Critical perspectives on language(s)

Journal of Sociolinguistics 7/2, 2003: 246±259

Critical perspectives on language(s) Sharon Harvey Auckland University of Technology A. Suresh Canagarajah. Resisting Linguistic Imperialism in English Teaching (Oxford Applied Linguistics). Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1999. viii + 216 pp. Paper (0±19±442154±6) £19.95. Robert Phillipson (ed.). Rights to Language: Equity, Power, and Education. Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. 2000. 310 pp. Cloth (0±8058±3346±3) $69.95 / Paper (0±8058±3835-X) $29.95. Alastair Pennycook. Critical Applied Linguistics: A Critical Introduction. Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. 2001. xv + 206 pp. Paper (0±8058±3792±2).

INTRODUCTION The recent publication of three books broadly addressing issues of power, resistance and politics as they relate to language and language education is indicative of the changing nature of the knowledge ®elds which may be loosely referred to as sociolinguistics, language education and applied linguistics. This review article aims to place these books in a context of shifting disciplinary knowledge, changing philosophical premises and a politicisation of the work of language academics. In powerful ways each book o€ers di€ering modes of thinking and acting based on a concern for those whose material lives are negatively and even tragically a€ected by language policies and practices around the world. While all three books take a broadly critical approach, there are philosophical di€erences. Pennycook and Canagarajah work from a carefully de®ned poststructuralist position while Phillipson's work is more aligned with the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory and Modernism, more generally. This writer, following Marginson (1997), contends that theory is important. Marginson states that theory is more than a mechanical tool for generating data: along with empirical investigation, it is an important input, the high ground where questions of interpretation are often settled. (Marginson 1997: 7)

Theoretical di€erences between these books (particularly Canagarajah and Pennycook vis-aÁ-vis Phillipson et al.) do make for di€ering ways of reading the # Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2003 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden MA 02148, USA.

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world and how to act within it. Nevertheless, these debates on the Left should not serve to obfuscate the general motivation, a mitigation of su€ering, understood in its broadest sense. Pennycook notes, . . . critical applied linguistics is an approach to language-related questions that springs from an assumption that we live amid a world of pain and that applied linguistics may have an important role in either the production or the alleviation of some of that pain. But, it is also a view that insists not merely on the alleviation of pain but also the possibility of change. (Pennycook 2000: 7)

This article will ®rstly appraise each book and then attempt to draw some connections between them. ROBERT PHILLIPSON, RIGHTS TO LANGUAGE: EQUITY, POWER AND EDUCATION Rights to Language published in 2000 and edited by the elder statesman of multilingual education, language rights and linguistic imperialism, Robert Phillipson (Research Professor, Department of English, Copenhagen Business School), is a festschrift for the sixtieth birthday of his wife, Tove SkutnabbKangas. While one might wonder at the propriety of producing an edited collection in recognition of the work of a spouse, the book nonetheless, represents a substantial array of re¯ections and expositions which serve to lay out the ®eld in compelling, diverse and sometimes controversial ways (in addition to fulsomely and from time to time sycophantically praising Tove Skutnabb-Kangas for her work over the years). The book is divided into ®ve sections re¯ecting the key words in the book title: `Language: Its diversity, its study, and our understandings of it'; Rights: Language rights, their articulation and implementation'; Equity: `Justice for speakers of all languages'; `Education: Arming diversity, con®rming rights'. Contributors include well known academics in language and society such as Joshua Fishman, D. P. Pattanayak, Masaki Oda, Michael Clyne, Jim Cummins and Joan Wink as well as a range of ex students of Skutnabb-Kangas, language activists, writers and policymakers. There are around forty-seven contributions in all, each just a few pages long. It is worth considering the work of Tove Skutnabb-Kangas ®rstly, as it provides a framework for the contributions in Rights to Language. SkutnabbKangas herself is Finnish and a Finnish-Swedish bilingual who has worked as an academic in Denmark for many years. Her publication record is proli®c, spanning several decades and including translations in at least twenty-®ve languages. Skutnabb-Kangas's main ®elds of interest and activism have been in supporting linguistic human rights, minority language education, establishing links between linguistic diversity and biodiversity, promoting multilingualism, and increasing awareness over linguicism (linguistically argued racism). The ®rst section of Rights to Language, on language rights, begins with a short piece outlining exactly where Tove and her supporters stand on matters of language # Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2003

