This chapter explores ideas about ‘(non-)native’ speakers of English, with particular reference to the professional context of teaching English to speakers of other languages (TESOL). The use of ‘(non-)native’ speaker to describe a person’s use of English remains common in a variety of domains, despite much scholarly and professional argument against the term. Given that learners and teachers comprise the educational context of this chapter, I have chosen to focus on the native and non-native speakers themselves, rather than on their (so-called) native and non-native uses of English. In doing so, I hope not to fall into the trap of thinking of people as permanent members of closed categories, but, on the contrary, show how we might raise awareness of the (potentially negative) effects of such thinking on speakers of English, in the TESOL profession.

This chapter aims to engage with wider discussions in this volume regarding ontologies of English and how language can be productively conceptualized by English teachers, learners/users, and other stakeholders. As indicated by the title, the work is intended to make a specific contribution towards uncovering complexity in ontologies of language that do not map cleanly onto dichotomies such as ‘monolithic versus plurilithic’ (Hall, 2013), ‘difference versus deficit’, or ‘standards-based versus intelligibility-based’. As also indicated, these ontological discussions are framed by a study carried out in a lingua franca context of pedagogy and usage, where (1) Japanese voluntary workers use English as a Lingua Franca to communicate with local interlocutors in diverse global locations and (2) an English language course is taken by these volunteers prior to their departure from Japan that is specifically designed to facilitate that communication. Further details on this context are provided in the following section before the focus returns to conceptions of English.

Ontological inquiry into the nature of language has been somewhat marginal since the “linguistic turn” in philosophy (cf. Rorty, 1967), i.e. for about seventy-five years. Although the shift of emphasis from the more concrete objects of investigation to their formal properties has since been reversed, this change in zeitgeist did not give rise to a new wave of ontological rethinking. That was perhaps mainly due to the impact of social constructionism, which was just as sceptical of ontology as logical positivism, albeit from a different perspective: Rather than looking for ‘hard’ properties of true reality in formal structure, social constructionists basically aimed at deconstructing all descriptions that claimed to represent true reality. This book is a welcome sign that things may be changing.

In our introductory chapter, we argued that applied linguistics must be more explicit about the ways in which English is conceptualised in and for the domains of language learning, teaching, and assessment. Now, after eighteen chapters that uncover, advocate, and contest beliefs about the nature of ‘English’ in a range of contexts and from a range of perspectives, we take stock of the project and consider its uses. We don’t have the space here to reference all the arguments and evidence put forward by the authors of these chapters, but we will emphasise those points that we feel have helped to meet the aims of the book. Naturally, we give particular consideration to Pennycook’s companion commentary in the previous chapter.

What is there in the world that we refer to as ‘the English language’? Is it more than one thing? If so, how many? And what is their ontological status? For those of us engaged in researching and teaching what we call English, these are fundamental questions, yet they are seldom posed. In addressing them explicitly here, I aim to provide academics, teachers, and policy makers with some conceptual tools and arguments for a deeper reflection on the nature of English, with a view to ultimately benefiting learners and users.

The origin of the term ‘lingua franca’ is unclear. According to Ostler (2010, p. 7), lingua franca “seems to be a retranslation of some Eastern-Mediterranean term for ‘language of the Franks’”. Ostler also notes (2010, p. 4) the “original ‘Lingua Franca’ was once a particular language … the common contact language of the Eastern-Mediterranean in the first half of the second millennium, the pidgin Italian in which Greeks and Turks could talk to Frenchmen and Italians”. He defines a lingua franca as a “contact language used for communication among people who do not share a mother tongue” (2010, p. 36). Seidlhofer points out that the term has Latin roots meaning something like ‘free language’. “It is thus not fanciful to think of ‘Lingua Franca’ as ‘free language’ … a means of intercultural communication not particular to countries and ethnicities, a linguistic resource that is not contained in, or constrained by traditional (and notoriously tendentious) ideas of what constitutes a ‘language’” (2011, p. 81).

This book is about the ways in which English is conceptualised in and for the domains of language learning, teaching, and assessment. Examining and being explicit about what we, as applied linguists, think English is – our ontologies of English – and how these ontologies underpin our educational ideologies and professional practices, should be an essential component of research in the discipline. Yet the nature of the ‘EL’ in ELT does not feature anywhere nearly as much as the ‘T’, and how English is conceptualised in schools tends to be debated more by educationalists than applied linguists. Teachers, learners, policy makers, and other stakeholders do have strong beliefs about what counts as English, who it belongs to, and how it should be taught, learned, and tested. In research we conducted with colleagues at a university in China (Hall et al., 2017), English teachers told us about the ways they conceptualised English as a global language and, more narrowly, as the subject they taught to undergraduate students.