Ch. 3 of Prof. Pennycook's CALx

Chapter 3 The Politics of Language


3.1 SOCIOLINGUISTICS AND POWER

Is access to "standard English"empowerment, as Honey (1997) claims?  Or do we create an "undifferentiated Other" when we argue as Honey does?



3.1.1 Liberal Sociolinguistics
Access to standard English and/or acknowledgement of alternatives?

Giroux (1983: 229)'s criticism on liberal sociolinguistics

To argue that working-class language practices are just as rule-governed as standard English usage and practice may be true, but to suggest at the same time that all cultures are equal is to forget that subordinate groups are often denied access to the power, knowledge, and resources that allow them to lead self-determined existences.
Henry Giroux (1983) Theory and Resistance in Education Bergin & Garvey Paperback

Henry Giroux is a social critic. See Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Giroux

Videos of Henry Giroux is available at
http://www.henryagiroux.com/interviews.htm
or
http://freire.mcgill.ca/content/henry-giroux-interview

Liberal egalitarianism of (socio)linguistics --> denying access to standard English AND claiming nonexistent equality?

A critical stance is necessary.

Traditional sociolinguistics may have disregarded social classes and instead only dealt with social strata (Fairclough 1989, Mey 1985)


"Sociolinguistic reality" as natural or political?

Questioning the concept of "sociolinguistic competence"

From "social appropriacy" to "language use in terms of political desirability"?
Peirce, B. N. (1989) Toward a pedagogy of possibility in the teaching of English internationally. TESOL Quarterly, 23, 401-420.

Does language merely reflect society?

-->An alternative view by Cameron (1995)

Sociolinguistics says that how you act depends on who you are; critical theory says that who you are (and taken to be) depends on how you act. (1995, pp. 15-16)
Cameron, D. (1995). Verbal hygine. London: Routledge.

==> "Speaking, learning, teaching language is a form of social and cultural action; it is about producing and not just reflecting realities." (p. 53)

3.2 LANGUAGE PLANNING AND POLITICS: THE GLOBAL SPREAD OF ENGLISH

Is language planning a scientific and technological matter or a social and political matter, or both?


3.2.1 Liberal Complementarity

A colonial celebrity position: "English is superior to other languages in terms of both its intrinsic (the nature of the language) and extrinsic (the functions of the language) qualities." (p. 56)

A liberal laissez-faire attitude: "a balance between the dual values of 'international intelligibility' and 'historical identity.' (cf. Crystal 1997)


Laissez-faire: a policy of allowing events to take their own course with minimal intervention. (Wikipedia)

You can read some portion of Crystal's English as a Global Language from Google Book Search.

Notice how he uses the verb 'grow' for language use (language as a natural phenomenon) and the impersonal pronoun 'nothing' for a social/political agency (non-political view over language, no notion of performativity and resistance)

Although avoiding firm predictions about the future, I thought it likely that English 'has already grown to be independent of any form of social control' (1st edition, p. 139). In my view the momentum of growth has become so great that there is nothing likely to stop its continued spread as a global lingua franca, at least in the foreseeable future. (Preface to the second edition, x)

Are the users of language other than English static markers of identity?
See my short review of Claire Kramsch and Anne Whiteside (2008) Language Ecology in Multilingual Settings. Towards a Theory of Symbolic Competence. Applied Linguistics 29/4: 645-671
http://yosukeyanase.blogspot.com/2008/11/kramsch-and-whiteside-2008-language.html



3.2.2 Language Ecology, Language Rights, and Linguistic Imperialism

Linguistic imperialism

Diffusion-of-English paradigm and ecology-of-language paradigm in Phillipson and Skutnabb-Kangas (1996) English Only Worldwide or Language Ecology? TESOL Quarterly, 30, 429-452.


They do not, however, take a simplistic view. What they call for is "increased sensitivity":

We are not suggesting that global injustice in North-South relations correlates simply or straightforwardly with English as the dominant world language and a range of uses to which English is put internationally and intranationally. Major complexities exist in the relationship between global homogenization and heterogenization, the intermeshing of economic and cultural forces (Appadurai, 1990), and controversy about the multiple nature of the English language and about whose interests “world Englishes” serve. On the other hand, as people concerned with language matters, we need to consider how and why English is expanding worldwide, whose interests this process has served, and what ideologies and structures currently favour the increased expansion of English at the expense of other languages. We need increased sensitivity to diverse language policy goals and to the potential of a range of educational language policy measures, particularly in formal schooling. We as TESOL professionals need to know whose agenda we are following, both as intellectuals (Said, 1994) and as teachers responsible for the educational development of fellow humans. (p. 441)

Linguicism, of which linguistic imperialism is one form is explained in Wikipedia as follows:

Linguicism is a form of prejudice, an "-ism" along the lines of racism, ageism or sexism. Broadly defined, it involves an individual making judgments about another's wealth, education, social status, character, and/or other traits based on choice and use of language.
The word is attributed to the linguist Tove Skutnabb-Kangas, who coined the concept in the mid-1980s, and gave it the following definition: "ideologies and structures which are used to legitimate, effectuate, and reproduce unequal division of power and resources (both material and non-material) between groups which are defined on the basis of language."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguicism

Language rights

See Wikipedia:

Linguistic rights (or language rights or linguistic human rights) are the human and civil rights concerning the individual and collective right to choose the language or languages for communicating in a private or public atmosphere, regardless ethnicity or nationality or the number of the speakers of a language in a given territory.

Linguistic rights include the right to legal, administrative and judicial acts, education, and the media in a language understood and freely chosen by those concerned. They are a means of resisting forced cultural assimilation and linguistic imperialism, especially in the context of protection of minorities and indigenous peoples.

Linguistic rights in international law are usually dealt in the broader framework of cultural and educational rights.

