141 © Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature 2018 B. Yazan, N. Rudolph (eds.), Criticality, Teacher Identity, and (In)equity in English Language Teaching, Educational Linguistics 35, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-72920-6_8 Accepting and Circumventing Native Speaker Essentialism Robert Weekly Abstract This chapter reports on a qualitative study of multilingual South-Asian English language teachers working in an ESOL department in Leicester. Through nar- rative interviews and focus groups the study explored how the participants experience linguicism, which positions them as inauthentic native English speakers (NES) or non- native English speakers (NNES). Several of the participants are also complicit in this, with many resisting a NES label or feeling some ambiguity with their native speaker status. One of the reasons for this, is that the NES/NNES dichotomy is embedded in the ideology of English language teaching and the ideological values of society. NES is semantically linked with other terminology, such as British English, RP, ‘whiteness’, Standard English, correct English and good English. In attempting to overcome preju- dice, rather than identifying themselves as NES, the participants emphasised their mul- tilingualism and presented stories of teaching practices. Therefore, while tending to accept essentialised identity construction by others, the participants utilized other aspects of their identity to overcome prejudice in the workplace. 1 Introduction This chapter focuses on the native/non-native distinction through semi-structured interviews and focus groups with South Asian English language teachers working in a further education college in the UK. The participants in the study are either frst gen- eration migrants, arriving in the UK in their early to late teens, or second generation migrants and born in the UK. Nevertheless, there is some ambiguity, even for some second-generation migrants, as to whether they are native English speakers (NES) or not. The frst-generation migrants rejected being positioned as NES based on their perception that a NES speaks a variety of British English (BrE) or American English (AmE). This is despite some of the participants learning English from childhood as one R. Weekly (*) Centre for English Language Education, University of Nottingham Ningbo, Ningbo, China e-mail: Robert.weekly@nottingham.edu.cn