This edited volume provides an overview of the integrational linguistic perspective—radically different from most contemporary linguistic theories—and its implications for language teaching. Integrationism rejects the “language myth” of separate verbal codes designed to perform telementation, or transfer of thoughts from one mind to another (26). It also reconsiders utterances in their contexts such that the application of any analytic methodology proves limited (73). In the keynote chapter, Roy Harris argues that conceptions of what a language is determine how languages are taught, and how languages are taught determines conceptions of what a language is. The following six chapters discuss various contexts and language-teaching issues from an integrationist view: relationships between Indic scripts and learnability, emotional engagement, self-perception, and the alphabetic Roman or Western script (Rukmini Bhaya Nair); games of role-playing as native speakers in Welsh language-immersion classes (Daniel Davis); English in Hong Kong as an example of the damaging model of native-speaker language ownership (Christopher Hutton); web-based “postcards” as artistic interpretations of ideas about communication based on experiences learning Arabic in Tunis (Sally Pryor); dialogic action games that model interaction as negotiation of interests and purposes in English and German (Edda Weigand); and the partiality and contingency of judgments in English writing assessments (Michael Toolan).
Many of the authors refer to personal experiences in order to bolster their arguments, as with Michael Toolan's discussion of his schoolboy experiences in the introduction and Christopher Hutton's examples from his work in Hong Kong. In addition, all of the chapters discuss the larger theoretical considerations involved in adopting an integrationist perspective. Unpacked throughout the book in various ways are the very concepts of language—as a metalinguistic extrapolation attached to a particular name (42); as the human ability to speak, which cannot be separated but is always integratively used with abilities to think and perceive (126)—and language teaching—as implicit conveyance of theoretical views on language and perpetuation of the language myth (41); as a communicative activity aimed at enabling more proficient skills (120); as “pointless … or at least marginal to the desired outcome of learning” (Charles Owen's interpretation of his fellow contributors’ perspectives, 169).
Charles Owen's contribution is a final, critically evaluative chapter in which he employs an illness metaphor for integrationism, interesting comparisons of linguistics to map-making, and imagery of integrationists as appearing to be “constantly sawing at the branch on which they are perched” (163). This chapter may resonate most with readers from “mainstream” linguistics; however, there are many other highlights in the book, including Edda Weigand's remarks on the state-of–the-art in language teaching and the foreign-language syllabus, Daniel Davis's list of self-reflection questions for language teachers, Michael Toolan's plea for teachers to maintain a critical stance toward prescriptivism, and Christopher Hutton's discussion of the promise of integrating new technologies such as corpus and internet-based approaches. The volume will no doubt prove intriguing and thought-provoking for readers looking to reflect on their own theoretical frameworks about language and language teaching.
