Rehearsing Acquired Privileges: The Nonnative Informant and Didactics of Difference

This article surmises the "position" and "ambition" of a nonnative speaker/teacher of a European language and literature as an ostensible facilitator of cultural difference in the U.S. foreign-language classroom. The paper opens a space to think through pedagogical conceptuality and the practice of assisting and guiding students in their perceptions of cultural difference in the specific situation when the instructor carries visible inscriptions of his/her "Otherness." Through an investigation of the adjectives "native?" and "non-native," the article critically reconsiders privileges of birth, affiliations through residence, education, and ethnicity. This article sutures two different streams of scholarship. First, by engaging with scholarship on German as a foreign language in the U.S., the article construes the "position" of the nonnative speaker vis-a-vis the native speaker/instructor. Next, through a discussion with cultural theorists, the article puts to test the "ambition" of the nonnative-minority as an allegedly reliable native informant of interculturality. (Contains 6 footnotes.)