, 1996;Kress, & Van Leeuwen, 2001, Randviir, 2004Thibault, 1991;Van Leeuwen, 2005). Language decisions are made according to the kind of activity persons are engaged in, their relationship, and the "role that language plays in it" rather than just "intuitions about grammatical acceptability" (Saracini, 2015, p, 18).
It also relates to Critical Discourse Analysis (Caldas-Coulthard et al., 1996;Fairclough, et al., 2011;Fairclough, 2003;Toolan, 2002;Weiss & Wodak, 2003), which, according to Fairclough et. al (2011) "sees discourse (semiosis) as a form of social practice" (p. 357). The authors continue, "discourse is socially constitutive as well as socially shaped; it constitutes situations, objects of knowledge, and the social identities of and relationships between people and groups of people" (p.358), and "discursive practices have major ideological effects: that is, they can help produce and reproduce unequal power relations" (p. 358).
Set within these perspectives, conceptual metaphors function as aspects of discourse that influence "situations, objects of knowledge, and the social identities" (Fairclough & Wodak, 1997, p. 258) of both native and non-native speakers. These distinctions, of course, have ideological effects that keep Englishes other than British or American locked within secondary status.
This article uniquely offers that one way to approach the problem is to focus on how metaphorical concepts frame the territorial native speaker/owner issue. In this sense, this study aligns with the interests of what is known as "Cultural Linguistics," which Sharifian (2015) describes as "a multidisciplinary field of research that explores how features of human languages and language varieties are entrenched in cultural conceptualisations such as cultural schemas (models), cultural categories, and culturalconceptual metaphors" (p. 515). This study also overlaps with Cognitive Sociolinguistics (Kachru, 1996;Polzenhagen & Wolf, 2017;Polzenhagen, Dirven, & Wolf, 2007;Polzenhagen & Xia, 2015;Wolf & Polzenhagen, 2009), but again the emphasis in these studies thus far has been on metaphors of people outside of Britain or the US or confusion caused by metaphors in translation.
While the focus of Cultural Linguistics and Cognitive Sociolinguistics is usually on culturalconceptual metaphors in "varieties of English," this article focuses on those that apply to English itself and its so-called native speakers. As Sharifian (2015) notes, "world Englishes need to be examined from the perspective of Cultural Linguistics in order for us to gain a better understanding of how English is used by communities of speakers around the world to express their cultural conceptualisations, including their world views" (p. 515). The focus then, of this article is on this dominant language metaphor and world view of English shared by many native and non-native speakers alike, and how it limits, and de-limits, progress in our understanding of the nature of and teaching of English as a world language.
To expose the cultural conceptions behind the native speaker/owner metaphor, this study specifically applies Lakoff and Johnson's theory of conceptual metaphor, what has become known as Conceptual Metaphor Analysis (Charteris-Black, 2004), by applying it to the native speaker/owner metaphor (Radwańska-Williams, 2008), and its entailments. This approach is useful for the study of World Englishes because it focuses directly on metaphors and associations of metaphors, what Lakoff and Johnson (2009) call metaphorical "entailments" (p. 9), exposing the basis for their accompanying logic and ideologies.
This study concludes with an exploration of the implications of two alternate metaphors conducive to the summarized metaphors above --continuum and open-source. The term continuum has a history of expressing vertical relations in the study of World Englishes -from acrolect to basilect (Platt,1975;Platt & Weber,1980;Platt et al., 1984;Mufwene, 1994Mufwene, , 1997 or to identify levels of intelligibility of intelligibility (Nelson, 1984(Nelson, , 1995Smith & Nelson, 1985;Smith,1992). As explored here, a horizontal understanding of both the nature and history of English as a continuum provides an alternate metaphorical framework by which we can describe and inscribe English in more egalitarian terms. Saracini's (2015) "open-source" metaphor seems most productive because it conveys the idea we not only "carry our tasks," though language, but the metaphor entails parallels between language and programming. In open source software, programs are "developed collaboratively by groups of enthusiasts," "publicly made available," and everyone is "encouraged to modify" and customize the code (p. 166).

Methodology
This native speaker/owner metaphor, historically, and often unconsciously, has provided a conceptual basis for our understanding and teaching of English generally, World Englishes specifically. The idea that conceptual metaphors structure not only language but also thinking and being, relates to the pioneering work of Lakoff and Johnson, who, in their book Metaphors We Live By (1980), offer that "metaphor is pervasive in everyday life, not just in language but in thought and action. Our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we both think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature. … Our concepts structure what we perceive, how we get around in the world, and how we relate to other people" (p. 3).
