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Part II Scientific disagreement in SLA: A diagnosis. Chapter Three Language and proficiency: a problem of contradictions In formal logic, a contradiction is the signal of defeat, but in the evolution of real knowledge it marks the first step in progress toward a victory. —Alfred North Whitehead How do we know if two theories clash or whether they are in fact compatible? As per the discussion
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above, in SLA the answer to this question will be complex (and complicated). A guiding realisation in this inquiry into consensus building is that theories are not monoliths, but they are —modular—, meaning they have many components. Some are superficial, and some are more deeply foundational. SLA theories can agree or differ at various levels: 1) through their conceptions of language and acquisition, 2) at the philosophical level, through ontological, epistemological,
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and methodological assumptions, but also through different axiological and ethical stances; 3) at a more problem-space level, because some theories are clearly more concerned with grammatical issues, while others focus on psycholinguistic, sociolinguistic or pedagogical issues; and 4) at a more sociological kind of level, because as it has been discussed above, there is a complex interaction between the principles of theories and the more idiosyncratic beliefs of
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theorists and thought collectives. Through this modular view, any overarching statement such as ‘I do not agree with that theory’ is seen as reductive. This invites for more open and nuanced understandings. In this section I will limit the discussion to theories of language and in the next one I will discuss theories of acquisition. Philosophical tensions between different approaches to SLA will be examined in Chapter 8. Mainstream linguistic theories in SLA:
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Formalism vs Functionalism In SLA we could recognise three mainstream conceptions of language: 1) Generative approaches, which informed most of the initial research into SLA, and continue to inform the input-output-interaction tradition, as well as processing instruction; 2) the more functionalist understandings of language, which inform the concept-oriented approach, usage-based approaches and complex dynamic systems theory;
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and 3) the lexical-functional grammar framework, which informs processability theory. Generative approaches and the lexical-functional grammar framework are part of formalist linguistics. In other words, they are concerned with the structure and organisation of language (Thomas, 2019, p. 5). On the other hand, functionalist linguistics assume that cultural, social and communicative factors influence language, where each utterance is uniquely contextualised. Margaret Thomas
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devised an analogy to make this distinction clear. She branded formalists ‘engineers’ and functionalists ‘collectors’ (Thomas, 2019). In her analysis, these two views of language work at different levels and observe languages from a different perspective, not necessarily in direct opposition. In some cases they may provide coordinated insights into some linguistic phenomena, but in others, most relevant to our discussion, they are truly incommensurable (p.
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4). It seems to me that an integrative theory of language is a basic requirement to approach second language acquisition in a coherent and holistic way. It would be important, then, to devise a theory of language that takes into account all of its attributes, including its formal aspects as well as its functional ones. However, integrating these two viewpoints is not a simple task, as Thomas puts it: Although the work of an engineer and of
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a collector are not incompatible per se, to harmonize the two in any meaningful way without undermining their differences would require cautious and respectful treatment of them both and deep understanding of the attributes of each one. (Thomas, 2019, p. 8) Interestingly, in the sub-discipline of L2 assessment, proficiency and performance emerge as terms that, perhaps unwittingly and driven by necessity, attempt to reconcile
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formalist concepts like ‘grammatical accuracy’ with functionalist ones such as ‘communicative ability’. Any experienced teacher that has looked at a so called ‘communicative’ assessment rubric will know what I am referring to. Here, I would offer that proficiency is key to discussions of language. In fact, when defined as an ability the word language greatly overlaps with proficiency. Indeed, in strict logical terms, what the term proficiency tries to capture in SLA is the
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degree to which a language has been learned, and when we do not have a general unified theory to tell us what a language is, any pedagogical attempt at describing proficiency would be, perhaps accidentally, a proxy attempt to theorise language. Thus, although this term has been readily adopted by researchers in L2 assessment, people in the L2 teaching/testing industry, as well as in L2 pedagogy, the truth of the matter is that these descriptions of proficiency are not
