Disciplinarity and disparity in applied linguistics: Widdowson, BAAL 2017

This 55-minute video shows Henry Widdowson’s plenary address given at BAAL 2017 in Leeds this summer, on the 50th anniversary of the founding of the British Association for Applied Linguistics. You can watch the whole video from the above link (with automatic captions if you wish) and here is the abstract from the conference website.

Update: see write-up as a chapter in Wright, C et al. 2019. Voices and Practices in Applied Linguistics: Diversifying a Discipline. (open access)

Disciplinarity and disparity in applied linguistics

The identification and institutional status of applied linguistics as a distinct academic activity has always rested on a claim to disciplinarity. Its engagement with issues of language use and learning is said to be informed by the theoretical insights and empirical research of one discipline or another: indeed it now seems to be taken as self evident that applied linguistics is of its very nature an interdisciplinary area of enquiry. So what does this disciplinarity involve? Whatever other informing disciplines might be invoked as relevant, linguistics must presumably figure as primary. How then has applied linguistics realized the relationship with  the discipline of linguistics that is claimed to inform and lend authority to its practices? This discipline has itself been defined in two radically disparate ways: one focusing on the abstract properties of the linguistic code and the other on how language is realized in contexts of use, and applied linguistics, especially as related to language pedagogy, has tended to take its bearings from one or other of these.  Both disciplinary variants have their validity as methodological constructs but as such both are necessarily partial and reductive representations of language as it is actually experienced by its users, which is what applied linguistics is essentially concerned with.  The critical question then arises as to the relative relevance of these two disciplinary perspectives, how far they have been, and can be, drawn upon, and their disparity resolved, in dealing with problematic issues in the practical domains of language use and learning.

This post offers a summary of the main points with most of the references.

The goals of applied linguistics

For Widdowson, applied linguistics (AL) has two distinguishing features (02:00):

1. it engages with problems to do with language experienced in the real world
2. it deploys means which are are essentially disciplinary, though not necessarily restricted to linguistics.

“It is perhaps uncontroversial to claim that applied linguistics, in becoming more interdisciplinary, is better prepared for the principled handling of a range of distinct types of real world issues, and more critically aware of its methodologies.”

Bygate & Kramsch, 2000: 2

Widdowson suggests that this approach to AL implies

“the more disciplinary you are, the better prepared you are to handle real-world issues.”

In the early days of applied linguistics the disciplinary focus was on the teaching and learning of languages beyond first. Nowadays the field draws on a wider range of disciplines, and Lantolf (2013) seems to suggest that this wider focus is a sign of progress and increased “preparedness to handle a wider range of problems,” according to Widdowson.

In contrast, Widdowson espouses what he calls an “unfashionable view,” that is, preoccupation with

• how the discipline of linguistics has informed the applied linguistics of language teaching, and
• how far this substantiates the belief in a unilateral dependency relationship between interdisciplinarity and the handling of real world issues.

Milestones and landmarks

Some key publications in the area of applied linguistics with reference to language teaching.

Two theories

1957	PUBLICATIONS	LINGUISTIC ORIENTATION
Chomsky	Syntactic structures	code linguistics: focus on formal features of code
Firth	Papers in linguistics	context linguistics: focus on how language is put to use

The disparity of views in these two publications has affected subsequent developments in linguistics. Chomsky’s approach follows Saussure, and can be characterised as a kind of structural formalism, which reduces language to a system of signs placed in categories. Firth, in contrast, focuses on the study of linguistic events in terms of social processes. Palmer, a follower of Firth, said in 1968 that Firthian views “lost out” to Chomsky because they were not so clearly delineated.

1964	INSTITUTIONAL EVENTS/PUBLICATIONS	LINGUISTIC ORIENTATION
Lyons	Chair in General Linguistics (Edinburgh University)	Chomskyan
Corder	Chair of Applied Linguistics (Edinburgh University)	Firthian
Halliday, McIntosh & Strevens	Linguistic science of language teaching	Firthian

Halliday et al (1964) was an influential book, a manifesto for applied linguistics. The order of elements in the title gives priority to linguistics rather than teaching.

“He (the language teacher) is not teaching linguistics. But he is teaching something which is the object of study of linguistics, and is described by linguistic methods. It is obviously desirable that the underlying description should be as good as possible, and this means that it should be based upon sound linguistic principles”

Halliday et al: 1964: 66

Two views of linguistics can therefore be distinguished: Chomsky was concerned with the formal features of the code, while Firth was interested in how language is put to use. Thus we have two different objects of study, each using different methods, resulting in two different linguistic theories. And so applied linguistics also developed along different lines.

