Michael E. Skyer

Second Language Acquisition & Bilingualism (ED 480) –

Professor Martha French, University of Rochester, Warner

School of Education and Human Development.

Literature Review Paper

December 11th, 2013

Dynamic Ecologies: Second Language Acquisition in the Postmodern ethos

Introduction – The postmodern ethos is neither monolithic,

nor is it fully inchoate. The postmodern is a family of

diverse theories oscillating around a locus of skepticism,

incredulity and critical questioning. Postmodern theories

emerged in the second half of the 20th century primarily as

a response to modernism but also as a critique of it (de

Alba, Gonzalez-Gaudiano, Lankshear and Peters, 2000). The

philosophical shifts produced by moving from modernist

transcendentalism toward a postmodern existentiality (or

ethos) have profoundly impacted science and education in

irrevocable ways. de Alba et al. describe the situation in

the following way: “The changes that have occurred so

rapidly around the globe since 1989, combined with the

erosion of the very essences and foundations of Western

thought, have put the educational field [and curriculum] in

a highly complex situation” (p. 149). Researchers, teachers

and theorists engaged with the postmodern ethos have

responded to the various ruptures and crises in

characteristically contingent ways.

Researchers working in second language acquisition and

teachers who work with students who use more than one

language can engage with different aspects of postmodern

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theory. Doing so allows them to understand language learning

within an increasingly complex discourse environment. Recent

findings from educational research posit that the language

learning process is not as straightforward, rule bound or

universal as was once thought (Dornyei, 2009). The

increasing complexity of educational research in this field

reflect the hybridity, diversity and fluid ways that

students engage with multiple languages and multiple

modalities in their lives. It is no surprise then that

educational research on multiple language learners borrows

vocabulary, terminology and theory from postmodernist

theorists. It is my belief that teachers and scholars who

neglect or reject the central questioning ethos of

postmodernity do so at the risk of alienating their students

and disadvantaging themselves by reducing critical thinking

opportunities at all levels of the language learning

process. The postmodern ethos permeates discourse on

multiple dimensions; those who ignore it obfuscate the

multivalent nature of language learning, discourse and

perhaps obscure reality itself.

Research Question – I begin this paper with the following

research question: What relationships exist between the ethos of

postmodernity and bi/multilingual pedagogical praxis? In this paper I

interpret selected linguistic theories, which respond to

conditions of postmodernity. In this paper, I specifically

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focus on how teaching and learning of second languages or

multiple languages are impacted. These networks of related

interpretive findings can be useful for teachers who seek to

foster critical thinking and genuine literacy practices in

language-learning contexts. The goal of this paper is to

explore potential outcomes of a reconstituted field of SLA

research oriented toward postmodern conditions and the

effects that they may have on pedagogy.

The postmodern ethos exists within tension to late

modernist theories and the scholars that espouse them.

Because postmodern thought has moved in so many different

ways, the reconceived field of second language research and

its findings reflect these changes Critical linguists of

this sort include Firth and Wagner (1997/2007), Pennycook

(2006; 2007; 2010) Canagarajah (2006) and Dornyei (2009)

among others. These findings often corroborate but sometimes

reject elements of postmodern theory. The reconstituted

field of SLA research presents diverse and occasionally

conflicted findings regarding pedagogy, it is my hope to

clarify and extend some of these lines of thought. It is

important to remember that strongly contrasting views exist

elsewhere and this interpretive paper is one potential

response among alternate permutations.

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It is my hope that sketching out the contours of these

theoretical implications can help educators understand and

navigate the path of postmodern theory and better see how it

is embedded within the praxis of current educational

activity. The first and second goals of this paper are to

sketch out related trait-clusters with regard to language

use and the theoretical notions that underpin them. The

final goal of this paper is to connect pedagogical practices

to the findings related to theories of second (or multiple)

language learning, and map out suggestions for teachers as

to how they can apply them in educational settings.

Theoretical Framework: Postmodern Ethos & Language Learning

– The postmodernist ethos is dissipated and has an amorphous

construction; it moves across and within different fields of

study. As such, it is applied in various ways. Postmodern

thought is a broadly defined category, and different people

for different reasons and to different ends enact it in

different ways (Lyotard, 1992). Postmodern theory has been

interpreted, described, critiqued, defined, rejected, or

endorsed by disparate scientists in differing fields of

study (Rampton, 2006; Ranciere, 2010). In their introduction

to Curriculum in the Postmodern Condition de Alba et al. (2000)

write

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Our life forms and our social visions of the past, the

present and the future [are] characterized by the

precarious…The precarious is understood as the floating and

unstable character of any configuration or system (such as a

political system, education system, family system, grammar

system, etc.). It inscribes on discourse the possibility of

change, transformation, and resignification (de Alba, et

al., 2000, p. 154).

Though postmodernist thinkers have emerged from within the

fields of philosophy, its roots have always tapped into

questions of language, knowledge and learning; these shifts

have profoundly affected the way that philosophers

understand knowledges and the creation of new knowledges,

particularly within educational research in the fields of

bi/multilingual education.

Ortega (2009) describes four concurrent developments in

SLA research. Each of these four developments can be

organized under the broad reorientation of linguistics

focused more on social/identity traits than

cognitive/psychological ones. These shifts have been called

the “social turn,” the “interpretive turn,” and the

“linguistic turn” in various fields of study (Rorty, 1992;

Block, 2008; Ortega, 2009). Each indicates a willingness to

engage with postmodern thought; they exude skepticism. Each

development can be generally subsumed under the postmodern

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ethos and are indicative of the postmodern condition albeit

in different ways.

Ortega first describes the social dimensions of

language learning by citing Firth and Wagner (1997),

Rampton, (1990) and Block (2003) (In Ortega, p. 216). She

describes recent changes that recognize language learning

and literacy as social practices. In Ortega’s view language

learning is “irreducibly multiple, intersubjective,

discursively constituted and the site of struggle over

conflicting power interests” (p. 218). This position

underscores the multivalent construction of students’

realities, which are not static, but are instead negotiated

constructions of language across social activities. In this

view, teachers and students create their own realities

through language. Second, Ortega points toward identity

complexity theory, a theory that borrows from poststructural

concerns for economic, historic and sociopolitical struggles

enacted through language users’ identities. These identities

are likewise multiple, changing, and occasionally

contradictory. It is important for teachers to recognize

that their students are complex beings acting out micro-

political struggles in all contexts, including classrooms.

Next, Ortega (2009) describes how second or multiple

language learning “is always transformative” and is “never

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just about language” (p. 250). Ortega describes the work of

Canagarajah (2002), and Pennycook (2004), and Norton (2006),

which point to these findings (In Ortega, p. 250-1). Teachers

need to understand that students are not simply learning how

to read and write, but undergoing continual shifts and

realizing new ways of being. Dornyei’s (2009)

conceptualization of a dynamic agent within a multivalent

environment reinforces this view. Teachers need to

understand that students learning languages are experiencing

profound alterations to their senses of self and are

enacting complex identities. Finally, Ortega recognizes that

networked communication and digital technologies are

transformed in globalized nations. These technological

developments are thoroughly enmeshed in the learning spaces

of many, if not most, students in highly developed

societies. These digital spaces create digitized selves that

must be accounted for in SLA research as well as

bi/multilingual classrooms. Participating in such discourse

spaces can either threaten or enrich students’ concepts of

language learning or language use. They can expose students

to wider cultural trends, broader patterns of discourse and

different modalities in which to make themselves known.

