This collection of 13 papers from the annual meeting of the British Association of Applied Linguistics held in 2001 covers a broad range of topics, including doctor-patient communications, students' interpretations of teachers' gestures, and measuring the lexical complexity of texts. A theme that runs throughout the collection and foreshadows an area of much current interest is the notion of voice and identity.
In “Beyond the Second Versus Foreign Language Dichotomy: The Subjective Dimension of Language Learning,” plenary speaker Kramsch points out that second language teaching (SLT) and foreign language teaching (FLT) have come from different academic traditions and thus aim to teach different voices. SLT assumes a learner who needs to function in a new speech community and so aims to teach a native-speaker voice. FLT, which embraces the humanistic academic tradition, assumes a learner who wishes to understand another culture and so aims to teach an academic and prescriptive voice. However, these days many real learners do not fit these generic models. Both SL and FL learners might speak several languages with varying degrees of proficiency (one thinks of heritage language learners), and their goal is to learn to move easily between different language communities. Kramsch recommends that both SL and FL programs “focus on the development of the learner's voice as well as the learner's choice of code, register, and audience in crafting a multicultural identity” (p. 18).
In the second plenary speech, “Is It a Wood or Are They Trees?” Johnson discusses the different voices of two traditions of research in applied linguistics: the social constructionist tradition and the (post)positivist tradition. Positivists, usually employing quantitative methods, look for woods (i.e., for general principles of learning). Social constructionists, usually employing qualitative methods, examine trees, providing rich descriptions of particular cases of learning. The usual take on the wood and trees divide (Johnson calls it a wall) is to say that certain research questions lend themselves to quantitative, positivistic inquiry and other research questions lend themselves to qualitative, constructionist inquiry. A traditional compromise is to conduct a study that employs both methods. However, Johnson suggests that this is not enough and recommends that the two camps need to know what is happening on the other side of the wall. Social constructionists ought to look to positivist cognitive theories generated in a laboratory for research questions that can be investigated in real-world settings, and cognitive researchers ought to look to real-world settings as testing grounds for their laboratory-generated theories.
In “Distinguishing the Voices of Researchers and the People They Research in Qualitative Research,” Holliday contrasts two philosophies of so-called tree research. The traditional naturalist position holds that social reality can be objectively described, whereas the progressivist position holds that social reality is constructed by observers and that its description is inevitably subjective. Holliday suggests acknowledging subjectivity by distinguishing between the voices of the observer and observed in both data collection and report writing. For example, in taking field notes, typographical conventions, such as underlining, can be used to distinguish between what participants actually said and what was (selectively) observed. Such distinctions should be reflected in the description of the research report by showing the process by which conclusions were reached. For example, the researcher should use the first person (“I interpreted these comments to mean…”) and should mention the sources of evidence (“The following comments by Nursing Assistants …”). In short, the researcher needs to make clear whose voices are being heard.
In the third plenary address, “Habeas Corpus and Divide et Impera: ‘Global English’ and Applied Linguistics,” Seidlhofer expands on some of the points raised by Kramsch. She discusses the notion that countries can be divided into three spheres of English speakers: the inner circle, where English is a native language (Britain, the United States, etc.); the outer circle, where English is a SL used for internal communication (India, Nigeria, etc.); and the expanding circle, where English is studied for professional reasons (Switzerland, Japan, etc.). She notes that many variationist studies have been done of inner circle and outer circle English and that these latter studies have lent strength to calls for the legitimacy of outer circle varieties, such as Indian English. Seidlhofer advocates legitimizing expanding circle English as well. To this end, she is engaged in a project to compile a database of expanding circle English, from which studies can be conducted and a pedagogical norm established. This corpus is called, appropriately enough for this collection, VOICE.
