Teaching and Researching: Language and Culture

Joan Kelly Hall

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781317862697
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Language and culture are concepts increasingly found at the heart of developments in applied linguistics and related fields. Taken together, they can provide interesting and useful insights into the nature of language acquisition and expression. In this volume, Joan Kelly Hall gives a perspective on the nature of language and culture looking at how the use of language in real-world situations helps us understand how language is used to construct our social and cultural worlds.The conceptual maps on the nature of language, culture and learning provided in this text help orient readers to some current theoretical and practical activities taking place in applied linguistics. They also help them begin to chart their own explorations in the teaching and researching of language and culture.

Section

III Researching language and culture

Chapter 7

The research enterprise

This chapter:

• presents the theoretical foundations of research on language and culture from a sociocultural perspective;

• discusses several issues to be considered when designing and implementing research;

• offers a list of additional readings on the topics covered in this chapter.

7.1 Introduction

Traditional conceptualisations of research in applied linguists draw a distinction between researchers and practitioners. The task of researchers is to produce new knowledge and practitioners are to use the knowledge to address real world issues. As originally conceived, this was the work of applied linguists, to apply findings about the nature of language and culture to the solving of problems concerned with, for example, the teaching of languages, language policy decision making, the assessment of language abilities and disabilities, problems in workplace communica tion and so on. This perspective is captured in Corder’s 1973 definition of applied linguistics as ‘the application of linguistic knowledge to some object’ (p. 10), with the applied linguist in the role of ‘consumer, or user, not a producer, of theories’ (ibid.).

A sociocultural perspective on research makes no such distinction. Instead, in defining research as a systematic quest for new understandings and new ways of attending to the world, such activity is viewed as a natural com ponent of all applied linguists’ activity. The distinction deemed relevant is that which distinguishes expert researchers from less proficient researchers. Rather than being based on one’s professional position, the distinction is predicated on an individual’s degree of expertise in a range of knowledge, skills and abilities needed to engaged in a complex and demanding task.

The purpose of this chapter is to lay out some of the general issues and concerns embodied in the enterprise of research with which anyone interested in doing research on language and culture from a sociocultural perspective should at least be familiar. The discussion is not meant to turn novice researchers into experts; for this, one needs extensive training and experience. Rather, it aims to highlight some of the basic issues involved in doing ‘good’ research that are worthy of consideration.

7.2 Foundations of research on language and culture from a sociocultural perspective

One important aspect of research expertise involves being aware of and able to articulate the theoretical premises embodied in different approaches to research. The ways in which we perceive the world and our relationship to it, however tacit these understandings may be, frame our understandings of the nature of research, the purposes for which we engage in it, the kinds of research questions we ask, and the methods we choose to seek answers to those questions. Before undertaking a discussion on possibilities for research on language and culture, it is useful to review some of the more fundamental presuppositions embodied in a sociocultural perspective.

A first premise has to do with the nature of knowledge. As we have discussed in earlier chapters, a more traditional ‘linguistics applied’ perspective configures knowledge as a rational, universal entity with unchanging properties that exists separate from and independent of the knower. Language and culture knowledge specifically are perceived as abstract representations that, although located in the head of individuals, can be extracted from individual mind, and subjected to enquiry independently of the varied ways in which they are used.

In contrast, a sociocultural perspective defines knowledge not as some rational system existing apart from its users, but as a socially constituted cultural construct. This construct exists not within universal mind but within our communities, and is given shape by the communicative activities in which we engage as members of our communities and, more specifically, their tools and the ways we use the tools to mediate our actions in our activities with others. It is from our mediated actions that knowledge takes shape, including its forms and functions, and from which referential understandings of the world are drawn.

A second premise has to do with the nature of inquiry. A traditional view of the purpose of research is to expand our theoretical understandings of the universal principles by which the world operates so that we may better predict and control what happens in it. In assuming language and culture knowledge to consist of internally coherent systems by which their existence – apart from any context – is governed, the role of such enquiry is to understand the structural specifications, the formal properties, of the knowledge systems as fully as possible so that we can predict how individuals, universally inscribed, make use of them. In such inquiry, sites of language use become sources of data only in that they allow for the collection of samples from which forms can be extracted and isolated, and hypotheses about the formal properties of systems can be made. In the process, the researcher is the scientist, who stands apart from that which is being studied in the aim for value-free ‘objective’ findings.

A sociocultural perspective on the nature of inquiry differs fairly significantly from the more traditional view. From this perspective, reality is not a fixed, stable entity but multiple and jointly constructed. Thus, the researcher cannot be separated from what is researched. Acknowledging the impossibility of objectivity, the role of the researcher is to maintain a credible, trustworthy voice through ‘habitual reflexivity’ (Sweetman, 2003: 528), that is, continual critique of his or her involvement in all aspects of the research process.