Interlanguage research and the Common European Framework

Widdowson argues that second language research and the Common European Framework of Reference for languages (CEFR) share an important feature, the construct of competence:

the two lines of development in applied linguistics seem to conceptually converge in that  both are concerned with identifying stages of approximation to native-speaker competence. CEFR can be seen as the functional equivalent to the formalist concept of interlanguage.

Widdowson, 2017: 32:57

He builds up to this conclusion as follows.

Continuing with the distinction made between the contributions of code and context linguistics to language teaching research, he cites key publications from both strands which appeared in 1972.

• On the code linguistics side, Selinker’s interlanguage opened the way towards second language (L2) acquisition research, taking a formalist perspective. Once research had revealed the processes involved, this would allow the definition of criteria for the design of L2 teaching.
• On the context side, however, Wilkins focused not on acquisition but on language learning objectives and how syllabus content might be developed to meet them.
• At the same time, other linguists began the shift from linguistic form to communicative content:

1972	PUBLICATIONS	FOCUS
Selinker	Interlanguage	construct for the study of process of second language acquisition
Wilkins	Linguistic and situational content of the common core in a unit/credit system	development of syllabus content to meet language learning objectives
Labov	Sociolinguistic patterns	instrument of communication used by the speech community
Hymes	Toward ethnographies of communication	communicative competence

This brought context linguists to the conclusion that what learners need to learn is what native speakers do, or linguistic events in social process, in Firthian terms. For Labov,

“It is difficult to avoid the common-sense conclusion that the object of linguistics must ultimately be the instrument of communication used by the speech community. If we are not talking about that language there is something trivial in our proceeding.”

Labov, 1972

With Hymes’ work on communicative competence, context linguistics became established as an alternative orthodoxy, offering a more coherent and systematic formulation of Firth’s principles.

COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE	AUTHORS	ORIENTATION
1972	Hymes	whether an act is ·      formally possible ·      feasible ·      appropriate ·      attested (actually occurring)
1969	Searle	felicity conditions for speech acts
1974	Hymes	restoration of contextual definition of linguistics (Austin, 1965)
1979	Brumfit & Johnson	Communicative Language Teaching (drawing on Halliday and Hymes)

For Widdowson, this begs the question:

“So which approach should language teachers follow? How can applied linguistics reconcile this disparity?”

In other words, how can language be representative of native speaker usage but also be organised to correspond to natural processes of acquisition as revealed by SLA research?

This contradiction must be resolved if applied linguistics is to engage with real world language problems, according to Widdowson.

Disciplinarity

Disciplines deal in abstractions and works by categorisation. Disciplines reveal commonalities by ignoring differences and take a necessarily restrictive view of the world.

Both linguistic views described so far offer abstractions, they describe general dimensions of behaviour by disregarding variables of experience. The more a discipline seeks to account for difference, the less explanatory it becomes.

Code linguistics is often criticised as remote from actual experience, based on the fictional existence of an “ideal speaker-hearer in a homogeneous speech community” (Chomsky, 1965). But context linguistics is also remote from user experience and discusses idealised language varieties; speech act conditions are also abstractions. No linguistics can account for what actual people do, since variability is a natural consequence of actual language use (Trudgill refers to the “convenient fiction” of abstract categories).

The purpose of linguistics is as a discipline which devises conceptual constructs to explain collective, communal knowledge and behaviours; individuals only exist as members of categories (e.g., learners, native speakers, participants in studies). Individuals are selectively sampled as examples used to illustrate categories, but remain approximations. Users are typified, abstracted as members of groups or communities, and this is necessary for theories to be significant.

Applied linguistics is concerned not with what is valid but what is useful. Validity is not relevant to utility and vice versa: valid ideas may not be useful, but useful ideas may not be valid. If disciplinarity is to be useful, does it follow that more disciplinarity is better?

The answer can be found by examining one central disciplinary concept, the concept of competence.

Competence

Competence can be taken to mean what native speakers know of their language. In code linguistics, simplifying assumptions are made about the existence of communities, but the basis of SLA research is the investigation of learners’ success in approximating this competence along the interlanguage scale.

From the perspective of context linguistics, even if communicative competence and not linguistic competence is now in focus, a level of abstraction is still maintained. For Hymes, the extent to which one is communicatively competent is judged in terms of how far what one produces is

• possible
• feasible
• appropriate
• attested (“done”)

This can be measured only in reference to established norms, hence by abstraction.

“There is an important sense in which a normal member of a community has knowledge with respect to all these aspects of the communicative systems available to him. He will interpret or assess the conduct of others and himself in ways that reflect a knowledge of each.”