These shifting panes of awareness are enacted through

networked spaces across time. These are powerful sites for

learning. Teachers who ignore or minimally engage with

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networked discourse are restricting opportunities for

student growth.

de Alba et al. (2000) cite Elizabeth Ermarth (1998) at

length in a passage that is worth revisiting briefly.

Ermarth (1998) applies postmodernism directly to human

sciences and education in an interesting way. She writes,

Postmodernism can be recognized by two key assumptions.

First, that the assumption that there is no common

denominator—in “nature” or “truth” or “God” or “the future”—

that guarantees either the One-ness of the world or the

possibility of natural or objective thought. Second, the

assumption that all human systems operate like language,

being self-reflexive rather than referential systems—systems

of differential function which are powerful but finite, and

which construct and maintain meaning and values (In de Alba

et al., 2000, p. 3).

Ermarth’s (1998) first assumption negates objectivity

and universality, the second questions modernist conceptions

of how discourse operates. She evokes language in an inverse

way to describe societal operations generally. From this

groundwork it is possible to unpack a description of

language by working backwards. Ermarth’s heuristic metaphor

allows us to understand that human systems like education

and discourse are macroscopic social uses of language.

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Within this theoretical space, societal operations

(including language use) operate outside of absolute meaning

thus opening space for plurality. Within a postmodern ethos

educators and theorists can eschew teleological orientations

of language and turn toward dynamic, reciprocal uses of it.

Discourse in postmodern theories is represented as fluid,

malleable and amorphous; it flows, seeps, regulates,

empowers, threatens and exalts (Ortega, 2009). Because of

this, educational research and teacher conceptions of

bilingualism and multilingualism need to adapt and take this

organicity into account. Failing to do so undermines the

complexity of the human experience.

In the literatures of this field, scholars frequently

draw from or interpret what could be described as a crisis

of linguistics following the postmodern turn. This crisis

can be described in postmodern, postindustrial, globalized

societies, as a transformation of language and discourse. de

Alba et al. (2000) identify Lyotard as a central theorist

and ‘grandfather’ of postmodernity. In The Postmodern Condition

Lyotard (1984) interprets this postmodern ethos as a

transformation of human knowledges. de Alba et al. (2000)

describe this critical juncture in the following way:

By ‘transformations’ Lyotard [refers] to the effects of the

new technologies since the 1950s and their combined impact

on the two principle functions of knowledge—research and the

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transmission of learning. Significantly, he maintains, the

leading sciences and technologies have all been based on

language-related development [including] theories of

linguistics… In this context, Lyotard argues that the status

of knowledge is permanently altered (de Alba, et al., 2000,

p. 5).

Alterations in human knowledges are inexorably bound to

praxis and education; as such, the debate of postmodernism

is squarely set within education, and specifically within

theories of language. This representational transformation

recognizes that languages move across plethora ecologies of

transfer and their movements affect language, language

learning as well as the users language in all forms (Garcia,

2009). These linguistic transferences and language contact

situations are sometimes described as “language crossing”

(De Costa, 2010a; 2010b) or are understood as languages “in

flux” (Ellis, 2007) with one another. Linguistic crossing

and hybridity are increasingly frequent in globalized

societies. Larsen-Freeman (2007) describes language as an

organic social system, and emphasizes that languages and

language learners are complex and interconnected. I find

that linguistic theories are equally fluid. Postmodern

theories of language depict language learning as “dynamic,

complex, nonlinear, unpredictable, sensitive to initial

conditions, sometimes chaotic, open, self-organizing,

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feedback sensitive [and are] adaptive” (Larsen-Freeman,

2007, p. 35).

These theoretical positions are increasingly noted in

the literatures and are even seen in the work of theorists

whose recent work allows for increasing contingency despite

a previous avowal of linear boundaries and fixity in systems

(de Bot, Lowie & Verspoor, 2006). The framework that

Ermarth’s (1998) posits demands critical questioning. It

assumes that language operates like knowledge, and that

language learning is a process. It can also be understood as

capillary or relational, changing across global and personal

timescapes (Aronin and Singleton, 2008). This hybridity can

create conflict or tensions for language users; however, it

also creates unique opportunities for language educators,

specifically those working with bi/multilingual students.

Aronin and Singleton (2008), De Costa (2010a; 2010b) and

McNamara (2011) have described paradigmatic shifts and have

called for a fundamental reconstitution of research to reflect

these realities. The fluidity/hybridity of language learning

has direct implications for theories of bi/multilingualism

as well as educational praxis.

The Postmodern Condition of Second or Multiple Language

Acquisition – From my initial question, three different axes

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emerge to inform my theoretical framework, they are:

postmodern theory, bi/multilingual theory, and educational

praxis. For this paper postmodern theory is described as an

ethos, rather than a finite thing. I refer to bilingualism

and multilingualism as different incantations of the same

phenomena. Praxis is understood to be primarily based upon

theory, but is also an enacted process of action and

reflection upon theory. Out of this tripartite construction,

I have identified five trait-clusters (described below) that

illuminate how language is used or enacted in postmodern

societies. These theories have implicit and explicit

implications for teachers of second or multiple languages;

each of these clusters shares, overlaps and depends the

others to a certain extent. The boundaries I sketch are more

for the purpose of description and should not be interpreted

as rigid or fixed delineations. Broad heading titles are

shown in boldface and applicable research findings are shown

underneath. In the section that follows this one,

pedagogical implications are discussed.

Language learning is characterized as

1) Dynamic: Complexity & Situated Nature – languages

are fuzzy, fluid, hybrid and dynamic systems which rely

on feedback from individual users and social groups of

users (Ellis, 2007; Larsen-Freeman, 2007); language

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users interact with language enact it, or perform it in

complex social patterns (Aronin and Singleton, 2008;

Dornyei, 2009); language itself is understood as

recursive–doubles back upon itself—as well as

discursive—expressed upon or with others—(de Alba et

al., 2000); language learning is dependent upon dynamic

systems involving the social acts of autonomous

individuals (Ellis, 2007; Larsen-Freeman, 2007);

grammar is understood to be a social-semiotic

characteristic and is not fixed but evolutionarily

dispersed among particular actors in particular

settings (Kramsch, 2004; 2008; Ortega, 2008; Garcia

2009).

Language production relies on

2) Language Use & Negotiated Identity: Autonomous

Individuals within Social Groups – language use occurs

inside and outside of classrooms in complex literacy

acts (De Costa, 2010a; 2010b); language acts are

performed in multiple spaces and are social

accomplishments of its users (Firth and Wagner, 2007);

language is an element of personal identity and

identity is enacted through language in discourse by

autonomous actors engaged in contingent multivalent

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spaces (Dornyei, 2009; Ortega, 2009); linguistic

factors exhibit strong relationships with personal

identity formation and its negotiation (Blackledge and

Cresase, with Barac, Bhatt, Hamid, Wei, Lytra, Martin,

Wu, Yagcioglu, 2008); sustained language contact may

result in assimilation, integration, separation or

marginalization of users (Norton, 2000); globalized

language contact/transfer is a source of power struggle

(Descarries, 2003; Pavlenko, 2001a; 2001b; Aronin and

Singleton, 2008; De Costa, 2010a; 2010b;); these

theoretical changes have been described as a “new

linguistic dispensation” and are understood to be a

paradigmatic shift in how language learning occurs

(Aronin and Singleton, 2008, p. 1).

