The Routledge Handbook of Language Awareness

Peter Garrett, Josep M. Cots

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781317385332
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

The Routledge Handbook of Language Awareness is a comprehensive and informative overview of the broad field of language awareness. It contains a collection of state-of-the-art reviews of both established themes and new directions, authored and edited by experts in the field. The handbook is divided into three sections and reflects the engaging diversity of language awareness perspectives on language teaching and teachers, language learning and learners, and extending to additional areas of importance that are less directly concerned with language instruction.

In their introductory chapter, the editors provide valuable background to the language awareness field along with their summary of the chapters and issues covered. A helpful section giving further reading suggestions for each of the chapters is included at the end of the book. This volume is essential reading for graduate students and researchers working in the sphere of language awareness within applied linguistics, sociolinguistics and across the wider spectrum of language and communication.

1

Language Awareness

Opening Up the Field of Study

Josep M. Cots and Peter Garrett

Our title for this chapter expresses an underlying aim in this handbook, and one that carries three senses. Firstly, ‘opening up’ means collecting together theory and research into language awareness and making it accessible to more students and researchers. Secondly, it concerns the advancement of research into language awareness. And thirdly, it entails the exploration and expansion of language awareness in areas outside the traditional one of language teaching.

Exploring the Scope of Language Awareness

Defining language awareness has always been challenging. While, as we see in this handbook, various definitions are provided, Donmall (1992), in her Editorial in the first issue of the journal Language Awareness, notes that “Language Awareness has the great advantage of being a cover term for almost anything to do with language” (1). And perhaps we should not be too surprised to see a host of differing definitions of a concept. Dance and Larson (1976) reported over 100 different definitions of the term ‘communication’, for example, and Gass and Seiter (2004) set out a long list of differing definitions of ‘persuasion’ by different scholars. Insofar as definitions can operate like a “fence … designed to keep some things in and other things out” (Gass and Seiter, 2014: 24), the advantages of strictly identifying what is entitled to lie within the fence sometimes need to be offset against the risk of closing out proximal areas that might turn out to be of great value (e.g. to the better understanding and development over time of what lies within), or more integral than first viewed. Another approach might be to identify what one might see as ‘inner’ areas of the language awareness field, where there is most agreement around key features (e.g. explicit knowledge about language) and where these features are all present, and then also to accommodate areas extending outwards, where some but not all of these features are present (e.g. where there might be a focus on explicit knowledge about nonverbal communication – proxemics or chronemics, for example – rather than about language itself). Thus, we might consider van Essen’s (2008: 3) idea of the “core business of LA” being concerned with language teaching and language learning, and with language teachers and language learners, but we might also readily embrace other areas such as “the world of work and issues in language-sensitive professions such as law and politics” (Donmall, 1992: 2) and transnational corporations (Codó, this volume). This is a project beyond the scope of this introduction, and perhaps one that might be taken up by the Association for Language Awareness (ALA). But it is the perspective that lay behind our initial planning of this handbook. Parts 1 and 2 can be viewed as closer to this “core business of LA”, while there are chapters in Part 3 reaching out and exploring beyond that core.

The understanding of the notion of ‘awareness’ among applied linguists owes much to the work of Schmidt (1995) and van Lier (1996, 1998), who saw it as a level, phase or facet of ‘consciousness’. Although in everyday life these two terms are sometimes used interchangeably, the latter can be seen as having a much more comprehensive meaning, referring to the response of an individual to their environment in the form of what Chafe (1994: 28) defines as a “self-centred model of the surrounding world”. Occasions of situated language use or specific communicative practices form part of this ‘surrounding world’ for which, if we want to survive in it, we need to develop a model of its functioning, including principles, rules and patterns. According to Schmidt (1995), consciousness can involve four different psychological processes: intention, attention, noticing and understanding. However, he associates the notion of awareness only with the last two, because they represent a more advanced stage in the process of modelling the surrounding world, as they rely on the individual’s capacity to focus on a particular phenomenon or event (noticing) and to establish or recognize a principle, rule or pattern (understanding).

Van Lier’s (1998) approach to the notions of consciousness and awareness is very similar to that of Schmidt in that he also considers four levels of consciousness, with an increasing degree of subjectivity and each including the previous one(s). Thus, at the most basic level, he proposes “global intransitive consciousness”, with which he simply refers to a general state of being attentive or observant in situated language use. The next level is defined as “awareness” or “transitive consciousness” and it has to do with the individual’s capacity to notice or focus their perceptual activity on a particular element or aspect of communicative practices. The third level of consciousness proposed by van Lier is “metaconsciousness”, and he divides it between “practical awareness” (the capacity to control, manipulate and be creative with language) and “discursive awareness”, which includes the individual’s access to a set of precise terms to analyse and discuss language as part of communicative practices. Finally, van Lier defines the fourth level of consciousness as “critical awareness” and it refers to the capacity to reflect on communicative practices as part of social and ideological practices.