Hymes, 1972: 282

This definition of communicative competence is based on the construct of a distinct community whose members know language and conventions of use, with norms by which examples are judged.

L2 teaching thus mean “getting learners to replicate the communicative competence of native-speaking communities,” that is, using language that is

• possible – correct or accurate by reference to the ideal encodings of the standard language,
• contextually appropriate, and
• attested in native speaker usage.

The focus on communicative function rather than linguistic form is what mades the Council of Europe 1972 threshold framework radical and now orthodox (see Van Ek & Alexander, 1975). Nevertheless, there is still a focus on form in the framework and in the design of course context. Although correlated with communicative competence, appropriate communication still involves producing the forms correctly.

In TBLT parlance, Widdowson suggests,

“if you want to be fluent you have to be accurate”

Learner language

However, for Widdowson, in language use, there is no such interdependency. Appropriateness depends on variable contextual factors. Communicative competence is not encoded in forms. To claim otherwise is to confuse the semantics of the language code with the pragmatics of its use and so to misrepresent the nature of communication.

CLT is not concerned with how language actually functions in communication, but only with the normative, stereotypical form that communication would take in an idealised NS community.

And yet this definition persists in the CEFR, which like Threshold level, is based on the same concept of competence. It also provides specifications for measuring how far learners have got in acquiring it.

And it is here that the two lines of development (code linguistics and context linguistics) converge conceptually.

• both are concerned with identifying stages of approximation of native-speaker competence, and
• the CEFR can be seen as the functional equivalent to the formalist concept of interlanguage

“What informs both is the assumption you can’t really be competent unless you conform to norms of how native speakers use the language; the closer you approximate to these norms the more competent you will be.

And if there is no such conformity then your linguistic conduct will be interpreted and assessed as inaccurate, inappropriate and evidence that you are an incompetent user of the language.”

So competence, whether linguistic or communicative, is an abstract construct defined in reference to the similar abstract representations of languages and communities as distinct entities. Such abstractions have their validity in the discipline of linguistics

they are convenient, necessary and sufficient for linguistics.

For applied linguistics, however, abstract constructs also need to be useful.

The usefulness of “competence” in applied linguistics

For Widdowson, the key question is to whom the notion of competence can be judged useful? Whose problems should “competence” be applied to?

Theoretical abstractions are useful for addressing sociopolitical concerns, making it easier to manage and control people, particularly if disciplinary validation can be called upon. The construct of native-speaker competence solves the problem of what is to be taught and tested. This makes it convenient for course designers and publishers, allowing them to prescribe what teachers should teach. It is especially convenient for the ELT industry by supporting the unique qualification of native speakers to teach English.

To this extent, the notion of competence does bears out the claim that applied linguistics provides a disciplinary solution to real world problems. It solves the problem of what should be taught.

From teaching to learning

 But what about learners? What of the problem of what learners encounter?

As things stand at present, what is learnt is given credit only to the extent that it corresponds to what has been taught. Assessment is based on teaching, not learning.

But we need to ask rather: why, in spite of teachers’ best efforts, do learners fail to conform? What’s their problem?

This problem has not been addressed by applied linguistics. For Widdowson, there is a pedagogical problem in applied linguistics. Language learning is impeded by teaching. Monolingual teaching makes a foreign language even more foreign. In teaching, any relation to the first language (L1) is deemed non-conforming.

However, it is actually normal to link the foreign language to the first language by appropriating it as an additional resource in a multilingual process of communication.

The teacher strives to replicate NS usage and denies natural processes, making learners acquire a separate competence. The teacher in effect inhibits learners from learning how to use language as a communicative resource and develop general lingual capability.

What we get is I think a glaring disparity between natural multilingual learning and the enforced imposition of monolingual teaching, making learners into teachees. No wonder they have a problem.

Widdowson, 2017:  40:04

Problems need to be defined not from a teacher’s point of view, as learners’ failure to conform to NS competence, but rather from a learners’ point of view.

If we take the perspective of code linguistics, How languages are learned (Lightbown & Spada, 2006) is what SLA is all about. However, the language to be acquired is defined in competence terms and L2 learners are incorrectly viewed as homogeneous group.

In the real world, according to Widdowson, the learning of languages is diverse. How learners view the language to be learned depends on typological L1-L2 distance, but also on how learners perceive the role and status of L2, and the “otherness” of FL. In Bourdieusian terms, we can view this in terms of economic, cultural, social, and symbolic capital.

