Generative Linguistics and Translingualism

It seems to me that there are a few misconceptions of generative linguistics held by some second language studies or translingualist scholars. These misconceptions are the ones that I personally know of through conversations with friends who work in those fields. They are most likely NOT representative of the fields, but to the extent that these views exist, it might still be worthwhile to point them out. My personal belief is that generative linguistics, second language studies, and translingualism are fundamentally compatible. Most "conflicting views" are in fact due to different understandings of certain terms, different aspects of language they aim to study, and different ultimate goals for their research agendas.

The first misconception is that generative linguistics is normative and prescriptive in nature. This can't be farther from the truth. If one interprets "normative" as having to do with obligation, they will be hard pressed to find any claims of such nature in the linguistic literature. When a linguist says, for example, that it should be ungrammatical to extract a wh-word out of one of two conjuncts in Limonese Creole, the word should only means that, based on what we already know about how language works, there's a high probability that native speakers of Limonese Creole will never form a wh-question sentence in that way. It is essentially a statement of prediction, common in all sciences. That kind of linguistic statement is similar to saying, in physics for instance, that if the temperature of water reaches 100 degrees at one atmosphere of pressure, it should boil.

Compare that with disciplines that do deal with normative issues, such as legal or political philosophy. Here, a statement such as "no citizen of a democratic community should be denied voting rights" is plainly a moral statement, not a prediction, as there have been multiple cases throughout history where certain groups of people were--and still are--in fact denied such rights.

Also, notice that whether a discipline is normative or descriptive doesn't depend on how many factors are typically considered in a research study in that field. Instead, it depends on whether the goal of the study is to describe what really happens / exists (even at an abstract level) or to argue what is morally desirable. Many theories in generative syntax, for example, can sometimes be quite abstract in the sense that many social, cultural, or even processing factors are not taken into account, but that does not mean the goal of this field is not to discover what rules exist in the human mind. This is the same with many laws in physics that, in their formulations, don't take into account certain factors, such as friction. Yet, no one would claim that physics is a normative discipline.

Related to the first misconception, a second one is that everything linguists call "ungrammatical" is a mere violation of some socially-constructed norm or convention of the language. This type of thinking may lead to the conclusion that there is nothing in a language, from spelling to syntactic structure, that can't be negotiated. That said, my impression is that scholars with this view do tend to focus their research only on linguistic patterns that are, for the most part, social conventions. It just so happens that those non-negotiable (presumably biologically-based) linguistic phenomena (e.g., syntactic operations based on hierarchical relations) tend to fall outside those scholars' radar, and the reason for that is probably because no L2 students ever produce the kind of linguistic output that will bring those scholars' attention to such phenomena (e.g., using an entirely linearly-based rule to form a wh-question in English). Therefore, I have little to say on this point.

A third misconception is that the terms native and non-native (and by extension, L1 and L2) used by linguists are now outdated and should be discarded by all researchers of language. These terms, as holders of this view would claim, are hard to define and therefore extremely problematic. Here, one should be careful and ask: "For what purposes are these terms problematic?" In my own field, the notions of native and non-native are commonly accepted criteria for sources of linguistic data. In general, one would not ask someone who, say, started to learn Russian in her late 50's to judge the grammaticality of some Russian sentence, unless the goal of the study is to see whether L2 learners have the same grammaticality judgement as L1 speakers in certain areas of grammar. But even in the latter case, a distinction between L1 and L2 is explicitly assumed.

Some scholars may deny that such a distinction really exists and believe that, given enough time and exposure, all late learners of a language will achieve native proficiency. (And if they don't, it's simply because there hasn't been enough exposure.) I would say that such a denial should be subjected to empirical investigations (or rigorous logical reasoning if no tools for empirical investigations are available) just like all claims in all scientific fields should be. The empirical basis for assuming there is a distinction between L1 and L2 can be easily found in SLA literature, and as far as methodology is concerned, I see no reason to abandon such an assumption, at least in my own field. Of course, it may turn out in the future that all differences observed thus far between so-called L1 and L2 speakers are actually reducible to some environmental effect (e.g., lack of exposure), and that there's nothing qualitatively different between the two groups. Before that day comes (if it ever does), the terms native and non-native will remain useful in generative linguistics, if for no other reason than to make sure the data we gather truly reflect what we aim to discover.

