Category Archives: teaching

The Language of Oppression: The Oath of Allegiance for New Canadian Citizens and its Implications for Teachers of the English Language

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I originally wrote this as a paper for a linguistics course I took two years ago. I’ve been thinking about this issue quite a lot recently, and I was quite pleased by this essay when I read back over it. It’s a little more academic than my previous posts, and it’s specifically written from the perspective of a language teacher, but I think it gets the point across pretty clearly. I’m reproducing it here without any alterations.

A language teacher’s role is to assist their students in improving their linguistic ability so that they are free to make more and better choices in their lives. The skills that are taught in a language classroom shape the students’ lives in a very real way. Language both shapes and reflects identity. A person’s choices in life depend on their linguistic competence, and the words that people use to express themselves give huge insight into their personalities, desires and moods. Situations in which a person’s agency is taken away, situations in which that person is forced to say things that they find abhorrent, are fortunately rare, but situations of this kind do exist and they are damaging. The oath of citizenship that all new Canadian citizens are required to take is one example of this kind of situation. This oath is colonial in nature and damaging to new immigrants to Canada, both those who take it and those who abstain from taking it and remain in Canada as mere permanent residents without the right to vote or hold certain government positions. In this paper, I will discuss why this oath is damaging and why ESL teachers in Canada need to be conscious of it.

In their 2011 paper, Discordant anthems: ESL and critical citizenship education. Citizenship Education Research, Brian Morgan and Douglas Fleming argue that the ways in which ESL is currently taught to immigrants to Canada who are hoping to become citizens there is unsatisfactory. They claim that the standards that the teachers of these immigrants must work with, the Canadian Language Benchmarks, were not designed to accommodate the specific needs of these immigrants. They claim that these standards seem “to view English language learners as having rights and responsibilities that pertain almost exclusively to being good consumers.  The content includes the need for learners to understand their rights and responsibilities as a “client, customer, patient and student” (p. 95), but not as workers, family members, participants in community activities, or advocates.” Instead of increasing the ESL learners’ agency as new Canadians, these standards do little more than help these immigrants fit in; ultimately, the standards serve the pre-existing Canadian social system rather than the immigrant.

I am in agreement with Morgan and Fleming’s analysis of the Canadian Language Benchmarks, but I believe that the issue of language instruction for prospective citizens to Canada is just one manifestation of a far more insidious and complicated problem. When I started reading Morgan and Fleming’s article, I was a little unsure as to what they meant by “critical citizenship”. The word citizenship has come to be used in several ways (digital citizenship, global citizenship), and I was not sure if “critical citizenship” was a technical academic term that I had not yet come across. However, it became apparent fairly quickly that the authors were not using the term citizenship in an obtuse manner; they were literally talking about Canadian citizenship. As an immigrant to Canada, I have had to familiarize myself with the Canadian citizenship process, and it is my belief, and the belief of many others, that this process is demeaning to the individuals who have to go through it. It requires new immigrants, a vulnerable group of people, to use language to compromise, undermine and sometimes negate their identities.

The Government of Canada’s official website gives a list of conditions that an individual must meet before they can apply to become a citizen of Canada. According to this website, the prospective citizen must have already received permanent residence status in Canada, have lived in Canada for a certain amount of time, and have three years records of income tax. The individual must also have a satisfactory criminal record and they must have reached level 4 of Canadian Language Benchmarks for both speaking and listening. (Given this information, Morgan and Fleming’s concern is justified. A person can not become a citizen in Canada unless they have reached level 4 of the standards that Morgan and Fleming are critiquing. Interestingly though, these authors note that “In the entire [CLB] document, there are only three references that could be considered to be associated with citizenship”, and “Further, these references to citizenship occur at the very highest levels of proficiency” (pp. 6-7). This is peculiar considering that CLB level 4 is the requirement for citizenship and that there are 12 levels in total.) However, the Canadian Government’s list of criteria for potential citizens is incomplete. There is at least one more requirement for all immigrants to Canada who wish to become citizens: the willingness to swear allegiance to the Queen. 

