REVIEW

Language & Development: Teachers in a Changing World

Our initial response in experiencing texts not belonging to our immediate cultural background is a feeling of strangeness, a lack of comprehension at that which cannot be readily interpreted....Our starting point then in the analysis of any cultural text must be the awareness of a "deep equivocality." Every word, every line, every image may mean something totally different from what we expect. (Schuchalter, in preparation)

The volume consists primarily of 21 "chapters," mostly running about 10-12 pages each, plus an introductory and a conclusory chapter, the latter two contributed by the editors. For the most part, the 21 core chapters describe more or less short-term "development aid" activities, some undertaken on very short notice, in the countries that, roughly, constitute South, Southeast, and East Asia -- i.e., Cambodia (Chapters 2, 11, 16, and 18), China (Chapter 14), India (Chapter 21), Indonesia (Chapters 4, 7, 8, 17, and 19), Laos (Chapters 3 and 10), Malaysia (Chapter 5), Papua New Guinea (Chapter 13), The Philippines (Chapter 1), Singapore (Chapter 9), and Vietnam (Chapters 12 and 15). The 21 central chapters are subdivided into three stunningly symmetrical sections (seven papers, about 90 pages in each): Coping with Change, Teaching and Learning in Different Worlds, and Responding to the Players. There is also a General Editors Preface by Candlin (as is conventional in this series), a list of contributors, a list of abbreviations and acronyms, a bibliography, and a mildly useful index. Among the contributors, 8 out of 35 (23%) probably represent people indigenous to the countries covered -- a phenomenon that raises some questions about the important issues of indigenization and sustainability, given the emphasis in the contributions on the inclusion of "insiders" and "stakeholders" in language development aid projects.

The bibliography in this volume is remarkably up to date; of the 219 references cited, 68% were published in the decade between 1987 and 1996 (indeed, 35% in the five years between 1992 and 1996). An additional 25% were published in the decade from 1977 to 1986, and only 7% are of an earlier date. There is a clear Commonwealth bias in the references (judging solely by place of publication, not counting scholarly journals); 42% of the citations are from publishers located in the Commonwealth. This bias is also evident in the rest of the volume; indeed, only one chapter discusses a US involvement. In general, the bibliography is, unfortunately, very thin on references from the language planning/language policy literature and the second-language acquisition literature.

The 21 chapters which make up the core of this volume may generally be characterized as "show and tell" pieces; as such, they do not in them- selves present a clear unified argument. On the contrary, contradictory points of view emerge. In the conclusory chapter, Savage undertakes to impose an order on the chapters by examining the issues of language- and-development from the perspective of "five notable characteristics" (p. 323) -- change-orientation, experiential-base, pro-autonomy, collaboration, and communication -- which he suggests represent a commonality across all these exercises. That conclusory essay is a splendid piece, justifying the volume and making it worthwhile. The individual chapters will be of interest to teachers working in development contexts, or indeed in any EFL environment, since they are replete with practical suggestions and practical outcomes. The conclusory chapter does indeed place the individual pieces into a totality.

And yet, despite Savage's exemplary synthesis, there are, to my mind, serious problems. All of the 21 pieces take language-development aid as a given. With Hancock (1989) and with Abbot, who writes,

it is generally admitted that long-term successes in development policies and projects have been few and far between and the forecast is rather gloomy. (1992, p. 173)

The motivations of donor agencies and donor nations are too complex to generalize, but it is a reasonably safe assumption that, if altruism enters into the motivational mix at all, it is not high on the list. Development aid (particularly in the context of language programs) is supposed to be about "the development of the individuals who work in them" (Savage, p. 286) and about the diffusion of educational innovation. It is, I suppose, the epitome of egotism to quote oneself; at the risk of seeming even more egotistic than I actually am, in my review of Crooks and Crewes (1995), I wrote:

McGovern (1995) points out that the "project approach model" (developed by Britain's Overseas Development Administration [ODA] and the British Council, and admittedly also employed by the US Agency for International Development [AID], the Australian Overseas Service Bureau [OSB], the Australian Agency for International Development [AusAID], and the Canadian International Development Agency [CIDA]), which has dominated -- and continues to dominate -- the field, "is not, and has never been claimed to be, a model for the diffusion of educational innovation" (p. 8), but rather was intended to permit "funding agencies to control expenditure" (p. 5); the model "is primarily...designed to provide accountability for expenditure" (p. 8). The use of such an economic model: restricts evaluation to "products," which are in fact impossible to measure (partly because they dont really emerge, and partly because -- assuming that they do emerge -- they emerge much more slowly than the life of any given project can tolerate); operates typically in three-year (or occasionally five-year) increments -- too short a time for educational effects to be realized, and; constrains the project implementers to a too-rigid, "top-down" structure (see, e.g., Kaplan & Baldauf, 1997).