Language contact is characterized by

3) Linguistic Boundary Crossings: Ambiguity and

Uncertainty in Discourse – languages change in specific

settings, and across time (Ellis, 2007); languages are

arbitrary systems which rely on multimodal signs and

symbols to convey meaning (Kress, 2010); meaning is not

fixed, but amorphous (de Alba et al., 2000); social

language contact and cultural language crossing implies

the impossibility of true translations (Cherryholmes,

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1994; Aronin and Singleton, 2008); studying language

contact in education is an interpretive act which bring

to relief these interpretive permutations which in turn

reify ideology, identity and discourse (Garcia, 2009);

codeswitching is an observable act of language crossing

(De Costa 2010a; 2010b; Rampton, 1995); perforations in

linguistic meaning cause overlap and seepage between

languages or language modalities (Ortega, 2009);

language should not be theorized in binary descriptions

(de Alba et al., 2000).

Language use occurs in fields of

4) Globalization & Technologization: Increasing

Plurality – technological representations of language

have increased the contact of local and global

languages (de Alba, et al., 2000; Aronin and Singleton,

2008); multimodality and other sensory-related

conditions are inhabited or populated by technologies

of late capitalist societies (Kress, 2010); languages

are globalized along with capital, culture and heritage

(Aronin and Singleton, 2008; De Costa, 20010a; 2010b;

McNamara, 2011); discourse, including language use and

literacy, can transcend national borders and discourse

affiliations and affects personal identity

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characteristics (Harklau, 1999; Pavelnko, 2001a; 2001b;

Rubinstein-Avila, 2007); language theories exist in

tension between conceptualizations of language as

capital/resource (Norton, 1998; De Costa, 2010a) and

language as ecology (Kramsch, 2004; 2008; Garcia,

2009).

Finally, the combined dimensions of language learning (1),

production/use (2), contact (3), and global-technological

dispersal have resulted in

5) Power Dynamics: Hegemony and Resistance – language

is embedded in sociocultural, historical practices

(French, 2013; Larson, 2013); an uneven distribution of

language resources is a source of power struggle and

identity formation (Blackledge and Cresase, et al.

2008); language use and discourse are situated

characteristics permeated by ideological overflows from

culture, history and personal narrative (Palevenko,

2001a; 2001b; Matsuda, 2006; Blackledge and Cresase, et

al. 2008; Matsuda and Matsuda, 2010); powerful

globalized languages can dominate minority languages

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and may impinge upon users sense of self (Rampton,

2006; Garcia, 2009); political dimensions of

second/multiple language learning contexts can work

toward social justice and resist linguistic hegemony

(Pavlenko and Blackledge, 2004).

Implications for Teachers – Like multilingualism itself,

multilingual theory often seeps into or permeates that which

surrounds it. Each cluster of characteristics are applicable

to each domain of my research question, but are not bounded

by exclusivity or rigid delineations. These overlapping

themes emerge from and influence language use in discourse,

particularly in educational settings. Attuning to this

theoretical complexity allows teachers to better understand

the “complexified” field of SLA/bilingual research (Larsen-

Freeman, 2007). It is my hope that this exploration can map

out relevant theoretical underpinnings, which in turn allow

teachers to understand and apply postmodern linguistics

praxis in their classrooms. The tenets (or trait-clusters) form

the basis of my assumptions moving into this paper with

regard to languages. In the following section I sketch out

interrelated notions and loosely bind them in order to

understand how they can affect teachers.

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1) Language learning is characterized as Dynamic: Complexity & Situated

Nature – Teachers must recognize that language learning is a

plural process with multiple, overlapping factors. The

interdependent nature of language learning is a mechanism of

complex sub-systems, which operate like ecologies. Teachers

need to understand that language-learning operations in

bilingual or multilingual classroom operation are not

linear, and cannot be interpreted in mono-causal or

unidirectional ways. Similarly, an overreliance on

artificial divisions or boundaries impedes language learning

at all levels. Language learning instead must be understood

as a social process occurring in a dynamic environment in

which modality of use effects discourse and its

representations. Supplying redundant opportunities for

learning helps guide this process of teaching, and vice

versa. Bi/multilingual students operate in multivariate

codependent social settings. Embracing the social use of

language enriches education. Teachers can foster and enrich

the learning context by understanding how it works

theoretically. Rejecting purely cognitive or psychological

theories of language learning allows teachers to understand

the theoretical complexity and dynamic nature of multiple

language learning.

Ellis (2007) cites converging tiers of research within

SLA research that revise previous characterizations of

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language acquisition. The newly described L2 acquisition

process treats learning as dynamic systems, not as static,

linear or universal; Ellis admits that is not an easily

conceived theoretical framework. He writes that language

theorists and teachers cannot rely on “monocausal magic

bullet explanations” (p.23) in labs or in classrooms. Ellis

describes and comments on de Bot, Lowie and Verspoor’s

(2006) theory, which now accounts for the complexity,

contingency and uncertainty of second language learning.

Ellis describes it as “a complex dynamic system where

cognitive, social, and environmental factors continuously

interact, where creative communicative behaviors emerge from

socially co-regulated interactions, where there is little by

way of linguistic universals” (p. 23). He describes language

learners as continually “in flux” (p. 23). Educators who

embrace language learning, particularly in bi/multilingual

settings need to understand that modernist assumptions about

language learning are rapidly becoming outdated.

Rather similarly, Larsen-Freeman (2007) surveys and

reflects on the SLA field and concludes that language

learning is “more complex, gradual, nonlinear, dynamic,

social and variable that had been [previously] recognized”

(p. 35). Her findings take postmodern theory into account

and represent language learning as a dynamic system. Larsen-

Freeman now describes language processes as “unpredictable,

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sensitive to initial conditions, sometimes chaotic, open,

self-organizing, feedback sensitive, adaptive, and have

strange attractors that are fractal in shape” (p. 35). This

increasing dynamism is an explicit rejection of reductionist

theories that, in the past, attempted to artificially order

natural phenomena. Teachers need to recognize these

theoretical dimensions and account for them in their

pedagogy. Larsen-Freeman’s metaphor evokes ecological

concepts of language learning. Viewing language learning as

an interdependent ecology provides imagery that is

interdependent, interactive and variable. These depictions

are decidedly in line with postmodern theories of systems,

symbols and diverse representations. The patterned

regularities that scientists once saw in language labs have

become increasingly fractal, contingent and dispersed.

Teachers who appreciate these findings can see the progress

of their students in a different, more complex way.

Dornyei (2009) traces out the increasingly contingent,

increasingly dynamic theories that currently characterize

parts of SLA-bilingual research (their developments, of

course, owing much to postmodern and poststructural theory).

Dornyei’s complex model includes a complex agent within an

evolving environment. He also accounts for the cognitive

ecosystem/social ecosystem that contains all agents in

social motion. These explicitly diverse planes of

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observation seem to substantially invalidate much of the

previous SLA research done before the critical discourses of

postmodernism held sway. He notes that for much of SLA’s

history, individual characteristics (for example, cultural

affiliations, gender, age, and learning styles) were

considered to be so much “background ‘noise’” (p. 232) to

the language learning situation, whereas in the new era of

all things Post—, learning of all types is increasingly

contingent upon them.

Dornyei charts myriad complexities and notes the

interrelatedness of dynamic clusters or “constellations” (p.