Canada prides itself on being a multicultural and welcoming country, but it still requires its citizens to swear allegiance to the descendant of individuals for whom this land was stolen, the heads of the largest colonial empire the world has ever seen. Ena Lee, in her 2015 article Doing Culture, Doing race, writes, “liberal discourses of multiculturalism, equality and tolerance such as those prevalent in the Canadian context of multicultural diversity lull us into complacency that we have moved away from these dark pasts, but have we genuinely moved to more critically aware spaces, or have we merely languaged our way out of the shadows of the past while remaining subject to its discourses and common-sense notions?” (p. 3). Despite the national image it wishes to promote both within itself and to other countries, Canadian society is unwilling to abandon its colonial, Eurocentric traditions. Immigrants of colour, from countries around the world are still being asked to swear the following oath of subservience to a white monarch from Great Britain.

I swear (or affirm)
That I will be faithful
And bear true allegiance
To Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second
Queen of Canada
Her Heirs and Successors
And that I will faithfully observe
The laws of Canada
And fulfil my duties
As a Canadian citizen.

From Government of Canada – Oath of Citizenship

Queen Elizabeth the Second, Queen of Canada’s full title is “Elizabeth II, by the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and of her other realms and territories” (Britannica.com). The phrase ‘by the Grace of God’ in her title implies the Divine Right of the British monarch; it implies that this person was chosen by God to rule over the United Kingdom and her other realms and territories, including Canada. New Canadian immigrants are essentially being asked to acknowledge that this woman was chosen by God to be their ruler and to swear allegiance to her. This is not bureaucratic rigmarole that the new citizen faces, it’s not just another box they have to tick off on a form; it is a solemn oath that is given during an official ceremony. It is hardly surprising that language training for prospective Canadian citizens focuses on fitting them into a box rather than preparing them to be dynamic, successful individuals when the final step of becoming a Canadian citizen is a mandatory oath of demeaning subservience. 

Morgan and Fleming note that “the citizen-subject is not the autonomous, free-reasoning individual commonly depicted in liberal discourses but a form of subjectivity shaped by the dominant discourses of nationhood.”(p. 2). The new citizen is for Canada as opposed to Canada being for them, and the Citizenship Oath serves as a means of making this clear.  For all of Canada’s progressiveness and multiculturalism, its immigration system still serves to maintain a certain social hierarchy. It is worth remembering that citizens born in Canada never have to take the oath. It is only for immigrants.

Leonid Sirota notes that  “For some, swearing allegiance to what they regard as a person embodying inequality, colonialism, and oppression goes against their deeply-held republican or egalitarian values,”(p.1) but that some immigrants merely find the oath perplexing and bemusing and that others view taking the oath as symbolic (p. 2). So not all new citizens find the oath repulsive, but perhaps, for at least some of these immigrants, their lack of objections has something to do with their English proficiency. Remember that the Language requirement for citizenship is CLB level 4, ‘Fluent Basic Ability’. At this level the individual can “Understand, with considerable effort, simple formal and informal communication on topics of personal relevance” (CLB Standards, p. 28) and “Communicate information about common everyday activities, experiences, wants and needs” (CLB Standards, p. 64). At this proficiency level, the learner might not be able to voice their opinion on complex political and social issues in English. Also, it is worth keeping in mind the other issues that a new immigrant may be facing. Even if they find the oath objectionable, they might take it regardless, for the good of their family. As newcomers to the country, they will likely keep their complaints about that country to themselves so as not to draw unwanted attention to themselves.