Moreover, the goal of research is not to reveal some underlying truth or sets of universal principles and properties of human nature and the world. Rather, the goal is multi-purposed. On one level, it is to understand the communicative worlds in which we live and the semiotic means by which we construct and are constructed in our worlds. To reach such understanding entails the examination of our lived experiences, the meanings residing in them, the social, cultural and political forces that give rise to these meanings, and the consequences that participation in these experiences have for individual action and development. Such examinations reveal the intricacies of our communicative worlds and make clear how our worlds, our social identities and the roles we play, are connected to, and partially constructed by, our communicative actions and those of others, and by the larger sociohistorical forces embodied in them.

In addition to enhancing understandings of the ‘taken-for-granted’ nature of our everyday lives, such research endeavours aim to contribute to the development of a theory of practice (cf. de Certeau, 1984; Lave and Wenger, 1991). The goal of such a theory is to help to explain, on a broader scale, the communicative actions by which individuals within social groups and institutions, and groups and institutions within larger sociocultural communities, (re)create and respond to both their sociohistorical and locally situated interactive conditions, and the consequences – linguistic, social, cognitive and otherwise – of their doing so.

Quote 7.1 On a theory of social practice

Briefly, a theory of social practice emphasizes the relational interdependency of agent and world, activity, meaning, cognition, learning, and knowing. It emphasizes the inherently socially negotiated character of meaning and the interested, concerned character of the thought and action of persons-in-activity. This view also claims that learning, thinking, and knowing are relations among people in activity in, with, and arising from the socially and culturally structured world. This world is socially constituted; objective forms and systems of activity, on the one hand, and agents’ subjective and intersubjective understandings of them, on the other, mutually constitute both the world and its experienced forms.

Lave and Wenger (1991: 50–51)

As Ortega (2005) notes, the value of such research is to be judged ‘ultimately on the basis of its potential for positive impact on societal and educational problems’ (p. 430). Therefore, in addition to enhancing understand ings, an additional purpose is to use the findings to engage with individuals, groups, institutions and communities and ultimately contribute to the transformation of understandings, policies and practices ‘in ways that can feed forward into society’ (Bygate, 2005: 574).

Quote 7.2 On the multiple goals of applied linguistics research

Although applied linguistics has a commitment to its necessary collaborators, it has, also, an equal commitment and obligation to itself. It has constantly to work to develop generalisable principles of theoretical and analytic insights which will enable it to say not only what it does, but why what it does is grounded in coherent and sustainable argument…. If applied linguistics is, ultimately, concerned not just with application but with the transformation and recontextualisation of the professional practices with which it engages, it is equally concerned with such continuing respecification of itself.

Candlin and Sarangi (2004a: 3)

7.3 Methodological considerations

7.3.1 Choice of methods

In addition to making one’s assumptions clear, doing good research involves choosing appropriate methods for collecting and analysing data, since the methods we choose to use will shape the kinds of data we gather and ultimately what we find. Data generally take two forms: quantitative and qualitative. The basic distinction between the two is that quantitative data are expressed in terms of numbers or amounts while qualitative data are not. Instead, qualitative data can take many forms, including verbal and non-verbal means of social action, pictorial and other kinds of visual representations, and so on.

Although this division is a common one, a closer look reveals that they are not distinct categories. Rather, they are intimately connected in that quantitative data are based upon qualitative judgements, and qualitative data can be ‘quantitized’ (Sandelowski et al., 2009: 211), described and manipulated numerically. The purpose of research on language and culture is to discern, examine and interpret meaningful communicative patterns and plans, and to explain them in terms of larger ideological themes and topics that emerge from the patterns. To generate well grounded, warranted claims about the patterns and themes detected through analysis of the data, we must rely on counting, which is a basic means for determining quantity. The more often an action takes place, or a form appears, or a concept or idea is generated, the more basis we have for determining whether there is a pattern or theme. Once we have determined the existence of a pattern or a theme, we generally rely on the number of times it occurs to determine its significance. The more often something happens, the more warranted is our claim of conventionality. Similarly, the more a theme appears in particular oral or written texts, the stronger our claim can be as to its significance to the person or persons to whom the texts belong.

The more we build our analysis on the basis of frequency, the less concern there is that the examples we have chosen to illustrate a claim are selective, representing our own hunches, rather than illustrative of the whole body of data from which the examples are drawn. Use of such quantitative methods allows researchers to ‘show regularities or peculiarities … they might not otherwise see or be able simply to communicate, or to determine that a pattern or idiosyncrasy they thought was there is not’ (Sandelowski et al., 2009: 210).

On the other hand, no matter which particular means of quantifying data we choose to use, the meaningfulness of the quantified data can only be deter mined through qualitative judgements based on the perceptions of those from whose lives the data are drawn. That is to say, detecting patterns of commun icative behaviour can tell us how ubiquitous something is in the full body of empirical evidence. However, what it cannot tell us is the meaning such patterns have for those whose patterns they are. It can, as Widdowson (2000: 7) has pointed out, ‘only analyze the textual traces of the processes whereby meaning is achieved; it cannot account for the complex interplay of linguistic and contextual factors whereby discourse is enacted’. Without so...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• General Editors' Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Publisher's Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Section I Defining language and culture
• Section II Teaching language and culture
• Section III Researching language and culture
• Section IV Resources
• Glossary
• References
• Author index
• Subject index