(Incidentally, it is sometimes claimed that the terms are problematic and should be discarded because there exist fuzzy cases where a person achieves native-like proficiency in a language that is not their L1 according to the traditional definition, whatever it may be. To that, I'd say most disciplines have fuzzy cases to which a certain term may not be entirely applicable, but people keep using the term because it is useful in some other cases. It seems obvious to me that this is true of linguistics as well.)

Now, it should be emphasized that just because these terms are useful in one field does not mean it is also useful in other fields, such as language education. One can certainly argue that for educational purposes, imposing labels such as L1 and L2 on students may actually do more harm than good. I will leave this matter to the experts on this site.

Like I said at the beginning, this post is intended to clarify some of the misconceptions I have seen, and they may not be representative of the general views of those in the second language studies and translingualism communities. Hopefully it will provide some food for thought nonetheless.

Week 3 (II) Some thoughts about distinctions between Native and nonnative; ESL and EFL

          In the first two weeks, my graduate course covered the debates in relation to the distinctions between NS, NNS, ESL, EFL. We read the following papers: Edwards (2014), Edwards & Laporte (2015), Canagarajah (2006, 2007), Higgins (2003), Nayar Bhaskaran (1997). Despite Nayar Bhaskaran (1997), all the others were prone to take the position that distinctions between NS/NNES, NS/ESL, and ESL/EFL are problematic. However, conflating the distinctions may also be problematic too.
          Edwards (2014), according to a corpus-based study, found no clear divides of progressive usages between ESL (i.e. Indian English & Singapore English) and EFL (Dutch English). In the follow-up research, Edwards and Laporte (2015) found that the most institutionalized English varieties (i.e. Singapore English, India English) had more similar usage of preposition "into" to that of native speakers than the least institutionalized varieties (i.e. Hong Kong English and Dutch English). The finding reveals that some outer circle varieties (Hong Kong English) are less prototypical ESL, and some expanding circle varieties (Dutch English) are less prototypical EFL, suggesting that NES, ESL, and EFL should be treated as a continuum rather than a strict divide. Higgins (2003) investigated NS-NNS dichotomy according to speakers' sense of "ownership." She found both groups of speakers showed variation in degrees of ownership, though NS speakers showed more sense of ownership of English, it was not significant.
          I agree that if taking the macro perspective, countries in the same outer or expanding circle can be exonormative or endonormative. Moreover, it's even possible to have NES, ESL, and EFL speakers living in the same country or discourse community, e.g. Zimbabwe, South Africa or Taiwan (some rich family send their kids to bilingual schools where afford abundant exposure of the target language for complete English acquisition; some may have resources remaining English exposure similar to ESL contexts, but some may have little exposure of English and can only learn it from schools like EFL learners.) Thus, macro divisions based on geographical and historical factors are definitely problematic. If taking the perspective of SLA, I think micro perspective based on individuals' language acquisition completeness and linguistic competence may be more valid to distinguish NS from NNS, and in that sense, NS and NNS are different due to distinct language acquisition processes, but ESL and EFL  are not distinct from each other because English are not the L1 for both group of people.

Can I not be labeled? 

          Interestingly, Canagarajah broke the shackles of SLA and regarded Lingua Franca Englishes as "a kind of language" which has negotiable fluid norms, and is socio-contextual oriented. Canagarajah (2006, 2007) argued that Lingua Franca English (LFE) should not be compared with Metropolitan Englishes or English from SLA perspective. Lingua Franca English is consisted of varieties of Englishes with multiple norms. The dominant English variety has been shaped and is continually being shaped  by lingua franca Englishes used in the multilingual contexts. Therefore, instead of pursuing the "sanitized" linguistic competence, multilingual speakers should be equipped with "multilingual competence," such as language awareness making instantaneous inferences about the norms and conventions , strategic competence to negotiate meaning, and pragmatic competence to adopt communicative conventions. Standard English is treated as one of the varieties of English. No one is LFE native speakers, but everyone has equal terms to use it to negotiate meanings. Thus, every speaker can claim ownership of LFE and manifest agency in his/her own right. Taking this translingual perspective, there is no need to distinguish NS/NNS, ESL/EFL and NS/ESL/EFL. I have to say WOOOOW! this is a brilliant view of language.
          However, I do have one concern. LFE is a contact language for communication purposes, but English in Taiwan is a subject matter taught in classrooms for learning purposes. Most Taiwanese EFL learners do not acquire English competence before critical period, therefore, make different errors from native speakers. That means, in learning contexts (not communication contexts), EFL learners need different instruction, assessment, and practice from NES. If the distinctions between NS and NNS are conflated treating NS and NNS the same, wouldn't it be problematic????

