Discourse Analysis and Foreign Language Teacher Education1
MAKING A CASE FOR DISCOURSE ANALYSIS IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE TEACHER EDUCATION
The concept of heteroglossia is extremely interesting to me. I recently gave a paper in which I discussed Ingeborg Bachmann’s Malina and asserted that the main character had basically two voices: one masculine, one feminine. I found it fascinating after reading the chapter in Fowler [1996] to think about the possibility of not merely two, but perhaps multiple voices. The notion of voice has been a topic of particular importance in feminist criticism, because women have debated how to find a voice in which to write that is not merely a reproduction of the “master discourse”. Yet if we consider voice to be heteroglossic, then it makes little sense to think of a master discourse, which would be, by virtue of definition, singular. (Fran, reaction journal)
Do we really need another term to describe something that already has a name?...the general confusion within the field of linguistics...has arisen due to the fact that the number of linguistic terms has increased in the past few decades to a ridiculous number. (Sam, reaction journal)
The authors of these two lead quotes are both student-teachers of a foreign language (FL), who participated in the same graduate seminar on discourse analysis (DA); yet, as is evident, they have radically different responses to learning about the notion of heteroglossia (Bakhtin, 1981) in their seminar. The purpose here is to investigate the influence of exposure to expertise in DA on a particular group of graduate student FL teachers at a public university in the United States. The study focuses on aspects of these teachers’ socio-cultural histories and socio-institutional contexts and the meanings that these have for their responses to exposure to DA.
Definitions of discourse (and DA) range widely from language-focused, structurally-oriented understandings to context-focused, socially-oriented ones. For example, Richards, Platt, and Weber (1985, p. 84) define discourse as “larger units of language such as paragraphs, conversations, and interviews”, while McHoul and Luke (1989, p. 324) propose multiple discourses and see them as “socio-historically specific systems of knowledge and thought.” The stance adopted here is that of educational linguist James Gee who makes the following distinction between “little d” discourse and “big D” Discourse:
I will reserve the word ‘discourse’ with a little “d,” to mean language-in-use or stretches of language (like conversation or stories). “Big D” Discourses are always language plus “other stuff.” ... To “pull off” being an “X” doing “Y” (e.g. a Los Angeles Latino street gang member warning another gang member off his territory, or a laboratory physicist convincing colleagues that a particular graph supports her ideas...) it is not enough to get just the words “right,” though that is crucial. It is necessary, as well, to get one’s body, clothes, gestures, actions, interactions, ways with things, symbols, tools, technologies (be they guns or graphs), and values, attitudes, beliefs, and emotions “right,” as well, and all at the “right” places and times (Gee, 1999, pp. 17 and 7).
According to this view of discourse, learning a FL requires more than the mastery of mere grammatical rules; instead it also necessitates an awareness of numerous discourse conventions, i.e. how to ‘pull off being an X doing Y’, and an ability to put these conventions into action in the right places at the right times with the right kinds of people. In the field of German as a Foreign Language, my particular area of expertise, Kotthoff (1989, p. 448) notes that such socio-cultural knowledge is rarely integrated into the classroom (see also Hufeisen, 2002, pp. 20-22). Similarly, Albert (1995) argues that there is an urgent need for the results of discourse analysis to inform German-language teaching, particularly in the area of intercultural communication (see also Byrnes, 2001, p. 518). In fact, German applied linguists have noted often that a lack of awareness of discourse conventions (e.g., culture-specific conversational styles) on the part of FL users have resulted in (a) ‘helpless frustration’ in the course of intercultural communication (Kotthoff, 1989, p. 449); (b) the perception that particular groups of FL speakers are rude or aggressive by nature (House & Kasper, 1981, p. 158); and (c) the assignment of value judgements to speakers of particular groups that result in destructive cultural stereotypes (Byrnes, 1986, p. 191; see also House 1996; 2000; Johnstone, 2002, p. 6). Belz (2003), for example, details the ways in which an under-appreciation of culture-specific conversational discourse conventions led to the complete alienation of one participant in a German-American telecollaborative partnership that was designed to foster inter-cultural understanding.
Instructed FL learners, however, cannot be expected to execute an awareness and/or mastery of FL discourse conventions if they have not been educated to do so and this, in turn, requires an understanding of language-as-discourse in teacher education programs. McCarthy and Carter (1994, p. 201) describe such a realization in the following way: “The moment one starts to think of language as discourse, the entire landscape changes, usually, forever.”
I examine whether or not and in what ways the landscape of FL learning and teaching (FLL&T)2 changed for a particular group of FL student-teachers when they were exposed to expertise in DA during their professional education as teacher-researchers. The following questions are addressed: (a) how and on what level(s) do the teachers in this study respond to exposure to expertise in DA with respect to FLL&T?, and (b) what aspects of their socio-cultural histories and their socio-institutional contexts influenced the types of responses that they had?
1 Earlier versions were presented at the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) in Dallas, Texas, in November, 1999 and at the Modern Language Association (MLA) in Chicago, Illinois, in December, 1999. I would like to express my thanks and gratitude to Karen E. Johnson for her help in the conceptualization of the ACTFL version and for her professional and personal support in general.
2 Although I have focused on the foreign language environment, many of the arguments could apply equally well to the second language environment.
