Practice Without Theory and Theory Without Practice

THE AUTHOR Diane Larsen-Freeman is a professor of education, professor of linguistics, and research scientist at the English Language Institute, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor She is also a distinguished senior faculty fellow at the School for International Training in Brattleboro, Vermont, United States Practice Without Theory and Theory Without Practice ROBERT KAPLAN University of Southern California (Emeritus) Los Angeles, California, United States Dr Drew Diligence, Vice-President and Provost (hereafter P): TESOL as a field of study seems to lie at the disjuncture between three war zones of theory— linguistic theory, applied linguistics theory, and educational theory The problem is disjunctive enough to require a thorough investigation and a number of experts from each of the three disciplines to be deposed The following deposition—representing only one vision—constitutes one of a potential series of statements intended to clarify the situation and to propose a solution Please state your name and your academic qualifications Subject (hereafter S): My name is Isaac Bullington, and I am emeritus professor of applied linguistics I have worked in the field for 40 years and have taught applied linguistics courses in the Department of Linguistics and language teacher preparation courses in the Department of Education I have published widely in the field and have been recognized by (among other distinctions) awards from AAAL and TESOL P: Clearly, you are qualified to offer information in this matter, and we stipulate that your comments shall be accepted Please state your general view of the respective roles of theory and practice in the field S: It is important to look at this matter from a historical point of view first As Docherry has remarked (in the early 1990s), there has been a gradual shift over the past 40 years away from what might be thought of as scientific knowledge toward some sort of narrative knowledge—a rejection of notions of Marxism, liberalism, democracy, and the changes attributed to the industrial revolution—in short, a movement in the direction of the relative and the local This was a movement across structuralism (in the sense of a correction and modernization of the ideas of the Enlightenment), rejecting the subjective in existentialism and psychoanalysis in favor of a quest for the objective in the patterning of social life (see, e.g., the work of Saussure & 294 TESOL QUARTERLY Levi-Strauss), to poststructuralism, rejecting the scientific aspirations of structuralism, and asserting that there is no truth and so there can be no appropriate methodology, and so demonstrating the ancient clash between nominalism and realism The result of this intellectual shift lies in the identification of the political, but with the following problem: Does the shift reveal the quest of a just politics or the quest for just a politics? This question resulted in a development that led to what might be termed critical applied linguistics The work of Pitt Corder (in the 1960s and 1970s) was an early attempt at a modernist theory; Corder’s ideas were replaced by theories arising from poststructuralism and postmodernism—critical theory, critical discourse analysis, and critical applied linguistics Are language teachers, now, to abandon skills training, to conduct lessons which are really discussions of the distribution and use of power, or are the new theoretical perceptions intended merely to guide the selection of texts for learners so that they must focus on cultural relativity (as it is manifested in film and the media)? P: Excuse me, Professor Bullington, but it seems to me you are lecturing and thereby not dealing with the question at hand You seem not to have said anything about practice or of the relationship between practice and theory S: Please, you are rushing me and you seem not to understand that the question must be addressed from both a synchronic and a diachronic perspective Now, in critical discourse analysis there was a serious fallacy, as Stubbs (around 1997) noted; practitioners “look in the wrong place for something, then complain that they can’t find it, and suggest that it is being concealed from them.” In other words, theorizing from the critical perspective means using the techniques of discourse analysis to provide a political critique of the social context—one that is Marxist from a Marxist viewpoint, feminist from a feminist viewpoint The “critical” theorists claim that there is a need to develop a socially responsible theory of language—one committed to social justice However, is the theory to represent a movement toward a just politics or toward just a politics? The “critical” theorists expose the way in which language is exploited through the covert insinuation of ideological influences by carefully selecting and interpreting whatever linguistic features suit their ideological position and simply ignoring the rest P: Professor Bullington, while I’m reluctant to interrupt the flow of your thought, may I point out that you haven’t yet said anything about practice Our time is limited S: Yes, yes, but you are in fact interrupting my train of thought You must understand that it takes weeks in a teacher-training course to cover the material I am trying to synthesize for you briefly and concisely No doubt students will have some difficulty in grasping all the subtleties of the development I’m trying to outline, but the brighter ones will be able to manage In any case, your interruptions and your SYMPOSIUM: THEORY IN TESOL 295 pressing me to address the matter of practice creates a position somewhat akin to that taken by some contemporary scholars—e.g., Rampton—to the effect that “all is practice”; that is, there is no theory, no reason, but rather only lots of reasons, uncoordinated, disjointed, the extreme of postmodernism In such a solution, there is no role for linguists or applied linguists, and the role of educators consists of dealing with a disconnected group of individual teachers working in some vague sense of collaboration You see, if it is not possible to trace the development of the field both synchronously and diachronically then there is nothing left to talk about; all that remains is a disjointed kind of practice unhinged from the sort of structure that supports all social science and leaves odd bits that can exist only within teacher education THE AUTHOR Robert B Kaplan, emeritus professor of applied linguistics at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, United States, was the founding editor-in-chief of the Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, a member of the editorial board of the Oxford International Encyclopedia of Linguistics (1992, 2002), and editor of the Oxford Handbook of Applied Linguistics He has served as president of NAFSA, TESOL, and AAAL TESOL, Applied Linguistics, and the Butterfly Effect ALAN DAVIES University of Edinburgh Edinburgh, Scotland What interests me in this discussion, initiated by Alister Cumming, is the use of the term theory Let me start with the butterfly effect This term is often attributed to Ray Bradbury in his science fiction story “A Sound of Thunder” (Bradbury, 2005, pp 203–215), which first appeared in 1952, but the idea goes back to Duhem (1906/1954) It was taken up by Edward Lorenz (1972) in his talk to the American Association for the Advancement of Science, which was given the title: “Does the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas?” Is this a theoretical question or, rather, does it make a theoretical claim? Obviously not in the strict sense because there is no way of reversing time so as to experiment with and without the flap of the butterfly’s wings At the same time, in a different—wider—sense of theory, 296 TESOL QUARTERLY