Critical Applied Linguistics

A Critical Introduction

Alastair Pennycook

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2001
• ISBN:
  9781135650179
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Bildung
• Subtopic: Bildung Allgemein

This accessible guide and introduction to critical applied linguistics provides a clear overview, highlighting problems, debates, and competing views in language education, literacy, discourse analysis, language in the workplace, translation and other language-related domains. Covering both critical theory and domains of practice, the book is organized around five themes: the politics of knowledge, the politics of language, the politics of texts, the politics of pedagogy, and the politics of difference. It is an important text for anyone involved in applied linguistics, TESOL, language education, or other language-related fields.

Chapter 1
Introducing Critical Applied Linguistics

Critical Applied Linguistic Concerns

Domains of Critical Applied Linguistics

Conclusion: Why Critical Applied Linguistics?

What is critical applied linguistics? Simply put, it is a critical approach to applied linguistics. Such a response, however, leads to several further questions: What is applied linguistics? What is meant by critical? Is critical applied linguistics merely the addition of a critical approach to applied linguistics? Or is it something more? This short introductory chapter gives an outline of what I understand critical applied linguistics to be, before I expand in much greater detail in later chapters on the domains it may cover, the theoretical issues it engages with, and the types of questions it raises. Critical applied linguistics is not yet a term that has wide currency, so this introduction in a sense is a performative act: Rather than introducing an already established domain of work, this introduction both introduces and produces critical applied linguistics (CALx). It is therefore also a fairly personal account of this area. And since I believe critical work should always be self-reflexive, this introduction must necessarily be critical (hence a critical introduction).

Rather than simply trying to define what I take critical applied linguistics to be, I would prefer to raise a number of important concerns and questions that can bring us closer to an understanding of this area. These concerns have to do with:

• The scope and coverage of applied linguistics
• The notion of praxis as a way of going beyond a dichotomous relation between theory and practice
• Different ways of understanding the notion critical
• The importance of relating micro relations of applied linguistics to macro relations of society
• The need for a critical form of social inquiry
• The role of critical theory
• Critical applied linguistics as a constant questioning of assumptions
• The importance of an element of self-reflexivity in critical work
• The role of ethically argued preferred futures
• An understanding of critical applied linguistics as far more than the sum of its parts.

CRITICAL APPLIED LINGUISTIC CONCERNS

Applied Linguistics

To start with, to the extent that critical applied linguistics is seen as a critical approach to applied linguistics, it needs to operate with a broad view of applied linguistics. Applied linguistics, however, has been a notoriously hard domain to define. The Longman Dictionary of Applied Linguistics gives us two definitions: “the study of second and foreign language learning and teaching” and “the study of language and linguistics in relation to practical problems, such as lexicography, translation, speech pathology, etc.” (Richards, Platt, & Weber, 1985, p. 15). From this point of view, then, we have two different domains, the first to do with second or foreign language teaching (but, not, significantly, first language education), the second to do with language-related problems in various areas in which language plays a major role. This first version of applied linguistics is by and large a result historically of its emergence from applying linguistic theory to contexts of second language pedagogy in the United States in the 1940s. It is also worth observing that as Kachru (1990) and others have pointed out, this focus on language teaching has also been massively oriented toward teaching English as a second language. The second version is a more recent broadening of the field, although it is certainly not accepted by applied linguists such as Widdowson (1999), who continue to argue that applied linguists mediate between linguistic theory and language teaching.

