Chapter 7: APPLIED LINGUISTICS:

NO ‘BOOKISH THEORIC’

GROUP
1. Le Thi Bon

2. Tran Kim Tram

3. Le Kim Tien
7. Applied linguistics: no ‘bookish
theoric’
1. INTRODUCTION
How far current philosophical developments in the
humanities and social sciences have affected applied
linguistics and in particular how influential the various
‘critical’ stances are .
2 WHAT IS POSTMODERNISM?
The term postmodernism refers to the contemporary
sense of scepticism felt by scholars in the humanities
and social sciences with regard to progress, in the
validity of knowledge and science and generally in
universal explanations and the optimism of the
Enlightenment.
7. Applied linguistics: no ‘bookish theoric’

2 WHAT IS POSTMODERNISM?
* Those professing ideas associated with postmodernism speak
of rejecting the grand meta narratives of modernity, such as
liberalism, Marxism, democracy and the Industrial Revolution,
and a championing of the local, the relative and the contingent.
* Postmodernism encompasses post-structuralism, itself a
reaction against the paradigm shift of structuralism which
brought the Enlightenment up to date for the mid-twentieth
century. Structuralism rejected the emphasis on the subjective
of ‘modern’ grand theories such as existentialism and
psychoanalysis in favour of the objective patterning in social life
that derives from the work of Saussure and Levi-Strauss
7. Applied linguistics: no ‘bookish
theoric’
3 CHANGE IN APPLIED LINGUISTICS PRACTICE
Applied linguistics as practised in the 1960s is recorded in the
widely praised volume by S. P. Corder (Introducing Applied
Linguistics, 1973)
Corder divides his book into three parts:
1. Language and Language Learning
2. Linguistics and Language Teaching
3. The Techniques of Applied Linguistics
 7. Applied linguistics: no ‘bookish
theoric’
3 CHANGE IN APPLIED LINGUISTICS PRACTICE
* Varieties, contrastive analysis, error analysis, syllabus
development, pedagogical grammars and testing: that was the
practice of applied linguistics in the 1960s.
- The comparison of varieties has branched into world
Englishes, stylistics, discourse analysis, gendered language
and so on.
Contrastive linguistic studies and the study of learners’
language (error analysis) have moved on apace, at first
contrastive studies being revitalised by the study of learners’
language to become the current study of second-language
acquisition, itself also heavily influenced by developments in
linguistic grammars.
7. Applied linguistics: no ‘bookish
theoric’
7.3 CHANGE IN APPLIED LINGUISTICS PRACTICE
- Syllabus studies have become curriculum studies, widening
their brief and there by taking far more of the context in which
language teaching takes place into account.
- Pedagogical grammars might well now be called a
pedagogical approach to grammar, while evaluation,
validation and tests may well be termed assessment or even
perhaps classroom-based assessment.
 4. THE NEW CRITIQUE OF
APPLIED LINGUISTICS
4.1 Changes
 A move: a more linguistic model => a more applied one

 bringing the social aspect of language in use into a

central position and to an extent downgrading the
linguistic and the psycholinguistic
 A major change in the rhetoric => to discuss applied
linguistics into practice.
 4. THE NEW CRITIQUE OF
APPLIED LINGUISTICS
4.2 Emergence of a theory
 Corder’s essentially modernist view:
Applied linguistics needed theory to explain the
practical (and of course the empirical).
 content early on with an explanatory theory based in
linguistics => seek a theory of practice
 Corder’s retirement: an indeeded emerged theory
deriving from post-structuralism and postmodernism
 Calling: ‘theory’, ‘critical theory’, ‘critical discourse
analysis’ and ‘critical applied linguistics’
 4. THE NEW CRITIQUE OF
APPLIED LINGUISTICS
4.3 Rise of relativism
 People opposed to the realist pursuit of the unique truth
=> not end up in the kind of unthinking and impotent
relativism
For example:
 Peim (1993) considered the value of critical theory to the
teacher of English as a mother tongue.
Post-structuralist
Sociological theory Doubt all the language
practice of English
Sociolinguistic theory
 4. THE NEW CRITIQUE OF
APPLIED LINGUISTICS
4.3 Rise of relativism

A general field of language and textuality

systematically excluded from English
Reconstruct English

Addressing issues of race, class and gender,

issues in relation to culture and democracy,
concerning among other things, language
differences and power, ...
 4. THE NEW CRITIQUE OF
APPLIED LINGUISTICS
4.2 Emergence of a theory

