CRITICAL APPLIED LINGUISTICS A PATH TO APPROACH SOCIETY AS CRITICAL EDUCATORS

 

By

Leidy Marcela Chacón Vargas

 

We as teachers and researchers in the EFL area are called to observe, analyze, criticize, reflect, transform; that is to say problematize what happens in our contexts and teaching practices. Pennycook, 1990, says:

 

we need to not only understand ourselves as intellectuals situated in very particular social, cultural and historical locations, but also to understand that the knowledge we produce is always interested. If we are concerned about the manifold and manifest inequities of the societies and the world we live in, then I believe we must start to take up moral and political projects to change those circumstances. This requires that we cease to operate with modes of intellectual inquiry that are asocial, apolitical or ahistorical’ (p. 25).

 From this previous assertion, it is possible to state that, we need to move from our comfortable zone of observers and the one of critical teachers researchers. It means, start looking at the situations that generates inequality, injustice, isolation, power, among real contexts and people.  It is a hard work that implies the transformation of a situation in the society that accounts for change in the way people act, or interact with others.  Here there is a postmodern view of research through Critical Applied Linguistics.  That vision implies a bidirectional or alternative investigation where the researcher becomes a catalyst of people’s voices and experiences which help them be free. As part of this reflection Critical Applied Linguistics appears as the path through which we can approach critical research. At this point, that term “critical” need to be understood not as the mechanical or instrumental activities of sitting down and think or assuming a position in favor or against any situation. Being critical goes beyond, and stresses on actions, innovations and transformations. It is explained as the dimension AL that “demands a restive problematisation of the givens of applied linguistics, and presents a way of doing applied linguistics that seeks to connect it to questions of gender, class, sexuality, race, ethnicity, culture, identity, politics, ideology and discourse. And, crucially, it becomes a dynamic opening up of new questions that emerge from this conjunction.’ (Pennycook, 2001, p. 10) 

 

Finally, what these previous assertions towards CAL bring to my mind is the sense that politics, ethics and knowledge have in my daily practices as a teacher and as a novice researcher. These let me inquire the way factors like those are operating in my institution, my region and my country. Definitely, there is a call for me to move on and go deeper on these situations in order to account for real transformation and change of what we as educators are facing in Colombia.

 

REFERENCES

Pennycook, Alastair (1990). Towards a critical applied linguistics for the 1990’s. Issues in Applied Linguistics, 1, 8–28.