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based on a scientific consensus and thus cannot be fully validated from an SLA perspective. Furthermore, it is unclear to me, for several reasons, whether words such as ‘proficiency’ or ‘competence’ are completely appropriate for SLA as a scientific endeavour that should focus on the explanatory mechanisms of acquisition, as opposed to the realms of L2 assessment or education, where outcomes are more relevant. For one thing, ‘proficiency’ and ‘competence’ may
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accidentally introduce some problematic value judgements and biases. If someone is proficient, this means someone else is not, and making such a determination has led to many scientific and ethical conundrums. Lourdes Ortega, for example, has developed very influential work exposing what we may call ‘deficit SLA’, which is an academic enterprise wherein learners are studied according to what they are not capable of, when compared to monolingual native speakers (Ortega,
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2019). She argues this view of acquisition is not only ethically questionable, but also that it is scientifically inaccurate. She points out we know bilingual brains are different from monolingual brains, because languages interact with each other in the brain all the time, and based on works in multilingualism research, she makes the argument that cross-linguistic influence is not better seen as the L1 contaminating the L2, but as both languages enriching
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each other with an overall mental library of semiotic resources (p. 31). In arguing this, she attempts to expose two biases in L2 research: the monolingual bias and native-speakerism. Perhaps we should take a step back to understand the context in which Ortega’s ideas are being put forward, which is in response to formalist approaches in SLA which assume that a language can be defined by its formal structure. In other words, yes, native speakers and monolinguals show
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a very fine-tuned grammar (and pronunciation) which is very systematic and, to some degree, stable; and, yes, we can engage in the exercise of comparing this formal system with that of L2 learners. However, this comes with a plethora of caveats. First, grammar evolves over time (we do not talk like Shakespeare or Cervantes) and it varies geographically (e.g. US’s ‘on the weekend’ vs UK’s ‘at the weekend’), as well as socially (e.g. General American grammar vs
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African American vernacular grammar). Therefore the existence of a native-speaker grammar is only a scientific term in a broad statistical understanding, when observing groups of speakers of a prestige variant of the L1; that is, it is an idealisation (see Larsen-Freeman, 2007), rather than a precise and accurate purely technical term. The fact that formalist observations idealise linguistic data is a common criticism in linguistics (see Thomas, 2019). This idealisation,
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notably, is politically and sociologically charged, by means of an unquestioned view of who is representative of a standard grammar. Second, this notion of a native-speaker grammar has a built in assumption that the L2 learner’s development should be understood as a positive ladder towards an exact copy of the prestige variant of their target language. The extent of this achievement of an exact copy is named proficiency, while everything short of that is
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not ‘fully’ developed, not proficient; which means the measurement bar for acquisition may be based on technical criteria, assumed to be objective, but it in fact does not escape certain underlying values. As such, the measurement bar will be socially unfair at some point, in some way. Third, to my understanding, theories that go beyond the grammatical level, such as usage-based approaches, SCT and CDST all assume that the individual learner’s linguistic resources
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will be uniquely shaped by his or her own history of experiences with the language. In other words, native speaker or not, a person inside the world of academia will be more familiar with academic language and even contribute to it, while someone in the fashion industry will be familiar with, and contribute to, a different overall collection of expressions, vocabulary, pragmatic choices, even social attitudes that shape how utterances are put together, regardless of grammatical
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accuracy. These more ‘social’ approaches to SLA view language in a more fluid way. CDST posits “Real-time language processing, evolutionary change in language structure, and developmental change in learner language are all reflections of the same dynamic process of language using, albeit at different timescales” (Larsen-Freeman, 2020, p. 250). Complexity theorists’ understanding of acquisition is contextualised, multivariate, non-linear and never ending, which goes hand in
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hand with Ortega’s sense that the field should pay more attention to the biographical aspects of learners (Ortega, 2019, p. 28). This being the case, though, some scholars may feel distressed at the uncertainty of what is our measurement bar of proficiency, if we lose traditional notions of linearity, native-speakerism and the monolingual bias, and I would argue we should indeed keep our philosophical guard up, and reflect on the implications. Is language really so fluid that any