In addition, there is a further question as to whether we are dealing with the application of linguistics to applied domains—what Widdowson (1980) termed linguistics applied—or whether applied linguistics has a more autonomous status. Markee (1990) termed these the strong and the weak versions of applied linguistics, respectively. As de Beaugrande (1997) and Markee (1990) argue, it is the so-called strong version—linguistics applied—that has predominated, from the classic British tradition encapsulated in Corder’s (1973) and Widdowson’s (1980) work through to the parallel North American version encapsulated in the second language acquisition studies of writers such as Krashen (1981). Reversing Markee’s (1990) labels, I would argue that this might be more usefully seen as the weak version because it renders applied linguistics little more than an application of a parent domain of knowledge (linguistics) to different contexts (mainly language teaching). The applied linguistics that critical applied linguistics deals with, by contrast, is a strong version marked by breadth of coverage, interdisciplinarity, and a degree of autonomy. From this point of view, applied linguistics is an area of work that deals with language use in professional settings, translation, speech pathology, literacy, and language education; and it is not merely the application of linguistic knowledge to such settings but is a semiautonomous and interdisciplinary (or, as I argue later, antidisciplinary) domain of work that draws on but is not dependent on areas such as sociology, education, anthropology, cultural studies, and psychology. Critical applied linguistics adds many new domains to this.

Praxis

A second concern of applied linguistics in general, and one that critical applied linguistics also needs to address, is the distinction between theory and practice. There is often a problematic tendency to engage in applied linguistic research and theorizing and then to suggest pedagogical or other applications that are not grounded in particular contexts of practice (see Clarke, 1994). This is a common orientation in the linguistics-applied-tolanguage- teaching approach to applied linguistics. There is also, on the other hand, a tendency to dismiss applied linguistic theory as not about the real world. I want to resist both versions of applied linguistics and instead look at applied linguistics in all its contexts as a constant reciprocal relation between theory and practice, or preferably, as “that continuous reflexive integration of thought, desire and action sometimes referred to as ‘praxis’” (Simon, 1992, p. 49). Discourse analysis is a practice that implies a theory, as are researching second language acquisition, translation and teaching. Thus, I prefer to avoid the theory- into-practice direction and instead see these as more complexly interwoven. This is why I argue that this book is an exercise in (critical) applied linguistics and also why it will not end with a version of the pedagogical implications of critical applied linguistics. I try to argue that critical applied linguistics is a way of thinking and doing, a “continuous reflexive integration of thought, desire and action.”

Being Critical

If the scope and coverage of applied linguistics needs careful consideration, so too does the notion of what it means to be critical or to do critical work. Apart from some general uses of the term—such as “Don’t be so critical”—one of the most common uses is in the sense of critical thinking or literary criticism. Critical thinking is used to describe a way of bringing more rigorous analysis to problem solving or textual understanding, a way of developing more critical distance as it is sometimes called. This form of “skilled critical questioning” (Brookfield, 1987, p. 92), which has recently gained some currency in applied linguistics (see Atkinson, 1997), can be broken down into a set of thinking skills, a set of rules for thinking that can be taught to students. Similarly, while the sense of critical reading in literary criticism usually adds an aesthetic dimension of textual appreciation, many versions of literary criticism have attempted to create the same sort of “critical distance” by developing “objective” methods of textual analysis. As McCormick (1994) explains:

Much work that is done in “critical thinking”…—a site in which one might expect students to learn ways of evaluating the “uses” of texts and the implications of taking up one reading position over another—simply assumes an objectivist view of knowledge and instructs students to evaluate texts’ “credibility,” “purpose,” and “bias,” as if these were transcendent qualities. (P. 60)

It is this sense of critical that has been given some space by various applied linguists (e.g., Widdowson, 1999) who argue that critical applied linguistics should operate with this form of critical distance and objectivist evaluation rather than a more politicized version of critical applied linguistics.

Although there is of course much to be said for such an ability to analyze and critique, there are two other major themes in critical work that sit in opposition to this approach. The first may accept the possibility that critical distance and objectivity are important and achievable but argues that the most significant aspect of critical work is an engagement with political critiques of social relations. Such a position insists that critical inquiry can remain objective and is no less so because of its engagement with social critique. The second argument is one that also insists on the notion of critical as always engaging with questions of power and inequality, but it differs from the first in terms of its rejection of any possibility of critical distance or objectivity. I enlarge on these positions briefly below, and at greater length in later chapters (→chap. 2), but for the moment let us call them the modernist-emancipatory position and the postmodern-problematizing position (see Table 1.1).

