Knowledge, Competence And Communication

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Radical Pedagogy (2001)
ISSN: 1524-6345
Knowledge, Competence And Communication
William H. Walcott
Centre for Language Instruction to New Canadians
Abstract
In this paper, the Chomskyan view, linguistic competence, as well as, communicative competence, a broad version of language competence, are examined carefully. On the basis of the assessment, it is proposed that proponents of communicative language teaching ( C.L.T. ) should not employ this broad version as an important basis to helping learners acquire and produce foreign and second languages. What is proposed, instead, is that they adopt and use Frierian pedagogy as the foundational core to educating learners, several of whom are taught in urban centres of economically prosperous societies within Western Europe and North America.
INTRODUCTION
Several years ago, when I was a senior high school student in British Guiana, the sole British colonial possession on the Latin American mainland, I read numerous works about slavery. This is a phenomenon which the brilliant historian, Fisher ( 1949, pp. 1028 - 1031 ) described as marking a special note of European infamy, a terrible commentary on Christian civilisation. What was so terrible? Fisher says the longest period of slave raiding known to history was initiated by the actions of Spain, Portugal, France, Holland, and Britain after the Christian faith had - for more than a thousand years - been the established religion of Western Europe.
These actions, clearly motivated by European demand for sugar, tobacco, and cotton, were fed by the labour of African slaves “...herded in barracks, working in gangs, and regimented, as they had been recruited, by soulless and mercenary violence.” ( Fisher, 1949, p. 1030 ). The historian contends that the inability of the Protestant religion to ameliorate the horrific nature of the traffic in slaves is all the more serious, because the British were the most successful and, thus, the most guilty of European traders.
The guilt could not be divorced from the eighteenth century, a period in which Fisher notes no colonies were so valuable as the British West Indian islands. He adds that since they were cultivated by African slave labour, the entire West Indian interest was arrayed against any proposal to abate or destroy the traffic upon which its profits depended. From readings in my high school days, I was well aware that the interest was strongly represented by the white plantocracy whose members adopted the views: at the beginning of the eighteenth century the British West Indian possessions were jewels in the English crown. Sugar was established as King and he was a wealthy monarch.
Britain abolished the slave trade in 1806 and slavery itself in 1854 but like its European competitors, continued its illegal ownership and dominance in African, Asian, and Caribbean colonies. Much of the dominance was defined by the imposition of European languages on these foreign lands, most of which, are no longer colonies. The languages were usually taught by Europeans who boasted openly about the cultural superiority of their societies. Today, the former illegal occupiers prefer to, and use, routes of economic, rather than physical power to maintain domination within the ex-colonies.
A powerful correlate of such use is existence of a profitable enterprise commonly known as foreign and second language teaching which takes place in the ex-colonies, as well as, large cities of previous colonising powers. Britain’s Liverpool and Bristol, whose prosperity Fisher says was based largely on the slave trade, come to mind, immediately. So do capitals in other countries which traded in, and used slaves. Foreign and second language teaching is also profitable in large urban areas of Canada, a former dominion possession of Great Britain, and the U.S.A., the world’s most massive economic giant whose corporate prevalence and cultural hegemony in Latin America are indisputable.
My principal goal, in this paper, is to examine one of the current and most popular approaches to language teaching, the communicative approach, whose proponents pursue the following important major objective: assisting learners to produce language as a central feature of their social interaction for the purpose of performing tasks which are important or essential to their everyday existence. A principal foundation to fulfilling this objective is development of communicative competence, which is presented as more representative of the learner’s language capabilities than Noam Chomsky’s linguistic competence.
I argue that if proponents of C.L.T. are to fulfil their objective legitimately or validly, they should not do so by employing communicative competence as their basis. I propose, instead, that they use the Frierian approach, conscientizacao, for the purpose of helping learners acquire foreign and second languages. In order for me to perform my tasks appropriately, I must examine two views of competence, Noam Chomsky’s linguistic competence, as well as, applied linguistic views of communicative competence. Once my examination is complete, I shall make my case for conscientizacao.
LINGUISTIC AND COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE
I shall show that because of the significant incompatibility between Chomsky’s and communicative views of language, the communicativists should not employ communicative competence as a legitimate basis to helping students produce target language, effectively. Let me immediately state some of the prominent and enduring applied linguistic views of communicative competence.
It is to ideas of Savignon ( 1985, p. 130 ) and Canale and Swain ( 1980, pp. 27 - 31 ) that I turn, in order to perform my initial task. Savignon views communicative competence as :
...the ability to function in a truly communicative setting - that is a dynamic exchange in which linguistic competence must adapt itself to the total information input, both linguistic and paralinguistic of one or more interlocutors. Communicative competence includes grammatical competence ( sentence level grammar ), socio-linguistic competence ( an understanding of the social context in which language is used ), discourse competence ( an understanding of how utterances are strung together to form a meaningful whole ), and strategic competence ( a language user’s employment of strategies to make the best use of what s/he knows about how a language works, in order to interpret, express, and negotiate meaning in a given context ).
Canale and Swain say communicative competence is composed minimally of grammatical competence, sociolinguistic competence, and communication strategies or strategic competence. The first includes knowledge of the lexical items and rules of morphology, syntax, sentence grammar, semantics, and phonology. The second consists of two sets of rules, socio - cultural rules of use and rules of discourse, knowledge of both of which, is crucial to interpreting utterances for social meaning particularly when “there is a low level of transparency between the literal meaning of an utterance and the speaker’s intention.”
Strategic competence consists of verbal and non-verbal strategies of communication that may be employed to compensate for communication breakdown attributable to “performance variables or to insufficient competence.” Communication strategies are of two kinds: those that are relevant, mainly to grammatical competence and those that relate more to socio - linguistic competence. An example of the first kind is to paraphrase grammatical forms that a person has not mastered or cannot recall, momentarily, while examples of the second would be the various role playing strategies such as how a stranger should be addressed by someone who is uncertain about the stranger’s social status.
Other applied linguists, notably, Bachman ( 1990 ) and Blum-Kulka and Levenston ( 1983, p. 120 ), have offered aditional extensions to communicative competence. Blum-Kulka view semantic competence as consisting of:
Awareness of hyponmy, antonymy, converseness, and other possible systematic links between lexical items, by means of which, the substitution of one lexical item for another can be explained in particular contexts.
Ability to avoid using specific lexical items by means of circumlocution and paraphrase.
Ability to recognise degrees of paraphrasic equivalence.
Bachman has posited two core aspects of linguistic competence, organizational competence which subsumes grammatical and discourse competence, as well as, pragmatic competence which encompasses illocutionary and sociolinguistic competence.
In describing what she regards as a conceptual expansion, Kasper ( 1997, p. 345 ) notes that strategic competence operates at the levels of pragmatic and organisational competence but in a broader sense than that proposed by Canale and Swain. While the ability to solve receptive and productive problems due to lack of knowledge or accessibility remains an aspect of strategic competence, it is now more generally thought of as the ability to use linguistic knowledge efficiently. She adds that the extension is compatible with the view that language use, a version of goal oriented behaviour, is always strategic.
