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1 Language, linguistics, and education

Introduction

Language is central to education; linguistics is the discipline devoted to the study of language. But the study of language within the educational process takes us far beyond linguistics alone, as the discipline is currently conceived. This book outlines some of the ways in which language interacts with human behaviour, and the ways in which that interaction affects education. The purpose of this book is (1) to describe a field of human enquiry which has only fairly recently been studied in any detail, and (2) to exemplify an approach to educational linguistics which reflects the many disciplines beyond linguistics that must inform our attempts to understand language in social use. Inevitably, therefore, I shall be drawing upon knowledge from recent research and simultaneously describing a current research programme – the process of trying to understand language in education. In this chapter most of my specific examples relate to British education, but the British educational context is shared by many other countries, and as later chapters show, I hope, the principles described below are relevant to most education systems.

We are only just beginning to assimilate recent developments in linguistic understanding to the varying practices of different groups of human beings, and language within the educational process is still a relatively unformed field of study. Indeed, when I was appointed to the Chair of Education at Southampton, in 1984, it was the first appointment of a linguist to such a chair in Britain. Others had been appointed to chairs concerned with the direct teaching of particular languages, but this was the first time that a chair had been set up to relate to the general field of language and linguistics in education. When I gave my inaugural lecture, delivered primarily to a non-specialist audience, I entitled it Is language education? or Is education language? Of course, neither ‘language’ nor ‘education’ is as limited as this formulation implies – but there is still a sense in which, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, education is conceived of as the accumulation by individuals of discourses relating to different areas of activity, communicating with groups of people with shared interests: in science, in sport, in culture, in technologies. And there is a further sense in which language can be seen as a never-ending process of repertoire extension (and repertoire reduction), in which the learning process cannot be separated from our constantly changing linguistic knowledge and linguistic practice. Understanding how these processes interact is exciting and challenging; but it is also immensely demanding, for if our aim is to understand human beings using language, we are addressing at once the most complex and the most creative aspects of human behaviour. We need to be not just rigorous scientists if we are to comprehend language as fully as possible; we need to be poets and mystics as well.

Academic studies and educational practice

‘Language’ and ‘Education’ share two disadvantages that many other areas of study avoid: they are both too familiar. We all use language, and many of us have strong views about it; we have all been educated, and we all have strong views about that. Expertise confronts experience, and experts have a difficult task defending their own expertise against others’ perceived experience.

Yet language is full of puzzles that experience alone cannot solve, and one of the greatest of these is the exact relationship between speech, writing, and the whole educational process. For a start, language operates on many levels and with many functions simultaneously, so that the relationship is always complex. Consider as an example a highly formalized educational event, such as the inaugural lecture referred to above. The structure of an inaugural lecture (at which customarily new professors deliver a public introduction to their field to an audience of colleagues, students, and outsiders) seems to be a carefully erected memorial to the relationship between education and language. What, after all, could be more of a memorial to language than a lecture: a text of dead words written to be spoken as if living? And what could be more of a memorial to education than a ritual recitation by an elderly person in formal dress intoned to a silent gathering of fellow mourners? Typically, the inauguration of a new professor is celebrated in a rite of words; typically too for education, some would cynically say, they are words that cannot be interrupted or debated. Yet no one who has experienced education in any form will doubt the major role that language plays in the practice of educational institutions. The desirability of this can be disputed, but we must concede the fact.

The inaugural lecture is partly a means of communication, to a very diverse audience, but it is also a formal rite, a symbolic event in academic life, and perhaps in the social life of the community outside the university. It is a means of communicating knowledge, but it is a means also of establishing solidarity, across academic departments, between the university and the outside world, between staff and students. It may even be a means of challenging ideas, by asking questions rather than providing answers, by asking the audience to rethink long-standing assumptions – and it may also be a demonstration of particular procedures, or particular ways of thinking. It is not just a physical event and a mental event, but an emotional one, and even sometimes a spiritual event. But it can only demonstrate these qualities because of the medium of language: however technical the content, however good the visuals, however spirited the delivery, it is crucially a linguistic event.

And linguistic events constantly surprise us. Here is an example which is outside the major preoccupations of linguistics. None the less, Figure 1.1 shows a text that starkly illustrates some of our problems.

This is a written text, but its message is puzzling and opaque. It is a genuine piece of evidence, the notes of one of my previous MA students (on the role of language in teacher education, as it happens) for her essay answer to an examination question (quoted with her permission). But what kind of language is this itself? How does a student arrive at such an independent and idiosyncratic piece of literacy? What is the relationship between this and the normal language (and the normal education) she has received? Discussion with the student revealed that she associates the images she has sketched with concepts to be used in the essay, but the associations are unique to herself, depending on contingent events in her own personal history. Yet this private ‘language’ illustrates one aspect of normal language which is little discussed: the ways in which the concepts represented in language possess rich associations that are purely personal to individuals. Lurking behind the shared code of ‘normal’ language lies a second code of personal associations, like those illustrated here, only partially perceived even by the writers or speakers themselves. The uniqueness of our individual experience colours the uniqueness of our individual understanding. Yet the code used to communicate these is shared.

Much has been written on the relationships between language and learning, but this example should remind us that for every generalization we attempt to make in our textbooks and our teaching, there will be thousands of individuals using language for their own purposes, with their own devices and methods, confounding our general and abstract pronouncements with their own precise and concrete instances. As in any exploration centred on human beings, the fact of our individual self-consciousness destabilizes the response and confuses the questioner. Each unexpected example makes us ask whether we have interpreted our own practice accurately or completely, and each time we do that our certainty is undermined. Certainty becomes the enemy of truth.

The risks that are being hinted at here can be more explicitly illustrated by considering the relationship between any descriptive discipline and a social and institutionalized practice such as education. Education is specifically concerned with intervention by one part of society in the lives of others. Such intervention is meant to be positive rather than negative, and safeguards of various kinds are provided to ensure that unsatisfactory intervention is avoided. But the mechanisms for intervening and the mechanisms for safeguarding are themselves part of the process of education, and have to be taken into account when the relationship between research and practice is examined.

As a field of study, ‘education’ tries to improve the quality of education provision in two related ways. First, the attempt to understand processes of education, in general and in particular, is needed both as part of our need to understand our environment and in order to inform discussion of educational policy. When it works successfully, this activity should lead – though often indirectly and after a long time lag – to more sensitive policy making at local and national levels, and to improved methods of teaching particular areas of the curriculum. Second, the attempt to develop appropriate teaching procedures, through experimentation with new materials and techniques and arising out of dissatisfaction with the old ones, leads simultaneously to criticism of current models of learning and teaching and to greater support for the teaching profession in its task within the educational system. Thus development, enquiry, improvement, and critique operate simultaneously and interactively.

Figure 1.1: MA student’s notes (reproduced with permission)

This is of course an idealized picture, though it is difficult to see how we can afford to be content with much less. And, indeed, it does seem to be a realizable ideal, as long as researchers, teachers, advisers, materials writers and other practitioners can interchange roles, collaborate, and have effective administrative support for such close relationships. These are practical needs, but they should not obscure the epistemological difficulties also associated with achievement of such integration.