As previously mentioned, the language that a person uses both reflects and shapes their identity. What does it do to a person’s self-esteem when they are forced to say something that they find morally repugnant, something that goes against values they hold dear? The United Kingdom has a complex history of colonialism, and has, throughout history, colonized countries on every habitable continent. Immigrants from these countries may have suffered directly from British Colonialism, but when they come to live in Canada, they are asked to swear allegiance to the British Crown. Also, individuals from countries that did not suffer under British colonialism may well have other political, religious and moral objections to swearing allegiance to a monarch supposedly chosen by God. All of these people are left with a choice: they can sacrifice their dignity and integrity and take the oath or they can abstain and remain in Canada only as tax-paying residents without the right to vote and hold certain government positions. There are many such residents in Canada. (Gray, 2015)

Ryuko Kubota claims that “engaging students in thinking and debating about controversial issues is educationally vital for developing critical thinking, building interpersonal skills in public discussion, and fostering morally responsible citizens in our society” (p. 7) Given then, that the Canadian citizenship procedure and the language standards that it requires are inherently unjust, discriminatory and oppressive towards new immigrants, it seems that the language instructors of potential Canadian citizens should address these issues in their classrooms. It will be valuable and empowering for one’s students to discuss a controversial issue that affects them directly. Kubota also notes that, “In a classroom, what the teacher or peers say or do not say about contentious issues might be shattering to students.” (p. 22)  While the truth may be unpleasant, these students deserve to know the unsavoury details about the country they are living in. However, it is crucial to remember that the individuals coming to take language classes to attain citizenship will be primarily concerned with passing the interview portion of the citizenship procedure in which the officer decides whether or not they have sufficient English proficiency. While the conscientious instructor may want to warn the new immigrants of the problems of the system they are about to enter, doing so must be performed with extreme caution and sensitivity. The instructor’s job is still to aid the immigrants citizenship procedure, not to discourage it. 

The issues with the Canadian citizenship procedures extend far beyond the control of language instructors, but the conscientious language instructor will feel compelled to address these issues in their language class. Doing so must be performed with the goal of empowering the students to use language to think critically so that they can join the battle for equity and fairness both while and after they establish themselves as a Canadian citizen. Fleming and Morgan quote Morgan and Vandrick’s claim that “the newcomer’s or outsider’s eyes and ears are alert to power in ways no longer available to habituated, domesticated insiders, who see but no longer perceive the beauty, horror and complacency around them.”(p. 3) The Canadian Citizenship Oath has been challenged in Canadian courts as unconstitutional on two occasions in the past 25 years, and both times it was brought to the attention of the court, it was done so by immigrants. (Sirota) Hopefully, by bringing this issue to the attention of more immigrants, language instructors will be able to do their bit in ridding Canada of colonialist oppression.

 

References

Centre for Canadian Language Benchmarks. Canadian Language Benchmarks. Retrieved November 3, 2017, from http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/pdf/pub/language-benchmarks.pdf

Encyclopædia Britannica. (2017, November 09). Elizabeth II. Retrieved December 05, 2017, from https://www.britannica.com/biography/Elizabeth-II

 Fleming, D., & Morgan, B. (2011). Discordant anthems: ESL and critical citizenship education. Citizenship Education Research, 1, 28-40.

Gray, J. (2017, March 25). Supreme Court won’t hear citizenship oath to Queen challenge. Retrieved December 05, 2017, from https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/supreme-court-wont-hear-oath-to-queen-challenge/article23211504/

Immigration Canada. (2017, October 11). Find out if you’re eligible – Citizenship. Retrieved December 05, 2017, from https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/services/canadian-citizenship/become-canadian-citizen/eligibility.html

Immigration Canada. (2015, December 22). Oath of Citizenship. Retrieved December 05, 2017, from https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/corporate/publications-manuals/operational-bulletins-manuals/canadian-citizenship/ceremony/oath.html

Canadian Government. (2017, April 18). What does “adequate knowledge” of English or French mean when applying for citizenship? Retrieved December 05, 2017, from http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/helpcentre/answer.asp?qnum=567&top=5

Kubota, R. (2014) “We Must Look at Both Sides”—But a Denial of Genocide Too?: Difficult Moments on Controversial Issues in the Classroom, Critical Inquiry in Language Studies, 11:4, 225-251,

Lee, E. (2015). Doing culture, doing race: Everyday discourses of ‘culture’ and ‘cultural difference’ in the english as a second language classroom. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 36(1), 80-93.