235) of learner idiosyncrasies. He maps their relationships

to their wider environments, neither of which can “exist in

isolation from one another” (p. 235). Teachers must

understand that personal identity factors weigh in heavily

in second or multiple language learning settings. Teachers

need to understand that multiple levels of identity are

always in operation; as a result, particular classroom

settings can either foster or inhibit student growth based

on how planes of identity come to the fore based on how

teachers interact with them. Dornyei, along with others

interested in the more uncertain, less assured stances of

postmodern theory, informs us that focusing on single

attributes or characteristics of second language learners is

to focus on artificial divisions. Dornyei’s images take a

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more postmodern, contingent and complex theoretical lens to

this situation. Also, his findings allow researchers to see

more, rather than less. Understanding identity as a matrix

of interconnected planes helps teachers to better interpret

their students’ actions and interactions.

de Alba et al. (2000) describe the social nature of

language processes. They describe identity as social traits

and contours (places of cultural contact), surfaces of

inscription (where an individual’s traits and contours meet

other individuals), and positionality (stance toward the

world and the self). They describe intersections as nodal

points. Nodal points are where differing surfaces of

inscription meet. Between nodal points are enunciative

spaces, which can open up and allow for discourse, dialogue

and meaningful exchange (pp. 150-3, 189-92). If these

postmodern concepts are integrated within a Dornyeian

framework of dynamic variation, then “heterogeneity” (p.

240), “feedback loops” (p. 243), and “complex

constellations,” become the norm. As Dornyei describes the

situation, much of the old notions and theories have

oversimplified and reduced the complexity of the real world

into neatly subsected boxes with neat names printed on them.

As we observe in real classrooms on a daily basis, such neat

divisions are rapidly becoming obsolete and anachronistic.

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Teachers who reject or ignore the implications of postmodern

thought do so in ways that can prohibit learning.

If identity is considered to be ‘background noise’ and

not a central component of language learning, teachers will

miss out on crucial opportunities for social learning and

reciprocity. Instead they will focus on meaningless

features in isolation from one another, a distortion of

reality. Teachers who embrace their students’ multiple

selves will have a better understanding of how diverse

identity factors influence what happens in their classrooms.

Those who recognize that surfaces of inscription contain

multitudes can better grasp the successes and failures of

their teaching methods and concomitant student performance.

Gender, sexual orientation, disability status, immigration

status, family history, personal narratives, race/ethnicity,

culture, and social processes, along with learning styles,

motivation, and age are represented heterogeneously across

student populations. Each of these factors contributes in

some way to the process of language acquisition. Educators

who are sensitive to these factors and can adapt accordingly

and are better equipped to teach with more personal

connectivity, more affective dimensions and are more likely

to encounter better results. Understanding student

individualism as a resource – not impedance—is crucial to

success with diverse populations.

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2) Language production relies on Language Use & Negotiated Identity:

Autonomous Individuals within Social Groups – Ortega (2009), Firth

and Wagner (2007), and De Costa (2010a; 2001b) chart the

course of SLA research following poststructural and later

postmodern philosophy. de Alba et.al (2000) posit that in

many key ways postmodernism has overtaken and subsumed

poststructuralism and other critical discourses. Ortega

describes this maturation process as the redirection and re-

centering of SLA studies around themes related to

postmodernism. Specifically, Ortega describes how

interpretive and social turns have unfurled themselves in

social science research.

Ineluctably, in order to understand L2 learning from a

radically social perspective, one must focus on experience

that is lived, made sense of, negotiated, contested, and

claimed by learners in their physical, interpersonal,

social, cultural, and historical context. In other words,

nothing can be known if it is not known in a given social

context—and out of the social, nothing can be known (p.

218).

In a postmodern ethos, languages are now seen not as objects

to attain, but processes to enjoin.

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De Costa (2010a) documents some of the resources

inherit in language learning situations and specifically

cites ideological, semiotic, and performative divisions. He

describes these resources as essential to functioning in

postmodern discourse spaces. De Costa recognizes that

traditional SLA concepts are becoming increasingly obsolete

or anachronistic, noting that all sociolinguistic actions

are always already situated across varying identity

characteristics. No longer can teachers or researchers look

at local speech communities or native speakers or non-native speakers in

such constrained forms; instead, social scientists need to

understand that language forms, genres, styles and literacy

practices move across borders (global and personal), and

that cultural essences cannot perhaps do not move so

swiftly. New conceptions such as “transcultural” identity

(p. 772), linguistic “flow” (p. 772), aesthetic dimensions

of “style” (p. 773), which permeate discursive spaces, but

also and ideological trajectories (p. 776) of language

learning are discussed and extrapolated upon in his work.

Transculturalism and translanguaging recognize that people

enact language in different sociocultural performances; it

operates in overlapping areas, overdetermined signals or

symbols which permeate one another like clusters of gauzy

venn diagrams.

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These new conceptions demand that SLA researchers

understand that language learning is non-linear, but instead

relies on interconnected platforms and dimensions of

situated identity characteristics. De Costa writes, “a

poststructural discourse-based view of the world…

acknowledges language and subjectivity as being mutually

constitutive, while taking into account the reality that

language learning is a political enterprise” (p. 777). De

Costa explores the paradigmatic shift of multilingualism

against a backdrop of globalized postmodernity. His

investigation focuses primarily upon adolescents who are

caught in twin upheavals: technological advancements and

globalized discourse. As a result, De Costa (2010b)

reiterates the importance of “hybrid and fluid” (p. 99)

theorizations of multilingual language learners. Citing

Canagarajah (2006), Pennycook (2007/2010), De Costa

constructs a radically different notion of SLA. Within this

expanded framework, De Costa sets out to establish working

terms and processes for collaborative communicative or

“liberation linguistics” (p. 102) as he describes them

within postindustrial contexts.

For teachers who work in second/multiple language

classrooms understanding language learning to be negotiated

and political acts is of the essence. De Costa builds and

reinforces Foucault’s (1991) skepticism toward modernist

27

conceptions of identity, which characterize it in stable

ways, with static categories including gender, class, race,

ethnicity, dis/ability status, emancipation, immigrant

status, among others. Teachers especially need to be aware

that students’ self perceptions along with their social

positioning enforce change with regard to identity. Identity

and linguistic negotiations are the rule, rather than the

exception. Pennycook (2007) describes identity as

“contingent, shifting and produced in the particular” (In De

Costa 2010b, p. 101). Appreciating identity in this way

allows researchers, teachers and students to conceive of

themselves and their language situations as changing,

evolving, dynamic power relationships that operate in local

and global spaces, simultaneously. De Costa (2010b) implores

us to understand that within postmodern societies, “it is

imperative that we embrace hybridity because increasingly,

people inhabit multiple identities across different

contexts” (p. 113).

Blackledge and Creese, et.al. (2008, p.535) describe

“language negotiation” as being bound up with identity in

very real ways. Considering the parallel development of the

colonial worldview of division and demarcation along imposed

boundaries, language definition as a process is an

ideological maneuver. Pennycook (2006) writes, “an ideology

of languages as separate and enumerable categories” was a

28

creation of modernist thinking and is an “arbitrary

imposition” (p. 41). Modernist assumptions of language

learning processes are distortions. Eschewing distorted or

false representations is imperative; for teachers must

recognize that they too are autonomous individuals working

within complex, hybrid, and political contexts.