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education. She argues unequivocally for all children to have full access to and ¯uency in their mother tongue, no matter what it is, as well as in the dominant/ important societal languages. Her reasoning is that, The mother tongue is needed for psychological, cognitive, and spiritual survival ± cultural rights. All the other languages, including an ocial language of the state in which the children live, are needed for social, economic, political and civil rights. A child must be able to speak to parents, family, and relatives, to know who she is, to acquire skills in thinking, analysing and evaluating. The mother tongue(s) is (are) vital for this. Further education, job prospects, and the ability to participate in the wider society require other languages. Thus high levels of multilingualism must be one of the goals of proper education (Skutnabb-Kangas 1999: 58; cited in Phillipson: 11).

One of the strengths of the book is the range of languages and cultures discussed. For a New Zealand reader more familiar with language policies and practices in white settler societies in the South Paci®c region, it was of considerable interest to read about the interaction of languages and language policies in the Nordic countries (re¯ecting Tove Skuttnabb-Kangas's origins and professional base) including the place of oral `literature' and survival of the SaÂmi language of the indigenous people of Northern Finland; the popular `reclamation' of Finnish in Finland from the late nineteenth century onwards, and education arrangements allowing for various permutations of bilingual education in Sweden and Finland. Other accounts of interest to this reader were the suppression of Kurdish in Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria; the dicult task of balancing the recognition of the language rights of minorities with forging a common civic identity through a shared language (Latvian) in post-communist states (Latvia in this case) and the case of language rights for the mixed English/ Tahitian language of Norfolk and Pitcairn. In addition, there are some unexpected pieces. For example, I was under the impression that Esperanto, an arti®cial language based on several European languages and invented by Polish philoligist, Dr L. L. Zamenhof in 1887 had, after a revival of interest in the 1970's and 1980's faded from view. Rights to Language, perhaps surprisingly, provides space for current enthusiasts, giving insights into why some hold it up as the international language alternative to `. . . the juggernaut of English, which rides roughshod over the rights of many non-native users of the language' (Phillipson, p. 274). Dasgupta, who has also written elsewhere on the subject, asserts rather ¯oridly that . . . it is in this language [Esperanto] that imaginative citizens have really seen themselves, and ably shown themselves in their speech and their writing, as responsible, sharing earthlings ®rst and as hedonist shareholders of national stock only secondarily. (Dasgupta, p 50)

Another, sometimes discredited, idea which gains space here and indeed is promoted by Skutnabb-Kangas, is that of the organisation Terralingua (Skutnabb-Kangas is the Vice-President) which advocates the interconnection between linguistic and biological diversity: # Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2003

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There is evidence that patterns of distribution of biodiversity coincide signi®cantly with patterns of distribution of linguistic diversity. It is also apparent that many of the same socio-economic factors are negatively a€ecting both. We know that a diversity of species lends stability and resiliency to the world's ecosystems. Terralingua thinks that a diversity of languages does the same for the world's cultures ± and that these manifestations of the diversity of life are interrelated. So are, we believe, the consequences of this diversity loss: a monolithic global human culture is not good for biological communities; likewise, a depauperate ¯ora and fauna are not good for human communities. Terralingua addresses both halves of the equation; that is, we believe in a holistic view of diversity in culture and nature (Terralingua 2002: 2).