Sirota, L. (2014). True allegiance: The citizenship oath and the charter. National Journal of Constitutional Law, 33(2), 137.

The Canadian Press. (2012, October 04). Lawyer Charles Roach dies with citizenship dream unfulfilled. Retrieved December 05, 2017, from http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/lawyer-charles-roach-dies-with-citizenship-dream-unfulfilled-1.1292161

E-Prime: A Linguistic Exercise to Avoid Confusion and Clarify Meaning

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Aristotle opens the 4th book of his metaphysics with the claim that “There are many senses in which a thing may be said to ‘be’ “. The verb ‘to be’ is perhaps the most commonly used verb in the English language, but we rarely contemplate the fact that it is used in drastically different ways. A thing being a chair is very different to a thing being late. (The former being is the ‘being of identity’, but the latter is the ‘being of predication’.) It has been argued that the different uses of the verb ‘to be’ are so potentially hazardous to human understanding that the verb should be abandoned entirely. I want to take a look at this argument and the implications and possible benefits of to-be’s abandonment.

Not, I guess.

Oxford Dictionary defines General Semantics as “A system of linguistic philosophy developed by Alfred Korzybski (1879–1950), which explores the arbitrary nature of words and symbols and attempts to refine ways of using language.” Encyclopedia Britannica says that “Korzybski and his followers sought a scientific, non-Aristotelian basis for clear understanding of the differences between symbol (word) and reality (referent) and the ways in which words themselves can influence (or manipulate) and limit human ability to think.” I think the main idea of General Semantics can be summed up by saying that the language we use affects how we think. The followers of General Semantics believe that by changing the ways we use language, we can change the ways we think and respond to our thoughts. This seems pretty similar to the concept of idea of strong linguistic relativity, but apparently Korzybski came to this idea by himself. (Some of his followers have even gone so far as to refer to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis as the Sapir-Whorf-Korzybski hypothesis.) I know that linguistic determinism is passionately refuted by many scholars, but I’m sure most people will accept the claim that the words we use can affect how we think. I haven’t read Korzybski’s books, but I sense that there’s some sense behind his ideas. This doesn’t mean these ideas are accurate or reliable though, and academics have been suspicious of General Semantics for more than half a century.

In Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science (1957), Martin Gardener notes that Korzybski and his followers accepted their own ideas too readily and that one follower of General Semantics even claimed that sufficient linguistic programming could lower the amount of acid in a person’s saliva. Gardener explains that General Semantics is basically a mish-mash of other people’s good ideas and doesn’t really contain anything revolutionary. He also notes that the actual practice of GS isn’t effective in changing its practitioners. Gardener does concede that GS may have some merit, but he doesn’t really elaborate on what that merit might be.

I want to examine English Prime or E-Prime, an idea born within the realm of General Semantics, to see if it is of any merit. E-Prime, put simply, is the English language without the verb ‘to be’ or any of its conjugates. That means no ‘be’, ‘is’, ‘are’, ‘being’, ‘was’, ‘were’, or ‘been’. E-Prime was first put forward by David Bourland, a follower of Korzybski. It has its roots in Korzybksi’s distinction between word and referent, a distinction summed up in his mantra, ‘The map is not the territory.’ The idea here is that words are not things they refer to. The word ‘dog’ is not a dog. It’s a word. A dog is a dog. It’s a simple idea, but we forget it fairly regularly.

When we say something like Rob is a teacher, the idea in our heads looks like this:

Rob = a teacher

But the equal sign should be reversible. When we say that 2+2=4, we can also say 4=2+2. The above equation implies that “a teacher = Rob”, but that is obviously incorrect. There are lots of teachers that are not Rob. When we remove the verb ‘to be’ from the statement, we can clarify our meaning. Instead of saying “Rob is a teacher.”,  we should say, “Rob teaches for a living.” or just “Rob teaches.” This might not seem hugely improved, but there are examples where avoiding this type of ‘is’ make things easier to understand.