Along with these metaphorical maps or frameworks come a related grouping of concepts, what Lakoff and Johnson call its metaphorical "entailments." For example, as they note, for the "TIME IS MONEY metaphor refers to metaphors of "money," "limited resources," and "valuable commodities." In this way, "metaphorical entailments can characterize a coherent system of metaphorical concepts and a corresponding coherent system of metaphorical expressions for those concepts" (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980, p. 9).
Lakoff and Johnson's theory of conceptual metaphor led to the creation of what is known as Conceptual Metaphor Analysis. In conceptual metaphor analysis, one considers various meanings associated with words used in specific texts or in a language in general, and traces the metaphorical implications of those words. Then one looks for words associated with those metaphors, other connected metaphors or entailments. Then one begins to sift from those entailments and surrounding texts and language the ideologies that sustains those associations. Using Conceptual Metaphor Analysis, we will map metaphors of entailment surrounding the territorial native/owner metaphor in order to displace and replace it.
This approach is useful for the study of World Englishes for three reasons. First, according to Charteris-Black (2004), "analysing metaphors in a corpus [makes] it … possible to understand better the conceptual level of metaphor and how this relates to underlying ideology" (p. 244). Such an approach seems perfectly aligned to the study of metaphor in World Englishes, particularly since the native speaker/owner metaphor is, and has been, thoroughly entrenched in colonialist and imperialist ideologies.
Second, it also is a useful tool for interpreting World Englishes because most of us are unaware, not only of the metaphors we use, but their impact on our perception and activities. As such, metaphors cannot be explained by linguistics alone. For instance, the idea of "native-speaker" linguistically means only a person who uses the language of her or his place of birth. However, in terms of cognitive processes associated with the term in the context of English language learning, it takes on associations with privilege, exclusion, and language domination. As Charteris-Black (2004) observes, "metaphors cannot be classified according to surface linguistic criteria because they are linguistic outcomes of underlying cognitive processes that also need to be represented" (p. 244).
Third, "An awareness of [conceptual metaphor's] motivation in socially influential domains of language use improves our understanding of the ideological basis for metaphor choice" (p.244). "Native speaker" is not a neutral term when used in the contexts of World Englishes.

Findings: Native Speaker/Owner Metaphorical Entailments
In the most careful study of the native speaker metaphor thus far, Radwańska-Williams (2008) makes clear that this perspective is moored in layers of metaphorical associations resistant to change. Specifically, a chain of entailments connects the idea of "native" with birth, birth with language, language with nationality, and nationality with language ownership. This chain of associations then ensures that the native speaker's language becomes THE standard and ensures that the term native continues to be associated with particular territories.
The native/speaker owner metaphorical entailment in the field of World Englishes functions both as a starting point and a flashpoint in the field. According to Radwańska-Williams (2008), in all its permutations, being a native speaker is associated with one's place of birth (p. 147). However, as she continues, "No one is literally born speaking any language, so the phrase 'native speaker'" can be identified as using the word "native" [only] metaphorically." Her discussion makes it clear that metaphorical associations of birthplace with nationality and inheritance work to connect birth with identity, what Lakoff and Johnson call metaphorical entailments: "the ground of the 'native speaker' metaphor is the attribute of birth as a mark of social identity, an identity which includes parentage and nationality" (p. 147).
NATIVE SPEAKER  BIRTH  INHERITANCE NATIONALITY  IDENTITY Figure 1: Native Speaker metaphorical entailments Radwańska-Williams (2008) continues, however, to note that these associations are contradicted by reality: "The native speaker metaphor no longer matches the social reality of today" (p. 150). As she observes, One's 'nativity' does not match one's residence, and one's residence may be maintained in several places at once. … One's parentage may also be mixed, and thus, one has a right, by birth, as well as right by residence, to claim more than one native language. The ideas of 'birth,' 'residence,' and 'language' no longer map onto each other; thus, they are no longer a good fit for a conceptual blend (p. 150). According to the author, this native/non-native distinction plays into what Lakoff and Johnson call the GOOD IS UP metaphorical motif, making the native a member of a "privileged social group" and the non-native "outsiders" (p. 151).