The links between loss of language diversity, loss of language rights, globalisation and economic rationalisation, as outlined by Terralingua, are themes which run in di€erent forms throughout the book. For example Michael Clyne looks at the implications of the `productive diversity' policy in Australia introduced by Prime Minister Paul Keating in 1992, which thematised an economic argument for promoting multiculturalism and multilingualism in Australia. This was in considerable contrast to broader conceptualisations of multiculturalism evident in the 70's and 80's. The shift in the 90's re¯ected a rise in neoliberal economic policies across the western world which gained political currency during the political terms of Margaret Thatcher in Great Britain and Ronald Reagan in the United States. Clyne asks: `What can be done to maintain a socially motivated language policy in the days of globalization and economic rationalism?' (p. 163). He takes the pragmatic and somewhat passive view of maintaining the principle . . . that Australia's identity is a multicultural one in which bilinguals and biculturals (with dual identities) have a vital role to play and are not considered to `belong' less than English monolinguals and monoculturals. This idea of monolinguals and monoculturals can leave open the door to further advances in multiculturalism in better times. (p. 163)

Interestingly, this wait and hope position is not one advocated by SkutnabbKangas, who by her actions and admonitions advocates action and activism by academics. Clyne himself notes: `I certainly learned from Tove that our obligations to other bilinguals extended to political activism in support of minority rights and not just the dissemination of research results as part of advocacy' (p. 160). Skutnabb-Kangas's strong commitment to action as reported by many of the writers in Rights to Language and as evidenced in her vast array of publications was one of the most interesting and important points in the book. I was therefore disappointed not to ®nd the term `critical' or `public intellectual' in the index. Phillipson speci®cally refers to the notion of critical/ organic intellectual in his ®nal `Integrative comment: Living with vision and commitment', but like so many terms in the book it is inadequately examined. In this case, Phillipson discusses the term using romanticised (despite protestations to the contrary) notions of `. . . working with the heart as well as the brain # Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2003

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. . .' and of `. . . being willing to see things afresh . . .' (p. 266). Worse perhaps, his characterisation of a critical intellectual is contradictory in ways that echo the broader philosophical confusion in the book and in much language work, generally. In one sentence Phillipson can say: Being passionate is not a question of personality and commitment, though these are of course essential, but rather being in touch with the ongoing struggles of ordinary people . . . and converting them into a solid scienti®c position. . . . (Phillipson, p. 266; my emphasis).

He goes on in the next section, `Issues of scienti®c approach', to talk about linking the commitment to the rights of oppressed groups with `hard science' (my emphasis). A `. . . quest for truth, for universal values, for moral principles' (Phillipson, p. 269) is mentioned in another sentence. One might assume, therefore, as does Pennycook, that Phillipson's belief in science and its applicability to sociolinguistics situates him as a critical theorist working out of a modernist, liberal structuralist framework. However, in the same chapter, Phillipson can also say: `For the critical intellectual it is a question of . . . drawing on alternative sources of knowledge as a means of counteracting unsustainable modernisation and the scienti®c sets of mind it entails' (Phillipson, p. 266; my emphasis). He goes on to rail against corporately correct research (Luke 1997) and the posturing `objectivity' that supposedly underpins it and yet objectivity is exactly what `hard science' purports to o€er. This is confusing indeed. I had further problems with Phillipson's chapter, particularly since its aim was to integrate all the contributions and bring some unity to the book. Some comments seemed to hardly make sense and one was left wondering exactly what was intended. For example, `. . . corporations are in some respects sensitive to non-economic variables. The internet is potentially a powerful force for democratisation . . .' (Phillipson, p. 275). The use of the de®nite article `the' as a determiner for `internet' suggests a cataphoric reference linking the internet back to `corporations'. Without further explication it is dicult to understand how the internet could possibly be a lexical subset of corporations especially since there are many non-corporate users of the internet. Coherency problems like this serve to further undermine any depth the overall argument may have. Particular terms seemed to ring with a certain naiveteÂ. Monolingual stupidity, is Skutnabb-Kangas's term for voluntary monolingualism (Phillipson 2000). This appears unnecessarily crude and does not take account of the socially constructed nature of people's choices. Likewise the binary terms `winners and losers' (the bene®ciaries and non-bene®ciaries of particular language policies and practices), and `A team and B team' do little to explain the complexity of ways in which languages and power are intertwined and co-productive. In relation to Skutnabb-Kangas's use of these terms, Pennycook notes `Such dichotomising between the haves and the have-nots can obscure social realities far more than they reveal them. . . . There is a related tendency to then suggest # Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2003