Important documents for linguistic rights include the Universal Declaration of Linguistic Rights, the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages and the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_rights

UNIVERSAL DECLARATION ON LINGUISTIC RIGHTS (World Conference on Linguistic Rights Barcelona, Spain, 9 June 1996) is available from here:
http://www.unesco.org/cpp/uk/declarations/linguistic.pdf

Notice that this Declaration takes "the principle that linguistic rights are individual and collective at one and the same time (Article 1, Section 2)."

Article 3 is about personal rights, collective rights and interrelation of them:

Article 3

1. This Declaration considers the following to be inalienable personal rights which may be exercised in any situation:

the right to be recognized as a member of a language community; the right to the use of one’s own language both in private and in public; the right to the use of one’s own name;

the right to interrelate and associate with other members of one’s language community of origin;

the right to maintain and develop one’s own culture;

and all the other rights related to language which are recognized in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights of 16 December 1966 and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights of the same date.

2. This Declaration considers that the collective rights of language groups may include the following, in addition to the rights attributed to the members of language groups in the foregoing paragraph, and in accordance with the conditions laid down in article 2.2:

the right for their own language and culture to be taught; the right of access to cultural services;

the right to an equitable presence of their language and culture in the communications media;

the right to receive attention in their own language from government bodies and in socioeconomic relations.

3. The aforementioned rights of persons and language groups must in no way hinder the interrelation of such persons or groups with the host language community or their integration into that community. Nor must they restrict the rights of the host community or its members to the full public use of the community’s own language throughout its territorial space.

http://www.unesco.org/cpp/uk/declarations/linguistic.pdf

Article 4 seems to aim for a good balance between separation and assimilation:

Article 4

1. This Declaration considers that persons who move to and settle in the territory of another language community have the right and the duty to maintain an attitude of integration towards this community. This term is understood to mean an additional socialization of such persons in such a way that they may preserve their original cultural characteristics while sharing with the society in which they have settled sufficient references, values and forms of behaviour to enable them to function socially without greater difficulties than those experienced by members of the host community.

2. This Declaration considers, on the other hand, that assimilation, a term which is understood to mean acculturation in the host society, in such a way that the original cultural characteristics are replaced by the references, values and forms of behaviour of the host society, must on no account be forced or induced and can only be the result of an entirely free choice.
http://www.unesco.org/cpp/uk/declarations/linguistic.pdf

Article 5 declare the equality and independence of the legal or political status of languages as official languages. Note the use of words such as equal, independent, legal, political, or official. Words like same, economic, social or even cultural are are not used here.

Article 5

This Declaration is based on the principle that the rights of all language communities are equal and independent of the legal or political status of their languages as official, regional or minority languages. Terms such as regional or minority languages are not used in this Declaration because, though in certain cases the recognition of regional or minority languages can facilitate the exercise of certain rights, these and other modifiers are frequently used to restrict the rights of language communities.

Article 14 prohibits a possible abuse of this Declaration to the detriment of the norm or practice of powerful languages.

Article 14

The provisions of this Declaration cannot be interpreted or used to the detriment of any norm or practice deriving from the internal or international status of a language which is more favourable to its use within the territory to which it is specific.

Volume 20, Issue 1, Pages 1-112 (January 1998) of Language Sciences is a special issue for Language Rights that is edited by Phil Benson, Peter Grundy and Tove Skutnabb-Kangas.

It contains the following papers.

Introduction
Pages 1-3
Peter Grundy, Phil Benson, Tove Skutnabb-Kangas

Human rights and language wrongs?A future for diversity?
Pages 5-27
Tove Skutnabb-Kangas

Language choice in education: Conflict resolution in Indian courts
Pages 29-43
E. Annamalai

The philosophy of language rights
Pages 45-54
Albert H. Y. Chen

Human language rights: An islamic perspective
Pages 55-62
Ahmad Shehu Abdussalam

Language rights--interests of state, language groups and the individual
Pages 63-72
Florian Coulmas

The right to language: Towards a situated ethics of language possibilities
Pages 73-87
Alastair Pennycook

Postmodernity, cultural pluralism and the nation-state: Problems of language rights, human rights, identity and power
Pages 89-99
Naz Rassool

Globalizing English: Are linguistic human rights an alternative to linguistic imperialism?
Pages 101-112
Robert Phillipson

Language ecology

Language ecology is explained by Phillipson and Skutnabb-Kangas (1996) as follows: "The ecology-of-language paradigm involves building on linguistic diversity worldwide, promoting multilingualism and foreign language learning, and granting linguistic human rights to speakers of all languages. (in the Abstract, p. 429)"

Following Tsuda (1994), Phillipson and Skutnabb-Kangas (1996: 436) presents the ecology-of-language paradigm by presenting its main features.

Ecology-of-Language Paradigm

1. a human rights perspective
2. equality in communication
3. multilingualism
4. maintenance of languages and cultures
5. protection of national sovereignties
6. promotion of foreign language education

Phillipson and Skutnabb-Kangas (1996) English Only Worldwide or Language Ecology? TESOL Quarterly, 30, 429-452.

cf. Tsuda, Y. (1994).  The diffusion of English: Its impact on culture and communication.  Keio Communication Review, 16, 49-61.

Compare how the concept of language ecology is explored in the Language Ecology Course Proposal at Berleley Language Center, where the following five issues are considered central problems: social context; history and geography;population dynamics; ideology; cognition.
http://blc.berkeley.edu/language_ecology_proposal.html
Syllabus is available from here:
http://blc.berkeley.edu/language_ecology_syllabus.html


--> Is the term ecology used as a scientific term or as a loosely ideological term?


See the entry of ecology in Wikipedia:

Ecology is the scientific study of the distribution and abundance of life and the interactions between organisms and their natural environment. The environment of an organism includes physical properties, which can be described as the sum of local abiotic factors such as insolation (sunlight), climate, and geology, and biotic ecosystem, which includes other organisms that share its habitat.