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temporal, geographic and historical demarcation between variants of a language is artificial, short-sighted and problematic? How do we study pragmatics or cultural awareness, if not in reference to commonly employed pragmatic strategies and commonly held cultural values of communities of native speakers? While the idea that native speakers are ‘not the bar’ is well received in, for example, the academic literature of world Englishes or English as a lingua franca,
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the idea seems not to work as well in the context of acquiring, for example, Japanese as L2. As a Japanese teacher myself I will say, we hope not to indoctrinate students into acting just like the Japanese, absolutely conforming to all norms in Japanese society and communication, which are famously strict, hierarchical and conveyed in indirect and subtle ways. However, production is only one part of the story, interpreting the real meaning of utterances in
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Japanese or any language with an indirect style of communication is tricky: sometimes ‘I like you a lot’, means ‘I hate you’. For interpretation to be effective we require a somewhat nativespeakerist view of language. As for production, our challenge is rather practical: what they normally say in their L1 may accidentally convey a different message from the one intended, often resulting in an invasive or offensive tone within the Japanese framework. Native-speakers of Japanese
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are no big monolith either, but indeed in broad statistical terms they are ‘the bar’, insofar as they are the only community of users from which we can learn and teach Japanese pragmatics. All this to say: should we castigate any claim of a statistical trend or generalised characteristic of a target language by labelling them misleading or unethical? And if not which trends should we
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reject and which ones should we accept? Or by the same token, should we conceptualise all formalist idealisations of language as inherently unjust, or should we more clearly restrict ourselves to only tackling SLA’s deficit bias? Moreover, I would also contend that further philosophical inquiry, especially of the axiological kind, should be dedicated to the concepts of non-linear and non-final acquisition. Should proficiency best be viewed
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as ultimately non-linear and never ending? There is certainly good research to support this (e.g. Verspoor et al., 2011). But regardless of the fact that an individual’s language is personal, development occurs non-linearly in u-shapes and many ups and downs, and it is ever-evolving even after reaching a somewhat stable state (aka an attractor state), we can nevertheless focus on the fact that the overall trend is positive and that stability, even if not an absolute stability, has
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become a characteristic trait. We can then make a subjective evaluation that someone went from not knowing anything about their L2, to being either ‘fluent’ or ‘native-like’ or competent in lexical and grammatical precision as well as in cultural awareness, and based on the extreme ends of this scenario we see a two-point, straight, positive line: from no knowledge, to robust knowledge, from no ability to effortless ability. While for some researchers this may be a lay person’s
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understanding of proficiency, in the section below I argue this is not necessarily the case. Does the data speak for itself? Statistics, Values, and Narratives The very same evidence can be interpreted in two different ways, on the one hand, some statisticians stress the central overall tendencies, which has been criticised as an emphasis on “averages” (Larsen‐Freeman, 2018, p. 9) or through what others have called the
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flaw of averages (e.g. Jansen et al., 2022, p. 3). In contrast, other researchers focus on the inherent variation (e.g. Lowie & Verspoor, 2019) and longitudinal non-linear change in the data (e.g. Lowie et al., 2021), which is what innovative statistical approaches to SLA are all about. But data will always contain both trends and variation, within group, individually, and across time, so my argument here is that there is a process beyond statistical thresholds
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and benchmarks, where we name and qualify phenomena, and where we ultimately decide through various technical and theoretical criteria, as well as biases and values, whether we want to believe the story contained in the data is one of trends or one of variation. For example, when we measure hight, we only grow upwards, even if the rate of growth varies, sometimes taking off and at times appearing quite stagnant. We will see this variation
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longitudinally, but the developmental story is about positive linear growth. When it comes to weight, it may be a person has only ever gain weight and the observed data is almost perfectly linear, but the phenomenon of adding weight is characterised by being dynamic and contrary to hight, revertible almost at will. In other words, data does not define the story, but mechanisms, and how we choose to describe or characterise those mechanisms. Further, the glass is neither
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‘half full’, nor ‘half empty’, if what we need is a sip of water, or two glasses. That is, a certain amount of variation, big or small, does not immediately lead to the assumption that variation defines the data, any more than the appearance of overall linearity immediately could deny the dynamic nature of the phenomenon being observed. We assess the value of variation or linearity in the data, not only because of the overall extent of variation or linearity, but depending on the