TABLE 1.1

Three Approaches to Critical Work

Micro and Macro Relations

Whichever of these two positions we take, however, it is clear that rather than basing critical applied linguistics on a notion of teachable critical thinking skills, or critical distance from social and political relations, critical applied linguistics has to have ways of relating aspects of applied linguistics to broader social, cultural, and political domains. One of the shortcomings of work in applied linguistics generally has been a tendency to operate with what I elsewhere (Pennycook, 1994a) called decontextualised contexts. It is common to view applied linguistics as concerned with language in context, but the conceptualization of context is frequently one that is limited to an overlocalized and undertheorized view of social relations. One of the key challenges for critical applied linguistics, therefore, is to find ways of mapping micro and macro relations, ways of understanding a relation between concepts of society, ideology, global capitalism, colonialism, education, gender, racism, sexuality, class, and classroom utterances, translations, conversations, genres, second language acquisition, media texts. Whether it is critical applied linguistics as a critique of mainstream applied linguistics, or as a form of critical text analysis, or as an approach to understanding the politics of translation, or as an attempt to understand implications of the global spread of English, a central issue always concerns how the classroom, text, or conversation is related to broader social cultural and political relations.

Critical Social Inquiry

It is not enough, however, merely to draw connections between micro relations of language in context and macro relations of social inquiry. Rather, such connections need to be drawn within a critical approach to social relations. That is to say, critical applied linguistics is concerned not merely with relating language contexts to social contexts but rather does so from a point of view that views social relations as problematic. Although a great deal of work in sociolinguistics, for example, has tended to map language onto a rather static view of society (see Williams, 1992), critical sociolinguistics (→chaps. 2 and 3) is concerned with a critique of ways in which language perpetuates inequitable social relations. From the point of view of studies of language and gender, the issue is not merely to describe how language is used differently along gendered lines but to use such an analysis as part of social critique and transformation. A central element of critical applied linguistics, therefore, is a way of exploring language in social contexts that goes beyond mere correlations between language and society and instead raises more critical questions to do with access, power, disparity, desire, difference, and resistance. It also insists on an historical understanding of how social relations came to be the way they are.

Critical Theory

One way of taking up such questions has been through the work known as Critical Theory, a tradition of work linked to the Frankfurt School and such thinkers as Adorno, Horkheimer, Walter Benjamin, Erich Fromm, Herbert Marcuse, and currently Jürgen Habermas. A great deal of critical social theory, at least in the Western tradition, has drawn in various ways on this reworking of Marxist theory to include more complex understandings of, for example, ways in which the Marxist concept of ideology relates to psychoanalytic understandings of the subconscious, how aspects of popular culture are related to forms of political control, and how particular forms of positivism and rationalism have come to dominate other possible ways of thinking. At the very least, this body of work reminds us that critical applied linguistics needs at some level to engage with the long legacy of Marxism, neo-Marxism, and its many counterarguments. Critical work in this sense has to engage with questions of inequality, injustice, rights, and wrongs.

Looking more broadly at the implications of this line of thinking, we might say that critical here means taking social inequality and social transformation as central to one’s work. Marc Poster (1989) suggests that “critical theory springs from an assumption that we live amid a world of pain, that much can be done to alleviate that pain, and that theory has a crucial role to play in that process” (p. 3). I am reminded here of a moment recounted by Habermas, the prolific heir to this critical tradition, when he went to visit Herbert Marcuse, his predecessor and author of such classic works as One Dimensional Man. Just before Marcuse’s 80th birthday, the two had had a “long discussion on how we could and should explain the normative base of Critical Theory.” Two years later, Habermas visits Marcuse in the intensive care unit of a hospital. The dying Marcuse returns to the previous debate: “Look, I know wherein our most basic value judgments are rooted—in compassion, in our sense for the suffering of others” (Marcuse as cited in Habermas, 1985, p. 77). This moment is worth recalling, I think, for amid all the discussions of different critical approaches and amid the insistence that this sort of critical work has to be based on particular political beliefs, it is worth reminding ourselves that it is perhaps compassion, but a compassion grounded in a sharp critique of inequality, that grounds our work. Taking up Poster’s (1989) terms, critical applied linguistics is an approach to language-related questions that springs from an assumption that we live amid a world of pain and that applied linguistics may have an important role in either the production or the alleviation of some of that pain. But, it is also a view that insists not merely on the alleviation of pain but also the possibility of change.