The word "ecology" is often used more loosely in such terms as social ecology and deep ecology and in common parlance as a synonym for the natural environment or environmentalism. Likewise "ecologic" or "ecological" is often taken in the sense of environmentally friendly.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecology

Or see how The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language defines 'ecology.'

(1a) The science of the relationships between organisms and their environments. Also called bionomics.
(1b) The relationship between organisms and their environment.

(2) The branch of sociology that is concerned with studying the relationships between human groups and their physical and social environments. Also called human ecology.

(3) The study of the detrimental effects of modern civilization on the environment, with a view toward prevention or reversal through conservation. Also called human ecology.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/ecology

Esperanto

[In a comment posted to this article, Mr. Brian Barker kindly suggested that some description of Esperanto should be included. I thank Brian for this constructive comment.]

According to Wikipedia, Esperanto is the most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language in the world. It was developed in the late 1870s and early 1880s by L. L. Zamenhof (1859-1917) to foster harmony between people from different countries. The number of speakers of Esperanto is estimated at between 100,000 to 2 million now.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto

Great efforts are being made to promote Esperanto. lernu! is a web site to help teaching and learning Esperanto.
http://en.lernu.net/

There is an interesting argument (with empirical evidence) that learning Esperanto may provide a good foundation for learning languages in general.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaedeutic_value_of_Esperanto

As is true with almost anything, there are some controvercies, though.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Esperanto

3.3 POSTCOLONIALISM AND RESISTENCE

Canagarajah (1999) begins his book Resisting Linguistic Imperialism in English Teaching (Oxford University Press) with a poem by Derek Walcott, a West Indies poet, playwright, writer and visual artist who writes mainly in English. Walcott, was born in Castries, St. Lucia, and he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1992.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derek_Walcott



A video of Walcott reading his poem can be seen in YouTube.

Here is the poem A Far Cry from Africaby Derek Walcott.

I who am positioned with the blood of both,
Where shall I turn, divided to the vein?
The drunken officer of British rule, how choose
Between this Africa and the English tongue I love?
Betray them both, or give back what they give?

Canagarajah (1990) then provides two positions, reproduction orientation and resistance perspective.

The negative or positive responses to the vernacular and English -- leading either to the 'betrayal' of one language, or to the 'giving back' of both -- are largely influenced by underlying differences in perspectives on power. A decision to reject English in order to be true to the vernacular (or vice versa) constitutes a specific ideological orientation. The assumptions made by proponents of this position are that subjects are passive, and lack agency to manage linguistic and ideological conflicts to their best advantage; languages are seen as monolithic, abstract structures that come with a homogeneous set of ideologies, and function to spread and sustain the interests of dominant groups. I will term such a deterministic perspective on power -- which has had considerable influence in linguistics, discourse analysis, social sciences, and education -- the reproduction orientation. The alternative response, of engaging favorably with both languages, calls for a different set of assumptions, in which subjects have the agency to think critically and work out ideological alternatives that favor their own empowerment. It recognizes that while language may have a repressive effect, it also has the liberatory potential of facilitating critical thinking, and enabling subjects to rise above domination: each language is sufficiently heterogeneous for marginalized groups to make it serve their own purposes. This is the resistance perspective alluded to in the title of this book. It provides for the possibility that, in everyday life, the powerless in post-colonial communities may find ways to negotiate, alter, and oppose political structures, and reconstruct their languages, cultures, and identities to their advantage. The intention is not to reject English, but to reconstitute it in more inclusive, ethical, and democratic terms, and so bring about the creative resolutions to their linguistic conflicts sought by Walcott and others in the periphery. (p. 2)

You can see Prof. Canagarajah talking on the subject of Voice, World Englishes, and writing instruction on YouTube

==> What do English teachers, both native and non-native say about ELT in Japan, which is probably neither in the center or in the periphery?

3.3.1 Colonialism and Postcolonialism

Postcolonialism "as a rewriting of colonialism, an opposition stance to the continuing effects of colonialism, and an appropriation of colonial tools for postcolonial ends." (Pennycook 2001, p. 66)

Distinction between postcoloniality and postcolonialism, and between postmodernity and postmodernism.

Colonialism as a political, economic, cultural and intellectual prosess.

-->Postcolonialism as a "challenge to some of the "central" categories of Western thought." (Pennycook 2001, p. 67)

Immanuel Wallerstein (2006 ) European Universalism: The Rhetoric of Power (The New Press) may give you a good understanding of "central categories of Western thought (Pennycook 2001, p. 67)". What Wallerstein terms as "European universalism" (a case of oxymoron -- how can 'universalism' be a regional notion?) consists of three types:the right to intervene against barbarians; essentialist particularism and scientific universalism.


The publisher gives a brief synopsis.
http://www.thenewpress.com/index.php?option=com_title&task=view_title&metaproductid=1365

In a short interview, Wallerstein himself summarizes the book as follows:

European universalism is used to justify imperialism, Western expansionism. Obviously, variants exist in sophisticated arguments. The first, the most brutal (as in Iraq today), consists in saying that the others are barbarians, whom we must tame. A second variant, a little more subtle, studied by Edward Said under the name of "Orientalism," claims that the others are different beings, fixed in their differences, to whom we must bring true civilization -- an argument that one finds in Samuel Huntington in particular. Lastly, a third type of argument is that of scientific truth to which one appeals to impose the Western point of view. And, as it so happens, this alleged scientific truth is held by the most powerful countries in the world!
http://www.monthlyreview.org/mrzine/doubre260308.html

There are some reviews, both positive and negative, of this book on the web.
http://www.complete-review.com/reviews/ghistory/wallersi.htm
http://www.culturewars.org.uk/2006-01/wallerstein.htm

Here is my short review of the book in Japanese.

http://yanaseyosuke.blogspot.com/2008/12/2008_05.html

3.3.2 Resistence, Appropriation, and Third Spaces

An historical understanding of language use

History and politics of translation as demostrated by Venuti (1998) The Scandals of Translation: Towards an Ethics of Difference. (Routledge)


A book review on the web explains an example of historicity of translation of Japanese literature.