This chain of signifiers, placed in the context of language learning, allows the next logical step, OWNERSHIP. If the language of our birthplace is our inheritance and an expression of our nationality, it is fundamental to our identity and, as such, then it is, in a very real sense, our property. Figure 2: Native Speaker/Owner metaphorical entailments While this chain of metaphorical entailments can be positive, instilling a sense of pride in the language of one's home country, it also can be the source of ideological differences. When it is used in identifying "native-speakers" of English as somehow privileged as exemplars of proper English use, when it is used to elevate "standard" forms of the English language as templates by which others are judged as deficient, exotic, NON-standard, it must be seriously questioned.

Discussion: Breaking the Chain of the Nativist/Ownership Metaphor
As we have seen, the metaphor of "native speaker" entails an ownership view of language where a person growing up in an English-speaking nation is set in a privileged position in terms of her or his "own" language through birthright. Though persons who study English in places where English is not dominant may actually understand English better, and even speak it more fluently, the native metaphor entails predictable outcomes: · The native the native speaker is prioritized as having special knowledge of English. · Non-Native speakers will be "corrected," often without invitation, by native speakers in the US, Britain, and abroad.
· Persons with little formal knowledge of the English language relatively easily attain jobs teaching it. · Non-native speakers are suspect as speakers and or teachers of English. · Non-native speakers lose out on employment and other significant opportunities if they do not speak a privileged native variety. · Englishes developed in environments outside traditionally English-dominant contexts will be suspect in the eyes of native speakers, counted as "broken" English, seen as sources of embarrassment, and its speakers perceived as deficient.
· Dismissive attitudes towards pidgins, creoles, blends, and habits of speech around the world will encourage countries in the outer and expanding circles to be dismissive of the Englishes of other countries in those circles, Thus, the nativist/ownership metaphor we use to describe and inscribe the English language then largely determine the kinds of English and the kinds of speakers we privilege, and that privilege bears significant and unnecessarily burdensome consequences for speakers of English beyond the first circle. We will attempt to supplant the metaphorical entailments supporting the nativist/ownership metaphor in three phases: 1. questioning the very existence of any kind of native territorial "standard" for the English language 2. questioning the very nature of the birth of the English language itself 3. suggesting alternatives to the nativist/ownership metaphor

Questioning the very existence of any kind of native/territorial "standard" for the English language
As Davies (2017) notes, "if the native speaker were dropped, what could serve in its stead? The answer to this dilemma to which Chomsky refers is that there is a model which is, in fact, in common use, and that model is the idealized native speaker (i.e. not a real entity but an aspirational construct). Does this bring us any closer to a solution for our model? The answer is yes, because in the absence of an adequate description of the native speaker, what takes its place is the Standard Language" (186). As Davies (2017) unpacks the native speaker conundrum as driven by the need for a standard, what is known as "standard American or British English is unfortunately a written standard (187). Can there be a standard for spoken English? Davies believes there has to be, because language use has to be "tested": "If the spoken language is to be tested, there has to be an agreed upon model. In most situations, this will be the local prestige 'class' accent, and for post-colonial situations, it is likely to be the colonial prestige" (p. 190). He concludes that "if the spoken language is to be assessed and if accent is one of the variables under test, then the native speaker in its idealized representation as a prestige variety is needed as model and goal " (p. 190).
Though admittedly Davies makes these observations "ruefully," and although they reflect a pragmatic, rather than a possible, reality, they leave intact a colonialist/elitist perspective on the English language. His argument relies upon several metaphors of language use: it has to be "tested," and to do so we need an "agreed upon model." He notes that most places around the world, "Standard language in itself does not have an accent, but there are more and less prestige accents" (p. 187). In order to have a "model and goal" for language proficiency, we need an idealized native speaker based in a "prestige variety." However, tying even an idealized native speaker to a "prestige" variety of a language, ties it to not only to a specific territory, it ties it, as he admits, also to "colonial prestige." All that has really happened here is that "standard English," shifts from being about conformity to written rules or actual native speech to conformity to prestige forms of the language. How could this not sustain a "deficiency" model of "Non-Native" language variations?
Whether depicted as an actual or idealized native speaker, the native speaker metaphor remains tied to the idea of territory. To break the chain of metaphors that sustain the nativist view, we may begin by questioning the very existence of any kind of territorial "standard" for the English language. Not only does this expose the fact that English is not a thing but a social practice (Saracini, 2015, p.13), it also destroys the basis for the birthplace argument that also sustains the nativist position. One cannot own something that is not ownable.