Opinions are more clearly delineated from objective truths in E-Prime. Instead of claiming that ‘Metallica are the best band in the world’, a person speaking E-Prime would say, ‘I prefer Metallica to all other bands.’ Instead of saying that the dress is blue, they would say that the dress appears blue to them. These statements express opinions without inviting argument.

Robert Anton Wilson, an advocate of E-Prime

I first came across E-Prime in a book called Quantum Psychology by Robert Anton Wilson (an author I have written extensively about elsewhere), and while the title of that book and the reputation of its author might have some (arrogant) academics rolling their eyes, it was Wilson’s description of E-Prime that convinced me of its usefulness. Instead of saying that a photon is a wave or a particle, Wilson claims that scientists should avoid trying to identify the photon and should instead try to describe it. Instead of saying a photon is a particle or a wave, it is more accurate and less confusing to say that the photon acts like a particle when measured by certain instruments and that it acts like a wave when measured by other instruments. Schrödinger’s cat dies if the atom decays. The cat lives if the atom doesn’t decay. No problems.

Isness has long been recognised as a source of philosophical confusion.  E-Prime abandons it and avoids this confusion. The disagreement of Parmenides and Heraclitus can’t be expressed in E-Prime; this form of English allows reality to change while staying the same. This approach might seem like avoiding the topic, but in my view, the problem of existence is either far too complicated to discuss meaningfully or it is actually a non-issue, a philosophical phantom, created by the limitations of our language. ‘I think, therefore I am’ put through E-Prime becomes ‘I think, therefore I think.’ It’s a redundant statement, but it’s not philosophically confusing.

E-Prime delineates opinions from facts, it can make science less confusing and it bypasses philosophical nuisances. It seems like a pretty good idea to me. My main concern is that it doesn’t go far enough. ‘To be’ is a verb, and I am convinced that it is a troublesome one, but every single noun in the English language implies an ‘isness’. If we are getting rid of the word ‘is’, perhaps we ought to get rid of implied ‘isness’ too.

“Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose.”

But is a rose really a rose? Roses, like most other plants, consist of mainly carbon, hydrogen and oxygen atoms. These atoms and their particles incessantly interact with the atoms in the air and soil surrounding the rose. To which sub-atomic particle can we point and say ‘This is where the rose ends and the soil begins?’ To delineate one object from the objects surrounding that object may make day-to-day human experience seem more manageable, but no thing can ever exist independently of its surroundings. Things can’t really ‘be’ in and of themselves, but nouns operate in such a way that they make us think that things “are”. If language becomes more accurate by omitting all forms of the verb ‘to be’, does it follow that its accuracy will be further enhanced by avoiding all words that imply ‘being’?

No. A language without nouns falls apart pretty quickly. Verbs have no subjects or objects to latch onto, and pronouns, adjectives, adverbs, articles, and prepositions become meaningless without nouns. I write this not in any sincere effort to get people to abandon language, but to suggest that language is not designed to accurately describe the actual physical word. It is designed to make sense out of human’s subjective experiences of that world. Our language is built to set up to help us find food, shelter and mates. It’s not really equipped to describe the objective nature of existence.

What of E-Prime then? Should we be satisfied with a means to increase the accuracy of our language knowing that it falls short of complete linguistic clarity? Does it do any good?

Robert Anton Wilson wrote that “when baffled by a problem in science, in “philosophy,” or in daily life, I gain immediate insight by writing down what I know about the enigma in strict E-Prime.” I’m not convinced E-Prime would be useful enough to warrant adopting it in our day to day lives, but I do think that it can be a useful strategy to help think about things. It forces the use of active verbs, and I have personally found that it can help clarify ideas.