Similarly, Venuti examines Japanese literature translated into English, finding that publishers and translators in effect conspired to show only one aspect of Japanese literary culture by translating only a few authors who are not necessarily representative of Japanese literature. Kawabata, Mishima, Tanizaki, and later Abe and Oe were, for a long time, the only representatives of Japanese literature made accessible to English-speaking audiences. Extensively translated, it was made to seem that that was all there was -- a situation that has only recently changed.
http://www.complete-review.com/reviews/venutil/scandals.htm

The review reports the imbalance of translation from and to English.

One of the shocking facts revealed here is how little foreign literature is translated into English. The statistics are astonishing, especially in light of the fact that in most languages English is the most-translated language (i.e. English language works are translated into the native tongue more than those from any other language). Venuti also correctly points out the many implications of not translating works, often using his favourite word, "marginalization".
http://www.complete-review.com/reviews/venutil/scandals.htm

A nonessentialist stance emphasizing appropriation and hybridity

From ethnicity and belonging to hybridity and appropriation.

Kanavillil Rajagopalan's paper, Of EFL teachers, conscience, and cowardice. (ELT J 1999 53: 200-206) is available from here:
http://eltj.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/53/3/200

The paper questions the claims of linguistic imperialism or its binary opposition of English vs the vernacular.

ABSTRACT
The central purpose of this paper is to plead for an urgent review of a currently fashionable rhetoric, according to which the spread of English is endangering many regional languages and their corresponding cultures. The unmistakable implication of this opinion is that the spread of EFL ‘has a nefariously aggressive and imperialistic dimension to it’. I contend that the guilt complex which is likely to arise among EFL teachers in particular from a suspicion of complicity in this gigantic enterprise of neo-colonialism is totally misguided. In my view, the whole thesis is based on premises that no longer hold good in a world marked by cultural intermixing and growing multilingualsm at a hitherto unprecedented level, leading to unstable identities and shifting conceptual contours.
http://eltj.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/53/3/200

If a consequence of the criticism of linguistic imperialism is a return to some genuine ethnicity or monolingualism (this is a rather big if), then the current situation betrays the idea of such a genuine land.

The post-World War II era also witnessed massive migratory movements of 'transplanted speakers'.all over the world on a hitherto unprecedented scale. These new contexts of 'diaspora' have led to highly fluid and endemically unstable linguistic environments, where multilingualism,rather than monolingualism, has become the norm. Even a supposedly monolingual country such as Great Britain has been described as 'socially multilingual' (Stubbs 1986: 15). The recent advances in satellite and cable television, and of information-flow over computer networks, have further helped reduce distances and make a mockery of zealously guarded cultural boundaries that until recently were considered inviolable. Many linguists and other language theorists seem not to have waken up to the full implications of the changes rapidly taking place under their very noses. To use Kachru's felicitous phrase (Kachru 1996), many of them seem to be suffering from a 'paradigm myopia', which the author defines as 'a short-sighted view of the fastincreasing English using community in the new contexts of diaspora'. Many linguists are still happy working with such discreet entities as language x, a monolingual speaker of language x, etc., that no longer corresponds even remotely to anything concrete to be encountered on the face of this earth. As Hutton (1996: 209) has observed, 'Linguistics is perhaps the most '19th century' of the academic disciplines taught in universities today.' (p. 204)

However, it's hard for me to agree with the tone of political realsm in the last paragraph of this paper.

In any Of EFL teachers, conscience and cowardice society, language planning and language teaching necessarily entail a rehashing of existing power relations simply because power is exercised in and through language. It is foolhardy to expect that such power inequalities can be rectified or done away with once and for all. From a linguistic perspective, all societies are riddled with what Ray (1965) calls 'indispensable inequality'. (pp. 205-206)

Works cited in the above quotations are:
Hutton, C. 1996. 'Law lessons for linguists? Accountability and acts of professional classification'.Language and Communication 16/3: 205-14.

Kachru, B. B. 1996. 'The paradigms of marginality'. World Englishes 15/1: 241-55.

Ray, P. S. 1965. 'Review of The National Language Question: Linguistic Problems of Newly Independent States by R. B. Le Page'. Word 21/2:334-35.


The paper that follows the above one in the same volume is a critical review Rajagopalan of by Canagarajah.

A. Suresh Canagarajah
On EFL Teachers, awareness, and agency
ELT J 1999 53: 207-214
http://eltj.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/53/3/207

ABSTRACT
If the rhetoric of linguistic imperialism (hereafter LI) has been fashionable for some time, we are now seeing another rhetoric become more fashionable and pitted against it. What I will call the linguistic hybridity movement (LH) celebrates the fluidity in languages, identities, and cultures, thus pluralizing these constructs. In their extreme versions, while LI is absolutist in defining these constructs monolithically as constituted by one ideology or the other, LH is relativistic in seeing them as always shifting in meaning and shape. While LI is deterministic in perceiving these constructs as always pliable in the hands of dominant forces, LH is antinomian, in seeing them as perpetually unstable, and resisting control. While LI is activist in struggling against hegemonic discourses to reconstruct a more democratic order, LH leads to apathy (as languages are seen as deconstructing themselves, transcending domination) or even playfulness (as the provision of new meanings to these constructs is treated as subverting the status quo). Leaping from one rhetoric to another without engaging rigorously with any, or clobbering one rhetoric with the other, are easy and eventually unproductive exercises. These are, after all, times when academic discourses, spawned freely in opposition to each other, swing wildly between extremes like a pendulum. As a teacher, focused on the concerns of my students, I negotiate with these divergent rhetorics to consider how they may develop a richer awareness of language and social life, enabling me to act more rewardingly in the classroom.
http://eltj.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/53/3/207

If we just go from the bandwagon of linguistic imperialism to a new bandwagon of linguistic hybridity, we will probably keep missing power relations in operation in the real world.