3) Language contact is characterized by Linguistic Boundary Crossings:

Ambiguity and Uncertainty in Discourse – de Alba et al. (2000) posit

that discourse is a potential outcome, an open space of

possibility. Discursive potentials are governed by the

social traits and contours of various actors, and the

enunciative spaces from which individuals speak, write and

sign. Without a complex understanding of discourse, it is

impossible to understand how two or more discourses

(informed by sociocultural-historical features) work in

relation to one another. Within this radically altered

approach, postmodern questions about the construction of

reality come to the fore. Postmodern skepticism challenges

modernist descriptions of language as a finite thing;

postmodern theory instead represents it is an act. Radically

new perspectives demanded radically new metaphors and terms,

and Kress (2010) reminds us, “New social, economic,

political and technological givens require new

29

names/metaphors capable of functioning as essential guides

to thought and action” (p. 19).

Firth and Wagner (2007) highlight some of these radical

changes, and explain in detail how real world events could

not be properly explained with the old terminology and old

theories. They describe myopic cognitivist/positivist

language learning concepts as putting “overwhelming emphasis

on and preoccupation with the individual’s linguistic

failure” (p. 801), with terms like: “input,” “problem

sources” “errors, input modifications, interference, and fossilization” (p.

801, emphasis original). Firth and Wagner find that these

constricting terms belied a more important constriction in

the epistemological orientations of researchers.

Computational, assembly-line approaches to language learning

and language learning theory are focused on failure not

social construction; not building, but tearing. Moreover,

Firth and Wagner described these orientations as outdated,

anachronistic and improperly complex to describe the

organicity and dynamism that natural language learning

situations are imbued with. That old theoretical dimensions

were unable to describe or interpret actual language use

indicated an overhaul was necessary. This rupture came with

numerous responses.

30

Cherryholmes (1994) offers similar findings in a

summative review of modernism and structuralism. He strongly

critiques each system’s limitations. Cherryholmes’ key

contributions are his reviews regarding the limitations and

assumptions inherit to positivist/empiricist frameworks.

Cherryholmes (1994) reminds us, postmodern theory cannot

produce modern findings, nor can modern theory produce

postmodern findings.

Cherryholmes also posits that all texts are contextual and

are results of the identity of the writer and his/her

positionality; therefore, discourse is a negotiation of

meaning. Critical in this discussion is Cherryholmes’ view

regarding language transfer and the impossibility of

complete translation, “…how is it possible to translate one

word by another and be certain that the meaning of the first

word survives the substitution?” (p. 197). Cherryholmes

(1994) defines pragmatism as a tool, or map with which the

user can chart a course through the conceptual jungle of

“posts”: post-analytical, post-modern and post-structural

scholarship. Language teachers understand that cultural, historical and affective domains of language learning can

lessen the blow of language incommensurability. Cherryholmes

describes science and the study of humans in social motion

as essentially questions of rhetoric. In his view, no matter

what, observations and theories are contingent upon the

people using language.

31

Meaning making and the transmitting of messages must be

understood as contextual and not necessarily interchangeable

across meaning making platforms (or languages). The same can

be said for observations, theories, and discourse generally.

This applies at all levels of educational praxis. Educators

who embrace these findings are better situated to understand

how postmodern theory has changed language learning theory

and how it functions in practice. Limitations in theoretical

frameworks then become observational limitations. This

leaves teachers with less complex theoretical frameworks;

they see less and outdated restrictive notions artificially

bind their findings.

Theory then, becomes a central part of educational praxis.

Teachers need to recognize that language is culture,

history, social traits, personal identity and heritage.

Teachers need to know that language is more than just words;

more than just language (Ortega, 2009). When languages come

into contact with one another, particularly in classrooms,

it is not just the languages that converge.

The overhaul of SLA studies came about, in part due to

the watershed paper Firth and Wagner (1997), which called

for a reconceptualization second language acquisition to

better align with the drastic overhaul in how social

scientists view language learning in a postmodern context.

32

Firth and Wagner (2007) imply that the changes (though slow)

were more revolutionary than evolutionary. The theoretical

base from which they draw is deeply rooted in postmodern

concerns for interrelationships, contingency and “nonlinear,

interactional, and contextual characteristics of language

use and language acquisition” (p. 804). Ortega (2009) and

Firth and Wagner (2007) describe the injection of postmodern

and poststructural theory into SLA as being a transformative

moment, one in which the focus moves away from modernist

concepts that knowledge is absolute, and the world is

knowable. They move toward a very different

conceptualization.

Firth and Wagner (2007) aptly note that their

metatheoretical contribution was met with strong resistance,

criticism and harsh critique. It is imperative that teachers

recognize that political pushback can (and perhaps will occur)

from theorists, policy makers, and colleagues. Despite the

resistance “SLA research of the 1980s and 19980s was itself

influenced by this sociocultural turn—as witnessed by the

steady increase in studies that acknowledged, thematized and

explored context and interaction” (p. 803). De Costa

(20010a) shares this view and makes an important point

toward the end of his article, which is central to his

paper. He describes the conflicts that teachers may face

33

when implementing postmodern theories of language in their

classrooms, he writes that controversial ideas

[M]ay come under attack by skeptical teacher practitioners

in search of more palatable ways to foreground identity in

the language classroom in the face of practical classroom

demands…However, such an approach needs to be balanced with

the recognition that not everyone (e.g. parents, teachers

and policy makers) shares a similar tolerance for ambiguity

(p. 113).

Ortega (2009) describes this change as fundamentally

reordering the SLA field, postmodern and post-analytical

studies acknowledge that “the nature of reality was social

and fundamentally unknowable and that a pursuit of the

particular, and not the general, would be a better

disciplinary strategy to illuminate complex human problems”

(p. 216). Ortega describes current language research as

radically social and radically emic. Firth and Wagner (2007)

condemn the former practices of dominant or mainstream SLA

theories and concepts as “myopic,” (p. 801) whereas

cognitive models describe language learning in terms of

failure, breakdown and loss, the new framework describes

opportunities, enrichment and interactivity. Firth and

Wagner describe the new orientation as “informed by

poststructural notions of contingency, fluidity, hybridity, and

34

marginality” (p. 801), which fly in the face of empirical

studies and constricting etic orientations.

McNamara (2011) similarly calls for a

reconceptualization of SLA and bi/multilingualism along

poststructural and postmodern lines, echoing Aronin and

Singleton (2008) and De Costa, (2010a: 2010b). Each

reconstituted field recognizes fundamental ambiguity, un-

transferability and contingency of language contact and

language learning situations. Educators who work these fault

lines need to readjust their theoretical frameworks to

account for the way that actual language is used. Modernist

delineations and metaphors are no longer up to the task of

describing postmodern language use. Teachers who bend their

praxis toward postmodernism are able to see problems and

solutions that are simply unintelligible otherwise.

4) Language use occurs in fields of Globalization & Technologization:

Increasing Plurality – Aronin and Singleton (2008) also call for

a reconceptualization of language theory to reflect a

swifitly changing world. They approach SLA in a much more

macroscopic way, and contribute forcefully to postmodern

representations of bi/multilingualism. In their view, a

tipping point has been reached. They call this paradigmatic

shift “the new linguistic dispensation” (p. 1). This

35

enormous shift encompasses political-economic facets,

multimodal elements, and sociocultural variables, all of

which are enhanced and complicated by dual increases in

globalized communication and networked technologies. They

describe multilingualism as ubiquitous, contextual, and as

an embedded element of human interaction, all of which are

increasingly necessary for the functioning of social

structures in postmodern societies.