Problematizing Givens

While the sense of critical thinking I discussed earlier—a set of thinking skills—attempts almost by definition to remain isolated from political questions, from issues of power, disparity, difference, or desire, the sense of critical that I want to make central to critical applied linguistics is one that takes these as the sine qua non of our work. Critical applied linguistics is not about developing a set of skills that will make the doing of applied linguistics more rigorous or more objective but is about making applied linguistics more politically accountable. Nevertheless, as I suggested earlier, there are quite divergent strands within critical thought. As Dean (1994) suggests, the version of critical in Critical Theory is a form of critical modernism, a version of critical theory that tends to critique “modernist narratives in terms of the one-sided, pathological, advance of technocratic or instrumental reason they celebrate” only to offer “an alternative, higher version of rationality” in their place (Dean, 1994, p. 3). As I argue in later chapters, a great deal of the work currently being done in critical domains related to critical applied linguistics often falls into this category of emancipatory modernism, developing a critique of social and political formations but offering only a version of an alternative truth in its place. This version of critical modernism, with its emphasis on emancipation and rationality, has a number of limitations.

In place of Critical Theory, Dean (1994) goes on to propose what he calls a problematizing practice. This, he suggests, is a critical practice because “it is unwilling to accept the taken-for-granted components of our reality and the ‘official’ accounts of how they came to be the way they are” (p. 4). Thus, a crucial component of critical work is always turning a skeptical eye toward assumptions, ideas that have become “naturalized,” notions that are no longer questioned. Dean (1994) describes such practice as “the restive problematization of the given” (p. 4). Drawing on work in areas such as feminism, antiracism, postcolonialism, postmodernism, or queer theory, this approach to the critical seeks not so much the stable ground of an alternative truth but rather the constant questioning of all categories. From this point of view, critical applied linguistics is not only about relating micro relations of applied linguistics to macro relations of social and political power; neither is it only concerned with relating such questions to a prior critical analysis of inequality; rather, it is also concerned with questioning what is meant by and what is maintained by many of the everyday categories of applied linguistics: language, learning, communication, difference, context, text, culture, meaning, translation, writing, literacy, assessment, and so on.

Self-reflexivity

Such a problematizing stance leads to another significant element that needs to be made part of any critical applied linguistics. If critical applied linguistics needs to retain a constant skepticism, a constant questioning of the givens of applied linguistics, this problematizing stance must also be turned on itself. As Spivak (1993) suggests, the notion of critical also needs to imply an awareness “of the limits of knowing” (p. 25). As I suggested earlier, one of the problems with emancipatory-modernism is its assurity about its own rightness, its belief that an adequate critique of social and political inequality can lead to an alternative reality. A postmodern-problematizing stance, however, needs to maintain a greater sense of humility and difference and to raise questions about the limits of its own knowing. This self-reflexive position also suggests that critical applied linguistics is not concerned with producing itself as a new orthodoxy, with prescribing new models and procedures for doing applied linguistics. Rather, it is concerned with raising a host of new and difficult questions about knowledge, politics, and ethics.

Preferred Futures

Critical applied linguistics also needs to operate with some sort of vision of what is preferable. Critical work has often been criticized for doing little more than criticize things, for offering nothing but a bleak and pessimistic vision of social relations. Various forms of critical work, particularly in areas such as education, have sought to avoid this trap by articulating ‘utopian’ visions of alternative realities, by stressing the ‘transformative’ mission of critical work or the potential for change throu...