Abstract
Comparative and International Education Society Conference
Washington, DC; February 22, 2023
Part of a Panel Discussion: The Elephant in the Room: Unspoken Dimensions of Power in Glocal Language Education from Canada, Palestine, Vietnam and the United States.
with Shelley Wong, Rachel Grant, Thuy Tu and Illam Nasser
Title: Exploring False Consciousness and Ideological Norms through the Deleuzian Critique of the Native Speaker
In light of the limited achievements, failures and outright disasters associated with various revolutionary movements, the role of ideology has been one of the central points of debate within socialist circles. Can Engels (1893) notion of false consciousness explain why the majority of workers in industrial countries have by enlarge failed to rise in rebellion as Marx had predicted? Can this concept explain why socialist movements so often degenerate into oppressive regimes? If false consciousness truly exists, how is it actualized?
False consciousness supposedly occurs when minoritized peoples identify with the ideology of majoritialized groups and structures. Many have developed their own variations on what false consciousness entails (e.g., Adorno, Marcuse, Debord, Fanon, Žižek). However, others (Nickerson, 2022; Bourdieu & Eagleton, 1994; Eyerman, 1981; Englestad, 2016) have noted that there are serious problems with the notion of false consciousness, not the least of which are the charges that it is prone to interpretations that are dogmatic, elitist or authoritarian. Using Gallagher’s (2013) notion of the socially extended mind, Starks (2007) argues that the notion can be saved in ways that retain human agency and avoid mechanistic interpretations. Instead of being in thrall to capitalist ideologies, individual identity has a dialectical relationship with the external world in ways that set up the norms what Gramsci called cultural hegemony.
These norms can be disrupted.
In this paper, I explore the complexity of norms pertaining to language by focusing on how Gilles Deleuze criticized the notion of the “native speaker”, a notion that has, in my opinion, been long been central dogma in structural linguistics. I do this through a description of the challenges associated with a three-month international development research project that involved one hundred English as a Second / Foreign Language (ESL / EFL) teachers from rural and remote areas in two Western Chinese provinces. The teachers worked on improving their communicative teaching practices and English language proficiency while living in Ottawa over the summer. In the project in question, the notion of the “native speaker” was challenged in terms of curricula, content and delivery.
Deleuze & Guattari (1987) argued that current linguistics has misrepresented language as being divorced from the serious consideration of a non-linguistic phenomenon. In other words, linguistics cannot realistically aspire to be a distinct scientifically based discipline that examines a distinct phenomenon given the agency inherent within our sentient use of language. The effort to “scientificize” linguistics has resulted in attempts at constructing a series of hierarchical functions based on what is conceived to be a largely unfettered transparent exchange of information. According to this orientation, the complexities of power relations, ideologies and politics have little bearing on linguistic phenomena. The disciplinary mission of this orientation towards linguistics conceives of language as an abstract and idealized system governed by sets of fixed rules that constitute standards. The supposed existence of the native speaker forms the bedrock for this mission.
I argue that there are parallel problems that lie with the positivistic nature of so-called Classical Marxism as represented by false consciousness and attempts to “scientificize” linguistics through such notions as the native speaker. Deleuzian concepts introduce a more complex orientation towards these phenomena. Two orientations currently fashionable in Applied Linguistics owe much to the Deleuzian critique of structural linguistics: New Materialism and Plurlingualism.
Comparative and International Education Society Conference
Washington, DC; February 22, 2023
Part of a Panel Discussion: The Elephant in the Room: Unspoken Dimensions of Power in Glocal Language Education from Canada, Palestine, Vietnam and the United States.
with Shelley Wong, Rachel Grant, Thuy Tu and Illam Nasser
Title: Exploring False Consciousness and Ideological Norms through the Deleuzian Critique of the Native Speaker
In light of the limited achievements, failures and outright disasters associated with various revolutionary movements, the role of ideology has been one of the central points of debate within socialist circles. Can Engels (1893) notion of false consciousness explain why the majority of workers in industrial countries have by enlarge failed to rise in rebellion as Marx had predicted? Can this concept explain why socialist movements so often degenerate into oppressive regimes? If false consciousness truly exists, how is it actualized?
False consciousness supposedly occurs when minoritized peoples identify with the ideology of majoritialized groups and structures. Many have developed their own variations on what false consciousness entails (e.g., Adorno, Marcuse, Debord, Fanon, Žižek). However, others (Nickerson, 2022; Bourdieu & Eagleton, 1994; Eyerman, 1981; Englestad, 2016) have noted that there are serious problems with the notion of false consciousness, not the least of which are the charges that it is prone to interpretations that are dogmatic, elitist or authoritarian. Using Gallagher’s (2013) notion of the socially extended mind, Starks (2007) argues that the notion can be saved in ways that retain human agency and avoid mechanistic interpretations. Instead of being in thrall to capitalist ideologies, individual identity has a dialectical relationship with the external world in ways that set up the norms what Gramsci called cultural hegemony.
These norms can be disrupted.
In this paper, I explore the complexity of norms pertaining to language by focusing on how Gilles Deleuze criticized the notion of the “native speaker”, a notion that has, in my opinion, been long been central dogma in structural linguistics. I do this through a description of the challenges associated with a three-month international development research project that involved one hundred English as a Second / Foreign Language (ESL / EFL) teachers from rural and remote areas in two Western Chinese provinces. The teachers worked on improving their communicative teaching practices and English language proficiency while living in Ottawa over the summer. In the project in question, the notion of the “native speaker” was challenged in terms of curricula, content and delivery.
Deleuze & Guattari (1987) argued that current linguistics has misrepresented language as being divorced from the serious consideration of a non-linguistic phenomenon. In other words, linguistics cannot realistically aspire to be a distinct scientifically based discipline that examines a distinct phenomenon given the agency inherent within our sentient use of language. The effort to “scientificize” linguistics has resulted in attempts at constructing a series of hierarchical functions based on what is conceived to be a largely unfettered transparent exchange of information. According to this orientation, the complexities of power relations, ideologies and politics have little bearing on linguistic phenomena. The disciplinary mission of this orientation towards linguistics conceives of language as an abstract and idealized system governed by sets of fixed rules that constitute standards. The supposed existence of the native speaker forms the bedrock for this mission.
I argue that there are parallel problems that lie with the positivistic nature of so-called Classical Marxism as represented by false consciousness and attempts to “scientificize” linguistics through such notions as the native speaker. Deleuzian concepts introduce a more complex orientation towards these phenomena. Two orientations currently fashionable in Applied Linguistics owe much to the Deleuzian critique of structural linguistics: New Materialism and Plurlingualism.
exploring_false_consciousness.ppt | |
File Size: | 633 kb |
File Type: | ppt |
critical_traditions_and_second_language__2_.docx | |
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File Type: | docx |