Dialogue With Bakhtin on Second and Foreign Language Learning

New Perspectives

Joan Kelly Hall, Gergana Vitanova, Ludmila A. Marchenkova

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2004
• ISBN:
  9781135611323
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Bildung
• Subtopic: Bildung Allgemein

This volume is the first to explore links between the Russian linguist Mikhail Bakhtin's theoretical insights about language and practical concerns with second and foreign language learning and teaching. Situated within a strong conceptual framework and drawing from a rich empirical base, it reflects recent scholarship in applied linguistics that has begun to move away from formalist views of language as universal, autonomous linguistic systems, and toward an understanding of language as dynamic collections of cultural resources. According to Bakhtin, the study of language is concerned with the dialogue existing between linguistic elements and the uses to which they are put in response to the conditions of the moment. Such a view of language has significant implications for current understandings of second- and foreign-language learning.The contributors draw on some of Bakhtin's more significant concepts, such as dialogue, utterance, heteroglossia, voice, and addressivity to examine real world contexts of language learning. The chapters address a range of contexts including elementary- and university-level English as a second language and foreign language classrooms and adult learning situations outside the formal classroom. The text is arranged in two parts. Part I, "Contexts of Language Learning and Teaching, " contains seven chapters that report on investigations into specific contexts of language learning and teaching. The chapters in Part II, "Implications for Theory and Practice, " present broader discussions on second and foreign language learning using Bakhtin's ideas as a springboard for thinking.This is a groundbreaking volume for scholars in applied linguistics, language education, and language studies with an interest in second and foreign language learning; for teacher educators; and for teachers of languages from elementary to university levels. It is highly relevant as a text for graduate-level courses in applied linguistics and second- and foreign-language education.

Chapter 1

Introduction: Dialogue With Bakhtin on Second and Foreign Language Learning

Joan Kelly Hall

Pennsylvania State University

Gergana Vitanova

University of Central Florida

Ludmila Marchenkova

The Ohio State University

Scholarship in second and foreign language learning has traditionally looked to the fields of linguistics and psycholinguistics for its epistemological foundations. One assumption in particular that has exerted much influence over the years on research concerned with language learning is a formalist view of language. Drawn from mainstream linguistics, this view considers language to be a set of abstract, self-contained systems with a fixed set of structural components and a fixed set of rules for their combination. Moreover, the systems are considered objects of study in their own right in that they can be extracted from their contexts of use and studied independently of the varied ways in which individuals make use of them.

Drawing on this formal view of language, investigations of language learning have ranged from identifying structural differences among language systems for the purposes of predicting those patterns that could cause difficulty in learning to describing the components of learners’ interlanguage system, the transitional system posited to be developed by language learners as they move from beginning to more advanced stages of knowledge of the target language system. Also of interest has been the various forms of pedagogical interventions to determine the most effective way to facilitate learners’ assimilation of new systemic knowledge into known knowledge structures. Given the view of language as stable, autonomous systems, it has been assumed that the best that teaching could do is to help learners make more effective use of an otherwise-immutable process.

Concerns with the limitations of this view for understanding fully language learners’ experiences have recently increased, with scholars calling for explorations into other disciplinary territories in search of new ways to conceptualize the field (Firth & Wagner, 1997; Hall, 1993, 1995). These explorations have been productive, yielding insights into the nature of language and learning that challenge the traditional, formalist perspective typical of earlier research.

One of the more significant sources of current understandings of language can be found in the work of Mikhail Bakhtin, a Russian literary theorist. Bakhtin developed his ideas in response to early Russian formalists. In contrast to an understanding of language as sets of closed, abstract systems of normative forms, Bakhtin viewed it as comprising dynamic constellations of sociocultural resources that are fundamentally tied to their social and historical contexts. These collections, which are continuously renewed in social activity, are considered central forms of life in that not only are they used to refer to or represent our cultural worlds, but they also are the central means by which we bring our worlds into existence, maintain them, and shape them for our own purposes. Voloshinov (1973, p. 95) stated that “Language acquires life and historically evolves precisely here, in concrete verbal communication, and, not in the abstract linguistic system of language forms, nor in the individual psyche of speakers.”¹

One concept that is crucial to Bakhtin’s conceptualization of language is the utterance, our concrete response to the conditions of the moment. For Bakhtin, the utterance is always a two-sided act. In the moment of its use, at one and the same time, it responds to what precedes it and anticipates what is to come. When we speak, then, we do two things; (a) we create the contexts of use to which our utterances typically belong and, at the same time, (b) we create a space for our own voice.

Bakhtin used the term speech genres to capture what is typical about utterances. According to Bakhtin, genres provide the history of an utterance. They bring to the moment a set of values and definitions of the context, or a way of thinking about the moment (Morson & Emerson, 1989). Bakhtin (1986, p. 87) noted:

A speech genre is not a form of language but a typical form of utterance; as such the genre also includes a certain typical kind of expression that inheres in it. In the genre the word acquires a particular typical expression. Genres correspond to typical situations of speech communication, typical themes, and to particular contacts between the meanings of words and actual concrete reality under certain typical circumstances.