It is the American anthropologist, Dell Hymes, in the early seventies, who first put forth the idea of communicative competence. Schacter ( 1990, pp. 39 - 40 ) notes that the “model” of communicative competence proposed initially by him gave tremendous impetus to linguists frustrated by a principal focus on grammatical competence.
Two of those linguists, Tarone and Yule ( 1989, p. 17 ) identify a major shift in perspective within the second language teaching profession.
In relatively simple terms, there has been a change of emphasis from presenting language as a set of forms ( grammatical, phonological, lexical ) which have to be learned and practised, to presenting language as a functional system which is used to fulfil a range of communicative purposes. This shift in emphasis has largely taken place as a result of fairly convincing arguments, mainly from ethnographers and others who study language in its context of use, that the ability to use a language should be described as communicative competence.
The principal ethnographer is, of course, Hymes ( 1971a, 1972, 1977, 1988 ) whom Ellis and Roberts ( 1987, pp. 18 - 19 ) claim was interested in: what degree of competence speaker/hearers needed in order to give themselves membership of particular speech communities. He examined what factors - particularly socio – cultural ones – in addition to “grammatical competence” are required for speaker/hearers to participate in meaningful interaction.
Ellis and Roberts add that not only did Hymes “set the socio - cultural ball rolling”, but he also demonstrated how language variation correlated with social and cultural norms of speech events or certain defined public interactions. And in one of his earliest statements about the broad version of competence Hymes ( 1971b, pp. 5 - 10 ) says the purpose of the linguist is to account for the fact that a “normal child” acquires much more than grammatical knowledge of sentences.
The linguist’s problem is to explain how the child comes rapidly to be able to produce and understand ( in principle ) any and all of grammatical sentences of a language. If we consider a child actually capable of producing all possible sentences, he would probably be institutionalised particularly if not only the sentences but also speech or silence were random or unpredictable. We then have to account for the fact that a normal child acquires knowledge of sentences not only as grammatical but also as appropriate. This is not accounted for in a transformational grammar which divides linguistic theory into two parts: linguistic competence and linguistic performance.
Hymes adds that children acquire repertoires of speech acts and are capable of participating in the performance of speech acts, as well as, evaluating the speech acts of others.
Hymes is talking about competence which is integral to attitudes and values concerning language and other codes of communication. Here is reference to “social factors” which he exemplifies as positive productive aspects of linguistic engagement in social life: there are rules of use without which rules of grammar would be useless.
Criper and Widdowson ( 1978, pp. 154 - 157 ), two principal protagonists of communicative language teaching, adopt a similar stance. They note Chomsky’s distinction between competence ( the ideal language user’s knowledge of grammatical rules ) and performance ( actual realisation of the knowledge in utterances ) and add that he has made the latter a prime object of linguistic study. Such choice - they claim - has allowed him to define linguistics by restricting the kind of information about language which has to be accounted for within his theoretical framework.
They characterise the choice as a necessary investigative step in confronting limited problems and achieving their partial or complete solutions prior to increasing the complexity of data studied. This approach is, however, too limited for the language teacher who is concerned, simultaneously, with competence in describing or contrasting language systems and ways of using the systems. In a particular reference to language learning, they say it means learning rules of use, as well as, rules of formal linguistic systems.
Until learners know how to use grammatical resources for sending meaningful messages in real life situations, they cannot be said to know a language. It is essential that they know what varieties of language are used in specific situations, how to vary styles according to their addresses, when they should speak or be silent, what types of gestures are needed for different forms of speech. They insist that the very essence of language is it serves as a means of communication. Language use involves social interaction.
Thus, knowing a language means knowing how it fulfils communicative function. And in what is, surely expression of preference for the broad version of competence, they state that it is inadequate for persons to possess knowledge about rules of sentence formation, they must also know how to utilise rules for the purpose of producing appropriate utterances.
The Hymesian position is endorsed, also, by Hudson ( 1980, pp. 219 - 220 ) who regards communicative competence as much more broadly based than “the ‘linguistic competence’ of Chomskyan linguistics”. Communicative competence includes knowledge of linguistic forms, and ability to use the forms appropriately.
If all of the aforementioned references to competence are appropriate indicators of the broad version, then it would appear that this version could be of dual significance to communicativists. Not only is there indication, within this version, that action is meaningful, it seems, also, to be a version which is entirely compatible with the communicative aim of assisting students to produce target language as central feature of their social interaction. Hence, the broad version could be employed to help learners. And according tho Stern ( 1990, pp. 94 - 95 ), interest in communicative language teaching has grown and spread since the late nineteen seventies. “Communication or communicative competence has come to be viewed as the main objective of language teaching; at the same time, communication has increasingly been seen as the instrument, the method, or way of teaching.”
Quite apart from Stern’s position, Canale and Swain ( 1980, pp. 35 - 36 ) imply, very strongly, that communicative competence could be used as a significant basis to helping students produce target language as a central feature of their social interaction. They state that one of the many aspects of communicative competence which must be investigated, more rigorously, before a communicative approach can be implemented fully in the areas of second language teaching and testing is: development of administratively feasible classroom activities that can be used to encourage meaningful action in target language use.
Some of these activities have been developed by Tarone and Yule ( 1989, pp. 68 - 128 ). They analyse and discuss means, as well as, instruments classroom teachers can utilise to determine students’ abilities within areas of grammatical, sociolinguistic, and strategic competence.
It is these very areas which are analysed as some of the significant components in a Bilingual Proficiency Project, a highly ambitious effort to provide what Schacter ( 1990, p. 39 ) views as empirical justification for a model of linguistic proficiency. This five year research project was conducted in the nineteen eighties at the Modern Language Centre, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, Canada. The main purpose of this project was to examine a group of educationally relevant issues concerned with the second language development of school age children. Three of the issues were the effect of classroom treatment on second language learning, the relation of social-environmental factors to bilingual proficiency, and the relation between age and language proficiency ( Allen, Cummins, Harley, and Swain, 1990: p. 1 ).
While Schacter does express reservations about adequacy and clarity of the concept, communicative competence, as well as, its exemplification in the project, she does not recommend its rejection. She - in fact - endorses Chomsky’s grammatical or linguistic competence, although she notes three issues of special relevance to the project. They are: what are the major constitutive components of communicative competence, whether - and to what extent - the components can be delineated clearly.
In responding to her concerns, not only do project researchers, ( Allen, Cummins, Harley, and Swain, 1990: p.53) accept Chomsky’s linguistic competence, but they also claim to be demonstrating a broadening of competence. An exchange between the two parties about competence is quite revealing.
Schacter says that beyond the level of isolated sentences, confusion, disagreement and fragmentation are reflected in “the overall state of knowledge” about communicative competence. On the other hand, the researchers emphasise that grammar, discourse, and sociolinguistic constructs do not “represent everything that is involved in communicative competence.” They, however, express their research aims: isolate aspects of communicative competence they consider to be educationally relevant, test the hypothesis that these aspects would emerge “as distinct components and would be differentially manifested under different task conditions and in different learning settings.”