Rajagopalan invokes the condition of cultural mixing, linguistic hybridity, and unstable identities only to prove that the monolingual communities and historical contexts that motivated the LI rhetoric don't exist any more. But he doesn't explore the ways in which the LH condition can be exaggerated to ignore certain realities of power in the contemporary world, just as LH has the potential to resist the types of imperialism articulated by the LI model. (p. 209)


Before we get carried away into joining the LH bandwagon, then, we have to make some sober observations on power relations. That identities are fluid doesn't mean that society and schools don't fix certain negative identities on minority students and discriminate against them accordingly. That cultures are mixed doesn't mean that certain values and practices aren't defined as the cultural capital required for success in dominant institutions, including schools. That languages are hybrid doesn't mean that certain codes don't function as the linguistic capital (with a clear hierarchy of the registers, dialects, and discourses valued) to obtain social and educational rewards. (p. 209)

Hybridity

Franz Fanon and his Black Skin, White Masks are often cited in the discussion of hybridity.

Frantz Fanon (July 20, 1925 - December 6, 1961) was a psychiatrist, philosopher, revolutionary, and author from Martinique. He was influential in the field of post-colonial studies and was perhaps the pre-eminent thinker of the 20th century on the issue of decolonization and the psychopathology of colonization. His works have inspired anti-colonial liberation movements for more than four decades
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frantz_Fanon

Black Skin, White Masks is a 1952 book written by Frantz Fanon originally published in French as Peau noire, masques blancs.
In this study, Fanon uses psychoanalysis and psychoanalytical theory to explain the feelings of dependency and inadequacy that Black people experience in a White world. He speaks of the divided self-perception of the Black Subject who has lost his native cultural originality and embraced the culture of the mother country. As a result of the inferiority complex engendered in the mind of the Black Subject, he will try to appropriate and imitate the cultural code of the colonizer. The behaviour, Fanon argues, is even more evident in upwardly mobile and educated Black people who can afford to acquire the trappings of White culture.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Skin,_White_Masks

Race and ethnicity

Crossley explains race and ethnicity as follows:

'Races', as discursive constructions, are rooted in either perceived (for example, skin colour) or imagined (for example, alleged genetic 'stock') biological differences, the presumption being that the human species as a whole sub-divides into various 'natural kinds' along the lines of these differences. (...)

The concept of ethnicity, too, tends to be focused upon cultural differences. Where 'racism' denotes an external categorization and judgement of a social group, however, 'ethnicity' tends to be used to refer to diffent cultural groups as they are defined from the inside, by their own members. Consequently the term tends also to map onto forms of self-identification/identity and a sense of belonging. (Crossley 2005, p, 235)
Key Concepts in Critical Social Theory SAGE

A focus on local contexts of language

"Hegemonies are also filled with complex local contradictions, with the resistences and appropriations that are a crucial part of the postcolonial context. (Pennycook 2001, 71).




3.4 CONCLUSION: TOWARD A POSTCOLONIAL PERFORMATIVE VIEW OF LANGUAGE

Spivak (1993) Outside in the Teaching Machine. Routledge.
The critique of essentialism as "an acknowledgment of the dangerousness of something one cannot not use. (p. 5)"

==> Hence the importance of deconstruction!  :P

Search in WWW Search in Yanase's current Japanese blog

（注：エンコードはUTF-8を使っています）

Kramsch and Whiteside (2008) Language Ecology in Multilingual Settings

Language Ecology in Multilingual Settings. Towards a Theory of Symbolic Competence by Claire Kramsch and Anne Whiteside (2008) in Applied Linguistics 29/4: 645-671 made a fascinating reading for me.

Abstract
http://applij.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/29/4/645

Kramsch and Whiteside take Bakhtin's (1981) dialogism as something quite compatible with complexity theory and postmodern sociolinguistics. The five features they cite as shared by the three are (1) relativity of self and other; (2) timescales; (3) emergentism; (4) unfinalizability; (5) fractals. (pp. 659-660).


Features (1) and (2) seem to me more important than the others. Regarding relativity of the self and the other they say:

[B]oth the self and the other are intrinsically pluralistic, and possibly in conflict with themselves and with one another. Because the I is not unitary, but multiple, it contains in part the other and vice-versa; it can observe itself both subjectively from the inside and objectively through the eyes of the other. (p. 659)

The plurality in terms of one's identity is amplified by layered simultaneity of different timescales. Kramsch and Whiteside cite Blommaert.

'We have to conceive of discourse as subject to layered simultaneity. It occurs in a real-time, synchronic event, but it is simultaneously encapsulated in several layers of hisotoricity, some of which are within the grasp of the participants while others remain invisible but are nevertheless present' (2005: 130) (p. 659)

The plurality in identity and time is indeed best embodied in Dostoevsky's novels. When I had an opportunity (in fact two, in a workshop and a plenary speech) in AILA 2008 to listen to Kramsch, my reading experience of The Brothers Karamazov on my flight to Germany was just recalled by her speeches, both in terms of content and style. After the workshop, I had a very lucky moment to talk to her, and when I mentioned the name of Dostoevsky, she gave me a smile of agreement. You may also love Dostoevsky perhaps because his multifarious style expressively reminds you of the plurality and complexity of the communication in your real life.


In the last section of the paper, Kramsch and Whiteside propose the concept of symbolic competence.