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theoretical significance of those traits, which is what we need from the data. All this to say, to theorise proficiency there would have to be a non-statistical, but, I submit, a somewhat axiological determination about whether language itself can be best defined by trends and stability or by variation and dynamism. To illustrate this, it may be that a low-income immigrant prefers a nativespeakerist, linear, and finite view of proficiency, which makes her feel empowered
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and accomplished, perhaps based on a perception of her own needs and aspirations. Longitudinal data, variation and non-finality included, could support her view as framed by her values. This leads us to additional philosophical questions that I believe should be given priority in the context of epistemic coordination and consensus building. Are non-formalist theories in SLA getting right the role of variation, use and ethics? And if so, how can we determine the
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degree to which SLA’s formalist views of a target language and the common subjective view of a two-point linear proficiency should either reign or be subdued by variation, use and ethics? Making such a determination will not be a straight-forward process, because this discussion exists at the intersection of values and scientific criteria and the expertise required to navigate such a matter belongs to the discipline of the philosophy of science, rather than to SLA
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proper. Furthermore, such a determination will, no doubt, require greater pluralism, major epistemic coordination efforts, ample back and forth argumentation, as well as openness and willingness to see language simultaneously through opposing lenses as a grounding strategy. Proficiency as a Mental Ability: a Partial Agreement? This is not the end of the story, however, because yet another different kind of proposals offer an
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alternative view of language, where it is more clearly defined as a mental ability, a term that is more associated with neuroscience and psychology than with linguistics, and when it comes to defining language as strictly a mental phenomenon, we could perhaps start with VanPatten (2019), who describes the nature of language as ‘complex, abstract and implicit’. It is almost as though what is contained in books or in conversations is not language, but something that
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is caused by language. This is called internal or I-language in generative linguistics. In his books and podcasts VanPatten commonly pushes the general idea that a learner is only truly proficient when their knowledge of their L2 is implicit. Here, again in the spirit of understanding the context from which theories emerge, I would like to point out that VanPatten’s description seems to be a
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reaction and a tailored response to commonly held notions among language teachers that mastering a language means understanding and memorising its grammar through explicit learning of rules in textbooks. Indeed, no SLA scholar holds such a simplistic notion or altogether dismisses the role of implicit knowledge in language and proficiency. However, there may be some problems with characterising a whole language (L1 or L2) as mostly implicit, because viewed
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from the DP model for which evidence outside of linguistics is very robust, vocabulary or any idiosyncratic knowledge is said to be stored in declarative memory, which is associated with both explicit and implicit knowledge; while grammar and pronunciation or any pattern- or rule-governed knowledge would be mostly stored in procedural memory, the implicit-only kind of memory (Ullman 2020a; 2020c). The assumption that explicit knowledge cannot be used in
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spontaneous speech seems to be challenged by the DP model. Furthermore, as mentioned above, some theories such as usage-based approaches (e.g. Ellis & Wulff, 2020) and Skill Theory (DeKeyser, 2020) assume there are interactions between declarative and procedural knowledge and learning, wherein even lacking a physical connection in the brain, declarative knowledge allows for either attentional aid or interactions and behaviours that may continually assist in the reinforcement
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of procedural memory during development, and by extension in intermediate stages of proficiency. Upon some reflection, these notions that there are interactions between the opportunities that the declarative memory provides for the procedural system, and the opportunities the procedural system provides for participation in communication sound a lot like a dialectical relationship, also named feedback loop (a mutual causal relationship). If this were the case,
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intermediate levels of proficiency would then be characterised by being in an unsettled state and by an ever changing reliance on two memory systems for different linguistic resources across time. As I read and write in my second language for the making of this book, I am keenly aware of these issues, as many expressions I mysteriously use fluently while writing (automatically write with no hesitation) I would probably not be able to use in fluent speech. We should also remember,