It would not be unreasonable to state that efforts to identify some of the foregoing aspects take place by examining communication strategies ( CS ) among foreign and second language users. Standing prominently among the investigators are: Yule and Tarone ( 1997 ), Poulisse ( 1997 ), Rampton ( 1997 ), Wilkes-Gibbs ( 1997 ), Kasper and Kellerman ( 1997 ), Wagner and Firth ( 1997 ). There is, doubtless, no single account of what constitutes communication strategies ( CS ). These strategies can, however, be classified under two broad categories, those derived from psycholinguistic and interactional views of communication.
The psycholinguistic or “intra-individual” perspective is neatly summarised by Kasper and Kellerman (1997, p. 2) who state that its proponents locate CS in models of speech production or cognitive organisation and processing. Proponents of the interactive approach, on the other hand, locate CS within the social and contextually contingent aspects of language production which covers features of use characterised as “problematic.” ( Wagner and Firth, 1997: pp. 325 - 327 ).
Crucial to understanding these problematic aspects is knowing about markers which indicate that speakers experience difficulty in expressing talk. Such speakers “flag” problems in discourse encoding, thus signaling the imminence of a CS. Flagging provides speaker/hearers with information about how utterances are to be interpreted and acted upon and can be exemplified by such phenomena as pausing, change of voice quality, or intonation contour, and rhythms.
Wagner and Firth note that what is essential to the interactional approach is investigating how communication is attained as a situated, contingent accomplishment. Interactionists regard CS as things displayed publicly and made visible to an analyst via participants’ actions. Emphasis is on the social, rather than, individual or cognitive processes underlying talk. Interactionists define instances of talk as CS, if and only if participants, themselves, make an encoded related problem public in the talk and, thus, engage, individually or collaboratively, in efforts to resolve the problem. CS are available to analysts, only in so far as they are produced and reacted upon by parties to talk. Further, the encoding problem may be either purely linguistic or a combination of the linguistic and conceptual.
THE LIBERTARIAN, ANTI-EXPERIENTIAL BASIS
I am now in a position to initiate my argument against use of communicative competence within the field of communicative language teaching. Let me, therefore, turn to Chomsky’s ideas. Chomsky wants persons to liberate themselves from the tyranny of forces external to them. There is a clear libertarian basis to his interest. That basis inheres in his interpretation of Bertrand Russell’s views on education, Renee Descatres, on creativity, Jean Jacques Rousseau’s, as well as, Wilhelm von Humboldt’s on freedom from repressive authority. He seeks to concretise his interest by finding out what contribution the study of language can make to understanding human nature.( Chomsky, 1972, p. 6 ). He deals with this issue by utilising his views of linguistic theory and language learning to explain what he terms the property of normal language use.
I want to address myself, initially, to the libertarian basis. According to Chomsky ( 1988, pp. 3 - 155 ), the libertarian ideas of Rousseau’s were based strictly on Cartesian conceptions of body and mind. Not only did Rousseau accept that humans, who possess minds, are crucially distinct from machines and animals, he argued, also, that the properties of mind surpass mechanical determinacy. Rousseau concluded - so claims Chomsky – that any infringement on human freedom is illegitimate, and must be confronted and overcome.
Chomsky adds that the Cartesian conceptions were developed in the libertarian social theory of von Humboldt that persons have essential human rights to carry out “productive and creative work” under their own control, in solidarity with others. Further, these rights were rooted in “human essence.”
The Cartesian conception subject to the greatest exposition by Chomsky is “the creative aspect of language use.” He notes, with great approval, Descartes’ observations: the normal use of language is apparently free from control by external stimuli or internal states, is unbounded and constantly innovative. In normal use, persons do not repeat what they have heard, they produce new linguistic forms and do so infinitely.
The Chomskyan position is, doubtless, against the experiential. This is shown in his presentation of Russell’s question, “How comes it that human beings, whose contacts with the world are brief and personal and limited are able to know as much as they do know?” And in a frontal assault on the experiential, Chomsky ( 1972b, pp. 9-27 ), rejects the notion that words he understands derive their meaning from his experience.
This stance is consistent with one of his principal goals, elucidating ‘the humanistic conception’ of man’s intrinsic nature and creative potential.” In pursuing the goal, he is strongly committed to highlighting the significance of Russell’s views on liberal education.
The task of a liberal education, Bertrand Russell once wrote, is to give a sense of value to things other than domination, to help create wise citizens of a free community, and through the combination of citizenship with liberty in individual creativeness to enable men to give to human life that splendour which some few have shown that it can achieve.
Chomsky’s embracing of individual creativeness, as well as, citizenship with liberty is an important feature of his views on systems of knowledge and beliefs which he says result from interplay of innate mechanisms, genetically determined maturational processes, and interaction with the social and physical environment. The analyst’s job is to account for the systems as constructed by the mind in the course of interaction. Further, the particular system of human knowledge which has lent itself most readily to the performance of such a task is the system of human language.
Chomsky ( 1974, pp. 136 - 137 ) presents the conditions for task performance, very forcefully, when he says the analyst interested in studying languages is faced with a very definite empirical problem. He has to look at a mature adult speaker who has acquired an amazing range of intricate and highly articulated abilities which enable her to use language in “highly creative” and novel ways. Much of what she says and understands bears no close resemblance to anything in experience. Chomsky regards the abilities as knowledge of language, which he characterises as instinctive or innate knowledge.
Persons possess instinctive knowledge, because they approach the learning experience with very explicit and detailed schematisims which tell them what languages they are exposed to. As children, they do not begin with knowledge that they are hearing particular languages such as English, Dutch, or French. They start with knowledge that they are hearing a human language of a very narrow and explicit type which permits a very small range of variation. The Chomskyan position on experience is expressed clearly when he claims what are revealed from serious study of a wide range of languages: remarkable limitations to the kinds of systems which emerge from the different types of experiences to which people are exposed.
The analyst who investigates these limitations must confront a well-delineated scientific problem, accounting for the gap between the small quantity of data presented to persons when they are children and the highly articulated, highly systematic, profoundly organised knowledge derived from the data. What is Chomsky’s explanation of the gap? Persons, themselves, contribute overwhelmingly to the general schematic structure and, perhaps, to the specific content of knowledge they derive, ultimately, from the data, otherwise characterised by him as “very scattered and limited experience.”
LINGUISTIC COMPETENCE AND GENERATIVE GRAMMAR
His primary concern in offering explanation of language learning is to account for linguistic or grammatical competence and generative grammar. Let me, thus, provide interpretations of his versions of theory, linguistic competence, and generative grammar. He states that linguistic theory is concerned with an ideal speaker/listener in a completely homogeneous speech community who knows language perfectly and is not affected by factors such as memory limitations or distractions. He specifies his positions about the ideal speaker/listener in a statement that grammatical or linguistic competence is a cognitive state which “encompasses those aspects of form and meaning and their relations, including underlying structures that enter into that relation which are properly assigned to the specific sub-system of the human mind that relates representations of form and meaning.” ( Chomsky, 1980: pp. 24 - 59 ).
