An Introduction to Applied Linguistics

4.8 A theorising approach
Modernist approaches (such as CDA) and postmodernist critiques (such as CAL)
of applied linguistics are, as we have seen, seductive. They provide a useful debate
on the nature of the discipline, they need to be taken into account. But they must
not be allowed to take over, cuckoo-like. Because their interest at the end of the day
is not primarily in what Brumfit calls ‘real-world problems in which language is
a central issue’. And since this is what applied linguistics is about, it is difficult
to con sider critical approaches as other than marginal to the applied-linguistics
enterprise.
In his critique of critical discourse analysis, Widdowson makes the following
comment: ‘It would appear that what the theory presented here really amounts to
is the reaffirmation of the familiar Whorfian notion of linguistic determinism, but
applied not only to cognition in respect of the language code, but in respect to its use
in communication as well’ (Widdowson 1998: 139).
Whorfianism, the notion of linguistic determinism (or linguistic relativity), asserts
that thinking and language are so closely connected that our view of the world is
determined by the structure of our first language or mother tongue.
Is Widdowson correct about the influence of Whorfianism in CDA? Surely the
proponents of critical discourse analysis and of the Foucauldian approach of critical
applied linguistics cannot be quite so naive as to fall for the functional fallacy? And
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yet, perhaps that is the case. Certainly there is a trace of strong Whorfianism running
through the certainties of both CDA and CAL which seems to take for granted that
language is a direct reflection of meaning. Such a restricted view reflects a meagre
view of the resources available to language.
But perhaps at bottom this is a philosophical disagreement between those
traditional views of reality, realism and nominalism, realism meaning that universals
exist in reality independently of our consciousness and nominalism the opposite.
For the nominalist there is no one-to-one relationship between language and
concept: language is a code for referring to meaning but is not of itself that meaning.
That must mean that only the very weakest Whorfian position is tenable; it must
also mean that the critical approach to discourse analysis or to applied linguistics
is vitiated by its own attachment to a realist (and Whorfian) view of language,
cognition and meaning. Postmodernist approaches simply take the realist position to
its extreme: there is indeed no truth (reason) to be discovered, only truths (reasons).
But there is still the fixation on truth. The nominalist, the empiricist and the applied
linguist are not concerned with truth but with a theorising explanation. They place
themselves in a compromise position between the grand theory of the modernist and
the relativity of the postmodernist. Theory, yes but not grand theory. Explanation for
the time being – not truth for all time. The search for a theory of applied linguistics
is surely misconceived, rather like the hunting of the snark in Lewis Carroll’s poem.
Applied linguistics does not need a unitary theory; what it requires is an openness to
influences and theories from elsewhere, so that professional applied linguists can
adopt a theorising approach to language problems.