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there must be a reason why vocabulary theorists have made a distinction between active and passive vocabulary, where passive vocabulary is always bigger than active vocabulary and where this remains true in both L1 and L2 speakers. All this to say: a theory that defines either language, proficiency, or attainment by focusing exclusively on implicit knowledge seems to run the risk of employing very specific and selective criteria. However, there may be some common ground between
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seemingly clashing theories, because, even though they are not exactly the same, closely related to the concept of implicitness qua proficiency as understood by VanPatten, is the concept of automaticity which all the other theories I just mentioned, as well as the basic language cognition theory by Jan Hulstijn (Hulstijn, 2015b), recognise as a component of later stages of proficiency. Automaticity could not be where shared notions end, however, because
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that would reduce proficiency to something very close to fluency. Yet, beyond this common ground, cognitive theories clash, because what we could call language as a mental representation is theorised, again, under the influence of formalist and functionalist accounts of language. For example, in addition to automaticity, I believe a common-sense element we could include in the description of proficiency could be robustness. We need some way to determine when learners have
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internalised many linguistic resources leading to a rich system, and we could work to frame this matter in an ethical way, trying to avoid the toxic side of native-speakerism. However, the concept of robustness would be limited, as the determination of what constitutes a robust representation would remain elusive in the context of competing theories of language. In other words, rich in what? Which linguistic resources? For usage-based approaches,
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the mental representation of language is proposed to be semiotic, episodic, and exemplar-based, not to mention these approaches introduce socio-cognitive notions such as extended cognition where, just like SCT, cognition is not merely learner-internal (see Ellis, 2019). For processability theory the representation would be conceptual and cumulative; while for the generative approaches the representation would be an internal network of lexical
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units with specified syntactic constraints. One does wonder the degree to which these three conceptions could be reconciled, or whether they should be reconciled at all. Attempts at reconciliation can be quite confusing, as what is understood by the term meaning and whether this concept is individual, social, shared; or to what degree it is fixed, contextual or negotiated is itself its own theoretical conundrum. Formalist approaches assume that grammar as contained in the
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learners’ utterances directly tells us something about the structure of language in their mind. Especially for generativists, the connection between form and mental meaning is assumed to be very strong, at a morpheme-by-morpheme level. Of course, by definition a morpheme needs to carry meaning to earn its name. But what if we could have empty morphemes? We see that all the time, ‘me desayuno’ in Spanish should mean ‘I eat myself for breakfast’ by employing ‘me’ (which roughly
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translates to ‘myself’), but it just means ‘I eat breakfast’, adding or deleting ‘me’ does not change the meaning. We also see it in L2 learners, when they learn chunkified language before they have the ability of manipulating the grammar inside of the chunks. We additionally see it in the evolution of languages, where morphemes or syntactic structures pop-up in strange places with a different meaning (like how ‘going to’ means future tense in all European languages
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except Catalan, where it evolved to mean the past tense); or become irrelevant and disappear (like the English ‘thou’). All this to say: is the bearing of meaning the main feature of all morphemes? Are all morphemes best described as inherently meaningful and, by extension, inherently communicative? What is the fate of formalist theories when morphemes can be empty? Functionalists expand on meaning-centred issues, referring to phenomena like phraseology,
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pragmatics, style and discourse to prove the relationship between utterances and meaning is a more fluid, context and participant-driven phenomenon. Ortega (2019) even emphasises “there can be no perfect correspondence between language and meaning: Meaning-making greatly supersedes the strictly linguistic, and sheer linguistic meaning is inherently polysemous, and ambiguous” (p. 29, citations omitted). One does also wonder, what is the fate of theories that seek a
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deep structure if meaning is indeed fluid? To make matters more complicated, cognitive usage-based approaches do not even assume a clear division between lexis, syntax and pragmatics; nor do they see a clear dichotomy of language vs cognition, or strict borders between environment, society, body and mind. It can be bewildering to notice how these notions, form and meaning, individual and society, variation and trends, can all refer to the same exact subject: language.
