The applied linguistics challenge
APPLIED LINGUISTICS AND RESPONSIBILITY
Brumfit’s definition of applied linguistics has been much quoted: ‘The theoretical and empirical investigation of real-world problems in which language is a central issue’ (Brumfit 1995: 27). In the last twenty or so years there has been considerable expansion of applied linguistics into new domains of real-world problems, as we see, for example, in the 2005 Special Issue of Applied Linguistics, where topics such as Gender, Asylum Seeker Cases and Institutions of Opinion were explored alongside analysis of the clash of knowledge and power in foreign languages and the dissection of the conflicting roles of the pragmatic and the generic in applied linguistics.
The expansion is one thing: what is new is the expectation that applied linguistics must take responsibility, essentially political responsibility. This was proclaimed by Pennycook (2001) and in language assessment by Shohamy (2001) and recently continued by McNamara and Roever (2006). No doubt this concern for taking responsibility, the acceptance of accountability, is one aspect of the professionalizing of applied linguistics and is therefore part of the push to ethicality. There is a difference, not always recognized, between two related questions: one, in doing this (assessment, CDA, asylum seeker language analysis etc.) are we behaving with ethical rigour; and two, should we be doing this anyway? The first question is entirely proper; the second is improper since what it may do is to make research subject to political judgement. This is most evident in the troubled debates on the role of assessment. Such debates raise the potential conflict between the rights of individual conscience on the one hand and the call of duty to one’s professional responsibilities on the other. Codes of ethics and of practice exist to establish just what those responsibilities are after agreement by the community, academic or professional, to which one belongs. But all such codes need to allow individual researchers, individual members, to object to particular responsibilities on the grounds of conscience. What scholars such as Shohamy, Pennycook, McNamara and Roever attempt, quite properly, is to persuade colleagues of the need for reform, of just what are the responsibilities of applied linguists, just what role they should adopt and what limits to put on the research and development areas they should be involved in.
One very sensitive area with which English language teaching (ELT) has been involved over the past fifty or so years is that of globalization. What Skutnabb-Kangas has termed linguicide (Skutnabb-Kangas, Phillipson and Rannut 1994) with particular reference to the Third World was first applied to colonial territories where English has, so it is claimed, a negative effect on local languages. But globalization has also had an impact on countries not in the Third World, on countries where English has taken more and more influential a role in public life. And this manifests itself today in the growing importance of English in the European Community (Phillipson 2003). The issue for applied linguistics is, again, what if any responsibility applied linguists have to prevent or slow down such huge take-over, which, it is claimed, hastens the decline and possibly death of other languages. Hence the growth of scholarly work on World Englishes, recording the development of new Englishes (Brutt-Griffler 2002) which may be seen as a reaction against the hegemony I have mentioned. Singaporean English, Indian English, Nigerian English etc. are ways of using English for local purposes and may therefore be seen as political statements.
There is a further aspect of globalization which is, after all, a more neutral term for what is in effect the hegemony of the west (and above all of the USA). This runs through all professional domains and is keenly felt by non-western academics (Canagarajah 1999). A key text setting out this issue is Makoni et al. (2003) which establishes its lead credibility in its Foreword. It calls on:
Black scholars to take on the duty and the challenge of researching and expanding the possibilities inherent in African languages and the varieties of Black languages they have generated around the globe over the years … Remarkably, these languages have developed despite all the odds set against them by the historical experience of the plantation, the colony, and the neo-colony … This collection is one more step on the road toward the decolonization of Black languages and Black thought. (wa Thiong’o 2003: xi, xii)
The editors argue that the purpose of the book is to challenge ‘conventional constructs such as multilingualism, indigenous languages, linguistic human rights and even the term “language” itself’ (Makoni et al. 2003: 1).
Interestingly and to some extent ironically, the book is not written in a black language. This is what the editors say:
although this topic is on Black languages, it has not been written in a Black language. As Black scholars from varying ethno-linguistic backgrounds, English is the language we have in common. The use of English in writing and communication between Black scholars is here a counter-hegemonic move: an attempt to challenge the hegemony of English by using English to create an intellectual counter-discourse in language studies. (ibid: 1)
Kramsch’s contribution to the Special Issue of Applied Linguistics mentioned above ends with a general comment on the responsibilities of applied linguists; and her comment has resonance for the black linguists I have quoted:
One of the main tools of power is the ability to frame the problems. It is the responsibility of applied linguists, as researchers and as language educators, to openly show the connection between language problems and the larger historical and geopolitical conditions that have brought them about and to re-frame the problems accordingly. (Kramsch 2005: 562)
This is, as they say, a big ask. What it does is to reveal the fault-line in applied linguistics that runs between teaching and research into language problems on the one hand and the political interventionism to relieve the underlying causes and remove the problems on the other. Whether both roles are possible is a major issue for applied linguists to argue about and investigate over the next period.