In a statement about generative grammar, he says it is expressive of principles which determine the intrinsic correlation of sound and meaning in language. It is also a theory of linguistic competence, a speaker’s unconscious latent knowledge ( Chomsky, 1966: pp. 46 - 47 ). He adds that serious investigation of generative grammars quickly reveals that rules which determine sentence forms and their interpretations are both intricate and abstract: the structures they manipulate “are related to physical fact only in a remote way by a long chain of interpretive rules.” And it is because of the abstractness of linguistic representations that the analytic procedures of modern linguistics - with their reliance on segmentation and classification, as well as, principles of association and generalisation in empiricist psychology - must be rejected.
This is, of course, clear rejection by Chomsky of phrase structure grammar and principles of operant conditioning in behaviourist psychology popularised in audio-lingual approaches to target language learning. And it was partially, but significantly in reaction to audio-lingualism that communicative language teaching ( C.L.T. ) arose. The Chomskyan opposition to behaviourism should not, however, be seen as compatible with negative reaction in communicative language teaching circles to audio-lingualism. C.L.T., audio-lingualism, as well as behaviourism, are all experientially based. Chomsky’s views of generative grammar, linguistic competence and language teaching are decidedly not. In fact, his general remarks about contemporary language teaching are not complimentary.
While dealing with reasons for distinctions between the difficulty in teaching target language to adults and the ease of childhood language learning, Chomsky ( 1988, pp. 179 - 182 ) made these remarks.
Use your common sense and use your experience and don’t listen too much to the scientists, unless you find that what they say is really of practical value and of assistance in understanding the problems you face, as sometimes it truly is. (Chomsky, 1988, p. 182 ).
He is, however, more explicit when he says persons involved in a practical activity such as language teaching should not take what are happening in the sciences seriously, because the capacity to carry out practical activities without much conscious awareness of what is being done is usually far more advanced than scientific knowledge.
Ideas in the modern sciences of linguistics and psychology, which are of little practical use to understanding the distinctions, “are totally crazy and they may cause trouble.” He adds that modern linguistics has very little to contribute which is of practical value. Language, he says, is not learnt. It grows in the mind. It is, thus, wrong to think that language is taught and misleading to think of it as being learnt. ( Chomsky, 1982, pp. 175 - 176 ).
I, therefore do not think it would be presumptious of me to conclude, at this point, that communicativists have no legitimate grounds for utilising their broad version of competence which includes Chomsky’s linguistic competence as a basis to fulfilling their aim. That aim is getting students to produce language as a central feature of their social interaction, in order to perform tasks which are essential or important to them. The communicativists are no where near to expressing a concern for analysing the issues, how the anti-experiential Chomskyan view of linguistic competence emerges from his interpretation of Russell’s, von Humboldt’s, Rousseau’s and Descartes’ ideas, how such a view can be reconciled to the communicative position which is not anti-experiential.
Lest my conclusion be regarded as inappropriate, I must point out, for purposes of exemplification, that Chomsky ( 1966a, p. 46 ) says a theory of generative grammar serves only as one component of a theory which can be made to accommodate the “characteristic creative aspect of language use.” He, himself, points out that whatever little attention Descartes devoted to language is subject to various interpretations and it should not be assumed that the various contributors to Cartesian linguistics necessarily regarded themselves as constituting a single tradition.
I am also fully aware that the following argument can be made against me: though the communicative version of competence includes linguistic competence, that broad version of competence is not Chomskyan. If this is the case, communicativists need to show, very clearly, what type of grammar exemplifies their sense of competence. They should say, as well, how their view of grammar differs to the Chomskyan view of generative grammar and, as a result, can exemplify linguistic competence which they make part of their broad version of competence. If communicativists are to meet the requests I propose, they should offer very careful analyses of the bases to Chomsky’s view of linguistic competence.
To the extent that they have not, they cannot, legitimately employ communicative competence as a basis to fulfilling their aim. Consider another argument against use of the basis - a cogent argument associated with Chomsky’s view of communication. In so far as communicativists emphasise the purposeful nature of language as central and necessary to their aim of fostering target language use, they would have to be concerned with the matter of conveying information to, and inducing beliefs about language in students.
This is not a concern, though, which they can express, legitimately, by means of including linguistic competence in their broad version of competence. Chomsky’s view of communication, which is linked, inextricably to, and derived logically from, his pronouncements about knowledge, creativity and freedom from repressive authority, contrasts sharply with views about the purposeful nature of language. In what he sees as the importance of avoiding a certain vulgarisation with respect to the use of language, he claims that if the term, ‘communication’, means transmitting information or inducing belief, there is no reason to think that language - essentially - serves instrumental ends, or that the essential purpose of language is communication. ( Chomsky 1977, pp. 87 - 88 ).
He adds that someone who offers a view of the purposeful nature of language ought to explain what she means in expressing that view and why she believes such a function and no other function to be of unique significance.
It is frequently alleged that the function of language is communication, that its “essential purpose” is to enable people to communicate with one another. it is further alleged that only by attending to the essential purpose can we make sense of the nature of language. It is not easy to evaluate this contention. What does it mean to say that language has an “essential purpose”? Suppose that in the quiet of my study I think about a problem, using language, and even write down what I think. Suppose that someone speaks honestly, merely out of a sense of integrity, fully aware that his audience will refuse to comprehend or even consider what he is saying. Consider informal conversation conducted for the sole purpose of maintaining casual friendly relations, with no particular concern as to its content. Are these examples of “communication”? If so, what do we mean by “communication” in the absence of an audience, or with an audience assumed to be completely unresponsive or with no intention to convey information or modify belief or attitude? (Chomsky, 1980: pp. 229 - 230)
His response is that we must deprive the idea, communication, of all importance or we must reject the view that the purpose of language is communication. He adds that no substantive proposals emanate from any formulation of the view that the purpose of language is communication or that it is pointless to study it apart from its communicative function.
Chomsky’s views about communication might well be in error; communicativists have challenged and rejected them. Challenge and rejection do not, however, stem from examining how linguistic competence emanates from his interpretation of Descartes, Russell, Rousseau, and von Humboldt. But communicativists do include linguistic competence in their broad version of competence. And while they state that they have examined linguistic competence, found its scope to be too narrow and resorted to devising a broad version within which it is included, inclusion is not logically admissible. Communicativists have not examined the basis to Chomskyan linguistic competence.
Alternatively expressed, my argument is that the communicative emphasis within C.L.T. on the purposeful nature of language does not emerge from a parallel or identical view about the purpose of language held by Chomsky. Therefore, communicativists should not use communicative competence as a central basis to fulfilling their aim of helping students. I wish to strengthen this inference by pointing to glaring contradictions within Bachman’s extended linguistic competence. This expansion incorporates illocutionary and sociolinguistic competence in pragmatic competence, one subdivision of linguistic competence.