The terms used to describe English and the teaching of English remain clustered around territorial property metaphors such as "British English," and "American English," though we are long past the point where either nation is constrained to any actual boundaries. The very idea of such a thing as "Standard" English, whether in the British Empire or the US, is rooted in a classist and economic privilege, results of Nineteenth-Century policies attempting to not only obliterate other languages like Gaelic or Native American, but also to quixotically erase regional accents. Both Britain and the US attempted to create and sustain unified standards based on the speech patterns and accents of narrow populations of white, privileged peoples in those nations.
The idea of British English, however, historically proves a chimera. "Native" persons in England have always spoken many different dialects, each with their own history, syntax, phonetics, morphemes, and word meanings and usages ---not to mention Irish English, Scottish English, Welsh English, and the many dialects spoken throughout the British Isles. Standard British English, Received Pronunciation or RP, is spoken by only a small percentage of English speaking people, yet it is held as an almost universal standard, often privileged even over US English, again for territorial/nativist reasons. Britain is the "birthplace" of the English language; therefore the British have the right of privilege in its use.
To add insult to injury, "standard" US English is also a fictional construct. The US alone has several distinct varieties of "American" English, some of them so unique that some Americans and some foreigners have difficulty following them. And, as  noted above, the English used in the States exhibits some of the same issues as Englishes in far off lands. What seems most unbelievable is the fact that what is privileged as "standard American English" is spoken by only a minority of Americans, and yet "it" is held up as a world standard. Ironically, most Americans have to be taught standard English. The logic of this reasoning can be expressed thusly: If NATIVE SPEAKER  BIRTH  INHERITANCE NATIONALITY  IDENTITY  OWNERSHIP Then NATIVE SPEAKER'S LANGUAGE = STANDARD LANGUAGE Figure 3: Native Speaker/Owner metaphorical entailment implications Though a fictional chain of entailments, the current dominance of the idea of speaking standard "American" English, related to its ubiquitous nature in media and on the internet, is so dominant that a Google search with the phrase "speak English like an American" yielded 1,120,000,000 results. Many of these are YouTube sites that promise also that one can learn to speak like a "native." Almost every one of them is taught by a white American, interestingly most often female.
Yet one could, and should, ask, a "native" of what? Where is this America that speaks standard English? Though it is stressed in schools, some formal events, and in news broadcasting, a majority of Americans do not speak "standard" English in their homes or workplaces. Even in the Midwest, supposedly the home of standard English, in many areas people use "ungrammatical" phrases like "I seen her yesterday," or "I have saw him three times" and unique expressions like "want to go with" and "your hair needs cut." Obviously, the native-speaker metaphor and its cousin, standard English, bear the markings of an elitist classicist perspective bent on judging the speech of "non-standard" speakers as substandard, even within the British and US boundaries. Kachru (1976, p. 236) framed this as "linguistic chauvinism," and suggests rather that we need to approach English use around the world with "linguistic tolerance." To this day, however, the World Englishes narrative remains plagued by territorial metaphors that privilege speakers born in the US or Great Britain. Phillipson (1992) describes the dominance of British models of English as "Linguistic imperialism" stating that 'The British empire has given way to the empire of English' (p. 1). He further delineates what he terms as "Linguicism," which "involves representation of the dominant language, to which desirable characteristics are attributed, for purposes of inclusion, and the opposite for dominated language, for purposes of exclusion" (p. 55). This process of inclusion and exclusion embodies an, often unconscious, underlying "attitude" toward non-standard English languages. As Huddart (2014b) notes, "Linguicism accordingly attributes different if not entirely opposed qualities to languages in a given context, with English often represented as 'scientific' and 'rational' while other languages are understood to be 'emotional', 'musical', or possibly simply 'irrational' "(p. 18).
However, the forces of globalization that brought about these perspectives are going to continue to hold sway. Huddart (2014a) interestingly offers the metaphors of leaping and falling as a way to interpret possibilities at this juncture. He notes that the necessary shift in perspective from English to Englishes, … enables a potentially positive connection to be made between English and global citizenship, even as the baleful influence of English's spread must also be acknowledged. There is the possibility or the coexistence of both leap and fall, with hard cultural and economic reality constantly shadowing the more optimistic rhetoric about English as a medium of global communication (with that hard reality invading the optimism through the very term 'communication'). (2014a, p, 53). In brief, English as a global language holds both the possibilities of the continuation of colonialist/ imperialist ideologies, and possibilities for cross-cultural communication and positive globalization.