When I started researching for this post, I came across a lecture on youtube given by Dr. Daniel Zimmerman. I was expecting a deeply academic analysis of the philosophy behind E-Prime, but thankfully it was more a practical presentation on the use of E-Prime as a means to revise academic essays. Zimmerman claims that it sharpens his students’ language and makes their meaning clearer. In English Teaching Forum, online (Volume 41, Issue 3), “a quarterly journal published by the U.S. Department of State for teachers of English as a foreign or second language”, John C. Herbert, a professor of English as Akashi College, advocates using E-Prime to strengthen ELL learners’ written English, claiming that “E-Prime shows great potential for transforming standard English sentences into more creative and clearer statements of description.” Even David Bourland, the father of E-Prime, referred to his creation as a “tool for critical thinking”, and I think that this is exactly how we should think of it. E-Prime is a tool to help clarify things; it’s not an instant deliverance to linguistic enlightenment.

I haven’t used E-Prime in my own classroom yet, but that’s only because I am currently working with lower level ELL students. I definitely intend to try out an assignment in E-Prime with higher level students in the future. I didn’t write this post in E-Prime, but I did use it to refine certain paragraphs and sentences that were getting a bit slippery. I don’t believe that it’s necessary for us to entirely abandon the verb ‘to be’, but I do think that E-Prime can be used as a tool to help clarify meaning in argumentative, philosophical and scientific writing.

The other posts on this blog have focused on one or two books. This one involved a good bit of reading, so I’m going to include a disorganized bibliography for my own future reference.

Bibliography:

Quantum Psychology – Robert Anton Wilson
https://www.britannica.com/science/general-semantics
https://emilkirkegaard.dk/en/wp-content/uploads/Martin-Gardner-Fads-and-Fallacies-in-the-Name-of-Science.pdf
https://web.archive.org/web/20061007112531/http://exchanges.state.gov/forum/vols/vol41/no3/p26.htm
https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/56091/what-is-the-difference-between-the-is-of-predication-and-the-is-of-identity
https://web.archive.org/web/20130204204954/http://www.generalsemantics.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/articles/etc/46-3-bourland.pdf
https://www.generalsemantics.org/the-general-semantics-learning-center/overview-of-general-semantics/basic-understandings/
https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/general_semantics
http://www.nobeliefs.com/eprime.htm
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2010/jan/16/e-prime-change-your-life
https://youtu.be/sl4UZDLFNT0 – Zimmerman
http://www.textjournal.com.au/april16/frazer.htm
The other posts on this blog and any book I read for them
http://www.nobeliefs.com/Sapir-Whorf-Korzybski.htm
http://www.nobeliefs.com/eprime.htm
https://web.archive.org/web/20080103161605/http://www.esgs.org/uk/art/epr1.htm
http://www.generalsemantics.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/articles/etc/47-4-kellogg-bourland.pdf

Chomsky and Universal Grammar

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I’ve been planning a new post for this blog for a few months now. I previously wrote a post about all of the parts of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s philosophy that interest me, and I was originally thinking of doing a similar post on the work of Noam Chomsky, but after doing a bit of research I quickly realised that Noam’s important ideas on language are not going to be easily or sensibly summarised in a brief blog post. Chomsky, as most of you undoubtedly know, is the most influential linguist alive. He has been working in the field since the 50s, and he has covered a lot of ground. Instead of attempting a summary of his work, I’m going to focus on one of his ideas and how it relates to my work as a language teacher. I will preface this post by claiming that most of what I know about Chomsky’s work comes from lectures I watched on youtube. It’s possible that some of the ideas discussed in this post are actually those of other individuals that Chomsky referenced in his own lectures. The failure to provide references is mine, not Chomsky’s.

Chomsky’s most famous idea is probably Universal Grammar. This is essentially the belief that the ability to use language is part of our genetic make-up. Prior to Chomsky proposing this idea, the prevalent view was that language was learned through a process of trial and error – a kid would watch their parents point at things and try to reproduce the corresponding utterances. Chomsky pointed out that this behaviorist view of language can’t explain the fact that most sentences that are spoken are spoken for the first time – the ‘point and repeat’ model of language acquisition can’t account for the infinite variety of sentences that can be produced. (If this behaviorist view was correct, it would in theory be possible to teach language to an intelligent animal.) Chomsky proposed that a language faculty is innate, and all the language learner has to learn are the arbitrary sounds that we use for words and the different linear structures (the order of words) that different languages use to produce sentences. He argues that aside from these superficial differences, all languages are essentially the same. This is a crude summary, but I’m pretty confident that’s the general idea.

