Although historically much teaching of English has been done by nonnative‐English‐speaking teachers (NNESTs), research on their concerns as English educators has been neglected. This article takes as its central focus the narrative of NNESTs in the context of critical praxis. It discusses a graduate seminar offered for perhaps the first time in a TESOL program for NNESTs. The article presents the process of interrogating the nativeness paradigm among NNESTs themselves via their own experiences and self‐representation. It discusses the validity of conceptual tools designed to overcome disempowering discourses that may exist in TESOL programs and centers on the construction of identity among NNESTs that neither prescribes a limited role for them in the profession nor specifies definite boundaries to their capacities therein. The study suggests that the process of empowerment of NNESTs is neither linear nor simple but can nevertheless be generated within and by teachers engaged in critical praxis. It also demonstrates that many of the participants found a new relationship with their contexts, analyzed the causes of their powerlessness, and generated a new sense of agency as teachers and scholars in the field.

This study suggests that identity-formation is related to the social process of identityassignation in the mother tongue context. The case studies of four English speakers are summarized in this study. The four English speakers, who were all born outside the mother tongue context, bend categories in various ways. This uncovers the ways in which mother tongue speakers situate other English users and how such social attitudes help shape the identities of those users. The findings support the contention that nativeness and nonnativeness among English users constitute non-elective socially constructed identities rather than linguistic categories.

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A B S T R A C TThis article analyzes the reasons for and the effects of the language shift in Zimbabwe represented by the increasing use of pan-ethnic lingua francas, or urban vernaculars, of local origin. It is suggested that essentialist0 primordialist assumptions about "indigenous" languages that feature prominently in current accounts of language endangerment should be made more complex by understanding their historical and social origins. In Zimbabwe, this means understanding the origins of Shona and Ndebele during the colonial period as the product of a two-stage process: codification of dialects by missionaries, and creation of a unified standard by the colonial regime. In the postcolonial context, these languages and the ethnic identities they created0reified are giving way to language use that indexes not ethnic affiliation but urbanization. The article adduces data showing that as Zimbabweans move with relative ease across language boundaries, urban vernaculars express their shared social experience of living in postcolonial urban environments. (Urbanization, African languages, indigenous languages, dominant languages, urban vernaculars)*