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Language: A perfect collection of contradictions To understand how so many different notions of language can coexists in a sort of theoretical chaos, we may refer to Young (2018) who brings up the discussion that when phenomena is complex, particular thought collectives will attend to some aspects and disattend others. In applied linguistics, he and many others highlight a tension between proficiency as robust knowledge vs proficiency
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as effective participation. I essentially agree with this characterisation, but I offer that when it comes to a wholistic view of human language, these processes of attending and disattending are amplified by the fact that many of the attributes of language appear to be puzzlingly contradictory. One can easily get this sense after a panoramic view of the theoretical landscape along with some reflection of one’s own experiences. Somehow, language is able to impress us by how
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dynamic and adaptable it is (there is no shortage of evidence on evolution and variation), while it can also impress us by how remarkably systematic and stable it can be (as Spanish speakers like myself are often reminded when we hold bilingual conversations with Italian, Portuguese, and Catalan speakers). So, language is fluid, while it is also organised. But not only that, it is as infinite and undetermined, as it is also formulaic and predictable. It is as universal,
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being the common law of the human land, as it is diverse, taking a different shape in different places. It is as logical, as it is full of illogical exceptions. As inherently meaningful, as it is inherently arbitrary. It is highly conventionalised, yet plagued by ambiguity. It allows for creativity, while it also may constrain it. It is as much a tool for cognition, as it is a tool for communication. It refines cognition, as cognition helps refine it; and it
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also shapes communication, while communication shapes it back. Yet, at times it feels like an obstacle for both effective cognition and effective communication. It is both an object and an activity, or at least that is how we talk about it. It is form and it is function. It has explicit and implicit facets; somehow these do not connect, yet they interact. It is both external, visible, and self-evident in its facet as a human product that physically exists in written texts,
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utterances and interactions; as it is internal, invisible, and mysterious in its facet as a mental entity. And while being cognitive at the internal and individual level, it is also the best example of social cognition. It is as much nature, because in a very primordial sense it is our human neurobiology that undeniably allows for its existence and its boundaries; as it is nurture because it is built, and is
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permanently restructured by social, cultural, and historical events as well as individual experiences (Table 1)
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The attributes of language are a perfect collection of contradictions, and baring this in mind it should not be difficult to see why certain theories will highlight some of these attributes, while others will highlight the opposite ones. Seen this way, it is also easy to understand how theories of language seem to be able to overlap while also contradicting each other. And following this line of thought, it is easy to see why researchers will be able to produce strong
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evidence for certain claims, while failing to disprove the opposing ones. One of Wittgenstein’s famous quotes, “the limits of my language mean the limits of my world” (Wittgenstein, 2014, 5.6) comes to mind, as it is obviously not the phenomenon of our interest here which is in itself incoherent and contradictory, but the adjectives we have available to us, which we are forced to use in an attempt to think about and describe such a phenomenon. Words are consequential,
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they create all these false contradictions, which in turn give rise to theories, which in turn give rise to research designs. Young (2018) goes as far as to say: “I wish to argue that attending to one aspect of language learning and use while disattending to other aspects that are treated as irrelevant is what principally distinguishes contemporary methods of research in applied linguistics” (p. 33). This problem is not unique to SLA or applied linguistics. Thomas
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(2019) discusses a similar problem of disattending opposite opinions when it comes to formalism and functionalism in linguistics at large: A first approach is to observe what linguist-engineers say to and about linguist-collectors, and vice versa. The corpus is not large. […] For the most part, each approach discounts the other, so that scholars tend to speak, write, and circulate their ideas within their own segregated