This concept has been knocking about for a long time now, and I know that loads of people have criticized it and pointed out problems, but in my mind it still seems pretty sensible, especially in comparison to the alternatives I’ve seen proposed. The refutations that I’ve understood seem to attack the wording of the current form of the theory rather than the central idea behind it. I don’t have the background to refute or defend it properly. Right now, I’m more interested in considering the consequences that the theory of Universal Grammar has for a language teacher.

For me, the most consequential idea that comes from the concept of Universal Grammar is the notion that language is not really something that is learned but something that grows. Like the faculty of sight, the language faculty is innate and develops along with the rest of the organism. It follows that language is not something that can be ‘taught’ in the traditional sense of that word. Small children pick language up with very little instruction. I am the parent of a two year old, and I can testify to the truth of this statement. When I think of the word ‘teach’ or of the traditional role of a teacher, I imagine a one-way transfer of ideas – a teacher takes what they know about a topic and tries to copy this information into the heads of their student, but this can’t be done in the case of language. As already mentioned, most sentences have never been spoken before, and a teacher can not possibly put into another’s head what does not yet exist in their own.

As a language teacher, I need to consider this idea carefully. If language can’t be taught or learned, should I just throw in the towel? It sounds discouraging, but on closer analysis, it doesn’t really change that much.

This Chomskyian view by no means negates the need for instruction for learners of a second (or third or fourth…) language. If it’s true that the only differences between language are vocabulary and sentence structures, as Chomsky’s model suggests, it seems likely that learners of a second language would greatly benefit from explicitly learning the rules of a new language. When Chomsky says that language isn’t learned, I don’t think he’s speaking about specific languages but rather the more foundational ability to use language.

One sensible consequence of the fact that the teaching of language does not involve the copying of information from one person’s head to another’s is that every person must then speak their own unique language. The languages of two neighbours or siblings are similar enough to communicate clearly, but these languages will, by their nature, be slightly different. Noam has me convinced that this is a natural consequence of any serious consideration of what language means. I speak English fluently, but my English is very different to the fluent English of somebody living in the Southern US. Indeed, the flow of communication between a speaker of Punjabi from Jalandhar and a speaker of Hindi from Delhi might flow more smoothly than the verbal communication between a speaker of English from Scotland and another from Zimbabwe. Chomsky pushes this idea to another level and points to studies that have shown that the way language is structured suggests that it is primarily a means of organizing thoughts rather than a means of communication. This makes the concept of ‘teaching’ a language even more daunting. Teaching a person to communicate seems tricky enough, but how can I possibly ‘teach’ a person how to organise their thoughts?

I don’t know exactly how Chomsky would respond to this question, but I reckon the correct answer is “through an extended process of immersion, understandable instruction and practice.” I don’t think that directly studying Chomsky has changed much about the way that I’ll do my job, but that’s probably because his ideas have already had a big influence on the way I was taught to teach language. I think Noam is a real cool guy, and I’m sure I’ll come back to his work in the future.

A note regarding my sources:
Over the course of the last few months, I have been downloading lectures Noam gave off of youtube and listening to them as I walk to work or make dinner. The content of these talks was largely similar. I haven’t kept a record of the exact videos, but you can find all of them by using the search term “Chomsky Language”. The only written texts that I consulted for this article were an essay called “Overview of Language Teaching Methods and Approaches” by Marianne Celce-Murcia in the 4th edition of Teaching English as Second Language edited by Celce-Murcia, Brinton and Snow and Introducing Chomsky by John Maher. I’ve read a few of the Introducing series (Wittgenstein, Joyce, Sartre, Islam, and Freud) and most of them are pretty good, but I found the Chomsky one overly technical for an introduction.