It is a focus on illocutionary competence which enables an observer to identify the inconsistency. Bachman does accept the Chomskyan notion of linguistic competence. This is not, however, acceptance which is synchronous with what should properly be called the illocutionary aspect of semantic competence conceptualised by John Searle whose ideas about language use are diametrically opposed to those of Chomsky’s. My point here is that an analyst cannot logically fuse or incorporate elements of the Searlean and Chomskyan views of competence.
Searle ( 1974, pp. 28 - 29 ) says semantic competence is the ability to perform and understand speech acts or illocutionary acts. These acts are some of the many acts associated with a speaker’s utterance in speech situations, speakers, hearers, and utterances. ( Searle, 1971, p. 39 ). Further, in these situations, the acts are concerned with performances such as making statements, asking questions, or issuing commands and have their expression in verb forms like state, assert, command, or order. He points out that if semantic competence is viewed from the standpoint of one’s ability to use sentences in performing speech acts, the acts will be seen as rule governed and intentional.
The speaker who utters a sentence and means it literally utters it in accordance with certain semantic rules and with the intention of invoking those rules to render his utterance the performance of a certain speech act. ( Searle, 1974: p. 29 )
To know semantic competence is to identify connections among semantic intentions, rules, and conditions specified by rules.
Searle’s view of semantic competence is grounded in his quarrel with Chomsky’s notion of linguistic competence. He argues that Chomsky’s theory of language is that sentences are abstract objects produced independently of their role in communication. His position is that any attempt to account for the meaning of sentences independently of their role in communication is inadequate. Searle ( 1982, pp. 171 - 172 ) says Chomsky regards man as essentially a syntactical animal. He never asks what the syntactical forms are used for, and conceptualises syntactical theory in purely “syntactical primitives.” There is no allowance for what the syntactical forms mean or how persons are supposed to use them.
He adds that the most interesting questions about syntax are inquiries about how form and function interact. For him, the study of syntax will always be incomplete “unless we get a study of linguistic use.” He states, pointedly, that Chomsky has denied what he regards as obviously true, that the purpose of language is communication.
My arguments against use of communicative competence as a central basis to communicative language teaching are complete. I must concentrate now on the relevance of Frierian proposals to this approach. I propose, instead, that the ideas of Paulo Friere be used as the main thrust of communicative language teaching. Once I have explored the Frierian relevance, I shall bring closure to my work by outlining what communicative language teaching should look like.
FRIERIAN LIBERATION PEDAGOGY
Paulo Friere was a Brazilian educator who dedicated himself to abolishing cultural invasion, manipulation, rule by division, conquest, and domination among oppressed people. The core of his commitment is expressed as a strong preference for using conscientizacao to abolish illiteracy.
Let me say, from the outset, what conscientizacao. “The term conscientizacao refers to learning to perceive social, political, and economic contradictions, and to take action against the oppressive elements of reality.” (Friere 1970, p. 19 ). Conscientizacao means identifying the learning of content with the process of learning. It will not emerge as a derivative of great economic change. It has to emanate from critical educational efforts that have a foundation in favourable historical circumstances. It is the development of an awakening of critical awareness ( Friere 1998,p. 19, p. 49 ).
The interactive route to conscientizacao is a dialogical one which is traversed horizontally by reflective co-subjects who are, simultaneously, teachers and learners. In the words of Goulet ( 1998, p. vi ), the unifying theme in Frierian practice is critical consciousness, the engine of cultural emancipation.
Why was the Frierian concern a concern with eradicating illiteracy? I shall address myself to this query, after which attention will be given to operations of the engine. Paulo Friere was an unapologetic anti-imperialist who observed, quite correctly, that a basic condition of colonial domination is linguistic imposition by colonisers on the colonised. It is, thus, not accidental that colonisers designate their own languages as languages and languages of the colonised as dialects. This is categorisation akin to inferiorisation and impoverishment, on the one hand, and richness and superiority, on the other. ( Friere, 1978: p. 126 ).
He, therefore, insists that language is a major preoccupation of societies which seek their own recreation by liberating themselves from colonialism. In the struggle for recreation, “the reconquest by the people of their own word becomes a fundamental factor.” This is, doubtless, the struggle for literacy education which Friere ( 1978, p. 72 ) characterises as one dimension of cultural action for liberation which is linked, inextricably, to other aspects such as the social, economic, and cultural politics of dominated societies.
The connections are echoed powerfully in references to both John Dewey, the American educator, and Julius Nyerere, the Tanzanian leader and liberator, who are credited with advocating a version of education devoid of naive significance. Nyerere and Dewey are posited as emphasising education, not as education for life, but as critical education, critical understanding of life actually lived ( Friere, 1978: p. 123 ).
This vehicle of cultural emancipation is driven by a profound sense of radicalism the liberating educator must use to enter into dialogue with the oppressed whose struggle he is committed to advancing (Friere, 1970: pp. 23 - 24). In this partnership, the very causes of oppression are objects of joint reflection ( Friere, 1970: p. 33 ). Here is advocacy of versions of communication through which the oppressed locate themselves in the existence of educators who position themselves, reciprocally, in the lives of the oppressed ( Friere, 1970: p. 162 ). And in the act of placement, which is humanistic, there is every effort to apprehend historical reality. ( Friere, 1970: p. 52 ).
It is clearly the case that he sees no distinctions between learners and teachers. He makes this position quite evident in the statement:
If the dichotomy between teaching and learning results in the refusal of the one who teaches to learn from the one being taught, it grows out of an ideology of domination. Those who are called upon to teach must first learn how to continue learning when they begin to teach. ( Friere, 1978, p. 9 ).
The involvement of learners - he adds - in defining educational content is of indisputable importance. They have rights, as active participants, to define what they need to know. ( Friere, 1978: p. 106 ). One of the most cogent conceptualisations of this stance emerges from the pronouncement that education must be initiated with efforts to solve the teacher-student contradiction, a reconciliation of difference, so that members of both groups are, simultaneously, teachers and students. ( Friere, 1970: p. 59 ). In the collective, persons become teachers-students with students-teachers. ( Friere, 1970: p. 67 ).
Goulet ( 1998, p. xii ) offers an appropriate assessment of the conceptualisation by noting that Friere views the successful educator - not as a persuader, an insidious propagandist, but as a communicator who applies his ability to dialogue with educatees in modes of reciprocity. What does dialogue signify? It signifies collective action aimed at removing illiteracy along a plane of equality. Dialogue is not a relation between “I” and “it”. Dialogue is, necessarily, communion between “I” and “thou”, two subjects, for whenever “thou” is altered to “it”, “dialogue is subverted and education is changed to deformation.” ( Friere, 1998: p. 52 ).
The sense of communion implies reflection, as well as, knowing, which is very specific to Friere ( 1998, pp. 100 -101 ). Knowing necessitates the curious presence of subjects who interpret the world through the constancy of invention and reinvention.