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that those that have rights have full access to all aspects of language, while those without such rights do not . . .' (p. 64). Real life is of course far more intricately woven. ALASTAIR PENNYCOOK, CRITICAL APPLIED LINGUISTICS: A CRITICAL INTRODUCTION It was with some theoretical relief then that I moved on to Critical Applied Linguistics. This is Alistair Pennycook's third book, following The Cultural Politics of English as an International Language (1994) and English and Discourses of Colonialism (1998). As the name suggests, the book attempts to map out the epistemological parameters of an applied linguistics infused with critical awareness. Pennycook began the ®rst bold moves in this direction back in 1990 in an article in Issues in Applied Linguistics entitled `Towards a critical applied linguistics for the 1990's'. In revising and expanding his arguments here, Pennycook investigates a gamut of theoretical ®elds to suggest ways of thinking about language and language education that go beyond the scientistic posturing and claims to truth and proof which are the basis of much of the research and teaching around language and particularly, English, globally. Pennycook acknowledges that much of his thinking has grown out of teaching the Critical Applied Linguistics course at University of Melbourne (he is currently Professor of Applied Linguistics at University of Technology, Sydney) and having to synthesise a wide range of material around applied linguistics as well as di€erent philosophical world views. In addition to bringing public/professional accessibility to the shifting ®elds of critical applied linguistics then, the book clearly demonstrates the ecacy of the teaching/research nexus. This is an important if unintended outcome in these times when the interrelationship between the two activities is continually called into question by governments intent on reducing funding in the tertiary education sector. A key tenet of the book is that language is already the social bond, not a re¯ection of it, nor something that can sit outside it. It is therefore re¯exively entangled in all the issues that shape our lives and world. Further to this is a notion that working with language in whatever situation (be it teaching, research or another activity) should be underpinned by a contextually mediated ethics, one that works to improve the material conditions people experience. Pennycook organises the book to highlight the broad ®elds he needs to cover in order to make his case for an appreciably di€erent way of working in applied linguistics. The chapters are as follows: `Introducing critical applied linguistics', `The politics of knowledge', `The politics of language', `The politics of text', `The politics of pedagogy', `The politics of di€erence', `Applied linguistics with an attitude'. These are not, as Pennycook admits, easy or straightforward divisions to make. As he says, `. . . moving across so many domains, trying to tie together so many varied approaches to critical work, and trying to locate ideas within di€erent domains of practice . . . [has been hard work]' (p. 27). Signi®cantly, # Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2003

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Chapters 2±6 highlight politics rather than the alleged subject at hand, applied linguistics, and Pennycook explains that this is because he is relying on a broad interpretation of politics, beyond formal political domains: . . . the notion of politics I am using here takes as its central concern the notion of power and views power as operating through all domains of life. Power is at the heart of questions of discourse, disparity and di€erence. (p. 27)

Another word that is central to the book is `critical'. The word has immediate associations with Marxist (modernist) critical theory and the Frankfurt School (JuÈrgen Habermas, in particular) as well as common collocations such as the overused term `critical thinking'. Pennycook juxtaposes these approaches with what he calls problematising practice, an approach to applied linguistics involving a constant scepticism towards ingrained policies and practices. He goes on to outline how this approach is informed by postmodernism, poststructuralism, postcolonialism and feminist and queer theory. Pennycook says that he is interested not in greater rigour in the discipline, nor objectivity (linguistics as science), nor rationality. Rather, he wants applied linguistics to be more politically accountable. In doing this it needs to adopt a . . . greater sense of humility and di€erence and to raise questions about the limits of its own knowing. This self-re¯exive position . . . is concerned with raising a host of new and dicult questions about knowledge, politics and ethics. (p. 8)

Pennycook's unequivocal position is that theory and philosophy matter. They are closely tied up with our world view and the way we live our lives and do our work. Pennycook advocates strong links between theory and practice and refers to this as praxis. Tied in with this is the premise that language education is always and already political despite claims to the opposite by some theorists (see, for example, Crystal 1997). The aim for praxis is to treat power as a productive possibility for change. Like Canagarajah, Pennycook believes that the micro contexts of everyday language and interaction are inextricably linked to macro social and political concerns in non-linear and complex ways and always carry traces of other times and other bodies. These relationships and the power they produce need to be explored and explained. Finally, Pennycook advocates a critical approach to language education which should not be an `add on'. It needs to be di€used throughout curricula, be these ESOL curricula or postgraduate programmes in applied linguistics. Pennycook ®nishes the book on a deliberately enigmatic note claiming his hope for critical applied linguistics is not that it become a new subdiscipline of applied linguistics with its own ®xed constructs. Rather, he hopes it will become a form of antidisciplinary practice which avoids model building and remains on the move, `. . . questioning, always seeking new schemas of politicization' (p. 173). Ultimately, his aim is to leave behind the marker `critical' and work towards a position where all work with language is already political. # Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2003

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A. SURESH CANAGARAJAH, RESISTING LINGUISTIC IMPERIALISM IN ENGLISH TEACHING Resisting Linguistic Imperialism in English Teaching is A. Suresh Canagarajah's ®rst book. Canagarajah is one of the few self-de®ned periphery scholars currently writing for an international ELT audience. He is from the Tamil speaking northern region of Sri Lanka and taught in the University of Ja€na from 1984±1994. Canagarajah is now Associate Professor in English at the City University of New York (CUNY). He contends that because of his particular standpoint as a Tamil/English bilingual and non-Westerner, the views he expresses are necessarily di€erent from academics writing about the ELT enterprise from the centre. As with the Phillipson collection, the constructs of the centre and periphery recur throughout this book to di€erentiate between technologically advanced, economically and globally powerful, English speaking Western societies and developing countries, respectively. The term `centre' for Canagarajah refers to North America, Britain, Australia, and New Zealand. He explains that the term periphery refers to . . . such communities where English is of post-colonial currency such as Barbados, India, Malaysia, and Nigeria. Also included under this label are many communities which formerly belonged to other imperial powers, such as Belgium, France, or Spain, but have now come under neo-imperialist thrusts of English-speaking center communities. They include Indonesia, Mexico, South Korea, Tunisia, and Vietnam. (p. 4)

The author, following Appadurai (1994), however, highlights the point that such categories are for convenience of labelling only and the use of them runs the risk of portraying ®xed geopolitical binaries when the range of relationships among countries is shifting, complex and paradoxical. Canagarajah notes: `For example, the periphery today displays a drive for technology and industrial production that surpasses the centre' (p. 7). The ®rst chapter outlines a philosophical underpinning for the key theme of resistance. By this Canagarajah means resistance to all forms of domination by the centre as well as to resistance against, for example, the narrow ethnolinguistic policies in the de facto Eelan state which proclaim Tamil as the dominant language. In particular, though, he is interested in exploring resistance to metanarratives (Lyotard 1979) in the English Language Teaching (ELT) profession. Metanarratives can be de®ned as the dominant myths or stories that inform our day to day existence. In the context of ELT these might include the view that: 1. Learning English is an objective cognitive activity free from emotion, imagination, intuition and contextual in¯uences. 2. Learning English is the same for everyone and therefore teaching can be conducted in a uniform way irrespective of the characteristics of the # Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2003

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learners, their lived experiences and the wider socio-cultural and political context which they are part of. 3. English has nothing to do with politics, socio-cultural contexts or values and therefore the content in classroom materials and textbooks is irrelevant. 4. Teaching English entails conveying a pre-constructed set of facts regardless of students' beliefs, values and prior knowledge. 5. There are international standards of English and these ought to be the focus of teaching. These received views, Canagarajah contends, serve in complex ways to denigrate and marginalise the lived culture, experiences and possibilities of periphery learners. In his discussion of theories of resistance, Canagarajah rejects traditional, western, scientisitic and (supposedly) apolitical forms of inquiry as a means of understanding the complex motivations, paradoxical desires, material conditions and instances of struggle in periphery classrooms. He points out that enlightenment thinking and the positivist research methodologies which support it (Delanty 1997) have suppressed non-western knowledge production and therefore a research voice for periphery communities. Canagarajah advocates a pragmatic poststructuralist/postcolonial sensibility towards research around issues of language, culture and politics, which is re¯exive and admits of its own partiality and interestedness. He notes that the poststructuralist position on language: that language is historically and socially situated, intertextual and instantiating of many (if not all) aspects of the social, allows for productive possibilities in negotiating subjectivities in periphery communities. While it is acknowledged that powerful and dominant discourses do heavily constitute and marginalise identity, there is always the productive space to critically negotiate these. For example, Canagarajah's research shows `. . . how subjects alternate the vernacular and English in a contextually advantageous manner to challenge the unequal distribution of symbolic and material rewards' (p. 30). The main focus of the book is an explication of the daily negotiation of issues of identity, community membership, and values through the competing languages of Tamil and English. Canagarajah aims for a grounded theory based on critical insider ethnographical research which is contextualised in terms of wider social, historical, cultural and political concerns. In addition, his conviction of the situatedness and partiality of knowledge construction leads to a necessary disclosure of his own background, personal tensions and cultural and linguistic hybridity. Canagarajah critiques Phillipson's (1992) work on linguistic imperialism, for example, for being too deterministic, distant (all his work has been done from the centre), impersonal and therefore inadequate for exploring some of the more complex issues of linguistic domination and resistance in periphery communities. From Chapter 4 the speci®c sides and sites of resistance to English are explored. Firstly, Canagarajah investigates student opposition to alien materials # Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2003

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and curricula in English classes. In particular, he studies the underlife of the classroom through analysing student glosses in the margins of textbooks. In these glosses students express their boredom with the class, reinterpret their American donated texts, write about popular movies and draw sexual images. But they also express an awareness of the importance of English in their future lives. Canagarajah's handling of and engagement with the con¯icting in¯uences in the student glosses and direct student responses (through questionnaires) is an exemplar for other researchers tempted to simplify their material for ease of analysis and linearity of argument. Canagarajah also investigates Tamil teacher attempts to integrate task-based teaching into their English classes. During his observations he witnesses a range of teacher practices from the relatively poor to a successful, locally grounded adaptation of the methodology (e.g. students work in gender segregated groups, critically debate the causes of di€erent lifestyles and use both Tamil and English in the class). Canagarajah's argument is that indigenous pedagogies prior to colonialism were highly heterogeneous and that a return to this type of holistic heterogeneity, more recently characterised in the emergent post-method movement is an empowering and locally connected way for people in periphery settings to engage in language teaching and learning. A key premise is that the classroom is society, not a microcosm of society, nor a re¯ection of it. What happens inside the classroom directly in¯uences how students and teachers act upon their and other people's lives in very material ways. Conversely, what happens in terms of the broader social structure is played out in lived experiences inside the classroom. Canagarajah's message is primarily directed to periphery communities (although he is also speaking back to the centre academy) which need, he contends, to go beyond mere opposition to centre dominance. Opposition is `. . . unclear, ambivalent and largely passive' compared to the more positive resistance which displays `. . . ideological clarity and commitment to collective action for collective transformation' (p. 98). And Canagarajah's suggestion for doing this in the ®eld of language is in negotiating the tricky terrain of linguistic appropriation ± of making English `their own'. English confers too many privileges in today's world to ignore, so indigenous monolingualism is not a powerful option. Rather, there is an insistence that people remain linguistically and culturally part of their community while also learning and `mastering' the discourse of power (including that of Western/English academia). The author writes: `Being sympathetically grounded in one's primary community is not inimical to multicultural status; on the contrary, it deepens the meaning and signi®cance of one's cosmopolitan provenance' (p. 183). From this position and the grounded theory of his ethnographic studies of teachers and students, Canagarajah proposes a `pedagogy of appropriation'. Such a pedagogy would involve the encouragement of strong re¯exivity in teachers and students so that they could recognise asymmetrical relations of power and knowledge in their immediate and wider communities. In addition, # Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2003

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the explicit encouragement of hybrid or bi-discoursal forms of knowledge/ language production gained through engaging in both indigenous and dominant forms of knowledge/discourse is proposed. At a classroom level, strategies for making English `their own' include: explicit teaching and `unpacking' of power/dominant discourses; problematising cultural and ideological content in set texts; using texts from minority writers; engaging in the popular culture of movies and pop music that students bring to class; promoting the use of student ®rst languages in class through, for example, same language group/pair work, and encouraging the use of journals where students can write in L1 (®rst language), mixed code or English for expressing themselves imaginatively (much like in the Tamil student glosses of textbooks). INTERRELATIONSHIPS These three books are unapologetically political and partial in their approach to research and argumentation. They communicate strong arguments for working for social justice through issues of language and culture and employing an overtly political agenda to do this. This is in direct contrast to the vast tract of applied linguistics texts which position the research and learning of English as neutral endeavours disconnected to the material conditions of people's lives. For this reason, they are important reading for everyone involved in language education: academics, teacher/researchers and teachers alike. Pennycook and Canagarajah, in particular, o€er some clear implications for the way language educators can think about their classroom and related academic practices. All three books cross-reference each other's work, often in order to contest claims and theoretical positions of the other (this is more explicit in Pennycook and Canagarajah than in Phillipson). Indeed the professional relationships between Phillipson, Canagarajah and Pennycook are somewhat intertwined as hinted at in prefaces to their various publications. Phillipson's (1992) Linguistic Imperialism was in many ways a watershed in the apolitical disciplinary world of applied linguistics and has been signi®cant in shaping the work of both Pennycook and Canagarajah. It posed one of the ®rst book length alternative views to the `. . . natural, neutral and bene®cial . . . (spread of English)' (Pennycook 1994: 11). As Canagarajah puts it, the book, `o€ers a forceful critique of the global spread of English and ELT, beginning from its military imposition by colonial powers and extending to the subtler neoimperialist activities of Western cultural organisations and aid agencies today' (p. 40). Phillipson is acknowledged in Pennycook (1994) as an advisor for his PhD thesis and is referenced liberally throughout that book as well as subsequent publications. In Critical Applied Linguistics, Phillipson and Skutnabb-Kangas's work appear several times, ®rstly as examples of important critical work in applied linguistics. In particular, Pennycook cites Phillipson's linguistic imperialist analysis and the concomitant threat of pervasive monolingualism. He also # Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2003

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discusses the argument for language rights (Phillipson and Skutnabb-Kangas 1996): that every person has the right to fully develop their mother tongue. Later in Critical Applied Linguistics, as Pennycook endeavours to outline di€ering frameworks for explaining relations between knowledge and politics, Phillipson appears, along with Norman Fairclough, in the Emancipatory modernist framework. Pennycook explains this position as being characterised by scienti®c leftism, linking neo-marxist politics with scienti®c analysis and the belief in macro structures of domination. He sums up the approach as `Powerful critiques, limited by determinism, in¯exibility and belief in emancipation' (Pennycook 2001: 30). The problem for Pennycook is that `Phillipson takes a static view of language and maps it onto a deterministic political framework, suggesting thereby that the promotion of English supports dominant capitalist and political interests' (Pennycook, p. 62). While there may be some veracity in this position, Canagarajah and Pennycook note that Phillipson's inability to engage with the way in which English is actually taken up by individuals in their day to day life in di€erent contexts in di€erent countries, to include a micro view, weakens his argument. Canagarajah cites Linguistic Imperialism as the motivation for his current publication. By using the title Resisting Linguistic Imperialism in English Language Teaching, Canagarajah simultaneously situates his book both within and in resistance to the work on English (language) imperialism and Phillipson, speci®cally. In e€ect Canagarajah's title forefronts his engagement with and contestation of Phillipson's work. The nature of this dialogue is explicitly signalled in the introduction: In his major study of the politics of ELT, Phillipson (1992) conducts a scathing attack on English for functioning as a tool for imperialist relations and values. However, his reproductionist orientation is responsible for some of the limitations as well as the strengths of his book. . . . The overly global approach to the subject is not conducive to exploring the day-by-day struggles and negotiations with the language that take place in third world communities. More importantly, the subtle forms of resistance to English and the productive processes of appropriation inspired by local needs, are not suciently represented. It is time, therefore, to take the exploration of this subject further. (Canagarajah, p. 3)

Canagarajah also locates himself in relation to Pennycook's work. In covering resistance to English Canagarajah ®rstly compliments Pennycook (Cultural Politics of English as an International Language) on the way he understands Anglicism and Orientalism to be co-productive and in the interests of the coloniser. Canagarajah nevertheless sees a gap in the argumentation in terms of failing to document resistance to colonisation. Another objection to Pennycook's work is similar to his objection to Phillipson. Canagarajah says: Pennycook's discussion of the post-colonial status and functions of English in the periphery stops short of answering some of the crucial questions evoked by the narration. . . . If there are con¯icting attitudes towards English, how are they # Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2003

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sustained? How do such attitudes manifest themselves in the linguistic interaction among speakers? What implications do such attitudes have for the structure, values, and functions of English in the periphery? How do speakers in the periphery resolve these tensions linguistically? (Canagarajah, p. 60)

A further connection between the authors is that Alistair Pennycook was a reader for Resisting Linguistic Imperialism in English Teaching along with Henry Widdowson. A very appropriate counter-balance, no doubt. Canagarajah notes: `While Widdowson checked for signs of pedagogical naiveteÂ, Pennycook questioned any display of ideological shallowness' (Canagarajah, p. vii). Canagarajah and Pennycook have bene®ted from engagement with Phillipson's work and each other's. However, the same cannot be said for Phillipson. In his `Integrative comment: Living with vision and commitment' (®nal chapter) in Rights to Language, he makes reference to Pennycook just once and then only to note the concept of cultural ®xity in the context of orientalism and education from Pennycook's English and the Discourses of Colonialism (1998). Canagarajah's work is not referenced once in Rights to Language, an interesting comment given the publication of Resisting Linguistic Imperialism in English Teaching by Oxford University Press the preceding year and Canagarajah's proli®c journal publishing record prior to that. Phillipson's festschrift would have bene®ted from a stronger theoretical engagement throughout but particularly where it attempted to grapple with the interrelationship between language, culture, globalisation and economic rationalisation. For me, the more satisfying and challenging books were Pennycook's and Canagarajah's. Both forge paths for Applied Linguistics and Language Education which promise to leave aside dreams of truth, proof and objectivity and instead aim for ethically informed, re¯exive, politicised and contextualised ways of working with and in linguistic and cultural diversity.

REFERENCES Appadurai, Arjun. 1994. Disjuncture and di€erence in the global cultural economy. In Patrick Williams and Laura Chrisman (eds.) Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory. New York: Columbia University Press. Crystal, David. 1997. English as a Global Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Delanty, Gerard. 1997. Social Science: Beyond Constructivism and Realism. Buckingham: Open University Press. Luke, Timothy. 1997. Thinking about political correctness in the university. Professional correctness or political correctness? In Michael Peters (ed.) Cultural Politics and the University in Aotearoa/New Zealand. Palmerston North: Dunmore Press. 51±64. Lyotard, Jean Francois. 1979. The Post-Modern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (translated 1984 by Geo€rey Bennington and Brian Massumi). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. # Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2003

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Marginson, Simon. 1997. Markets in Education. St Leonards, New South Wales: Allen and Unwin. Pennycook, Alistair. 1990. Towards a critical applied linguistics for the 1990s. Issues in Applied Linguistics 1: 8±28. Pennycook, Alistair. 1994. The Cultural Politics of English as an International Language. London: Longman. Pennycook, Alistair. 1998. English and the Discourses of Colonialism. London: Routledge. Phillipson, Robert and Tove Skutnabb-Kangas. 1996. English only worldwide or langauge ecology? TESOL Quarterly 30: 429±452. Skutnabb-Kangas, Tove. 1999. Education of minorities. In Joshua A. Fishman (ed.) Handbook of Language and Ethnic Identity. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press. 42±59. Terralingua. 2002. Learn about Terralingua. Downloaded from the World Wide Web on 28 May 2002 from http://www.terralingua.org/AboutTL.html

Address correspondence to: Sharon Harvey Centre for Communication Research Auckland University of Technology Private Bag 92006 Auckland 1020 New Zealand [email protected]

# Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2003