We consider that, independently of the extent to which Schmidt’s and van Lier’s proposals may reflect how the mind actually works (an issue which, by the way, needs to be acknowledged for most psycholinguistic models of language competence), they represent very useful conceptual frameworks with which to approach both research and practice around the notion of language awareness. Beyond the conceptual issues, however, there is the reality of many researchers and practitioners, who at a point in time, and with probably different experiences, goals and theoretical bases, saw in the notion of language awareness a focalizing idea for what they were doing and one that could bring them together to join efforts.

The history of language awareness is well documented elsewhere (see, for example, Donmall-Hicks, 1997; van Essen, 2008), so we will look at it here only briefly and selectively. In 1989, a BAAL (British Association of Applied Linguistics) seminar on language awareness was organized at Bangor University in Wales, and its motivation is summed up at the start of the edited collection of papers that arose from it (that is, James and Garrett, 1992a): “Language Awareness (LA) is a term that crops up more and more in a widening range of academic and pedagogical contexts, and this growing frequency of use has brought with it a proliferation of senses of the label” (James and Garrett, 1992b: 3). The idea “was to assemble representatives of some of the various branches of LA, each with its own understanding of the term, and invite them to explore common ground and areas of difference in terms of definitions, objectives and means to achieve these objectives”. We mention this to emphasize the diversity of the field from the outset. In the context of the 1980s, there was the language awareness of Hawkins (1981, 1984, and also 1992, 1999) arguing for programmes of study in schools about language and how we learn languages, with Modern Languages and English teachers working together. Hawkins was responding to the poor literacy rates and the poor record of foreign language learning in UK schools, and in doing so was also seeking to arouse curiosity about language (realizing too, in his notion of the “school language apprenticeship” (Hawkins, 1999: 137) that the languages the students might need in later life might well not be the ones available in schools), and to counter prejudice and foster tolerance (in particular in response to racial and religious tensions in UK cities, especially at that time). In the same vein, language awareness programmes and materials were also being created and implemented by ethnic minority support services that were working with schools in many parts of the UK at that time. All of these programmes, as well as the Language in the National Curriculum (LINC) materials designed for the in-service training of teachers in their knowledge of the English language (see Carter, 1990), were concerned with increasing conscious knowledge about language in various ways, although this could involve raising to people’s awareness aspects of language that were already part of their implicit knowledge. In addition to these areas of language awareness work was the activity in the field of Critical Language Awareness (CLA), with its focus on students seeing and engaging with the ideological and political nature of language (e.g. Fairclough, 1989, 1992, 1999; Clark and Ivanič, 1999). This also of course concerned the development of explicit understanding and knowledge about language.

In this same period, a role for conscious knowledge about language was also being argued in the second language acquisition (SLA) field, where there was a debate between those who favoured Krashen’s (1982) Monitor Model, which saw no useful part for conscious knowledge about language in second language acquisition, and those who opposed this view and argued, with evidence, that there was indeed a cross-over, and that conscious knowledge did indeed play a role. In this SLA arena, the argument for explicit knowledge was very much a counter to the comparatively monolithic ‘implicit-only’ standpoint of the Monitor Model, and so left the way open for a permeable interface: that is, complementarity rather than ‘explicit-only’.

Accordingly, then, both in this handbook and elsewhere, while authors might refer to the definition of language awareness posted on the ALA website: “explicit knowledge about language, and conscious perception and sensitivity in language learning, language teaching and language use”, they also often write about both conscious and unconscious/nonconscious phenomena, as if recognizing that, in at least some areas of language awareness, it is not viable or useful to consider just one side of this coin. We see this not only in chapters focusing on beliefs and attitudes, but in chapters on other areas too. Just to take some examples, Llanes considers the roles of both explicit and implicit language knowledge in relation to Study Abroad programmes. Van Leeuwen considers both conscious and unconscious knowledge in relation to composition in visual images. Bardovi-Harlig reports both implicit and explicit perspectives on pragmatic awareness, and suggests not seeing these as in binary opposition but as a continuum. As shown above, this notion of levels of awareness is also found elsewhere in the language awareness literature, albeit with different focuses (e.g. Preston, 1996; Schmidt, 1995; van Lier, 1996, 1998). While explicit knowledge tends to be at or more to the fore in some areas, such as the Hawkinsian field, and LINC, there is clearly an interest in the implicit side of things too. Preston (this volume) is encouraging of this, arguing that folk linguistics too has moved in the direction of studying implicit as well as explicit knowledge. And Kristiansen (this volume), researching in the sociolinguistic field of language change, finds implicit attitudes to be more revealing of the direction of language change than explicit attitudes.