How those who study World Englishes, those who promote linguistic tolerance, frame (metaphor intended) the discussion could make all the difference.
In Banerjee's (2008) review of two collections on World English and education, the author notes that "The growth of English as a global language, as well as increased global migration in general, has raised questions about ownership of English, linguistic identities, and education" (p. 150). These are very important issues, but the first question, about ownership, leaves open whether or not the very concept of ownership of language should be questioned. Though authors in the first collection Banerjee reviews, by S. Nero, Dialects, Englishes and Creoles and Education, support the legitimacy of various forms of English and their importance to the identities of the speakers, and even question the role of standard English, that collection leaves undisturbed the notion of language ownership. Matsuda (2003) confirmed in interviews with Japanese teachers that they feel that English "belongs" to native speakers, and though "most said they did not know English is spoken in India and Singapore, when they learned of outer circle varieties, they express a strong preference for American and British English because they believed American and British English were more 'pure ' and 'authentic' " (p. 721). This closer-to-the-birthplace-is-purer metaphor is a metaphorical entailment of the nativist/ territorial metaphor.
The burden then, for those who wish to promote World Englishes beyond a nativist perspective, is to show that the very idea of British or American standards is based on a fictional generic form of English that does not and cannot truly represent English as it is spoken, even in Kachru's first circle. If second and third circle speakers were more aware of the language diversity within first circle forms of English, rather than some plastic form of "standard" English, they might begin to see 1) that English is negotiated and fluid rather than pre-scripted and consistent, and 2) that their own contributions to the language are not desecrations or deviancies, but rather innovations that extend the natural creativity found within the language itself.
As Saracini (2015) notes, we need to "abandon the idea that languages have pre-fixed boundaries" that imply that the natural inter-mixing of languages are "intrusions," and instead think of emergent forms of English as "made up of linguistic resources that people draw from in their daily activities" (p. 117). From this point of view, English speakers, no matter where they are on the planet, are engaging in the same kinds of activities-the so-called "native" speakers are no different. All play a part in what Canagarajah (2013b) and others identify as "translingual" practices.

Questioning the very nature of the birth of the English language itself
To break another link the metaphorical entailments of the nativist perspective, we need to question the very nature of the birth of the English language itself. As Saracini details in his book, World Englishes: A Critical Analysis (2015), the very notion that English began at one point and one place is completely erroneous. The author notes that "actual language data from the time generally considered the 'birth' of the English language is completely unavailable. The earliest, very sparse, examples date back to Bede's time, nearly 300 years after the arrival of the so-called Anglo-Saxons" (p. 20). This idea that English was "born" and then "travelled" or was "taken" elsewhere is based in a narrative imposed by later people's intent on creating a nation-state ideology (p. 27) -a uniquely "English" identity.
The study of the so-called history of English stems from exactly the period of the rise of the nation state, from the 1700s onward (p. 29). He adds, "Language was not solely a means for defining a nation, but a means of creating one … to gather potentially disparate groups into one cohesive national community, using and understanding one tongue" (Shrank, as qtd. in Saracini, 2015, p. 30). In fact, Saracini observes, "languages don't begin at any particular point it time" (p. 31). "The existence of neat boundaries between languages not only is unsupported by textual evidence, but also runs counter to the fact that people make use of the linguistic repertoire available to them as they see fit" (p.40).
In addition, even the notion of a unified language, "Anglo-Saxon," seems at heart a later fabrication. The language we meet when English becomes written down resembles modern Frisan, differs even from other Germanic languages (under what some believe is a Celtic influence), and has already lifted words, expressions, and grammar from the Viking Norsemen (Braha, Old Norse Influence on Old English). One of the signs of a creole language is an increased level of regular verbs, which results in the blending of at least two languages. That is exactly what began to change from "Old" to "Middle" English. Why then is it even called "English," other than to express the need of the speakers to create a different identity from their Danish, Frisian, and Viking forebears?