An ecological analysis of these data reveals a much greater degree of symbolic action than is usually accounted for in applied linguistics. Social actors in multilingual settings seem to activate more than a communicative competence that would enable them to communicate accurately, effectively, and appropriately with one another. They seem to display a particularly acute ability to play with various linguistic codes and with the various spatial and temporal resonances of these codes. We call this competence 'symbolic competence'.
Symbolic competence is the ability not only to approximate or appropriate for oneself someone else's language, but to shape the very context in which the language is learned and used. (p. 664)

Kramsch and Whiteside say symbolic competence operates in four different ways: (1) subjectivity or subject-positioning; (2) Historicity or an understanding of the cultural memories evoked by symbolic systems; (3) performativity or the capacity to perform and create alternative realities; (4) reframing. (pp. 664-667).

As I've read Butler's Excitable Speech recently (in Japanese translation), the third and fourth points were well taken.


This paper was really successful in drawing on "insights from complexity theory and post-modern sociolinguistics to explore how an ecological approach to language data can illuminate aspects of language use in multilingual settings (p. 646)."

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Ch. 2 of Prof. Pennycook's CALx

Chapter 2 The Politics of Knowledge



2.1 CRITICAL WORK AND ANIMOSITY TO THEORY

"Critical theory that can help inform our thinking about social structure, knowledge, politics, pedagogy, practice, the individual, or language." (p. 25)
"Critical theory that takes knowledge and its production as part of its critical exploration." (p. 25)



2.2 KNOWLEDGE OF POLITICS AND THE POLITICS OF KNOWLEDGE


There needs a general introduction of power, first.

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy explains power in the framework of 'power-over' or 'power-to' in the section of "Feminist Perspectives on Power." Below is a brief summary of the description.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feminist-power/#defi

The power-over concept defines "power as getting someone else to do what you want them to do." The classical example that advocated this concept is Max Weber. Robert Dahl offers an “intuitive idea of power” which is “A has power over B to the extent that he can get B to do something that B would not otherwise do” (1957, 202-03).
Dahl, Robert. 1957. “The Concept of Power.” Behavioral Science 2: 201-15.

The power-to concept defines power as an ability or a capacity to act. Thomas Hobbes is a classical example in this camp. Hannah Arendt's definition of power as “the human ability not just to act but to act in concert” (1970, 44) is another example of this conception..
Arendt, Hannah. 1970. On Violence. New York: Harcourt Brace & Co..

Regarding the discrepancy of this concept, the Stanford Encyclopedia offers an explanation that "how we conceptualize power is shaped by the political and theoretical interests that we bring to the study of power."

A very useful guidebook, Key Concepts in Critical Social Theory by Nick Crossley (2005, SAGE Publications) proposes HOW VS WHO as a useful distinction for categorizing different theories of power.

Starting with the WHO side, Crossley chooses Steven Lukes and his three-dimensional approach as a prime example. Lukes presents the three dimensions, in the words of Crosseley, (1) decisions reached, (2) suppressed agenda items, and (3) invisible restraints upon the airing of opinions.

See how Wikipedia summarizes the approach:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_(sociology)#Lukes

Lukes, S. (2004) Power: A Radical View (2nd edition) Palgrave Macmillan.



On the HOW side is Foucault. Crossley summarizes Foucault's Discipline and Punish in "the transition in modes or technologies of power from the ancien re'gime into modern societies." (Crossely 2005, p. 219) The first shift is from visibility to discipline power (self-policing and self-regulation). The second is a shift of knowledge base from religion to the human sciences. The third is a change in the perceived nature of power from 'negative' to 'positive' (eg. from punishment as hurting to punishment as rehabilitation). The fourth transition is related to WHO VS HOW dimension: from the notion of power "rested in the person of the monarch" to the notion "dispersed throughout the social body in a capillary network, functioning at the mundane level of everyday life." (Crossely 2005, p. 220).

"The human sciences" is explained in Sparknotes along with "Norm" as follows:

The human sciences - Sciences, or bodies of knowledge that have man as their subject. Psychiatry, criminology, sociology, psychology and medicine are the main human sciences. Together, the human sciences create a regime of power that controls and describes human behavior in terms of norms. By setting out what is "normal", the human sciences also create the idea of abnormality or deviation. Much of Foucault's work is an attempt to analyze how these categories structure modern life. See norm.

Norm - An average standard created by the human sciences against which people are measured: the sane man, the law-abiding citizen, and the obedient child are all "normal" people. But an idea of the "normal" also implies the existence of the abnormal: the madman, the criminal and the deviant are the reverse side of this coin. An idea of deviance is possible only where norms exist. For Foucault, norms are concepts that are constantly used to evaluate and control us: they also exclude those who cannot conform to "normal" categories. As such, they are an unavoidable but somehow harmful feature of modern society. See human sciences.
http://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/disciplinepunish/terms.html

If you like, read my short Japanese essay on knowledge/power in academic discourse of ELT.

http://yanaseyosuke.blogspot.com/2008/12/1.html

Foucault's notion of power/knowledge is explained by Crossley as a "two-way street" where strategies and technologies of power facilitate and generate knowledge, while knowledge becomes the basis and principle of power. (Crossley 2005, 226).

Foucault, however, rather emphasises the aspect of body in explicating the concept of power. Crossley (2005, pp. 23-26) sees Foucault's concept of 'body-power' or 'bio-power' as a challenge to two conventional ideas of power. One is a challenge to the idea of power as a commodity, capacity or 'thing-like' entity, typically possessed by the state, political elites or the ruling class. The other is against "the notion that 'power' and social order are exclusively or even primarily secured through 'ideas' or 'consciousness (p. 24).'" What Foucault means by 'body-power' or 'bio-power' is the "moulding of the body at the level of the social microcosm (p. 25)" 'body-power' or 'bio-power' "aims to mould the body in the manner required by society, fostering life and bodily potential (p. 26)."