ICONOCLASM POSTMODERNISM

 overthrow all grand theories

 set up of alternatives: race, class, gender, culture,
democracy, power.
 4. THE NEW CRITIQUE OF
APPLIED LINGUISTICS
4.3 Rise of relativism
Peim’s project: What actually means for language teachers?
 Are they to abandon all skill training?
 Are all lessons to be concerned with discussions of
power?
 Are we dealing with the criteria for selection of texts
for learners so that they necessarily focus on these
‘grand issues’?
 4. THE NEW CRITIQUE OF
APPLIED LINGUISTICS
4.3 Rise of relativism
Block (1996): A more helpful advocate of the relative
position
 Advocate the single theory of second-language
acquisition research in a characteristic postmodern way
against grand theory
 Not oppose to the role of a theoretical approach
 4. THE NEW CRITIQUE OF
APPLIED LINGUISTICS
4.3 Rise of relativism
Block (1996):
 Not oppose to the role of a theoretical approach
 Why think in applied linguistics => have to act
“scientific” where “scientific” is understood as what is
done in physical sciences?
 Study language acquisition, an extremely sensitive
phenomenon to changes of context => evaluate theories
in relation to context and purpose
 4. THE NEW CRITIQUE OF
APPLIED LINGUISTICS
4.4 Critical discourse analysis
 The post-colonial views of Kachru (1985) and the post-
imperial of Phillipson (1992):
 Critiques of the post-colonial and the post-imperial
=> be identified as both modernist and postmodernist.
 Postmodernist => stand up for the rights of the
marginalised, decry the hegemonising juggernauts of the
colonial and the imperial with relation to their totalising
influence on English.
 4. THE NEW CRITIQUE OF
APPLIED LINGUISTICS
4.4 Critical discourse analysis
 Modernist => offer a single explanation for the
phenomenon
 The post-colonial effect on English, the explanation of
world Englishes, itself a development of the wider
theory of varieties.
 The post-imperial, English is charged with the crime of
(English) linguistic imperialism, of devaluing and then
destroying local languages and so by definition local
cultures
 4. THE NEW CRITIQUE OF
APPLIED LINGUISTICS
4.4 Critical discourse analysis
Fairclough (1989):
 Write extensively on critical discourse analysis (CDA).
(CDA).
 Have the critique of applied linguistics most often
associated with Marxism
 use discourse analysis techniques to provide a political
critique of the social context – from a Marxist viewpoint
 Feminist writings about applied linguistics take a similar
approach but from a feminist position
 4. THE NEW CRITIQUE OF
APPLIED LINGUISTICS
4.4 Critical discourse analysis
Fairclough (1989): defines what calls critical language study
 Critical: used in the special sense of aiming => show up
connections hidden from people (the connections between
language, power and ideology … )
 Critical language study: Analyse social interactions in a way
 focus upon linguistic elements
 set out to show up hidden determinants in the system of
social relationships, possible hidden effects upon that
system.
 4. THE NEW CRITIQUE OF
APPLIED LINGUISTICS
4.4 Critical discourse analysis
Stubbs (1997): sharply critical of what he regards as the
excess of politics and the lack of linguistics in approaches
such as Fairclough’s
 A repeated criticism [of CDA]: the textual interpretations
of critical linguists are politically rather than linguistically
motivated => analysts find what they expect to find,
whether absences or presences.
 The approach of CDA - a long pedigree; developed by
other literary critics
 4. THE NEW CRITIQUE OF
APPLIED LINGUISTICS
4.4 Critical discourse analysis
Stubbs (1997):
 The extent of a text’s taken-for-grantedness confirms the

importance of context
 Context dependence that is cleverly deployed by the hoax

 the receivers’ willingness to suspend disbelief, readiness

to be unthinking dupes and to accept the fabrication at

face value demonstrates
 how powerful are the pragmatics of the taken-for-

grantedness that employed in normal spoken and written

interactions.
 4. THE NEW CRITIQUE OF
APPLIED LINGUISTICS
4.4 Critical discourse analysis
Tic-tac-toe experiments:
 People’s dependence on the expected in conversation

explains the reactions Garfinkel’s ethnomethodological

students met => breach what Garfinkel calls ‘the
properties of common understandings’
 the extent to which people rely on the unspoken

assumptions of social life

 Firth meant in his discussion of the prescribed ritual of
conversation
 4. THE NEW CRITIQUE OF
APPLIED LINGUISTICS
4.4 Critical discourse analysis
Firth (1957)
Once someone speaks to you, you are in a relatively
determined context and you are not free just to say
what you please … Much of the give-and-take of
conversation in our everyday life is stereotyped and
very narrowly conditioned by our particular type of
culture.
(Firth 1957: 28–32)
 4. THE NEW CRITIQUE OF
APPLIED LINGUISTICS
4.5 Widdowson’s critique
Widdowson’s critique of critical applied linguistics:
 need to develop a socially responsible theory of language,