By the time we reach the period dubbed "Middle English," Old English has clearly evolved into a creole of Germanic, Norse, Norman French, and Medieval Latin, to name a few. Even at that early time, it bears little resemblance to what we call Old English, and seems to have changed to the point of almost being another language -at the very least, as was noted before, a creole. As Saracini notes, though Chaucer and Beowulf stand but 300 years apart while we are 700 years from Chaucer, the "linguistic gap" between Chaucer's English and the language of Beowulf is "far greater" than the one between Middle and modern English. He asks, "On what basis, other than political ones, can we argue that the language of Beowulf is fundamentally the same as the language of The Canterbury Tales?" (p.17).
In any case, so-called "Engish" has continued to creolize as British, American and other first circle Englishes have blended with each other and adopted terms and phrases taken from every place English speakers set foot. As a result, current day English is a New Orleans-style jambalia blending almost every language in the world -words and phrases and syntax from immigrants, battlefields, colonized countries, outer circle Englishes.
In sum, since the whole idea of a specific language called English is questionable, then the whole idea that English belongs to a specific territory or set of people is entirely erroneous. What is happening to English around the world has already been happening throughout its history. How could speakers of say, Hinglish, "corrupt" a language that never at any point anything but a compostite of various tongues and cultures?

Suggesting Alternatives to the Nativist/ownership Metaphor
According to Graddol (1999), "Large numbers of people will learn English as a foreign language in the 21st century and they will need teachers, dictionaries and grammar books. But will they continue to look towards the native speaker for authoritative norms of usage? (Graddol,. Perhaps, if we create a paradigm shift in the metaphors used and applied of World Englishes, it will not --not if we desire to lessen the forces that cause English to be framed with the metaphors "a Trojan horse," "the other tongue, and "step-daughter" (Bolton & Kachru,p. 324.).
To truly break the dominance of the nativist/owner metaphor, we in the field not only need to break the chains of entailment that sustain it, we need to provide and promote new metaphors for the nature of the English language that invite alternate perspectives. Canagarajah (2006a) adopts a metaphor of ownership: "taking ownership of English, or appropriating the language by confidently using it to serve one's own interests according to one's own values, helps develop fluency in English" (p. 592). Higgins (2003), in her insightful reflection on the idea of English ownership, notes that ownership refers to "the degree to which [non-native speakers] project themselves as legitimate speakers with authority over the language (p. 615). Matsuda (2003) expresses perfectly the goals of this article: "teaching inner-circle English in Japan neglects the real linguistic needs of the learners, eclipses their education about the history and politics of English, and fails to empower them with ownership of English" (p. 721). She even features a section called "the Right to Ownership of English." It is then a matter of human rights to open lessen the grip of native speaker territorial ownership so that those who are learning and engaging in English everywhere can gain as sense of linguistic ownership.
Traditionally, language has been imagined as a great tree with many branches. This naturalistic metaphor is attractive, but lends itself to the "roots" metaphor often associated with the birth metaphor. It also plays into the idea that languages begin or end at some particular point, though Saracini has vividly shown this is not the case. It also plays into the idea that languages are distinct and subject to identifiable boundaries. In the case of English, this imagined tree rests on an "Indo-European" trunk, an association that has serious ideological and political implications. In addition, in the traditional depiction of the Indo-European language tree, those closest to the root and trunk take precedent. In the myriad tree drawings of languages on the internet, however, Spanglish, Hinglish, Japlish, etc. are not even leaves --at this point. Kachru (2005) notes, however, that Asian tree metaphors might be more productive: "The metaphors 'the flowering tree' or 'the speaking tree' point to yet other dimensions of English, that of its multiculturalism, its pluralism and its immense hybridity" (p. 10) Language and English has also been imagined as a "container," perhaps of soup or a prepared dish, as if it were a stable entity or recipe to which people simply "add" new words and ideas. The popular notion that other languages "add spice" or "flavor" easily piggybacks onto this metaphor. From this perspective, the Irish add "musicality," Indians add "spice," South Americans add "flavor" to the rather bland British and American English. This metaphor clearly lends itself to exoticist and Orientalist perspectives. Matsuda and Matsuda (2010) inadvertently offer alternate metaphors in "World Englishes and the Teaching of Writing." They observe that "Because English in expanding circle contexts includes a wide variety of international and intranational uses, the traditional model of setting a single target variety has become problematic (p.370). They offer instead the metaphors of "comprehensibility" and "intelligibility" as a way to view usage from a very contextual perspective friendly to multiple contexts. Though these Latin terms are not posed by the authors as metaphors, both of them are. According to the Online OED. com means "together" and prehendere means to "grasp," while "intelligibility" means able to understand. These terms can be used to sidestep the native standard metaphor.