REFERENCES:
Canagarajah, S. (2006). The place of world Englishes in composition: Pluralization 
          continued. College Composition and Communication, 57 (4), 586-619
Canagarajah, S.. (2007). Lingua Franca English, Multilingual communities, and 
          language acquisition. The Modern Language Journal, 91, Focus Issue: Second
          Language Acquisition Reconceptualized? The Impact of Firth and Wagner (1997)
          (2007), 923-939.
Edwards, A. (2014). The progressive aspects in the Netherlands and ESL/EFL
          continuum. World Englishes, 33 (2), 173-194.
Edwards, A. & Laporte, S. (2015). Outer and expanding circle Englishes. English
          World-Wide 36 (2), 135-169.
Higgins, C. (2003). "Ownership" of English in the outer circle: An alternative to the 
         NS-NNS dichotomy. TESOL Quarterly, 37 (4), 615-644.
Nayar Bhaskaran, P. (1997). ESL/EFL dichotomy today: Language politics or
         pragmatics? TESOL Quarterly, 31 (1) 9-37.

Week 3 (I) Descriptive details -- cognitive processes in L1 and L2

          In this week, my teaching foci were teaching "descriptive details". Since autobiography writing is a kind of narrative or descriptive writing, descriptive details allows readers to create mental images to "see," "feel," "experience" what the writers undergone.
          To create descriptive details in writing, I taught students to use: 1) modifiers, including adjectives and adverbs, 2) vivid words, including vivid verbs and nouns, 3) sensory details, including words relating to smell, taste, sight, feeling, and sound, 4) similes and metaphors,  5) conversations, and 6) the five journalistic "W"s.
          After my lecture, I asked my students to do some exercise by giving them some sentence skeletons as follows:
1. When she buys clothes, she is like ___________________
2. Kobe Bryant is as tall as _____________
3. My best friend sings like _______________
4. She is as quiet as _____________
I encouraged the students to apply the above 5 strategies and use their L1 to revise and complete the sentences by providing my answer of sentence 1 as an example:

"When she buys clothes, she is like______" => "End of season sales have successfully launched shopping insanity, and crazy shoppers stormed into shops clambering over each other to snap up deals. My sister armed with coupons to buy clothes, and she got into the frantic crowds like a starving wolf searching for prey."
          I also asked students to discuss their completed sentences with their peers in whatever language they felt comfortable with in order to brainstorm more ideas for revision. Afterwords, I asked two students to share their revised sentences. The two students' sentences are as follow:
          Student A: My best friend sings like a chirping golden oriole.
          Student B: When my mom was in an ecstasy of shopping, she is like an eager hunter.

[My observation and reflection]:
          1. Cooped thoughts. When students were doing the exercise, it seemed to be difficult for them to think out of the cliched box from making corny sentences, such as "Kobe Bryant is as tall as a tree" or "My friend sings like a bird." Even though when I asked them to think in Chinese, most of them were still confined by the English skeleton sentences or cooped up in the syntactic stratum of English. The two  students' sentences account for the cognitive constraint. More evidence was observed. I asked one student to complete sentence 4. Because she showed embarrassment and stuttered, I suggested her using Chinese to help her thought mapping. She murmured in Mandarin, "She is as quiet as....." "She is very quiet like a...." Then eventually, she came up with a sentence "She is so quiet like a mute person." She felt a bit frustrated that she was not able to make a satisfied and "splendid" sentence.
         It looks like once the L2 syntax is primed and when L2 outputs are preset as a pursuing goal, even though one is allowed to use his/her L1, L2 still predominates one's working memory and inhibits L1 process. Lack of L2 linguistic resources seems to be one of the major reasons causing thought constraints. Although some vocabulary may emerge automatically from L1 to compensate L2 defects, muse of thoughts doesn't flow in automatically when switching to L1. One student said that her brain was totally blank in English, but when switched to Chinese it was slowly awaken, yet very slowly.

