[lg policy] Call for Chapters: Linguistics for Intercultural Education in Language Learning and Teaching

Fri Nov 6 15:19:57 UTC 2009

  Call for Chapters: Linguistics for Intercultural Education in Language
Learning and Teaching

Call for Chapters (deadline for abstracts: 1st March 2010)
Linguistics for intercultural education in language learning and teaching

Editors:
Fred Dervin
- Adjunct Professor in Sociology (University of Joensuu Finland)
- Adjunct Professor in Language and Intercultural Education
(University of Turku Finland)
Anthony J. Liddicoat
- Professor of Applied Linguistics (University of South Australia)

According to Daniel Coste (1989), the field of language education consists
of a vast array of direct and indirect discourses on language teaching and
learning as held by various actors (teachers, researchers, publishers,
scientific and professional associations...). As such, the field is complex
and multifaceted. This volume is interested in one aspect of language
learning and teaching, intercultural education, and the role that
linguistics can play in its design and implementation. The relationship
between linguistics and language education has varied over time and most
recently, linguistics has played a more reduced role in developing theory
and practice in language education, especially where views of the nature of
language teaching and learning have moved beyond simple code based views.
This means that while fields such as anthropology, sociology, psychology
and philosophy have had a clear influence on theory, practices and research
directions for intercultural education, there have been relatively few
attempts at linking linguistics and intercultural education.

In language education, the learner has now become a real “subject” - a
subject who is at the centre of learning and teaching; a subject who is
taught to be responsible for his/her learning; a subject who interacts; a
subject who is required to be both performer and analyser of language in
use. The emergence of an intercultural perspective in language education
has had a significant role to play in allowing these changes. Many
researchers such as Abdallah-Pretceille, Byram, Kramsch, Zarate, etc., have
called for systematic integration of work on intercultural communication
and the development of intercultural capabilities in language classrooms.
Though their approaches and theoretical backgrounds often differ, their
main message seems to be the same: language educationalists need to move
away from an educational approach which consists in building up facts about
a "target culture," comparing "cultures" and analysing the cultural
routines and meanings of a particular group of people and overemphasizes
national/ethnic identities and cultural differences in an objectivist
perspective. These scholars seem to agree that "culturalism" (or the use of
culture in an uncritical and systematic way to explain intercultural
encounters) tends to give a very objectivist-differentialist vision of
"cultures"; it also corresponds to "analytical stereotyping" (Sarangi) and
ignores the postmodern understanding that identities are multiple and
co-constructed - even within the self. This is why methodologies which
consist of "soft" content analysis, which merely paraphrase what the Other
or the Self have to say to serve as evidence of "culture," need to be
questioned.

In attempting to move intercultural language education beyond superficial
ways of understanding the intercultural, methods such as
participant-observation, self-reflexive essays, role-plays, simulations,
and even "stays abroad" have been used for allowing learners to develop
what most authors call "intercultural competence" (Byram, 2008). Such
activities are developed as opportunities for students to develop reflexive
and critical skills, yet how the students build up these skills through
such activities is often less well explored.

One of the main problems facing intercultural education is our heavy
reliance on interpreting and understanding discourses and actions.
Discourses are unstable and do not always correspond to actions. These
problems call for different ways of understanding and analysing learners'
relations to interculturality and their discourses on the self, the "same"
and the other. The analysis of language can allow people to examine how
they construct/co-construct themselves and others through the discourses
they use and encounter. Faced with unstable and contradictory discourses
and actions, learners need the resources to analyse both their construction
and their (in)consistency. We believe that linguistics has a role in
developing more sophisticated understandings of the nature of the
intercultural in language education.

One of the reasons that linguistics has been seen as having little
relevance to interculturally oriented language education is that it has
often been perceived as being concerned with formal descriptions of
autonomous linguistics systems, however, linguistics, just like language
education, has evolved massively since the 1970s. In a very similar vein to
other human sciences, new approaches in linguistics have emerged which give
greater emphasis to language in use, to the culturally embedded nature of
language, to the role of context, to interaction, and to analysing the ways
discourses are (co)created and negotiated between interlocutors.

Some of the linguistic approaches that may serve as tools for understanding
and researching intercultural language learning and teaching include, but
are not limited to:
- Conversation analysis
- Critical discourse analysis
- Dialogism
- Discourse analysis
- Ethnography of communication
- Interactional sociolinguistics
- Membership categorization analysis
- Positioning theory
- Pragmatics
- Reconstruction method
- Rhetoric
- Semantics
- Semiotics
- Theories of enunciation
- Theory of pre-discourse.

The editors of this volume believe strongly that linguistics has a lot to
offer to both language and intercultural educationalists and researchers.
This volume aims to present a range of investigations of intercultural
language teaching and learning which demonstrate how linguistics can
contribute to understanding the field. Focusing on any field of language
education (primary, secondary, higher education, lifelong learning, adult
education...), the contributors will examine how teachers and researchers
use linguistics to promote and research interculturality in language
education.

Possible topics to be covered include the role and use of linguistics in:
- language and intercultural education in the classroom;
- in computer-mediated language learning and teaching;
- in informal language learning contexts;
- in teacher education (pre-service or in-service);
- in preparation for study abroad;
- in assessing intercultural capabilities;
- in combination with other disciplinary approaches to develop
interdisciplinary perspectives on intercultural language education.

Call for Papers: November 2009
Deadline for submitting proposals: 1st March 2010
Decisions: 15th April 2010
Chapters to be handed in by 15th September 2010

Potential authors are invited to submit a 300-word proposal (including a
few lines about the author(s)) in English to both editors by 1st March 2010
(frederutu.fi & Tony.Liddicoatunisa.edu.au). The proposals should clearly
explain the theoretical framework and concerns of the proposed chapter, and
include a short description of a corpus (where applicable). A basic
bibliography may also be added. Authors of accepted proposals will be
notified by 15th April 2010. Full chapters are expected to be submitted by
15th September 2010. The book is scheduled to be published in autumn 2011
by an international publisher. All submitted chapters will be reviewed on a
blind review basis.

-- http://linguistlist.org/issues/20/20-3776.html
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