For a possible example of "body-power/bio-power" in operation in ELT in Japan, read my short essay in Japanese about my visit to an elementary school.

http://yanaseyosuke.blogspot.com/2008/11/blog-post_4099.html

Now let us go to Prof. Pennycook's account of power:

"The workings of power," "power as operating through all domains of life." (p. 27)

Power as something an individual has, or power as something that is socially constructed and maintained.  "How power operates on and through people in the ongoing tasks of teaching, learning languages, translating, talking to clients."(p. 28)

Books Pennycook regards as important for the concept of power includes the following:

Fairclough (1989) Language and Power.

Bourdieu (1991) Language and Symbolic Power.

Lakoff (1990) Talking Power: The Politics of Language.

Foucault (1980) Power/Knowledge

Foucault's concept of power is summarized in Spaknotes as follows:

Power - Foucault's conception of power is a central part of this work. Essentially, power is a relationship between people in which one affects another's actions. Power differs from force or violence, which affect the body physically. It involves making a free subject do something that he would not have done otherwise: power therefore involves restricting or altering someone's will. Power is present in all human relationships, and penetrates throughout society. The state does not have a monopoly over power, because power relations are deeply unstable and changeable. Having said that, patterns of domination do exist in society: for example, the modern power to punish was established through the action of the human sciences. The relationship between power and knowledge is also an important one. The human sciences are able to control and exclude people because they make claims to both knowledge and power. To claim that a statement is true is also to make a claim to power because truth can only be produced by power.
http://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/disciplinepunish/terms.html

Below are some excerpts from Chapter 6: TRUTH AND POWER of Foucault's Power/Knowledge (Pantheon).

Power is not just repression, according to Foucault.

What makes power hold good, what makes it accepted, is simply the fact that it doesn't only weigh on us as a force that says no, but that it traverses and produces things, it induces pleasure, forms knowledge, produces discourse. It needs to be considered as a productive network which runs through the whole social body, much more than as a negative instance whose function is repression. (p. 119)

Some people may regard the State as the only power. It is, however, a 'meta-power' that rests upon multiple and indefinite power relations.

The State is superstructural in relation to a whole series of power networks that invest the body secuality, the family, kinship, knowledge, technology and so forth. True, these networks stand in a conditioning-conditioned relationship to a kind of 'meta-power which is structured essentially round a certain number of great prohibition functions; but this meta-power with its prohibitions can only take hold and secure its footing where it is rooted in a whole series of multiple and indefinite power relations that supply the necessary basis for the great negative forms of power. (p.122)

School is an important measure to create and maintain power.

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries a form of power comes into being that begins to exercise itself through social production and social service. It becomes a matter of obtaining productive service from individuals in their concrete lives. And in consequence, a real and effective 'incorporation' of power was necessary, in the sense that power had to be able to gain access to the bodies of individuals, to their acts, attitudes and modes of everyday behaviour. Hence the significance of methods like school discipline, which succeeded in making children's bodies the object of highly complex systems of manipulation and conditioning. (p. 125)

Through school and university and other social institutions, truth is created and maintained to become power.

Each society has its re'gime of truth, its 'general politics' of truth: that is, the types of discourse which it accepts and makes function as true; the mechanisms and instances which enable one to distinguish true and false statements, the means by which each is sanctioned; the techniques and procedures accorded value in the acquisition of truth; the status of those who are charged with saying what counts as true. (p. 131)

The politics of power may have less to do with the content of truth but more to do with the institutions of truth.

The essential political problem for the intellectual is not to criticise the ideological contents supposedly linked to science, or to ensure that his own scientific practice is accompanied by a correct ideology, but that of ascertaining the possibility of constituting a new politics of truth. The problem is not changing people's consciousness -- or what's in their heads -- but the political, economic, institutional re'gime of the production of truth.

It's not a matter of emancipating truth from every system of power (which would be a chimera, for truth is already power) but of detaching the power of truth from the forms of hegemony, social, economic and cultural, within which it operates at the present time.

The political question, to sum up, is not error, illusion, alienated consciousness or ideology; it is truth itself.  Hence the importance of Nietzsche. (p. 133)

Read the entry of perspectivism in Wikipedia:

Perspectivism is the philosophical view developed by Friedrich Nietzsche that all ideations take place from particular perspectives. This means that there are many possible conceptual schemes, or perspectives which determine any possible judgment of truth or value that we may make; this implies that no way of seeing the world can be taken as definitively "true", but does not necessarily propose that all perspectives are equally valid.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perspectivism

Read the following excerpt from Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil and see how his perspectivism is a radical departure from the European theological-philosophical tradition.

[I]t is high time to replace the Kantian question, "How are synthetic judgments a PRIORI possible?" by another question, "Why is belief in such judgments necessary?"--in effect, it is high time that we should understand that such judgments must be believed to be true, for the sake of the preservation of creatures like ourselves; though they still might naturally be false judgments! Or, more plainly spoken, and roughly and readily--synthetic judgments a priori should not "be possible" at all; we have no right to them; in our mouths they are nothing but false judgments. Only, of course, the belief in their truth is necessary, as plausible belief and ocular evidence belonging to the perspective view of life. (Chapter 1 Prejudices of Philosophers Section 11)
The Project Gutenberg Etext of Beyond Good and Evil, by Friedrich Nietzsche (Helen Zimmern translation)
http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/4363

Introduction to Foucault

See also Open Culture.





2.2.1 Liberal Ostricism

Applied linguistics as an "autonomous realm that is not connected to more general political views," "disinterested stance of rational inquiry." (p. 29)

Structural linguistics: all languages are equal. Deviant forms are explained in terms of their own structural consistencies (eg. Black English, dialects, interlanguages.) --> "structuralist egalitarianism"

Failing to understand "how languages are complexly related to social and cultural factors, ignoring, therefore, profound questions of social difference, inequality, and conflict." (pp. 32-33)

Arendt's distinction between Gleichartigkeit/sameness and Gleichheit/equality

Gleichartigkeit/sameness as a biological notion.