• Maybe next time, I can create a L1 context first by writing sentence skeletons in Chinese and asking students to compose in Chinese. Then ask them to transfer the emerged ideas into English. I hypothesize that they can be more creative and free-thought in their L1. 
• Shuttling between L1 and L2 though sounds like an automatic reaction, L1 doesn't transfer to compensate L2 deficit automatically. It looks to me that L1 and L2 codes, though are integrated in one repertoire, they receive different priming from the contexts. When the context of a task requires L2, L1 is automatically inhibited, which demands extra efforts to be retrieved. That means, shuttling between L1 and L2 doesn't take place easily or automatically but demands time for shuttling, and "certain threshold level of" training and practice. However, why the contextual priming activates L1 L2 differently if they are integrated together? Would it suggest that L1 and L2 are partially separated into different linguistic systems but have some parts overlap?? 

Cook (2012) http://www.viviancook.uk/Writings/Papers/KeyIssues.htm

         

Week 2- Jotting down eventful life episodes and find key points to dig in

1. To encourage my students to generalize their experience into points or opinions, I asked students to recall their English learning experience and jot down the episodes that are most impressive, memorable, or strike them.
2. Sorting out the episodes into categories and provide meaningful themes to these categories.
3. Then, I asked them to break into discussion group of 2 or 3 to share their stories and episodic themes. I allowed them to use English, Mandarin, mixed codes, or whatever languages that they felt comfortable to describe their experience and to share their insights.
4. I asked peers to provide feedback to the shared stories and themes in order to provide outsiders' perspectives which can shape the original themes and points to be made.
5. I intentionally created a multilingual space for students where they could focus more on idea generation and brainstorming rather than focusing on lexical choices for English expression. It is evident that students were empowered and liberated by translanguaging. Even though all the students mainly used English to share and discuss, they seemed to be more relaxed, expressive, creative and reflective in this multilingual "safe space". Moreover, because of the "safe" feeling that they won't be judged by their English, they seemed to be more tolerant of errors made by themselves and their peers and were more willing to negotiate meanings in their Englishes.
6. After discussion, I asked two students to share their stories and insights derived from the episodic stories and peer interactions. I provided feedback to their sharing afterwards. The purpose was to set them as examples to demonstrate how experience can be generalized into opinions.
7. Finally, I asked students to research the episodic themes that they came up with during the above processes in order to obtain more references or professional information, which can help them dig the themes deeper and help them theorize their opinions.

My observation:
The two students shared their stories and the emerged points. Yet, one happened to have similar experience to the the autobiography of Prof. Canagarajah which was used to serve as the writing sample in this class. So, he adopted Prof. Canagarajah's points to account for language power and social unfair stratifications that caused by languages.
The other student shared her personal English writing experience that she adopted Chinese writing style in her English writing, and then how she "realized" that she had to follow English writing conventions. The point that she made was vague. Something was emerging, but she was not able to make it substantial yet.
I still concern about how I can lead students to generalize and elicit insightful points from their experience. I think this is one of the important abilities that autobiography writing can help students to develop.

Week 1- How to conceptualize daily life experience??

This is my first time to try translingual approach to teach academic writing. Honestly speaking, I am a bit anxious because I used to be a “prescriptive” writing teacher who teaches writing conventions, rules, forms and trains students to conform. It would be hard for me to "intentionally ignore” students’ “errors” that deviate from the conventions of English academic writing. It would be quite odd for me to teach them rules on the one hand, but encourage them to break the rules on the other. It would also be challenging for students to not to focus on rules and grades but contexts, purposes, rhetorical negotiations, and audience. These are the concepts that are too abstract and far-fetched to them.

Past experience shapes
who we are and what we are

In the first week, I briefly provided a course orientation explaining my curriculum and syllabus. Then I asked my students to introduce themselves and share their English learning experience. Almost all the students started their introduction with similar ideas that their English learning experience is nothing special, that learning English requires persistent efforts and practice. I was quite worried because the first writing project is an autobiography in which students need to narrate/describe their English learning experience and generate unique insights from the experience. All the theories emerge from human’s experience; however, theorizing experience is a sophisticated mental work involving higher-order thinking and metacognitive knowledge. I was pondering how I can teach students elicit insights from everyday experience.