The rapid advancements of postindustrial societies

toward globalized and technologized language contact have

left an indelible mark on how teachers understand language

use, and how these permutations occur in all corners of the

world. Aronin and Singleton (2008) describe language

performativity as increasingly fluid or flowing. These “flows”

wrap and rewrap our postmodern societies in ways that are

having profound and lasting effects in SLA and bilingual

education. Aronin and Singleton also use and expand upon the

metaphor of “ecology” to describe language learning,

language contact and language glottophagy/autophagy

(cannibalistic) in the postmodern era. Though they recognize

that many of these trends have been in place throughout

history, their genealogical investigation still recognizes

that the scale of these transformations and the speed at

which they have occurred are unprecedented. These

paradigmatic shifts have result sedimented societies

36

becoming de-sedimented, and actors within these morphic

cultures need to possess a “constellation of languages” as a

requirement or prerequisite for global-social functioning.

While some languages are being devoured, others are

evolving, or emerging.

Educators must be aware of and account for the swift

change of networked technologies and social media. Second

language learning processes are increasingly deployed in

multimodal discourses using digitized platforms of transfer.

Educators who are aware of new emergent technologies,

particularly social media platforms, are better prepared to

understand how their students enact language in their actual

lives. Bi/multilingualism is global and it is local. This

glocal tendency of language learning means that more languages

are coming into contact with one another with increasing

speed. Technological developments have exponentially

transformed the ways that students use language in digitized

production.

Kress (2010) breaks down the ways in which people

participate in new forms of communications using a semiotic

approach with a postmodern frame of reference. He posits

that provisionality and instability characterizes the

production of knowledge currently. These changes have

resoundingly decentered traditional forms of discourse in

37

profound ways. For example, in describing wikis, he writes,

“Authority is ‘assumed’ (as in ‘taken on’) rather than

‘achieved’ (worked toward, or an accomplished act/process)

or ‘bestowed’ (given by the public)” (parenthesis and

descriptions added, p. 24). This eruption subverts centuries

of established norms regarding literacy; those considered

authoritative do not need credentials. Synchronous groups

that may or may not challenge such authority/authorship

converge in digitized spaces to build a linguistic

repository, always in evolution. Knowledge continually flows

from new sources: socially enacted—digitally represented.

New platforms for language use are developing and

touching corners of the world that never had access to

schools in the past. Students in third world countries or

developing nations without developed infrastructures are

using digitized communication in ways that challenge western

preconceptions. In developed nations, students use social

media platforms outside and inside schools to learn single,

second or multiple languages. The rapidity of these changes

often outpaces the theories used to explain them. Newsmedia

outlets describe African children with no knowledge of

technology learning about unlocking, or hacking into tablet-

style computers (Talbot, 2012). Teachers who neglect the

literatures on postmodern developments have a reduced

knowledge base and have difficulty comprehending the

38

diverse, personal and cultural changes that have ushered in

a radically different age of globalization and

technologization. Aronin and Singleton (2008) write, “to understand the current human condition of multilingualism as

a new linguistic dispensation is to acknowledge the need for

a reassessment of key questions regarding language use in

society” (p. 13). I believe that their conclusion points

toward an increasingly complex language condition that is

best understood and unpacked using postmodern or

poststructural theories of symbolic overdetermination and

totalizing discourses. New semiotic features of language

demand new teaching methods and new representations.

Kress (2010) forcefully argues for new semiotic

dimensions of understanding to apply to the fragmentation of

communication generally including ethical, social, and

particularly aesthetic dimensions. “Makers of

representations are shapers of knowledge,” he writes (p.

27). He uses these new dimensions to understand the shifts

occurring in communications and new media. His approach

takes for granted that communication is social, political,

situated, unstable; a priori, so are the producers and

consumers of language. Kress’s arguments focus on production

of language, the emergence of meaning within communication,

and the political/situated identities. Each are core tenets

of productive communication. He argues that the agency is

39

shaped by many competing factors, which in turn affect the

in/effectiveness of discourse modalities: signs, symbols,

language and messages conveyed. He proposes, “Design is the

process whereby the meanings of a designer become…messages.

Designs are based on [rhetorical] analysis, on aims and

purposes of a rhetor, and they are then implemented through

the instantiations of choices of many kinds” (p. 28, all

emphasis original).

Central to this proposition are agency (Kress describes

these as “motivation” and “effectiveness” [p. 29]) of the creator,

but also a reconceived notion of author, now cast as a

“rhetor” (p. 28), or shaper of argument. In shifting the

focus away from the modern author, and toward a postmodern

rhetor/designer, Kress swiftly defines our age and points

toward useful theorizations for classroom teachers, as well

as “participants in everyday life” (p. 28). Additionally, he

notes that the rhetorical and design choices are made by

autonomous craftspeople reclaim power through aesthetics,

art, and design. He also stresses the political dimensions

and situated character of aesthetics, an important

contribution in and of itself.

While other theorists who deal with aesthetics, such as

Cherryholmes (1999), stress the variability, instability,

and perhaps even chaotic contingency of design (on

40

curriculum, on messages, on discourse of all sorts), Kress’

(2010) claim describes design as an essential operation of

language. His position on the situated nature of aesthetics

goes a long way to clarify my thinking on the matter.

Students often rely on their teachers to navigate complex

fields of knowledge. If teachers are seen as shapers and

producers of knowledge, then their designs must be

accessible to their students via aesthetically designed

constructions. Educators that can understand their teaching

as aesthetic and understand their preparations for classes

as design can see dimensions of language acquisition that

are otherwise hidden from view.

Ito, Baumer, Bittanti, boyd, Cody and Herr-Stephenson

(2010), describe this mutalbility of modality as shifts

creating new “genres of participation (p. 14-8) based on

ethnographic findings. In their “genres” category, the

authors provide and overview new genres them against

emerging theories in the fields of communications, literacy

studies, social participation studies and situated learning

theory. Ito et al. (2010) trace concurrent developments or

reconfigurations of discourse in two primary ways, through

youth expressions of autonomy via new media, and through the

rapid paced evolution of the technological media forms

themselves. These simultaneous, though divergent evolutionary

processes include genres of participation, networked publics, peer-based

41

learning and new media literacy, each of which are characterized as

in a state of change. Collectively they simultaneously

present threats and opportunities for the young people who

engage with them. Lankshear and Knobel (2011) support this

finding and theorize that students explore “remix” across

many genres of art and popular culture. Vasudevan (2006) and

Black (2009) include new participatory media forms in their

frameworks for literacy with the millennial generation.

Teachers need to understand these changes in practical ways,

but perhaps more importantly, in theoretical ways as well.

Despite all of the interconnectedness and

transferability of various languages across the globe,

languages are valued differently in different contexts.

These valuations are asymmetrical and change while crossing

situated borders (personal, national, and virtual). These

changes result in the need for new theoretical dimensions

and symbols in order to explain and understand language

learning. Globalization and technologization are twin

vortices of postmodern societies; the contingent, contextual

and political nature of these changes must be taken into

account. Teachers in particular need to be aware of and

proactive about these asymmetrical distributions of power so

they can assist their students’ navigation of these churning

waters. Education has become increasingly reliant on

technological representations, and new theoretical

dimensions demand new teaching practices.

42

5) Finally, the combined dimensions of language learning (1), production/use (2),

contact (3), and global-technological dispersal have resulted in Power

Dynamics: Hegemony and Resistance – McNamara (2011) relies on

Derrida (1998) and Foucualt’s (1980) poststructural theories

to decry normative policies in schools. His claims echo

Foucault (1980) who describes normative systems like law and

government as functioning by hiding violence within the law.

