Construct Validity in SLA Research: A Response to Firth and Wagner

Its analyses are oversimplistic, F&W assert, because they have generally considered the L2 acquirer as a "nonnative speaker" of the L2, as a "learner," and as someone whose L2 repertoire and underlying grammar is an "interlanguage" (the psycholinguistic L2 equivalent of an "idiolect" in sociolinguistics, a construct to which F&W presumably also object), and as a "deficient communicator, struggling to overcome an L2 competence" when interacting with an "idealized native speaker," who is attributed elevated status by researchers. They assert that this view is "individualistic," "mechanistic," and