1992 and Since

1992 was something of a milestone year for language awareness. In the wake of the above-mentioned 1989 BAAL seminar, Bangor University hosted the first International Conference on Language Awareness in 1992. At the conference itself, the journal Language Awareness was launched, published then by Multilingual Matters. At the same conference, the ALA was also founded, to which the journal was then affiliated, and which since that time has held biennial international language awareness conferences. And alongside all this, two edited volumes were published by Longman that same year, both of which are still much referred to: Critical Language Awareness (Fairclough, 1992) and Language Awareness in the Classroom (James and Garrett, 1992a).

‘Newness’ is a focus of attention in (at least) two ways in language awareness. One is that awareness-raising tends to involve noticing the gap between what one knows and what one does not know, or what one needs to know, and moving forward from what one knows (old knowledge) to seeing what is new and needs to be learnt. The other concerns a point made by Svalberg (2016: 9, and mentioned in Andrews and Lin, this volume) that in terms of the content knowledge language teachers need to have as a basis for their teaching, language is far from a static body of knowledge. There are always “new developments and new insights” to take on board (Andrews, 2007: 67). Since 1992 (just one year after Tim Berners-Lee created the world’s first ever webpage), a great deal has happened across the world that has required us to reassess our knowledge, perspectives, ideas and practices regarding language, culture and communication.

Although globalization is arguably not a uniquely contemporary phenomenon, it is in our contemporary era one that is particularly associated with the 1990s and onward. To illustrate, in their US survey, Fiss and Hirsch (2005: 47) found that more than 40% of their respondents in 1993 reported that they were not familiar with the concept of globalization, whereas just five years later only 11% of their respondents did not express a view when asked whether globalization was good or bad. While the concept of globalization carries variable values, associations and inferred meanings for people across the world (e.g. see Garrett, 2010), we will list here a few of the main characteristics that Coupland suggests, each having implications for language awareness:

Massively increasing demographic mobility

Developing ethnic pluralism, especially in urban settings

Proliferation and speeding up of communication technologies

Increasing mediation of culture and greater cultural reflexivity

Increasingly familiar cultural landscapes, widely dispersed

A large shift to service-sector work, globally dispersed

More emphasis on individualism and projects of the self

Failing trust in professional (medical, legal, political) authority

Growth of middle class but accentuation of the rich/poor divide

Coupland, 2010: 2

As one would expect, many of the authors in this handbook consider changes associated with globalization and/or their impacts. Hence several include mention of the world-wide web and social media (e.g. Hall; van Leeuwen; Young; Finkbeiner and Schluer; Basturkmen and Philp) if not have their primary focus on them (Dooly), in terms of their effects on, amongst other things, language and language use itself, on increasing multimodality, on their cultural and intercultural aspects, and as a basis for new teaching and learning practices. The massive mediatization of the globalized world also reshapes language use, values and ideologies, and indeed awareness (e.g. Dooly, as well as Kristiansen’s chapter with its report on what is happening with the Danish language, and see also Mortensen, Coupland and Thøgersen, 2017, on the creative innovations in style and the intensified reflexive awareness generated by late-modern media).

The increasing numbers of people on the move and the developing ethnic pluralism link of course to the growth of multilingualism and third (or more) language acquisition (e.g. Jessner), plurilingualism (Oliveira and Ançã), diasporic communities and border protection agencies (Hatoss), internationalization in universities (Dafouz), and Study Abroad programmes (Llanes), language diversity in primary schools (Young), and language policies and practices in multilingual workplaces and organizations (Codó). Relatedly, Johnstone (2010: 387) notes that this increased geographical mobility and the resulting demographic heterogeneity in localities create “precisely the conditions that foster dialect and language awareness”.

As Codó reminds us in her chapter, though, people communicating ‘within the workplace’ are not necessarily ‘people on the move’, as our knowledge economy has developed more and more into a network (also internetwork) economy, with global teams of professional experts, contractors, customers, etc. working together from different locations around the globe. Such world-networked multilingual and multicultural environments are a significant development and an important focus for the language awareness field.

The Handbook Chapters

In planning the handbook, then, we decided to have three parts. Parts 1 and 2 would focus on what we have earlier referred to as ‘core’ language awareness, with its primary focus on the teaching and learning of languages, whether L1 or additional languages, and extending to intercultural issues and the field of human communication. Part 3 would include other perspectives on awareness which do not relate so directly to language pedagogy but are nevertheless concerned in various ways with language and communication – areas ranging from professional communication, translation, visual communication to other areas such as the social psychology of language, sociolinguistics, dialectology and the sociology of language.

Part 1

While it is for the most part not possible (or necessarily desirable) to separate teaching from learning, Part 1 contains a collection of chapters where the co...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Information
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Dedication
• List of Illustrations
• List of Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Language Awareness: Opening Up the Field of Study
• Part I Focus on Language Teaching and Teachers
• Part II Focus on Language Learning and Learners
• Part III Beyond Language Pedagogy
• Further Reading for Each Chapter
• Index