An Introduction to Applied Linguistics

4 THE NEW CRITIQUE OF APPLIED LINGUISTICS
4.1 Changes
Changes in applied-linguistics practice there have been, but in our view these can be
accounted for by appealing to a move from a more linguistic to a more applied
model. This has meant bringing the social aspect of language in use into a central
position and to an extent downgrading the linguistic and the psycho linguistic. But
there has also been a major change in the rhetoric used to discuss applied linguistics
and this has spilled over, as we saw earlier, into practice.
4.2 Emergence of a theory
Corder took an essentially modernist view, that applied linguistics needed theory to
explain the practical (and of course the empirical). He himself appeared content early
on with an explanatory theory based in linguistics but his own development led him
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to seek a theory of practice. A theory has indeed emerged since Corder’s retirement
in the early 1980s, a theory deriving from post-structuralism and postmodernism,
the theory calling itself variously ‘theory’, ‘critical theory’, ‘critical discourse analysis’
and ‘critical applied linguistics’. We have referred to this theory in Chapters 2 and 6
above. Here we offer a critique of that theory, making clear that in our view it is an
inadequate theory to explain and support applied linguistics practice. (For discussion
of socio-cultural theory see Chapter 8.)
4.3 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).
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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 marginalised, whom they wish to empower: to that extent they
decry the hegemonising juggernauts of the colonial and the imperial with relation to
their totalising 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 theorising applied linguistics resembles a rather simplistic
Marxism (see below). 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 every -
where. For such a claim to stand up we need a higher standard of proof, such as is
found in the natural sciences.