If the motivations of donor states and agencies are complex, the motivations of recipient states and agencies are at least as convoluted. Common sense, however, suggests that poor nations will happily accept money and staff to do virtually anything that will ease the overwhelming pressure on the national budget; if aid donor agencies want to support language programs, so much the better, since there is perhaps a vague awareness among politicians (as distinct from language professionals) that languages are necessary for international activities, but given the vast infrastructural problems that developing states face, language is generally not uppermost on their agendas. That may be a reason why so many language development aid programs are never indigenized and why sustainability is such a problem. If the language programs can be taught to become income-earning, why not? But the developing state is usually in no position to subsidize language development in comparison with basic survival, a minimally possible standard of living, basic educational opportunity, etc.

As Savage explains "[o]ver half of the books chapters are collaborations involving two or three practitioners writing up their work" (p. 303). The sort of democratic sentiment that underlies such collaborative work may not be indigenous to the developing states. Pennycook (1994), Phillipson (1992), and Tollefson (1991) all discuss linguistic imperialism, but they all recognize that it isn't just language that is being diffused; what is also being diffused is the idea of democracy and accompanying capitalism. As a citizen of the United States, I accept those values, but I am increasingly reluctant to impose them on others. Savage says:

[t]he notion that the governments of English-speaking countries and their agents abroad have an agenda to coerce people into learning English negates the reality that host country personnel at all levels have an agency and agenda of their own. Such a notion seems to assume, on the one hand, that people in non-English speaking countries are unwitting or unaware victims of English linguistic imperialism, and, on the other, that they should resist the temptation to learn English. (pp. 313-14)

the practice-based evidence documented in this book clearly demonstrates that host country personnel, and the expatriate colleagues with whom they work, are fully aware of the roles that English and other languages play in their societies. (p. 314)

This book does what Savage claims for it:

[t]he appearance of these 21 accounts of language and development practice is in itself a step forward towards listening to voices from the periphery (p. 317);...to[ward] provid[ing] an opportunity for the voices of local teachers to begin to be heard alongside those of expatriate language educators. (pp. 322-23)

Abbot, G. (1992). Development, education and English language teaching. ELT Journal, 16(2), 172-179.

Crooks, T., & Crewes, G. (Eds.). (1995). Language and development. Jakarta: Indonesian Australian Language Foundation. (Review to appear in English for Special Purposes.)

Kaplan, R. B., & Baldauf, Jr., R. B. (1997). Language planning from practice to theory. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.

Hancock, G. (1989). Lords of poverty. London: Mandarin Paperbacks.

McGovern, J. (1995). Changing paradigms: The project approach. In T. Crooks & G. Crewes (Eds.), Language and development (pp. 3-15). Jakarta: Indonesian Australian Language Foundation.

Mülhäusler, P. (1995). Linguistic ecology: Language change and linguistic imperialism in the Pacific region. London: Routledge.

Pennycook, A. (1994). The cultural politics of English as an international language. Harlow: Longman.

Phillipson, R. (1992). Linguistic imperialism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Schuchalter, J. (in preparation). Literature, representation, and the negotiation of cultural lacunae. In H. Schrüder et al. (Eds.), Lacunaology: Studies in intercultural communication. Munich: Iudicium Verlag.

Tollefson, J. W. (1991). Planning language, planning inequity. London: Longman.

Robert B. Kaplan is Professor Emeritus of Applied Linguistics and past Director of the American Language Institute at the University of Southern California. Professor Kaplan is the past Editor-in-Chief and currently a member of the Editorial Board of the Annual Review of Applied Linguistics. He also serves on the editorial boards of several other scholarly journals. Over a relatively long career, he has published extensively and has presented more than 200 talks, papers, and invited plenary sessions at national and international conferences. He is past President of numerous international organizations, including TESOL, AAAL, and NAFSA. He currently resides in Port Angeles, Washington, USA.