Accent and Appearance in Pre‐Service English Teacher Identity: Embodied Language Ideologies in the Political Economy of Language Education in Türkiye

ABSTRACT This study examines how two pre‐service English teachers in Türkiye navigate the racialized (whiteness‐Europeanness‐indexed) and marketized legitimacy regimes of the private English language teaching sector. Drawing on a language teacher identity lens and a political economy account of accent commodification, we analyze the contrasting narratives of Yelda and Mizgin, undergraduate ELT students who sought part‐time employment while preparing for more secure public‐sector careers. Data come from two narrative‐oriented, semi‐structured interviews and are analyzed using an analysis‐of‐narratives approach focusing on identity positioning, recognition, and meaning‐making in critical incidents. Findings show that private‐sector hiring functions as a gatekeeping site in which teacher legitimacy is interactionally produced through embodied language ideologies that link accent, appearance, and presumed nativeness. Yelda is recruited on the condition of performing a market‐recognizable native persona, a process we conceptualize as native rebranding, while Mizgin is denied employment despite asserting intelligibility because he is not native‐like. The study highlights how teacher education can both reproduce and contest these hierarchies, and it foregrounds native rebranding as identity labor shaped by racial capitalism in ELT markets.