When we speak, then, we do so in genres—that is, we choose words according to their generic specifications. At the moment of their use, we infuse them with our own voices.

Bakhtin used the term dialogic to capture the meaning-making process by which the historical and the present come together in an utterance. All utterances are inherently dialogic; they have, at the same time, a history and a present, which exist in a continually negotiated state of “intense and essential axiological interaction” (Bakhtin, 1990, p. 10). It is in the dynamic tension between the past and the present that gives shape to one’s individual voice. Such a view of language removes any a priori distinction between form and function and between individual and social uses of language. Just as no linguistic resource can be understood apart from its contexts of use, no single utterance can be considered a purely individual act. Thus, rather than being considered peripheral to our understanding of language, dialogue is considered its essence.

Bakhtin’s conceptualization of language has several significant implications for current understandings of second and foreign language learning. First, it helps us to see language as a living tool—one that is simultaneously structured and emergent, by which we bring our cultural worlds into existence, maintain them, and shape them for our own purposes. In using language to participate in our activities, we reflect our understanding of them and their larger cultural contexts. At the same time, we create spaces for ourselves as individual actors within them.

Second, it locates learning in social interaction rather than in the head of the individual learner. In learning a language, we appropriate signs that are laden with meaning, “drenched in community experience” (Dyson, 2000, p. 129), and so, at the same time that we learn to use specific linguistic resources, we appropriate their histories and the activities to which they are associated. Learning language, then, does not mean accumulating decontextualized forms or structures but rather entering into ways of communicating that are defined by specific economic, political, and historical forces (Holquist, 1990).

From this perspective, the act of learning other languages takes on special meaning. For Bakhtin, it is only through knowing others that we can come to know ourselves. The more opportunities we have for interacting with others, the wider and more varied our experiences with different genres are. The more encounters with different genres we experience, the more enriched is our ability to understand and participate in social life. For, according to Bakhtin, in orienting toward us, others’ utterances project a potentially new space for us that we can evaluate, draw on, and make our own. Where there are few possibilities for others to orient to us, “there are no tools for living in that place” (Emerson, 1997, p, 223). Thus, it is only by entering into dialogue with “a diversified array of others” (Emerson, 1997. p. 223) who are different from us that we can flourish.

OVERVIEW OF THIS BOOK

This edited volume presents 10 chapters that draw on Bakhtin’s insights about language to explore theoretical and practical concerns with second and foreign language learning and teaching. The chapters begin with the premise that learning other languages is about seeking out different experiences for the purposes of developing new ways of understanding ourselves and others and becoming involved in our worlds. The text is arranged into two parts. Part I contains 7 chapters that report on investigations into specific contexts of language learning and teaching.

Braxley’s chapter (chap. 1) uses Bakhtin’s concepts of dialogism and speech genres in investigating how international graduate students in a North American program master the task of academic writing in English as a second language. Arguing that dialogue is a critical component of the process through which non-native speakers negotiate the complexity of academic genres, Braxley presents data from a qualitative study with five female students from east and southeast Asia. The data, collected through open-ended interviews, revealed several important patterns. Most important, Braxley discovered that although mastering the genre of academic English was challenging both cognitively and emotionally for her participants, it was facilitated by dialogues with peers, instructors, and with texts. The findings also reveal that students were able to appropriate the genres of their own academic fields; however, the mastery of one genre did not extend to the mastery of other genres. Braxley concludes her chapter with a discussion of what she considers to be some significant pedagogical implications arising from these findings.

In chapter 2, Iddings, Haught, and Devlin examine mutual relations among sign, meaning, and language learning that involve two second language students in an English-dominant third-grade classroom. They apply Bakhtin and Vygotsky’s views on meaning-making, supplemented by Bakhtin’s concept of dialogism, in order to understand how these novice learners of English reorganize and develop semiotic tools to create meaning through interaction with each other. Their findings indicate that the students’ engagement in multimodal representations facilitated their access to the social life in the classroom, which in turn opened the door to the learning of English. Iddings et al. conclude that the most important factor in creating meaning was the developing relationship between the two interactants, in which they used various signs, such as drawings, block patterns, and ornate designs.

Orr considers in chapter 3 Bakhtin’s concept of utterances to be particularly fertile for the field of English as a second language composition. In his study of a freshman composition classroom, he demonstrates how objects of popular culture function as utterances that carry ideological and cultural meanings. The ESL students in this classroom had to select, analyze, and respond to bumper stickers as artifacts of popular culture. In the essays they wrote, followed by letters to friends and the owner of car with the bumper stickers, students actively engaged in dialogic relationships with others’ utterances. They evaluated these utterances on the basis of their own ideologies and the ideologies of their first-language communities. Orr’s findings reveal that these ESL composition students exhibited a keen awareness of the interactive nature of utterances, and they understood how these are politically and socially situated. This realization—that language is not a neutral medium, according to the author—can significantly enhance access to the second language and increase L2 proficiency.

