Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dsjbd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-23T04:54:46.670Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

15 - English as a Resource in a Communicative Assemblage

A Perspective from Flat Ontology

from Part VI - English and Social Practice

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 December 2019

By
Suresh Canagarajah
Edited by
Christopher J. Hall  and
Rachel Wicaksono
Christopher J. Hall
Affiliation:
York St John University
Rachel Wicaksono
Affiliation:
York St John University
Get access

Summary

Ontology (i.e. thinking about what’s out there) is intimately connected to epistemology (i.e. questions such as, “how can we know what’s out there?”). Both are also connected to ideology (i.e. whose interests do those perspectives on ontology and epistemology serve?). The once dominant cognitivist and structuralist orientations on language and communication are increasingly challenged by new thinking about what is out there. This new thinking is in turn changing the way we engage in inquiry about language and communication. Among the many philosophical paradigms challenging cognitivism and structuralism, I present the set of theories espousing a flat ontology as facilitating a more inclusive and dynamic understanding of language in communication. Flat ontology questions binaries such as mind/body, cognition/matter, human/nonhuman, and verbal/nonverbal, with the former in each pair treated as agentive and more significant. It considers all resources as working together in the construction of meaning and activity. Flat ontology is adopted by philosophical schools such as posthumanism (Braidotti, 2013), new materialism (Barad, 2007), actor network theory (Latour, 2005), and spatiality (Massey, 2005). In this chapter, I will articulate how such schools provide a different orientation to the ontology of English, with new implications for meaning and communication, and for changes in the way we conduct language analysis and teaching in the future.

Keywords

flat ontologycompetencescientific communicationtranslingual practiceassemblagerhizomes
Type
Chapter
Information
Ontologies of English
Conceptualising the Language for Learning, Teaching, and Assessment
 , pp. 295 - 314
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Appadurai, A. (2015). Mediants, materiality, normativity. Public Culture, 27(2), 221–237.Google Scholar
Atkinson, D. (2011). A sociocognitive approach to Second Language Acquisition: How mind, body, and world work together in learning additional languages. In Atkinson, D., ed., Alternative Approaches to Second Language Acquisition (pp. 143–166). Oxford: Routledge.Google Scholar
Atkinson, D., Churchill, E., Nishino, T., and Okada, H. (2007). Alignment and interaction in a sociocognitive approach in second language acquisition. Modern Language Journal, 91, 169–188.Google Scholar
Barad, K. (2007). Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Blommaert, J. (2005). Discourse: A Critical Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Blommaert, J. (2010). The Sociolinguistics of Globalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Braidotti, R. (2013). The Posthuman. Cambridge: Polity.Google Scholar
Bullock, A. (1975). A Language for Life: Report of the Committee of Inquiry Appointed by the Secretary of State for Education and Science under the Chairmanship of Sir Alan Bullock F.B.A. London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office.Google Scholar
Canagarajah, S. (2013). Translingual Practice: Global Englishes and Cosmopolitan Relations. Abingdon: Routledge.Google Scholar
Canagarajah, S. (2018). Materializing competence: Perspectives from international STEM scholars. Modern Language Journal, 102 , 1–24.Google Scholar
Canagarajah, A. S. and DeCosta, P. (2016). Introduction: Scales analysis, and its uses and prospects in educational linguistics. Linguistics and Education, 34 , 1–10.Google Scholar
Canale, M. and Swain, M. (1980). Theoretical bases of communicative approaches to second language teaching and testing. Applied Linguistics, 1(1), 1–47.Google Scholar
Chomsky, N. (1965). Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. Cambridge: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Coole, D. and Frost, S. (2010). New Materialisms: Ontology, Agency, and Politics. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F. (1987). A Thousand Plateaus. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Derrida, J. (1973) [1967]. Speech and Phenomena and Other Essays on Husserl’s Theory of Signs. Allison, J., trans. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.Google Scholar
Dulay, H., Burt, M., and Krashen, S. D. (1982). Language Two. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Genesee, F., Lindholm-Leary, K., Saunders, W. M., and Christian, D., eds. (2006). Educating English Language Learners: A Synthesis of Research Evidence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hymes, D. (1971). On linguistic theory, communicative competence, and the education of disadvantaged children. In Wax, M. L., Diamond, S. A., and Gearing, F., eds., Anthropological Perspectives on Education (pp. 51–66). New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Kendon, A. (2004). Gesture: Visible Action as Utterance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Kress, G. (2009). Multimodality: A Social Semiotic Approach to Contemporary Communication. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Latour, B. (2005). Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Marston, S., Jones, J., and Woodward, K. (2005). Human geography without scale. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 30(4), 416–432.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Massey, D. (2005). For Space. London: Sage.Google Scholar
Mondada, L. (2014). The local constitution of multimodal resources for social interaction. Journal of Pragmatics, 65, 137–156.Google Scholar
Nishino, T. and Atkinson, D. (2015). Second language writing as sociocognitive alignment. Journal of Second Language Writing, 27, 37–54.Google Scholar
Pennycook, A. (2017). Translanguaging and semiotic assemblages. International Journal of Multilingualism, 14(3), 269–282.Google Scholar
Pennycook, A. and Otsuji, E. (2015). Metrolingualism: Language in the City. Abingdon: Routledge.Google Scholar
Pigg, S. (2014). Emplacing mobile composing habits: A study of academic writing in networked social spaces. College English, 66(2), 250–275.Google Scholar
Prior, P. A. (1998). Writing/Disciplinarity: A Sociohistoric Account of Writing in the Disciplines. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Rickert, T. (2013). Ambient Rhetoric. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press.Google Scholar
Rymes, B. (2014). Communicating beyond Language: Everyday Encounters with Diversity. Abingdon: Routledge.Google Scholar
Spivak, G. (1993). Outside in the Teaching Machine. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Thrift, N. (2007). Non-representational Theory: Space, Politics, Affect. Abingdon: Routledge.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×