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communities. Haspelmath (2000) brings the point to a head in the plaintive title of a review article, ‘Why Can’t We Talk to Each Other?’. (p. 83) To both of these accounts, I would add that all lines of research are quite successful and productive, and one can feel bombarded by these plethora of perspectives, the critical element that seems to be missing is coordination in theoretical development. In fact, in this section I hope to have exposed
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this lack of coordination in more than one way. Beyond particular theories we saw a sub-discipline of L2 assessment operating in a problem-solving basis, out of necessity, in the context of the lack of an SLA consensus that could really inform it. We also saw overconfident formalist approaches to SLA, which result in ethical conundrums from the view of more sociological approaches; and premature psychological concepts like implicit-explicit, which get confronted by
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neurological theories that provide deeper insights into the relationship between neurological systems and their associated mental abilities. I do not mean to imply that SLA trumps L2 assessment, usage trumps structure, or that neurology trumps psychology. It would not be wise to misleadingly declare the supremacy of certain academic communities over others. What I believe instead is that the mood has to shift from finding so called ‘research gaps’, which are normally understood as
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superficial gaps within one thought collective, to finding ways to build theories together, because it is clear that while there should be coherence between all the academic endeavours mentioned above, what we actually see is great epistemic disconnection. Consequently, it would be unfair to expect teachers to have theoretically coherent views, and beyond pedagogy, any decision-maker will have a hard time informing their resolutions based on a rigorous science,
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they would have to decide who to listen to. Summary of propositions in Chapter Three: Theories are not monoliths, but they are modular and thus can clash or overlap in complex ways: 1) through their theories of language and acquisition, 2) through their philosophical foundations, 3) at a problem-space level, or 4) due to the idiosyncrasies of theorists. There are broadly three mainstream theories of language in SLA: generative approaches,
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usage-based approaches, and the lexical-functional grammar framework. Formalist linguistics focus on the structure and organisation of language, while functionalist linguistics focus on the communicative and contextualised nature of language. Formalist and functional approaches differ in nature. They can overlap and be coordinated, but can also be incommensurable. L2 assessment, pedagogy and the
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testing industry unwittingly combine formalist and functionalist concepts into the term proficiency. The term proficiency may introduce problematic value judgements for a scientific pursuit like SLA, which is more centrally interested in explanatory mechanisms, compared to pedagogy and education which focus more on outcomes. Defining a target language by its formal structure leads to scientific and ethical issues, including a view of acquisition where learners development
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is studied based on how deficient their language is compared to a monolingual native-speaker. Social approaches to SLA view linguistic proficiency as non-linear, ever evolving, contextualised and biographical, which introduces an axiological tension as to whether human language should be best defined by its trends or by variation. Getting rid of nativespeakerism as the bar for proficiency is not a straight forward endeavour,
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as the need to extend meaning beyond grammar and to respect and understand another culture’s general communication style, clashes with the idealisation of meaning as ever fluid, contextualised and negotiated. Leading to the question of which native linguistic trends should be accepted as ethical depictions and which should be rejected. There seems to be some agreement across some theories that automaticity is a key feature of
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proficiency/language, but there is disagreement as to the content and structure of language as a mental representation in the brain, which impedes the development of the term robustness. The attributes of language often seem contradictory, which results in some theories producing evidence for certain claims, while failing to falsify opposing claims. All lines of research are quite successful, the main challenge to arrive at a shared,
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coherent and comprehensive theory of language seems to be a lack of coordination in theoretical development. Evidence of this lack of coordination is not just the existence of several theories, but the differing perspectives on language, as commonly approached in L2 assessment, in SLA, as well as through linguistic, psycholinguistic, and neurolinguistic approaches, revealing a noticeable disconnection.
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Decision-making currently depends on who to listen, rather than a rigorous science.
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