It claims from each person a critical reflection on the very act of knowing. It must be a reflection which recognises the knowing process, and in this recognition becomes aware of the “raison d’etre” behind the knowing and the conditioning to which that process is subject. ( Friere, 1998: p. 100 )
Promoting dialogue is strongly suggestive of relegating - if not condemning - what is anti-dialogical. I must now direct my attention to explicit Frierian condemnation of the anti-dialogical, as a way of strengthening the relevance of liberation in educational practice. Friere ( 1970, pp. 133 - 167 ) identifies four features of the anti-dialogical, all of which, are indicative of imperialist domination. They are conquest, divide and rule, manipulation, and cultural invasion. I shall focus on conquest, manipulation, as well as, cultural invasion.
In acts of conquest, the conquerer imposes his objectives on the vanquished and converts them to his possessions. He imposes his own patterns and structures on the conquered who internalise the forms and become ambiguous persons. Manipulation entails ways in which the dominators secure conformity of the oppressed to their objectives of inferiorisation. Cultural invasion involves a narrow interpretation of reality, a stagnant sense of the world, and the imposing of values from the invader who has a fear of abandoning those values. One of its principal signifiers is that decisive positions from which actions affecting the lives of the invaded are taken should be those occupied by the invaders. Invaders are actors who choose; the invaded are followers who have the illusion of acting via the experience of the invaders. Cultural invasion is particularly insidious. Friere regards it as violence, penetration of cultural contexts of the invaded whose prospects for development are demeaned and creativity impeded.
Why should Friere’s work be foundational to remedying the communicative approach to target language teaching? There are historical, pedagogical, and sociological reasons for the modification. In the first place, systematic efforts to teach European languages such as French, English, Spanish, Dutch, German, and Italian in colonial possessions have been directly associated with conquest, divide and rule, manipulation, as well as, cultural invasion. European teachers of these languages in conquered territories were the purveyors of cultural superiority.
After several of the territories - mostly in Africa and Asia - attained political independence and the European teachers returned to their own societies, one of the very significant changes which occurred in these locations was the emergence of the communicative approach to second and foreign language teaching. Not only did this development take very strong roots in Great Britain, but its growth also emerged from direct influences of J.R. Firth, a British linguist, who, in the words of notable followers, Halliday, McIntosh, and Strevens ( 1964, p. 151) viewed linguistics as the study of “how we use language to live.”
And according to Catford ( 1969, pp. 247 - 257 ), another linguist greatly influenced by Firth, the British have distinct preferences for practical matters, applications, rather than theoretical considerations. In keeping with this choice, Firth emphasised “the sociological component” in linguistic studies, the examination of language as part of a social process, “a form of human living, rather than merely a set of arbitrary signs and signals.” The emphasis is evident - so states Catford - in the Firthian view about contexts of situations or fields of relations, among persons playing roles in societies and what they utter.
Despite Firthian residues in the British approach to communicative language teaching, what is notably absent from it is any effort to grapple with the enormous question of domination or oppression. In the British, as well as other approaches, there is no identifiable basis in conscientizacao premised on efforts to abolish colonial domination and its existing residues.. There are no programmatic statements which exemplify commitments to struggle against social, economic, and cultural oppression. Nor, for that matter, is there reflection on causes of oppression or accounts about how teachers can learn in acts of critical self-reflection.
The argument above is applicable, even to strong claims about learner centred infusions to communicative language teaching. The appropriate reference points here are ideas of Tudor ( 1996, pp. 271 - 282 ). He says the basic assumption behind learner centeredness is that language acquisition will be more meaningful, if students, rather than than the teacher, make decisions about the conceptual, methodological, and linguistic content of the acquisition. What is being promoted is a ‘partnership model’ geared to attaining transference of responsibility.
At the classroom level, it is consultation between teachers and learners defined by negotiation which leads to curriculum design. Contributions from learners are integrated, at every stage of acquisition. Students become active participants in collaborative processes aimed at accomplishing outcomes such as syllabus negotiation, and learner independence. Tudor acknowledges that target language teaching is a multi-faceted social and cultural activity which obliges practitioners to be cognisant, not merely of of learners’ psychological profiles, but also, their socio-cultural settings. One of the relevant factors which must be considered is learners’ cultural attitudes to language study and the roles of teachers and learners. Collaborative activities will not be successful, if teachers are regarded authority figures. Despite the acknowledgement, Tudor is explicit in declaring that it is the teacher’s ultimate responsibility for ensuring that effective learning occurs.
The Frierian absence is particularly noteworthy, in post-independence periods. These have been characterised by significant flows of immigrants whose first languages are non-European, to European locations. Many of the immigrants are, indeed, the masses who have been exploited, as a consequence of colonial oppression.
Further, in a contemporary setting where the stranglehold of globalisation and monopoly capitalism which nurtures it bodes ill for many inhabitants of ex-colonial possessions, there is no version of communicative language teaching whose proponents address themselves to the destructive impact of a matter such as cultural invasion. Perhaps, one of the most harmful consequences can be seen in the activities of Rupert Murdoch, the Australian who became an American citizen for the purpose of expanding his media empire. In early 1993, Murdoch, owner of Sky television in Europe, Fox Network in the U.S.A., and several newspapers worldwide - including the Times, Sun, and News of the World in Great Britain - issued what he considered to be a far reaching announcement about international satellite telecasting. It is Murdoch’s intention to create a global village where all citizens of the world could be entertained or watch news programming without inhibition.
Facilitators of this modern version of instantaneous information transfer are metallic dishes. Murdoch’s technological arrangement is a multi-million dollar business of privately owned satellite telecasting. Programming via the medium would be consistent with the owner’s political philosophies: Murdoch, a staunch supporter of Margaret Thatcher’s free market capitalism, has long since made it clear to editors of his British newspapers that they should not be politically independent. Their editorial inclinations ought to reflect views of the Conservative Party in Britain. The Australian/American is not a public servant to the world. He is a media baron motivated by prospects of super normal profits.
I think that if the world is to be a true global village, then satellite telecasting should originate, not just from rich developed countries. Programming about developing societies from these locations should also be telecast in the developed world. This type of exchange is, however, unfeasible, because of prohibitive costs of the developing world.
The burden of cultural invasion can also be revealed by looking at the statuses of what have come to be known as vernaculars in ex-colonial possessions. Vernaculars, many of which do not have official language designation, are used by the oppressed. According to Phillipson ( 1992, p. 40 ), use of the term, vernacular, is not accidental. He notes that the term is a loaded term. It refers to what is homebred, homemade, homegrown, rather than what emanates from formal exchange. In popular and technical usage, it connotes localised, sub-standard, non-standard language which is very different to literary, cultured or foreign languages. For Phillipson, vernaculars are, therefore, stigmatised in relation to languages elevated as the norms.
Catford is, thus, correct when he states that the development of any discipline is influenced by the cultural and political setting in which it occurs. Such is, doubtless, true of linguistics. It is to the setting that I turn, for the purpose of explaining the absence of commitment to removing oppression.