Avoiding the idea of standardized "target" is beginning. As Canagarajah (2006b) rightly observes, "Gone are the days in which we could focus on a singular target language. These concerns gain importance as we begin to question the distinctions native/ nonnative and standard/ nonstandard and give due recognition to speakers of WEs" (p. 26).
The groundwork at least for shifting the nature of the target has been laid. Studies like Tan (2011) observe that many Englishes are beginning to move into an "endonormative" phase (4), Englishes like Singaporean English "cease to look elsewhere for [their] own norms" (p.18). Tan observes that just as American English differs from British, other Englishes will naturally differ as well. These other Englishes commonly regularize idiosyncrasies in British and American versions, and "non-standard" variations not only do not interfere with comprehensibility, they encourage the forming of national identities. Though, as Saracini (2015) notes, Tan's analysis of Singaporean English still applies a "spot the difference" due to incessant references to "the very norms from which independence is sought," the idea that we can move in an endonormative direction in our understanding of World Englishes is positive.
The work of L. Alsagoff (2012) is also instructive. She notes that "seemingly inconsistent patterns of use of certain grammatical forms" in Singaporean English are the result of an "incorrect assumption that the grammars of new Englishes are organized along the same grammatical principles of those of standard varieties … when in fact other underlying patterns prevail." She concludes, that the "new Englishes must be examined as autonomous linguistic codes in their own right" (Alsagoff as qtd, in Saracini, 2015, p.109).
As noted above, as Kramsch (1997) observes, the main problem is our conception of language as a "standardized system" rather than a "social and cultural practice" (p. 360).
These points bear repeating: · Kramsch: "language is a social and cultural practice" · Tan: differences in Englishes are no different than differences between American and British English · Tan: "idiosyncrasies" in British and American English are regularized in other Englishes · Tan: "non-standard" variations "do not interfere with comprehensibility" · Tan: "non-standard variations "encourage the forming of national identities" · Alsagoff: "new Englishes must be examined as autonomous linguistic codes in their own right" The "practice" metaphor is therefore a rich alternative because it levels the nativist/ownership hierarchy and promotes a more pluralistic multilingual view of Englishes.
Kachru (Bolton & Kachru, 2006) offers some "Asian" metaphors that express positive or benign attitudes toward English: "the world language," "a universal language," "the language on which the sun never sets." Within this "jungle of metaphors," he also identifies metaphors of "distance and otherness [emphasis in original], such as "a Trojan horse," "the other tongue, and "step-daughter" (p. 324.). These metaphors wonderfully capture the positive and negative aspects of English as a world language, but to mollify some of the effects of the second list, those of distance and otherness, we need alternate metaphors for English and its relation to the native/owner metaphorical entailments. "World" and "universal" are helpful, but very general.
The metaphor that best frames all of these studies is "continuum." This term has a long tradition in the field as related to the vertical continuum of dialects from basilect to acrolect (Platt 1975;Platt & Weber, 1980;Platt et al., 1984;Mufwene, 1994Mufwene, , 1997. Another way the metaphor continuum is used in vertical manner is in reference to intelligibility. According to the work of Nelson (1984Nelson ( , 1995, Smith & Nelson (1985), and Smith (1992) language understanding ranges from a base of intelligibility (utterance recognition), to comprehensibility (locutionary force) to interpretability (illocutionary force). Smith suggests that (1988, p. 274) "interpretability is at the core of communication and is more important than mere intelligibility or comprehensibility." The metaphor of continuum is then well established in the field of World Englishes, but should also be applied horizontally to our understanding of the history and nature of English. From as far back as we can trace the English language, it has been an amalgam of various languages and dialects, and by the time it comes into printed form, if there is truth to the traditional narrative, is already a blend of the language Latin, Angle, Saxon, Jute, and Norse. The fact is, no one knows exactly what English was like before it was written down, nor do we know anything about, beyond Latin and some conjectural relations to ancient Germanic reconstructions, the various tongues that supposedly blended to create it. It even bears some of the grammar of the Celtic peoples. "English" did not begin at any one point, and has never been standardized in its everyday use.
