ABSTRACT
“Passing” is a notion Piller (2002) uses to describe a type of act performed by “expert L2 speakers” (advanced speakers of a language outside of their mother tongue) who feel they can match the default speaking styles of “native speakers” in their current speaking contexts. Piller suggests that we still know very little about “whether L2 speakers consider themselves high-level achievers, what high-level proficiency means to them, and how and why it has been achieved, or whether they can and do pass for native speakers” (p. 184). Performing in several languages in my own linguistic repertoire (English, Korean, Japanese and Chinese), I have observed that being praised as having native-like pronunciation and/or fluency often seems to translate as being “smart” which may also be seen as a form of “cultural capital” (Bourdieu, 1991). Such cultural capital can help individuals who might be considered “outsiders” to gain “social capital,” with access and membership to “insider” communities. However, the conditions and implications of what this “native-like” fluency means in specific situations need to be carefully considered.