A legal codex (international, national or local) then

contains hidden systems of control which enforce and disrupt

power relations among language users. McNamara (2011) notes

that in policy and assessment with regards to

multilingualism. Together these findings question the

validity of stable truths.

McNamara uses these poststructural findings to engage

in a sustained critique of the

social/political/cultural/linguistic orders. Within his

framework, critique is leveled at the “violence of

monolingual practices in education” which result in

“alienation,” “victimhood” and “suffer[ing]” (p. 432) on the

part of multilingual learners forced toward homogenization

and normativity. McNamara does not engage in a vacuous

celebration of multilingualism or difference of identity (as

other theorists tend to do); instead, he questions the

43

internal dynamics of hybrid and plural language situations.

Within postcolonial and postmodern contexts of globalized

language contact, language policy and assessment functions

on an ideological level with symbolic as well as functional

roles for those under rule.

McNamara’s powerful critique levels a harsh analysis

upon national and international contexts that claim to be

bilingual or multilingual but in effect remain focused on

“ideologies of nationalism” (p. 437). McNamara questions the

practice of examinations. Tests, he writes, “[reinforce] the

power of national languages [and serve] ideological goals of

unification” (p. 437). These normative goals are distorted

rhetorical representations. Though international

examinations (PISA internationally and OCED, in Europe)

claim to support multilingualism, their discourses are

framed in terms of deficit models of student performance,

and tend toward using bi/multilingual policy as a means

toward unification and eventual standard monolongualism.

This process is also known as subtractive bilingualism (Garcia,

2008; Ortega, 2009).

McNamara’s problematizes “skin deep” (p. 438)

multilingualism, and claims that it hides and coverts

ideological, sectarian violence under cover of laws that

enforce examination/capitalization. He rightly claims “we

44

need detailed studies that will allow us to understand and

acknowledge the complex and ambivalent role that language

tests play, as instruments of policy, on one hand, and as

instruments of research, on the other” (p. 439). McNamara

states other languages need to be understood as contextual

and political dimensions. As de Alba et al. (2000) describe

the clusters of postmodern philosophy, they demarcate “anti-

naïve realism” as a foundational tenet, that emphasizes “the

nonreferentiality of language,” “the naturalizing tendency

in language” and the supports the “diagnosis and critique of

binarism” (p. 8), each of these tenets can be seen in high

relief throughout McNamara’s study. These contestations

mirror almost exactly the policy recommendations that Garcia

(2009) describes. Teachers who can recognize the political

dimensions of language policy can understand also how those

actions are interpreted in their classrooms.

Matsuda (2006) looks at power relationships within

bi/multilingual college composition classrooms and tackles

the false binary representation of language use. He

diagnoses and critiques the “myth of monolongualism” within

literacy instructional contexts. Matsuda provides an

overview of literacy education within the college

environment and contests the “policy of unidirectional

monolingualism” (p. 637). He questions whether the movement

toward English Only is moral or even an accurate reflection

45

of classrooms, the teachers or students that inhabit them—

who are increasingly diverse and heterogeneous. In his

investigation, Matsuda problematizes the dominant discourse

of monolingual standards, which depicts bi/multilingual

writers as incompetent, as possessing weak forms of language.

Policies oriented toward monolingual norms seek to

quarantine or contain hybrid-language students in separate

developmental course sequences, away from the eyes of the

rest of the writing pedagogical practice. Matsuda’s findings

are consistent with other minority language use policies as

well.

Matsuda describes the historical nature of

bi/multilingual education as a “policy of containment” (p.

641). Within American universities he cites a lack of

accountability, a tendency of shucking the burden, or

passing on the problem to writing centers or tutors. Other

factors that contribute to misidentifying and

mischaracterizing second language learners are noted. He

cites a rapid influx of international students and

accumulating census data and that shows more students coming

to college with a first language other than English. The

university system has historically ignored or marginalized

these “underprivileged varieties of English” (p. 641).

Teachers in all contexts can relate to the rapid changes in

student populations and attest to the increasingly diverse

46

student body. Teachers interested in postmodern theories of

language growth need theoretical and practical tools with

which they can resist policies of linguistic quarantine.

The primary problem that Matsuda documents is that

native speakers of English are held up as the

normative/representative populations, and the reality of

schools contradicts this. The result is a chaotic system of

floating symbolic misrepresentations, another key theme in

postmodern schools of thought. In his account, the

historical situation regarding bi/multilingual students has

overwhelmingly relied on ad-hoc or normative strategies to

categorize and describe bi/multilingual populations despite

the increasingly heterogeneous population characterized by

linguistic diversity.

Instead, the dominant image of students remained

unchallenged because the policy of containment kept language

differences in the composition classroom from reaching a

critical mass, thus creating a false impression that all

language differences could and should be addressed elsewhere

(p. 648).

Isolating and fragmenting students in this way is an act of

oppression. By challenging and questioning the metanarrative

of homogeneity, Matsuda charts a radical course away from

containment and toward recognizing the composition classroom

47

as a multilingual space where students can embrace their

situated identities and multilingual selves. Matsuda

contributes to the growing tendency to treat language

learning as a complex, and dynamic procession. His

recommendations seek to reduce exclusion and recognize

heterogeneity by updating our abstractions and symbolic

images attributed to students of difference. Translingualism is

one such concept.

In much the same way Matsuda and Matsuda (2010) the

authors explore an increasingly useful concept in the

writing classroom, which permits teachers and professors to

eschew traditional monolithic concepts of uni-varietal,

mono-directional English as the solitary and unchanging

goal. The key contribution Matsuda and Matsuda provide to

the literatures are twofold. The first recognizes that there

are varieties of English in the world. The second asserts

that those varieties of English can and should be recognized

as legitimate forms despite any perceived deviance from the

norm. Matsuda and Matsuda emphasize that there are existent

tensions in language classrooms between “standardization and

diversification” (p. 371); narratives conflict with counter-

narratives. Each polemic representation can be considered as

binary metanarratives. The postmodern scholar is skeptical

and inquisitive against their dominance. Matsuda and Matsuda

recognize that there are benefits to so-called Standard

48

English forms, but as teachers and professors guide their

students in a journey toward academic Englishes, they need

to be understand the boundary as a “fuzzy and negotiable

one” (p. 372).

Negotiation appears to be a key element to Matsuda and

Matsuda’s work. They call for teachers and scholars to

recognize the political and power relationships inherit in

any language contact situation

The diversity of Englishes owes much to the ongoing contact

among diverse users of Englishes with users of other

Englishes and languages. Every time L2 writers write in

English, they are engaging in a language-contact situation.

To prepare students adequately in the era of globalization,

we as teachers need to fully embrace the complexity of

English and facilitate the development of global literacy

(p. 373).

Within Matsuda and Matsuda’s theoretical space, their

emphasis is on providing multiple counter-narratives that

combat the traditional model of single target variety English. By

problematizing this particular issue, they return the focus

of language learning as an ideological conflict situated

within power struggles.

49

Teachers should recognize that bi/multilingual students

are not deviant users of their languages. Students who use

more than one language are diverse and their use of language

in bi/multilingual settings reflects this diversity.

Identity, politics, rhetoric and ideology are embedded

within language use (Janks, 2010). These dimensions of

language production have real effects on how students learn.

Institutions and classrooms that force students into

categories that they do not identify with are at risk of

damaging those students’ senses of self. These actions

negate the complexity of language learning processes.

