Native Speakers (Round Two)

[Eliot Borenstein]

        While I agree with some of Katya Krivinkova's comments, I still
feel that the native speaker issue has to be understood in its proper
context.  Certainly, departments can hire native speakers for less money
simply to be "professional native speakers," and to do the tasks that I
enumerated before.  But there are a few problems.

        Not all departments are able to have such a position.  And this is
where I think there are misconceptions about the job search and job
requirements.  Typically, when a department is fortunate enough to be able
to hire, it has one slot open.  Their requirements of the person who fill
that slot depend on what they already have, and what they perceive their
needs to be.  For example, a department could decide it really needs a) a
native speaker, b) someone who can teach 19th century Russian literature,
and c) someone who can teach a culture course.  This does not mean that
anyone thinks that points a, b, and c are in any way connected; in the best
of all possible worlds, three people would be hired.  But there is only one
position, and so they look for someone who can do everything they want.
One of the reasons I got my first job was that I said I could teach
first-year Serbian/Croatian.  That has absolutely nothing to do with my
specialty (20th century literature), but the combination worked.  And
that's what most departments are looking for:  someone who can fill as many
of the department's given gaps as possible.

        There's also a hidden downside to the "professional native speaker"
positions:  they can turn out to signal that "we already have our native
speaker," so if you are a native speaker and are also a qualified linguist
or literature specialist, the message might well be not to bother to apply.
I know plenty of Russian phds here in America who feel in danger of being
pigeon-holed as native speakers and nothing *but* native speakers, despite
their other important qualifications.

        Yes, we do have to look at the reasons why the job market stinks.
And Slavic departments have to ask themselves how they've exacerbated the
problem.  But I don't think the trouble is that American universities are
hiring "foreigners", and the anxiety raised by this issue is, to my mind,
very disturbing.  It's all too easy to point at outsiders and blame them
for spoiling the market, when actually the situation is much more complex.

        The field is in no danger of being taken over by foreign-educated
Slavs; if anything, many Russians I know worry that they will never get
jobs precisely because they are Russian, and because there are a lot of
American Slavists who, when push comes to shove, would rather work with
Americans.

        Finally, I stated specifically that it is foolish to think native
speakers are, a priori, better language teachers.  My reasons for hiring a
native had nothing to do with that.  Perhaps my point about classes for
native speakers was misunderstood: when I talked (somewhat facetiously)
about students "giving their professors hell", I did not mean that a
non-native shouldn't be able to teach the class (especially since I will
probably end up teaching it one of these days, and I expect to come out of
the experience unscathed).  However, I still think that having a native
speaker teach such a class makes sense, even if it is not absolutely
necessary.

                                                Eliot Borenstein
                                                New York University