Learners variably accommodate to L2, converging or diverging depending on accommodation possibilities. How learners conceive of the foreignness of the L2 affects their motivation, but also affects which features they seek to acquire. NS norms reflect little more than etiquette, and for learners with no idea of those norms, correctness has no purpose. They encounter users of the language who can get by very effectively without correctness (who are fluent, without being accurate).

What and how learners process another language thus depends on their conception of its foreignness, and the process will be locally variable and content-dependent.

“This is counter to a teaching-imposed, competence-based concept of language learning derived from the discipline. But it is this concept that currently predominates and is given an authoritative endorsement in the CEFR.

Dual monolingualism and a categorical conception of competence

The CEFR characterises all L2 languages as foreign, all learners as having the same objectives, with same communicative needs. Although it claims to represent a profoundly modified conception of goals of language learning and teaching, its categories of assessment are in line with previous models of language teaching. The goal is still the acquisition of dual monolingualism.

The change in terminology from native speaker to the more politically correct term expert user does not alter the objective, which remains the acquisition of an ideal, monolingually defined competence.

There is no recognition that expertise is not an absolute but a relative quality, not a matter of how closely a learner might approximate the competence along an assessment scale, but how far they can use the resources of the language effectively in relation to communicative purposes.  In this sense, learners could be expert users even if they don’t meet CEFR assessment criteria.

The problem is this categorical competence conception of language teaching. It is  convenient for stakeholders, but comes at the cost of misrepresenting the processes of natural language use and learning.

Language learning as a starting point

At present, language teaching informs learning. But learning should influence teaching, rather than vice versa. To determine what kind of disciplinarity, what types of abstraction are appropriate we shouldn’t assume disciplinarity as defining features of AL. The unilateral application of disciplinarity impedes progress. This is linguistics applied (Widdowson, 1980, 2000). Applied linguistics should reverse this dependency: instead of disciplinarity being applied to real world issues, real world issues should determine what type of disciplinarity is of use.
Disciplinarity needs to be regulated by practical value and usefulness. It is ancillary to problem-solving. Otherwise it becomes a self-justifying academic exercise. Since AL is an institutionally established academic field of academic inquiry, with university departments, associations, and its own peer-reviewed journals, this academic orientation is inevitable. Peer reviewers are academics and disposed to evaluate papers by university criteria (impact factors).
But we need to ask what impact do our contributions have on the outside world? At present, the diversity of AL depends on range of fields rather than range of problems that can be addressed. There is a disparity between what is promised in principle and what is delivered in practice.

Conclusion

Widdowson notes in conclusion that he has not argued against disciplinarity, but claimed instead that disciplinarity is only useful if the nature of problem to be handled is analysed first. He brings us back to Firth’s context of situation:

A context of situation for linguistic work brings into relation the following categories:

• the relevant features of participants: persons, personalities
  • the verbal action of the participants
  • the non-verbal action of the participants
• the relevant objects
• the effect of the verbal action

JR Firth

Widdowson offers context of situation as an analytic framework for handling real-world issues. Second language pedagogy should consider what type of communication is relevant for given learners; we cannot presuppose disciplinarity.

In terms of his opening questions, we might interpret his argument thus:

• the discipline of linguistics has informed the applied linguistics of language teaching via both
  • code linguistics: interlanguage and SLA
  • context linguistics: communicative competence and the CEFR
• this has been a unilateral dependency relationship which has favoured established institutional power relations and failed to serve learner needs
• applied linguistics should develop concepts and constructs to serve language learning, rather than being with disciplinary abstractions and seek to apply those.

His talk concludes with remarks on how far AL has come, on his aim to raise critical awareness of questions, challenges, and opportunities, and this quote from TS Eliot.

References

Austin, J. L. (1965). How to do things with words.Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Brumfit, C. & Johnson, K. (1979) The Communicative Approach to Language Teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Bygate, M., & Kramsch, C. (2000). Editorial. Applied Linguistics, 21(1), 1–2. doi.org/10.1093/applin/21.1.1

Chomsky, N. (1965). Aspects of the theory of syntax. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Chomsky, N. (1957). Syntactic structures. Oxford: Mouton.
Council of Europe (2017). Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning teaching, assessment. Companion volume with new descriptors. Council of Europe: Strasbourg. PDF
Firth, J. R. (1957). Papers in Linguistics, 0xford: Oxford University Press.
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Hymes, D. (1972). Toward ethnographies of communication: The analysis of communicative events. Language and social context, 21-44. PDF
Labov, W. (1972). Sociolinguistic patterns. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.
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Widdowson, H. G. (2000). On the limitations of linguistics applied. Applied linguistics, 21(1), 3-25. PDF
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