Standardizing a metanarrative of monolingual normativity is

disingenuous, damaging and distorted representations in need

of a drastic overhaul. Teachers can make challenges to these

assumed norms, by doing so they invite students to be who

they are and learn in their own specific ways. Recognizing

that language is a situated formation of identity allows for

language to be learned in different ways by different people

in different contexts. This by itself is an act of

resistance.

Garcia (2009) and Kramsch (2004; 2008) have expressed

new linguistic metaphors for bi/multilingual learners; these

findings continue and expand these lines of thought. Kramsch

(2008) explores dimensions of “layered simultaneity” (p.

391) and fractal patterns characteristic of postmodern

50

language use. She advocates for teachers to see bi/multi

lingual classrooms as operating between languages, which means

“finding more ecological means of evaluating critical

language awareness, interpretation, translation and

understanding of the historical and subjective dimensions of

language use” (p. 403). Garcia (2009) writes, “bilingual

education in the twenty-first century needs to do more than

simply shift or maintain minority languages or add languages

of power; it needs to be attentive to the dynamics of

bilingualism itself” (p. 113). Both Garcia and Kramsch

reject the use of tightly bound representations of language

usage (such as capitalistic/computational). They believe

that restrictive transactional metaphors belie the

complexity of actual language use. Heteroglossic beliefs

move in the opposite direction. The developing metaphor of

ecology implies that languages are copresent within one

another, that plurality in language policy enables

translanguaging and transculturalism. Garcia (2009)

describes Recursive or Dynamic bilingualism (p. 113, 119),

which are extremely similar to Matsuda’s (2010) concept of

translingualism.

Postmodern scholars have questioned the validity of

strict boundaries encircling nations and states (McNamara,

201; French 2013). Globalization has transformed technology;

both enhance mobility across borders of all kinds,

51

emphasizing porosity. Subtractive or merely additive

language policies are no longer adequate to the task of

policing these borders. Language itself is recursive and

dynamic, it is not a problem, but instead an open set of

passages. Resisting normativity, reinscribes the concept

that having/using multiple languages is a right, not a privilege.

Those who work these fissures, fault lines and eruptures are

engaged with political struggles, acts of resistance within

power dynamics.

Conclusions – As I have come to understand it, postmodernity

as a plural condition. It is an often-conflicted, often-

contested family of theories used to define and describe

contingent and fractal reconfigurations of human knowledge.

It is possible to uncover and unpack some of the effects

postmodernism and apply them directly to the phenomena of

bilingualism (as well as multilingualism), in educational

setting. In this paper with regard to the convergences of

postmodern bi/multilingualism and education, I have

attempted to restrict my analyses to findings and theories

that directly influence educators and teachers who engage

with postmodern theories of language use or language

performativity. Educational theorists working in the past

two decades have increasingly noted the mutability and

dynamism inherent in language learning settings, these

52

realizations and theoretical constructions echo Lyotard’s

(1984) conception of language games. Knowledge

transformations characteristic of the postmodern ethos have

permanently altered the way that scientists have come to

understand language use in postindustrial globalized

societies, and are poised to create new questions for

educators working today.

Teachers armed with theoretical tools similar to those

expressed in this paper are better equipped to combat

oppressive language policy and work toward reconciliation.

Kress (2010) reminds us to conceive of ourselves as

designers, aestheticians, artists or creators of

representations. The representations that teachers use to

depict bi/multilingual students have powerful effects on how

those students interact in classrooms. Understanding the

contingent, conflictual, and situated characteristics of

postmodern theory helps teachers and educators to bridge

these gaps. Language is being used in different ways in

postindustrial nations; some languages are being

cannibalized, others enjoy global rejuvenation; both are

affected by twin developments in technoligization and

globalization. Educators of all varieties need to recognize

that mutations in theory affect praxis. Failing to do so

results in the willingness to consume oppressive

metanarratives and a willful suppression of diversity,

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heterogeneity and dynamism. Ecologically oriented metaphors

reinscribe the potential for interdependency. Environmental

formations of language learning interpret classrooms as

dynamic, recursive spaces in which knowledges are socially

constructed and shared.

Postscript:

Laclau (1983/2007) informs us

The ideological would not consist of the misrecognition of a

positive essence, but exactly the opposite: it would consist

of the non-recognition of the precarious character of any

positivity, of the impossibility of any ultimate suture. The

ideological would consist of those discursive forms through

which a society tries to institute itself as such on the

basis of closure, of the fixation of meaning, of the non-

recognition of the infinite play of differences. The

ideological would be the will to totality of any totalizing

discourse. And insofar as the social is impossible without

some fixation of meaning, without the discourse of closure,

the ideological must be seen as constitutive of the social.

The social only exists as the vain attempt to institute that

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impossible object: society. Utopia is the essence of any

communication and social practice (p. 42-3)

Laclau precisely reinforces the need for negotiation,

and the concept of language diplomacy. His conceptions of

discourse are radically organic, situated in the social and

with recognition for permutations of meaning. Ideology

becomes a central component of discourse and language. When

ideologies are in competition, discourse tends toward

unilateral speech and action, whereas within a framework of

negotiation, the social, interpretable practice of “language

crossing” (Rampton, 1995; as cited in De Costa, 2010a, 2010b)

can become a space of enunciative potentiality.

Ideology is a regularized system of ideas and ideals

that form the basis of a worldview (economic, political,

theoretical, etc.); also, ideologies are characteristic of

bodies, groups, or social organizations of individuals

within society (Apple Dictionary, 2013). Additionally,

ideologies do not exist in vacuums or voids; they exist

alongside other competing, complementary or redundant

ideologies. Different ideologies have different purposes,

functions, and characteristics. Ideological contact occurs

when differing ideas/ideals come into engagement or

articulation with one another and exhibit “relational,

unequal, conflictive and productive” contact (de Alba,

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et.al., 2000). This phenomena is almost identical to how

McNamara (2011), Aronin and Singleton (2008) and De Costa

(2010a; 2010b) describe language contact.

de Alba, et.al (2000) describe cultural contact “in

terms of differentials in…ideologies” (p. 173). In cultural

contact situations, discourse and ideology become essential

topics of discussion, since they are the point of

articulation between differing worldviews. Said another way,

social traits and contours become articulate when they come

into contact with one another. In essence, ideology is at

the heart of discourse because ideology can only be

understood when it is written, spoken or signed. Shown in

comparison to another ideology, the first appears more

clearly. Without a comparative structure, ideology becomes

easily conflated with reality, and perhaps disappears

altogether from view.

Bourdieu (1990/1980) separates embedded ideology

(habitus) and apparent ideology (doxa). In doing so, he

separates the “thinkable” from the “unthinkable” (in Larson

and Marsh, 2005, p. 152). Critical reading and writing

allows us to recognize ideology as a foundational tenet of

discourse. By comparing hidden vs. explicit ideologies, we

can transform social realities through critical literacy and

praxis. Ideology permeates all levels of discourse, and

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helps educators and students to name the workings of power.

By undermining the destructive or negative potential of

ideological discourse, we can enhance the productive

formulations of ideology. de Alba et.al. (2000) posit that

cultural contact “produces (dislocation, but also) creates

room for possibilities and the freedom to think in new and

open ways about the future” (p. 175). In regard to ideology

and its uses Lacalu (1983) writes, “Utopia is the essence of

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Despite any inherit risks, teachers can and should welcome

the complexity embedded in language learning settings. To

reject complexity is to invite a predetermined failure.

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