Furthermore, according the Rincon (2016) "The present-day English owe about a third of their ancestry to the Anglo-Saxons." According to Sayer (2017), archaeological research, which examines ancient DNA and artefacts to explore who these 'indigenous' Anglo-Saxons were, shows that the people of fifth and sixth century England had a mixed heritage and did not base their identity on a biological legacy. The very idea of the Anglo-Saxon ancestor is a more recent invention linked closely with the English establishment. Given that the English people themselves are not entirely Angle-ish, neither they, nor anyone else, have a right to own English or claim to a native speaker.
As Saracini (2015), "what we call 'English' is no more than a set of linguistic conventions constantly open of (re) negotiation according to use we put them to as part of what we do." This is true from Beowulf to The Kite Runner. And because those "conventions happened to be shared among a large number of people … this gives it "a practical advantage" "but they don't need to be in competition with, or kept separate from, other conventions that happen to bear different names." (p. 187).
PRACTICE  of a set of CONVENTIONS  used across a CONTIUUM OF ENGLISHES  CREATING local and global INNOVATIONS Figure 4: Alternate Metaphorical Entailments for Englishes I added the word innovations to avoid metaphorical associations of words such as variant or variations, which are neutral terms but too often associated with error and deviation. Canagarajah (2006b), offers other metaphors for re-thinking norms and our terms for variations: "We realize that rather than teaching rules in a normative way, we should teach strategies -creative ways to negotiate the norms operating in different contexts. Rather than judging divergence as error, we should orientate to it as an exploration of choices and possibilities" (pp. 26-7). Saracini (2015) suggests "open source" computer software as an alternate metaphor. This metaphor stresses that English, or any language, literally belongs to no one, and may be used and modified to meet the needs of the user.
The Metaphor of Open Source Software (Adopted from Saracini, 2015, p. 166) · Publicly available for all to use freely · Open to code modification · Open to being made more robust · Open to customization to meet user needs · "Open source software developers don't abide to copyright, but to copyleft, which guarantees that the ability to modify and/or redistribute a piece of software remains intact as the programme is further developed and shared by more and more people." This creates a viable metaphorical alternative when used in conjunction with the metaphorical entailments noted above.
If "English" is a PRACTICE  of a set of CONVENTIONS  used across a CONTIUUM OF ENGLISHES  CREATING local and global INNOVATIONS Then a productive metaphor for it is as a kind of OPEN-SOURCE SOFWARE Figure 5: Alternate Metaphorical Entailments for Englishes How do we implement this alternate chain of metaphorical entailment? By changing the language we use to refer to World Englishes. It begins with changes in our teaching, our relation to the surrounding culture, and in our scholarly writing.
For example, in 2013, I published an article called "Crossing Cultural and Gender Boundaries to Change the Way We Use Discourse in the Classroom," focusing on teaching argument in the classroom without teaching what Lakoff and Johnson call the ARGUMENT AS WAR metaphor. In 2014, I published "Feminist Challenges to 'Academic Writing' Writ Large: Changing the Argumentative Metaphor from War to Perception to Address the Problem of Argument Culture," about displacing that same metaphor in public dialogue. In 2016, I published "Beyond "Dichotonegative" Rhetoric: Interpreting Field Reactions to Feminist Critiques of Academic Rhetoric through an Alternate Multivalent Rhetoric," suggesting that we stop reacting to the work of other scholars using the argumentas-war metaphor, suggesting instead we use the metaphor of multivalence and invitation. For this reason, in most all of my writing I avoid the words "asserts," "claims," and "argues," and use rather words for observation, suggestion, and offering -more inviting and engaging metaphors. I did so in this essay.
The same principle applies here.
In the case of the study and teaching of Englishes, it is common to use the metaphors "feature," "error," and "discrepancy" for variations from standard English. Microsoft Word lists five synonyms for the word variation and five for innovation: Figure 6: Synonyms for Variation and Innovation Consider the implications of using the terms under invention for language differences rather than those under variation (each of which begins with the negative Latin morpheme "dis-"). Just a change in the language used signals a change in perspective, and invites metaphorical entailments such as found in figures 4 and 5 rather than those in 1-3.
If those of us in the field begin to adopt and teach perspectives on World Englishes based in figures 4 and 5, and also use synonyms associated with innovation rather than variation, then our understanding of World Englishes may begin to progress past the native/ownership metaphor to a much more productive and egalitarian "open-source" view of the "English" language. Abrahamsson, N., & Hyltenstam, K. (2009). Age of onset and nativelikeness in a second language: