Content uploaded by Craig Sower
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Craig Sower on Mar 30, 2016
Content may be subject to copyright.
Some Second Thoughts on English
and Capital: A Response to
Pennycook
Posted October 23rd, 2012 by webadmin
Issue: The Language Teacher - Issue 22.1; January 1998
Date: Thu, 1998-01-01
Writer(s): Craig Sower
Alastair Pennycook's article, "English and Capital: Some Thoughts," in the
October 1997 edition of The Language Teacher, presents a troubling view of
language and language teaching. While the piece gives some indication of the
author's agenda, a more complete picture is available in his description of
Critical Applied Linguistics (CALx), a field he sees as useful in the study of
language education. He writes:
As a developing focus within an interdisciplinary domain, therefore, its
[CALx] antecedents are best understood in terms of the critical domains
on which it draws. These include, first, traditional areas of critical thought,
such as Marxian structuralist analyses of society, studies in political
economy, or theories of imperialism (in press).
I take exception with the author on three points. First, I believe that language is
more than a political act. Second, I think it is a travesty to use Marxism as a prism
through which to view issues of language rights and imperialism. And, finally, I
find the notion of an emergent, predominantly Western, world culture to be
erroneous and ethnocentric.
There are better terms
One of the key sentences in Pennycook's TLT article reads, "What I want to
suggest, then, is that we see English use as, for want of a better term, acts of
desire for capital" (p. 56). I think there are better terms for language ranging
from the sublime to the mundane.
Some feel the highest form of language is literature. "One breaks into the canon
only by aesthetic strength, which is constituted primarily of an amalgam:
mastery of figurative language, originality, cognitive power, knowledge,
exuberance of diction" (Bloom, 1994, p. 29). While it is trendy to decry literature
as elitist and out of touch, much of it remains liberating and vital.
More commonly, language is what people use to share our love--parents
nurturing their children, endearments murmured between lovers, believers
praying to their gods. It is something we use to offer and receive solace in our
moments of grief. Language is how we connect with those separated from us by
time or space--an avenue to the wisdom of generations past, our gift to great-
grandchildren we may never see, our attempt to communicate with people from
other cultures and lands. Language is humanity's way of reaching out.
Strictly speaking, the author is correct that language is used in "acts of desire for
capital." Language is used to help the user get what the user wants, but this
seems true only in the most banal and limited sense. Viewed more generously,
language is a means of expressing the inarticulate speech of the heart. In the end,
perhaps one's view of language is simply a Rorschach test revealing more about
the observer than the observed.
Marxian structuralist analyses
When a method of analysis is put forward, one should look for cases in which it
has been used. While we cannot tell the future solely by past performance, we
can gain useful insights. One place to start with Pennycook's method would be in
those societies which organize themselves along Marxist principles. With China
and Vietnam moving rapidly toward market economies, the last three rigidly
Marxist societies are Cuba, North Korea, and Yemen, excellent places to be from
though not actually in.
If we find no reason for confidence in existing Marxist societies, perhaps there is
something to be learned by looking at Marxist regimes past. On the issue of
language rights the former Soviet Union is a case study in failure. Marx regarded
nations as "an irrational complication--a residue of the past," leaving little doubt
how he viewed national languages (Meyer, 1981, as cited in Kreindler, 1985, p.
348). The early Bolsheviks argued that national identities and languages should
be subsumed by the formation of a common culture and common language for all
people (Kreindler, p. 348). Lenin, in formulating the Second Party Program in
1919, defeated these Marxist purists and put forth a strong case for language
minority rights including education in mother tongues. In 1938, however, Lenin's
policies were reversed, Russian was adopted as the official language of the USSR,
and national languages came under severe pressure. To mention but two
examples, before World War II, Tartar and Kalmyk enjoyed the status of
autonomous-republic languages. This ended in 1944 when both groups were
deported to the Soviet Far East (Kreindler, p. 4).
Professor Pennycook is not alone in giving prominence to Marxist analyses of
society, many in academia take the view that Marx is just misunderstood.
However, Marx and his modern academic acolytes failed to recognize
nationalism as the driving force of the 20th Century--not imperialism, socialism,
or internationalist movements (Pfaff, 1993, p. 238). They missed the fact that
people will work longer, harder, and better for themselves than for some
abstract collective or common good. They did not grasp that workers, through
their associations and behavior, are a dynamic market force moderating
capitalism. Given that the socio-economic pseudo-science of Marxism performed
so dismally in its chosen field, I see few reasons for applying Marx to the
language classroom.
The West vs. the Rest
Mr. Pennycook's introduction to his TLT article reads in part,"...we need to
understand English language teaching as one arm of global linguistic
imperialism, as interlinked with the dominance of Western ideology, culture, and
capitalism, and a crucial element in the denial of linguistic human rights" (p. 55).
Many Westerners find it comforting to believe their culture is becoming the
world's culture. This ethnocentric mirage has two facets. One has been called the
Coca-colonization thesis, the other has to do with modernization. According to
professor Samuel Huntington, chairman of the Harvard Academy for
International and Area Studies, both theses "project an image of an emerging
homogeneous, universally Western world--and both are to varying degrees
misguided, arrogant, false, and dangerous" (1996, p. 28).
Because certain elements of Western pop culture and consumer products are so
widely accepted, it is tempting for some to conclude that the world is becoming
Westernized. The ubiquitousness of Western music, fashions, fast food,
technology, and CNN News seems evidence of fundamental sameness. However,
as Milton Bennett wrote about the first stage of ethnocentrism, "the essence of
denial is the inability to see things as different" (1996, p. 15). The fact is that,
beneath superficial similarities, profound differences in religion, language,
customs, and traditions exist among the cultures of the world. These are not
eliminated by anything so facile as sharing the same soft drinks, gadgets, or
buzzwords. Driving Hondas does not make Australians think like Japanese any
more than eating Big Macs turns Chinese into incipient Americans.
In terms of modernization, some Westerners assume that industrialization will
occur more or less along the same lines everywhere as it did in Europe. This
seems wishful thinking at best and flies in the face of the expressed wishes of the
peoples of China, India, Japan, and every other country in Asia. Within the
triangle stretching from Istanbul in the west, to Indonesia in the southeast and
Japan in the northeast, lie some forty nations inhabited by two-thirds of the
world's population. This region has experienced the greatest economic growth
and modernization in the past twenty years. Yet, with the arguable exception of
Turkey, this area contains not one Western society. Heads of European
governments gathered at the Asia-Europe Summit in Bangkok in March, 1996,
seemed surprised when Prime Minister Mahathir of Malaysia told them,
"European values are European values; Asian values are universal values," but
similar sentiments have been voiced by senior officials throughout the region
(Heilbrunn, 1996, p. 1). To Asians, the notion that adopting Western values and
cultural norms is a natural and inevitable consequence of industrial development
is not only ethnocentric but profoundly racist as well.
The self-congratulatory chimera of Western hegemony becomes especially acute
when extended to English usage. While it is true that English serves as the lingua
franca for much of today's multinational business, diplomacy, and entertainment,
it does not follow that this is a permanent condition. Dutch, Spanish, Russian, and
French all enjoyed periods of ascendancy which proved to be ephemeral. English
is, to be sure, one tool Asian peoples may use, but that is all it is. Nowhere in Asia
is English the predominant language, and the suggestion that some of the world's
oldest civilizations are seriously threatened by language encroachment is
patronizing and false. They are made of sterner stuff.
A final note on the use of English and power distribution is necessary. It is true
that power and resources are not evenly allocated in the world. But the use of
English, indeed the use of language, does not cause injustice. The problems about
which the author is concerned arise from human nature, not linguistic choices.
Conclusion
Clearly, language does not occur in a vacuum and it is important to examine how
it relates to the lives of people. However, casting the language classroom as an
extension of international and cross-cultural power struggles politicizes
language learning in ways which detract from the already daunting task of
second language acquisition. If one introduces explicitly political agendas into
class, on what principled basis can one object when others do the same?
There is something beautiful and transcendent about language which cannot be
seen as simply political. It would be a shame to reduce such an elegant
instrument to just another rusted cog in the failed machinery of Marxism. This is
not to say that we should not take a critical approach to language and linguistics.
We should, and the place to start is with a critical look at Critical Applied
Linguistics.
References
Bennett, M. (1996). Beyond tolerance: Intercultural communication in a
multicultural society. TESOL Matters, 6 (2), pp. 1, 15.
Bloom, H. (1994) The Western Canon: The books and school of the ages. New York:
Harcourt Brace & Company.
Heilbrunn, J. (1996, December 29). U.S. vs. Asia: Culture as diplomacy. Los
Angeles Times, Opinion, p. 1.
Huntington, S. (1996). The West: Unique, not universal. Foreign Affairs, 75 (6),
pp. 28-46.
Kreindler, I. (1985) The non-Russian languages and the challenge of Russian: The
Eastern versus the Western tradition. In I. Kreindler (ed.) Sociolinguistic
perspectives on Soviet national languages: Their past, present and future.
Berlin: Walter de Gruyter & Co.
Meyer, A. (1981). Book review, Slavic Review, No. 3, p. 482. Cited in I. Kreindler
(ed.), (1985) Sociolinguistic perspectives on Soviet national languages: Their
past, present and future.
Pennycook, A. (in press) Critical applied linguistics and education. In R. Wodak
(ed.) Language Policy and Political Issues in Education, Volume 1 of D.
Corson (ed.) Encyclopedia of Language.