committed to social justice

 theory is crucial to the validity of the social justice project

It is rightly recognized in all of these books that without

such theoretical support, the particular analyses (no
matter how ingenious and well-intentioned) reduce to
random comment of an impressionistic kind’
(Widdowson 1998: 137)
 4. THE NEW CRITIQUE OF
APPLIED LINGUISTICS
4.5 Widdowson’s critique
Widdowson’s attack:
 adds force to conclusion => what critical discourse

analysis (and indeed critical applied linguistics) represents

is an offshoot of post-modernism, masquerading as
modernity
 the boundaries between the two movements are vague

and ill-defined
 7.4.6 Critical applied linguistics

 Pennycook, who approaches discourse analysis from a Foucauldian

position, argues that the traditional applied linguistic approach (which
Widdowson would represent) and the critical discourse analysis approach
of Fairclough are incommensurable.
 Pennycook locates within postmodernism. He explicitly advocates this
admittedly relativist stance for applied linguistics on the grounds that it
opens the way to a more effective involvement with the major
stakeholders.
 Writing of the teaching of English as an International Language (EIL) he
claims that the approach he advocates can deal with issues seriously
rather than following critical discourse analysis, which deals with ‘serious
issues’ (such as crime, abortion and so on). And dealing with issues
seriously enables him to make the link both with language being learnt
and with the lives of his students
(Pennycook 1994a: 132–3).
 7.4.7 Rampton's “ open field”

 Rampton points to the still-present fault line between the

linguistics and the applied linguistics views of applied
linguistics and argues that the attempt to develop an
applied linguistics model (citing both Widdowson and
Brumfit) has failed.
 If applied linguistics is not to slip back into a comfortable
accommodation with the linguistics model (here he
mentions Corder) then it needs to be re-positioned.
 Citing the work of Hymes and Bernstein, Rampton argues
for a model so different that it would seem to abandon
completely any coherence to which applied linguistics might
lay claim:
 7.4.7 Rampton's “ open field”

＋ If in the past in applied linguistics there has been a tendency

to attribute special privileges to the generalist, casting him or her
as either the central character, sage or master of ceremonies,
this now seems less relevant.
＋ Understood as an open field of interest in language, in which
those inhabiting or passing through simply show a common
commitment to the potential value of dialogue with people who
are different, there is no knowing where, between whom or on
what the most productive discussions will emerge.
 Rampton’s recipe for applied linguistics takes us to the
extreme of post-modernism, even if unintentionally, since
what he proposes suggests that there is no vocation of applied
linguist, just individuals working in some loose sense of
7.4.8 A theorising approach

 Modernist approaches (such as CDA) and

postmodernist critiques (such as CAL) of applied
linguistics are, as we have seen, seductive.
 They provide a useful debate on the nature of the
discipline, they need to be taken into account. But
they must not be allowed to take over, cuckoo-like.
 Whorfianism, the notion of linguistic determinism
(or linguistic relativity), asserts that thinking and
language are so closely connected that our view of
the world is determined by the structure of our
first language or mother tongue.
7.5 Theorising practise

 3 possible directions for fragmentation: theory, ideology and

practice. The first is towards a powerful theory, as we see in
current second-language acquisition (SLA) research,
attracted at present by the explanatory power of Univer-sal
Grammar.
 The second fragmentation is that applied linguistics is taken
over by the ideology of one or other political variety, the CDA
practised by Fairclough, or the more radical, if also more
nebulous CAL promoted by Pennycook.
 There are other ideological possibilities which point away
from a political or postmodern outcome: one such alternative
would be the linguistics of Harris’s language-in-use project.
 There is the practice emphasis which would shift applied
linguistics to a future largely within teacher education.
7.6 Conclusion

 In this chapter the author has queried how far current

developments in the humanities and the social
sciences have affected applied linguistics, with
particular reference to the various ‘critical’ stances.

 He suggested that what Critical Discourse Analysis

(and Critical Applied Linguistics) represent is an
offshoot of postmodernism, masquerading as
modernity. Such approaches, he concluded, are
marginal to the applied linguistics enterprise.
 4. THE NEW CRITIQUE OF
APPLIED LINGUISTICS
4.5 Widdowson’s critique
Hammersley (1996): explains the use of ‘critical’ in critical
discourse analysis, critical applied linguistics
 Implying an abandonment of any constraint on the
evaluation of the discourse and contexts that are studied.
 The term ‘critical’ generally refers to forms of research

assuming that people can only understand society as a

totality
 Producing knowledge of society critical research => reveals
what is obscured by ideology, which being pervasive and
playing an essential role in preserving the status quo.