This is a locus defined by what Phillipson ( 1992, pp. 47 - 61 ) regards as linguistic imperialism strongly condemned by Ansre ( 1979, pp. 12 - 13 ) who defines it as a state in which the experience of users of a language are oppressed by another language to the extent that they internalise the view: only the dominant language should be employed for dealing with advanced versions of life such as education, philosophy, literature, and the administration of justice. Linguistic imperialism alters, in subtle fashion, the expectations, and attitudes of persons who are impeded from appreciating and actualising the full potential of indigenous languages.
Other analysts, notably Calvet ( 1987 ), have conceptualised linguistic imperialism as linguistic racism. This is a position of which I am fully supportive, for I accept the views expressed by West ( 1999, pp. 70 - 71 ) and Marable ( 1997, pp. 185 - 186 ) on racism. For Marable, racism refers to an unequal relationship between social groups strengthened by patterns of power, ownership, and privilege which reside within social, economic, and political organisations of society. In addressing himself to the inferiorisation of members of one group, West is insistent that the Afro-American engagement with the modern world has been shaped, primarily, by the doctrine of white superiority which is integral to institutional practices and is actualised in everyday folkways.
For Phillipson, linguistic imperialism is powerfully present in its English form.
...the dominance of English imperialism is asserted and maintained by the establishment and continuous reconstitution of structural and cultural inequalities between English and other languages ( Phillipson, 1992, p. 47).
The term, structural, accounts for material possessions, such as organisations and monetary provisions. The cultural represents ideological features such as attitudes and teaching principles. English imperialism is also indicative of linguicism which entails the presence of ideologies, structures, and methodologies applied for the purpose of validating the perpetuation of unequal division of power and resources among groups defined on the basis of language.
In addition, disparity guarantees the provision of greater resources to English than other languages and is advantageous to groups that are proficient in this language. Phillipson’s views of linguistic imperialism are subsumed by ideas of Galtung ( 1980, pp. 127 - 128 ) about cultural imperialism, a relationship in which some societies dominate others. Domination is forged principally by devices such as penetration, fragmentation, marginalisation, and exploitation. The last involves asymmetric interaction between groups exchanging commodities on terms of disparity. The exchange is facilitated by existence of a dominant Centre, typically made up of Western capitalist societies, and dominated Peripheries, usually underdeveloped countries. Connections between power at the Centre and the Peripheries are exemplified by shared interests in language.
I think the most cogent evidence for claims of Phillipson’s, West’s, Marable’s, Galtung’s, Ansre’s, and Calvet’s can be located by looking at the status of vernaculars. While extensive research and promotion, which require huge financial resources, are associated with Western languages, this is not the case in regard to vernaculars. Here is an appropriate example. The work conducted by the International Group for the Vernacularisation and Standardisation of Literacy which resulted in publication of a document, “Vernacular Literacy: A Re-Evaluation, Clarendon Press/Oxford ( 1997 ), is a rather insignificant production when compared to the massive output of Western linguistic material.
The juncture of promotion is, thus, an appropriate point at which I can solidify my argument for a Frierian presence in Communicative language teaching. My focus is on one of the richest societies, Canada. Canada, once a dominion possession of Great Britain, though dominated by two European groups, francophones and anglophones, has been accepting large numbers of immigrants from underdeveloped societies, former colonial territories. Several of these new Canadians are in a new society, principally because Canada cannot progress economically without the presence of steady immigrant streams. The Canadian Federal Government, through its Citizenship and Immigration Commission, ( C.I.C ), makes available, to all immigrants, on a nationwide basis, a communicatively based programme of second language acquisition known as Language Instruction for New Canadians ( L.I.N.C. )
Let me deal with L.I.N.C., as a way of making my Frierian case. Several of the intended beneficiaries, members of the oppressed masses, are residents of a capitalist society whose government is an aggressive promoter of globalisation, one of the most powerful indicies of socio-economic inequity and cultural imperialism. The new immigrants, once victimised by by oppression in their own societies, must now face a different version of domination. One very relevant issue for promoters of L.I.N.C. programmes across Canada is whether there are efforts in the programmes to grapple with oppression.
The response to this query is emphatically negative. On the face of it, a national administration which promotes globalisation but simultaneously integrates opposition to domination in its language programmes would be adopting a contradictory posture. There is, however, a stronger reason for the foregoing response. It can be found in the inextricable connection between L.I.N.C. programmes and multiculturalism. The latter has been criticised by Price ( 1978 ), Bannerji ( 1997 ), Walcott ( 1997 ), and Ng ( 1993 ) for reproducing white superiority in Canada. What is the connection between L.I.N.C. and multiculturalism? My response shall be followed by my critical remarks about multiculturalism.
A Canadian Standing Committee of 1987 claims that the goal of multiculturalism is the integration - not assimilation - of racial and ethnic groups. This is a position offered explicitly by the originator of this policy, none other than Pierre Elliot Trudeau, late Canadian Prime Minister. In October, 1971, he stated publicly that there cannot be one cultural policy for Canadians of French and British heritage and another for members of other groups.
He added that despite the existence of two official languages, English and French, “...there is no official culture, nor does any ethnic group take precedence over any other...A policy of multiculturalism within a bilingual framework commends itself to the government as the most suitable means of assuring the cultural freedom of Canadians.” Of vital importance to me are Mr. Trudeau’s statements about the bilingual framework, two official languages, English and French. It is this framework which must be considered in the foreground of what is contained in the Canadian Multicultural Act of 1988.
According to the Act, the Canadian Constitution recognises the significance of maintaining and expanding the multicultural heritage of Canadians. The Canadian Government also recognises the racial, national, ethnic, and religious diversity of citizens as a basic feature of the society. It is committed to a multuiculturalism policy aimed at the preservation and enhancement of cultural heritage which is consistent with accomplishing the equality of all citizens within economic, social, cultural, and political spheres of life.
I cannot see how equality can be accomplished in a climate of official bilingualism associated with languages whose historic dominance has been a major feature of cultural and linguistic imperialism. It is not irrelevant for me to note that within the national Canadian media - both print and audio-visual - Canadian culture is typically presented as white anglophone and franchophone culture. Discourse about other cultures is a poor distant relative to the Eurocentric focus. This peripheral presence is not divorced from a continual battle between strident franchophone separatists within the province of Quebec and their white anglophone counterparts within the rest of the country over one Canada made of ten provinces or one Canada made up of nine provinces whose closest and newest neighbour is the sovereign state, Quebec.
The battle over difference reached one of its highest points in 1995 when a separatist government in Quebec, which had secured a provincial referendum on a sovereign state, narrowly lost. The Quebec Premier at the time, an eloquent an uncompromising separatist, Jacques Parizeau, declared, disparagingly, after the loss, that it was the “Ethnic vote” which caused defeat. Monsieur Parizeau was pointing to Canadians other than Anglophones who were not franchophones. By a strange process of exclusion, these other Canadians, the ethnics, had to be differentiated from franchophones. Many of these ethnics who arrive in Canada as non-native immigrant users of English or French and wish to learn an official language under auspices of the L.I.N.C. programme in Quebec are obliged to learn French. It is to L.I.N.C. programmes across Canada that I direct my attention, so that I might be able to continue making a Frierian case.
