Applied linguistics: no ‘bookish theoric’
THE NEW CRITIQUE OF APPLIED LINGUISTICS
Rise of relativism
We have maintained that opposition to the realist pursuit of the unique truth does not of necessity end up in the kind of unthinking and impotent relativism that we find, for example in Peim (1993) in his consideration of the value of critical theory to the teacher of English as a mother tongue:
The implications of post-structuralist, sociological and sociolinguistic theory throw into doubt all the language practice of (the discipline) English, including all those practices associated with creativity, with self-expression, as well as those that emphasize social aspects of language, like correctness or appropriateness, for example … The realization of a general field of language and textuality systematically excluded from English represents greatly extended possibilities … I’m proposing here … that this more inclusive field be addressed, a field of language and textuality, in which questions of power and ideology, for example, could not be ignored … To reconstruct English in this way means addressing … issues of race, class and gender, issues in relation to culture and democracy, concerning among other things, language differences and power, what it means to be literate. (Peim 1993: 8–9)
It is tempting to wonder how it is that the iconoclasm that has led postmodernism to overthrow all grand theories seems to lead to the setting up of alternatives in their place: race, class, gender, culture, democracy and, above all, power. But what is even more puzzling about Peim’s project is what it actually means for language teachers: are they to abandon all skill training? Are all lessons to be concerned with discussions of power? Or are we dealing with the criteria for selection of texts for learners so that they necessarily focus on these ‘grand issues’?
A more helpful advocate of the relative position can be found in Block (1996). Block argues, in a characteristic postmodern way against grand theory, in his case the single theory of second-language acquisition research, advocated, he maintains, by Long (1990), Beretta and Crookes (1993). But he is not opposed to the role of a theoretical approach: ‘why do we think in applied linguistics that we have to act “scientific” where “scientific” is understood as what is done in physical sciences? We study language acquisition, a phenomenon which is extremely sensitive to changes of context and, this being the case, I propose … that we evaluate theories in relation to context and purpose’ (Block 1996: 77).
Critiques of the colonial and the imperial such as we find in the post-colonial views of Kachru (1985) and the post-imperial of Phillipson (1992) can be identified as both modernist and postmodernist. They are postmodernist because they stand up for the rights of the marginalized, whom they wish to empower: to that extent they decry the hegemonizing juggernauts of the colonial and the imperial with relation to their totalizing influence on English.
And yet they are also modern in that they both offer a single explanation for the phenomenon, in the case of the post-colonial effect on English, the explanation of world Englishes, itself a development of the wider theory of varieties. In the case of 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; we can account for this hypothesis in terms of the one grand theory of linguicism which brooks no argument (Skutnabb-Kangas and Phillipson 1997). Such an approach to theorizing applied linguistics resembles a rather simplistic Marxism. It provides an explanation but there is no obvious way in which it can be upheld; it cannot obviously be subjected to the classical Popperian method of disproof, and as such makes the mistake not of failing to explain but of over-explaining, of being for a theory too powerful, so that it explains everything everywhere. For such a claim to stand up we need a higher standard of proof, such as is found in the natural sciences.
