Negotiating linguistic legitimacy in reciprocal COIL: affect, native-speakerism, and L2 user positioning

This case study examines how linguistic legitimacy is negotiated in a reciprocal Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) project involving Japanese university students learning English and U.S. university students learning Japanese. Drawing on research on native-speakerism, raciolinguistic ideologies, affect, and language-user positioning, it investigates how reciprocal target-language use shapes participants’ experiences and positioning as language users. Participants used their target languages in synchronous interactions. The study draws on pre- and post-COIL questionnaires, written summaries and reflections, and follow-up focus-group interviews. Theoretically informed multiple-case analysis identified three interconnected patterns: anticipatory affect shaped by ideological expectations; temporary redistribution of linguistic vulnerability through reciprocal language use; and continuing negotiation of linguistic legitimacy through peer recognition and self-positioning. Participants described increased confidence and interactional equality, but native-speaker norms, expectations associated with ancestry and national identity, and the desire for recognition from proficient or socially authorized speakers continued to shape their understandings of legitimate language use. These findings extend research on native speaker saviorism and the ideology of nativeness by suggesting that reciprocity can alter the affective conditions of language learning without necessarily transforming the ideological criteria underlying linguistic legitimacy. Thus, COIL may not dismantle native-speakerism, but can make linguistic hierarchies visible, negotiable, and temporarily reconfigured.