L.I.N.C. was instituted by a Canadian Federal Agency, The Canada Employment and Immigration Commission, in 1962, for the purpose of facilitating the settlement and immigration of newcomers to Canada. Learners are assigned to various levels of language instruction, on the basis of their performance on assessment procedures, the Canadian Language Benchmarks Assessment tool, geared to account for their communicative competence. This competence is promoted in learner centered classrooms where students are assisted to participate more fully in Canadian society, to integrate successfully into a new country.
One vital basis to the assistance is a set of curriculum guidelines made up of themes, topics, and learning outcomes reflective of multiculturalism and devised in accordance with principles of communicative language teaching. What is crucial to L.I.N.C. programmes is integration. This is, of course, integration within the bilingual framework of multiculturalism, a framework that is not devoid of linguistic imperialism. Further, learners, several of whom were oppressed and victimised by such practices as conquest and cultural invasion and are the objects of manipulation in globalisation, have no say in devising either the guidelines or assessment tools.
CONCLUSION
I believe I have made a very strong case for a Frierian infusion to communicative language teaching. I shall bring closure to my work by offering an analysis of what Frierian foundations to communicative language teaching should look like. What is central to the examination is setting up an alternative multicultural framework to that which exists in Canada. It is within this structure that European, vernacular, as well as, non-European national languages will be acquired as second and foreign languages.
My reference point for setting the framework is the discourse from Marable (1996, pp. 119 - 124 ) on versions of multiculturalism, three of which I shall outline. They are corporate multiculturalism, liberal multiculturalism, and radical democratic multiculturalism. It is the last which I find relevant to the goal of implementing a different approach to communicative language teaching. I am fully aware that Marable’s discourse on multiculturalism is applied to the U.S.A. I am also cognisant that the global setting is not the U.S.A. Like the world setting, the U.S.A is ethnically and racially diverse. Marable’s discourse is also conceptually appealing.
He states that promoters of corporate multiculturalism emphasise cultural and social diversity by endeavouring to heighten the sensitivity of business executives to matters such as racial, gender, age, linguistic, sexual differences. Marable notes that the principal motivating forces for this type of multiculturalism are minority markets and labour force demography. In the U.S.A., there is great pressure on the corporate milieu to hire persons from the diverse pools of the non-white population. It is also within these diverse pools that corporate America stands to make huge profits from massive consumer spending. In the foreground of globalisation, labour force demography and consumer power are very evident.
Marable’s problem with corporate multiculturalism is that its advancement is devoid of significant discussion about exploitation, racism, sexism, or homophobia. Its evasive posture can be located in celebrating diversity of all kinds without criticising anyone. Liberal multiculturalism, a broadly democratic outlook, is distinctly anti-racist. It is premised on the view that educational establishments have major obligations to deconstruct the ideology of human inequality. It is, however, inadequate in dealing with inequalities of power, privilege, and resources.
It attempts to articulate the perceived interests of minority groups to increase their influence within the existing mainstream. In short, liberal multiculturalism is “liberalism” within the framework of cultural diversity and pluralism. ( Marable, 1996: p. 120 ).
The quotation above is powerful evidence of the type of multiculturalism which features in L.I.N.C. programmes and, is, of course, a cogent reminder that official Canadian bilingualism, is one existing mainstream. In contemporary globalisation, it is the destructive breadth of the existing mainstream in the forms of multinational manipulation, World Bank debt impositions, environmental destruction, and cultural hegemony which would emasculate liberal multiculturalism.
Unlike liberal multiculturalism, radical democratic multiculturalism is transformationist cultural critique. Discussions of culture are always connected to the issue of power, as well as, methods by which ideology is employed to control and dominate the oppressed. Proponents of radical democratic multiculturalism stress similarities between the cultural experiences of oppressed persons around the world, strive to redefine and reorganise systems of culture and political power.
It is my view that this is the type of emphasis evident in Friere’s call for the oppressed to reclaim their language. What should Friefrian reclamation look like from the standpoint of a communicative approach to target language teaching embedded in radical democratic multiculturalism? It should consist of: an approach to language pedagogy in which discourse that exposes the features of oppression is central to the sustenance of conscientizacao. Such discourse must be a factor of culture and a cultural fact in communicative pedagogical practice.* The practice must be evident in the teaching of European and non-European foreign languages, as well as, vernaculars within ex-colonial possessions. Within the advanced industralised world where former residents of colonial possessions meet native born citizens and acquire European foreign and second languages, the sustenance of conscientizacao must also prevail.
Conscientizacao must not be absent from the teaching of vernaculars in societies once dominated by imperialism. The intersecting of vernacularisation with conscientizacao offers excellent prospects for liberation. It is at the foregoing juncture that historical, cultural, educational, sporting, and scientific achievements of vernacular users can be revealed, very powerfully. The matters of scientific accomplishments are of particular interest, here. These developments, which several observers in the rich developed world associate with alternative medicine, are integral to the everyday lives of vernacular users. Their massive economic significance is so paramount to the forces of domination that prominent bio and agro-chemical multinationals have been seeking to exploit the curative values of plant life indigenous to Africa, Asia, and South America.
The case for vernacularisation can be made by looking at a discussion from Carrington ( 1997, pp. 82 - 92 ) on strategies for the establishment of vernacularisation of literacy. One of Carrington’s main points of departure is his acceptance of this definition of a literate person offered by Gudschinsky ( 1968, p. 146 ): “That person is literate who, in a language he speaks, can read with understanding anything he would have understood if it had been spoken to him; and can write so that it can be read, anything that he can say.” Carrington proceeds to list three strategies all of which are closely correlated with the achievements noted above.
The first strategy consists of identifying and acting in settings within the lives of vernacular users where they recognise that their everyday existence can benefit from literacy in their language. The second strategy is to locate and act in contexts where the common good for the citizenry is sufficiently uncontroversial that the medium for transmission of information is not regarded as threatening by the literate social establishment. The final strategy is to find and explore routes along which vernaculars have filtered into linguistic areas which are primary areas of official languages.
In his introduction to Friere’s “Education for Critical Consciousness”, Denis Goulet says no contemporary writer more persistently explores the multi-faceted nature of critical consciousness than Paulo Friere, a multi-cultural educator with the entire world as his classroom. If the international compass of communicative language pedagogy is to have a world focus, its proponents cannot trivialise radical democratic multiculturalism. In so doing, they must embrace language use for the abolition of domination and can neither ignore nor exclude the Brazilian intellectual.
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Radical Pedagogy
Citation Format
Walcott, William (2001). Knowledge, Competence And Communication. Radical Pedagogy: 3, 3


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