In chapter 4, Lin and Luk take as their point of departure Bakhtin’s analyses of the liberating power of laughter. They use Bakhtin’s ideas to address the issue of teaching English in post- and neocolonialist contexts. They then present a discourse analysis of classroom interactions video recorded in two Hong Kong secondary schools. The analysis demonstrates that English lessons may be uncreative parroting sessions for students. In contrast, Lin and Luk discuss how students use their native language styles in more creative learning situations. They conclude the chapter by arguing that Bakhtin’s ideas can help English teachers to be more aware of the ideological nature of their own teaching practices and to use dialogic communication with their students. A special role in such communication, they emphasize, belongs to students’ uses of local linguistic styles, social languages, and creativity.

Chapter 5, by Dufva and Alanen, combines Bakhtin’s notion of dialogicality with neo-Vygotskyan approaches to language learning in their ongoing study of a small group of Finnish schoolchildren. Drawing on dialogical and Vygotskian perspectives, Dufva and Alanen critique purely cognitivist views on children’s metalinguistic awareness and suggest that the latter is simultaneously a social and individual/cognitive phenomenon. Polyphony is another Bakhtinian concept that Dufva and Alanen extend to their analysis of metalinguistic awareness. By arguing that young children develop their knowledge of native and foreign languages in a variety of settings and interactions, they explain that children’s awareness emerges as a multivoiced, rather than a unified, construct. Dufva and Alanen’s analyses demonstrate that the child’s metalinguistic awareness is, in a significant way, a heteroglossic phenomenon, as Bakhtin would term it. In other words, it reflects traces not only of different dialects, registers, and styles but also of values and beliefs that are picked up in everyday life contexts. By embedding metalinguistic awareness in Bakhtinian terms, the chapter prompts language researchers to rethink this complex construct and contends that metalinguistic awareness develops through socialization practices into the discourses of one’s settings.

In Platt’s chapter 7, the concept of dialogism elaborated by Bakhtin serves as a theoretical framework for analyzing the performance of a problem-solving (information gap) task in a new language. The focus of her study is on two novice learners of Swahili who establish intersubjectivity, construct meaning, and come to recognize their language-learning selves in negotiating this challenging task. Using multiple sources of data, Platt demonstrates the differences between the participants in terms of their perspectives on language, procedural preferences, and goals for accomplishment. She also describes the gradual processes of a successful completion of the task by both participants, revealing how, as a result of their dialogic activity, one of the learners, Majidah, comes to recognize herself as a good language learner.

In chapter 8, Vitanova explores how adult immigrants author themselves and how they act as agents in contexts and discourses alien to them. Vitanova’s understanding of agency is grounded in the Bakhtinian framework of subjectivity, in which agency is shaped by creative answerability and marked by emotional-volitional tones. To illustrate, Vitanova draws on narrative discourse examples from three eastern European immigrants. She examines how the participants reauthor and re-create their selves through dialogic relations with others, in responding creatively to the others’ voices and practices. She concludes the chapter by calling for microsocial linguistics articulated by Bakhtin that views personhood as a continuous creative process.

The three chapters that comprise Part II, “Implications for Theory and Practice,” present broader discussions on second and foreign language learning using Bakhtin’s ideas as a springboard for thinking. In chapter 9, Marchenkova outlines a much-needed parallel between Bakhtin and Vygotsky. In it, she argues that, despite their different theoretical backgrounds—philosophical and literary theory for Bakhtin and developmental psychology for Vygotsky—the two scholars’ frameworks enrich and complement each other. In delineating the similarities and differences between the two Russian scholars, she focuses on three interrelated areas: (a) the notion of language, and how it is conceptualized in the two frameworks; (b) the role of culture in the development of intercultural understanding; and (c) the formation of self and the role of the other in this process. Of particular interest to L2 researchers and teachers, however, is not merely the theoretical parallels between Vygotsky’s and Bakhtin’s approaches to Ian-guage and the self; rather, it is Marchenkova’s suggestion of how linking these two compatible— and, at the same time, distinct—frameworks can provide a fruitful ground for L2 pedagogy.

Kostogriz’s chapter 10, also espouses Bakhtin’s s notions of dialogue, culture, and the other. Its focus, however, is on ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Preface
• Contributors
• Chapter 1: Introduction: Dialogue With Bakhtin on Second and Foreign Language Learning
• Part I: Investigations into Contexts of Language Learning and Teaching
• Part II: Implications for Theory and Practice