The sameness prevailing in a society resting on labor and consumption and expressed in its conformity is intimately connected with the somatic experience of laboring together, where the biological rhythm of labor unites the group of laborers to the point that each may feel that he is no longer and individual but actually one with all others. 

(Hannah Arendt, 1958, p. 214)  The Human Condition (University of Chicago Press)

Gleichheit/equality as a political notion.

The equality attending the public realm is necessarily an equality of unequals who stand in need of being "equalized" in certain respects and for specific purposes.

(Hannah Arendt, 1958, p. 215)  The Human Condition (University of Chicago Press)

--> All languages are "gleichartig/same" biologically (Chomsky's linguistics as biology).

-->All languages should be regarded as "gleich/equal" politically.

-->All languages, however, are NOT "gleichartig/same" economically (economy as a means for biological survival.)

-->"Socially?"  ("Social" for Arendt is about collective production and consumption for survival, whereas for Luhmann it is about pluralistic differences among individuals).

Arendt (1985) in The Human Condition regards the "social/sozial" as follows:

But this "collective nature of labor," far from establishing a recognizable, identifiable reality for each member of the labor gang, requires on the contrary the actual loss of all awareness of individuality and identity; and it is for this reason that all those "values" which derive from laboring, beyond its obvious function in the life process, are entirely "social" and essentially not different from the additional pleasure derived from eating and drinking in company.  The sociability arising out of those activities which spring from the human body's metabolism with nature rest not on equality but on sameness, and from this viewpoint it is perfectly true that "by nature a philosopher is not in genius and disposition  half so different from a street porter as a mastiff is from from a greyhound."  (p. 213)

Luhmann (1995) adopts a general systems theory and distinguishes social system and psychic systems, the former being further subdivided into interactions, organizations and societies.

See the chart Luhmann uses (adapted by Yanase) by downloading form here.

2.2.2 Anacho-Autonomy

Noam Chomsky: rationalism, realism, mentalism, creativity and freedom on the one hand, and anarcho-syndicalism or libertarianism on the other.

Wikipedia defines anarcho-syndicalism as follows:

Anarcho-syndicalism is a branch of anarchism which focuses on the labour movement. Syndicalisme is a French word meaning "trade unionism" --hence, the "syndicalism" qualification. Anarcho-syndicalists view labour unions as a potential force for revolutionary social change, replacing capitalism and the State with a new society democratically self-managed by workers. Anarcho-syndicalists seek to abolish the wage system, regarding it as "wage slavery," and state or private ownership of the means of production, which they believe lead to class divisions. Not all seek to abolish money per se.

Wikipedia defines libertarianism as follows:

Libertarianism is a term used by a broad spectrum of political philosophies which prioritize individual liberty and seek to minimize or even abolish the state. The extent to which government is necessary, if at all, is evaluated from a variety of distinct metaphysical, epistemological, and moral grounds. The word libertarian is an antonym of authoritarian.

Plato's problem and Orwell's problem:

For many years, I have been intrigued by two problems concerning human knowledge. The first is the problem of explaining how we can know so much given that we have such limited evidence. The second is the problem of explaining how we can know so little, given that we have so much evidence. The first problem we might call "Plato's problem," the second, "Orwell's problem," an analogue in the domain of social and political life of what might be called "Freud's problem." (Chomsky, 1986, xxv)

Plato's problem, the questions ultimately belong to the sciences, although many conceptual questions arise, including some that have long been troublesome in one or another form. The problem is to discover explanatory principles, often hidden and abstract, to make some sense of phenomena that seem on the surface chaotic, discordant, lacking any meaningful pattern. The study of Orwell's problem is quite diffeent. The patterns that lie behind the most important phenomena of political, economic, and social life are not very diufficult to discern, although much effort is devoted toward obscuring the fact; and the explanation for what will be observed by those who can free themselves from the doctorines of the faith is hardly profound or difficult to discover or comprehend. (Chomsky, 1986, xxviii)

Plato's problem is deep and intelletually exciting; Orwell's problem, in contrast, seems to me much less so. (Chomsky, 1986, xxix)
Chomsky, N. (1986) Knowledge of Language. Praeger Paperback

However, see how much effort Chomsky makes for the "less exciting problem."

http://www.chomsky.info/

Take a look at The Chomsky-Foucault Debate on YouTube and see how they agree and disagree. Personally, I very much enjoy this dialogue where the two different minds respond to and agree to disagree with each other. An open dialogue gives us a different intellectual joy from the one that a monologue of a book does.





The Chomsky-Foucault Debate: On Human Nature is published by New Press.




2.2.3 Emancipatory Modernism

Scientific leftist, relating language study to leftist politics.
"It [=emancipatory modernism] continues to keep in play notions of objectivity and truth, and it fails to be reflexive about its own knowledge status. (p. 38)"

"Neo-Marxist materialism": language (superstructure) merely reflects society (infrastructure). (p. 39)

"Emancipation through awareness":patronizing and oppressive? (pp. 39-41)



2.2.4 Critical Applied Linguistics as Problematizing Practice

Poststructuralist, postmodernist, and postcolonial perspectives. Skepticism about sicence, truth claims, and the emancipatory position outside ideology. (p. 42)

"This book and my understanding of critical applied linguistics are not "objective" or "scientific": They are political. And ultimately, as I argue later (--> chap. 5), they are grounded in an ethical vision." (p. 43)



2.3 CONCLUSION: OUTFLANKING MARX FROM THE LEFT

"Too much mainstream critical work is not critical enough: It is too normative, too unquestioning of its assumptions." (p. 44)

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