Regardless of the education, training and language proficiency that NNSs have, the pedagogic discourse of ELT discursively constructs them as less useful than NSs who are automatically endowed with the trustworthiness and credibility associated with their linguistic birth privilege. During my talk I will attempt to critically look at specific discursive practices of ELT used to secure the professional value of the NS, often at the expense of the pedagogical project itself a project which should be reconsidered on the basis of the new communication ethos to be developed in a United Europe. In our increasingly complex and elusive world, teaching is one of the messiest human endeavours. The unhappy teacher is an all too common sight these days. It looks as if there is no way out of this impasse.
Local norms differ from global norms, whether used by native speakers or non-native speakers.
As any language can in principle be used for good or evil purposes, it is important, when analysing the uses and learning of English, to situate English in hierarchies of language, and principles of language ecology and language rights. The Norwegian peace researcher Johan Galtung states that for negative peace, externalities have to be internalised, counted as costs for war. For positive peace, externalities have to not only be internalised but have to be shared, globally, as internalities. More specifically, the costs of the protection of their linguistic human rights are often not even mentioned, let alone counted. It could be said, maybe a bit provocatively, that many of the costs of translation and interpretation are not caused by minorities or indigenous peoples who in most cases are bilingual or multilingual.