Heritage Learners and the Native Speaker Continuum

Following the reconceptualization of language learning in Chapter 2 as socially mediated participation rather than individual acquisition, one of the most deeply entrenched categories in language education becomes problematic: the native speaker. The native/non-native binary presupposes that linguistic competence is a stable possession anchored in biography. It assumes that authority derives from origin and that legitimacy correlates with proximity to a homogeneous and internally coherent linguistic norm. Yet a relational framework for understanding language learning destabilizes precisely these assumptions.