Having and Doing, or is it Doing and Having? Neither. Learning is about both at the
same time.
Diane Larsen-Freeman, University of Michigan
Rationale:
Applied Linguistics has long been under the influence of Linguistics, in which language is
seen to be something that one “has,” obtained either through applying a deductive universal
grammar or through a process of induction from input. In keeping with this
conceptualization, much work in second language acquisition has focused on acquisition
orders and sequences of development. The expressed goal is to explain language acquisition
as a process of taking in of linguistic forms as a mental act, albeit one that takes place
through interaction with others. As learners acquire forms, they can then do something with
them.
More recently, a bid has been made to view language acquisition not so much from an
acquisitionist perspective, but rather from one of social participation. According to this
perspective, language development is not the taking in of linguistic forms, but rather entails
ever increasing participation in discourse communities or communities of practice. Language
is less about structure than function--not about having, but about doing.
Viewing matters of concern to applied linguists through the lens of complexity theory, I do
not see having or doing as independent processes. Instead, having and doing are operations
that take place simultaneously, though on different timescales.
Key arguments:
•
From a complexity theory perspective, learning is not the taking in of linguistic forms
by learners, but neither is it exclusively concerned with doing. Instead, learners are
constantly adapting their language resources in the service of meaning-making in response to
affordances that emerge in the communicative situation, which is, in turn, transformed by
learners’ adaptations. Individuals’ perceptual, conceptual, and linguistic systems are
continually being updated by what they perceive in the ongoing flow of experience.
•
“The act of playing the game has a way of changing the rules” in a complex adaptive
system. There is upwards emergence of the patterns of individuals interacting, which is
nevertheless “downwardly” entrained due to both the historic trajectory of the system and by
its present-day sociocultural norms.
•
One can adopt an etic perspective or an emic perspective on the object of concern.
An etic perspective involves a linguistic description (and this can be helpful). It is not clear,
from an emic perspective, however, that the linguistic descriptors one would use have any
psychological reality for the learner. Instead, learners’ variegated language-using patterns
emerge from language use. They are characterized, not only by linguistic features, but also
sometimes accompanied by gesture and prosody, and by affective, cognitive, and episodic
associations.
•
From an emic perspective, embodied learners are seen to soft assemble their language
resources interacting with a changing environment. As they do, their language resources
change. Learning is not the taking in of linguistic forms by learners, but the constant
adaptation of language-using patterns that emerge in interaction with a dynamic
communicative situation.
•
Learners learn to use language through repeated activity in slightly different
situations. Learning is not a linear, additive process, but an iterative one. When we say that
someone “has” some linguistic structure, we mean that the contextual and individual
conditions are such that the learner has zoomed in on some stable, but not static, pattern. It
follows, then, that learning is not only embodied, it is also situated and inextricably linked to
history.
Methodology:
Many extant research methods, such as ethnography and computer modeling, are appropriate
for a complexity theory approach to the study of learning. Others, such as classic
experiments, are less successful. Several criteria are important in any methodology informed
by complexity theory, among which are investigating all the variability of learner
performance, recognizing the nonlinearity of the learning process, and avoiding predictions.
Predictions may work in the physical sciences, but do not work well in activities that are
mediated through human judgments, assessments, values, identities, positioning, stancetaking, and desires. For these, retrodiction is preferred. Experiments which involve
retrodiction, such as formative and design experiments, are more appropriate.
Epistemology:
Our knowing is informed by a theoretical commitment to complexity theory and by adopting
its dynamic perspective on language use by language learners. In addition, computer
modeling and neurobiological research show that experience shapes neural networks in ways
that are sensitive to frequencies.
Discussion:
Teaching and learning languages do not involve the transmission of a closed system of
knowledge. Thus, learners are not engaged in learning fixed forms or sentences, but rather in
learning to adapt their behavior to an increasingly complex environment. In some cases,
morphogenesis, or the creation of new patterns, results. What motivates development is some
discrepancy between what the learner wants to say and what she or he is able to say. Second
language learning is thus a dialectic process in which development is driven by the
inadequacy or instability created by the thesis of the learner’s current language resources and
the antithesis provided by internal and external feedback. In addition, it is the role of the
teacher, in negotiation with students, to establish the constraints that will help learners to
further develop their repertoire of language-using patterns. Doing so will likely be facilitated
through syntactic coordination and zipfian profiles.
Conclusions:
There are many ways to conceptualize learning in applied linguistics. One way that has
occupied center stage for some time is to see language teaching as presenting linguistic forms
and language learning as a process of taking them in. I have called this the “having” view.
A second conceptualization adopts a more functional approach to language. Language
teaching is more about guiding students to get their message across, and language learning is
developing discursive routines through participation in communities. I have called this the
“doing” view.
In this paper, I make the case for language as a complex adaptive system, in which every use
of language changes the language resources of the learner/user and the changed resources
then are potentially available for the next speech event. This view suggests a unity not only
between doing and having, between real-time processing and development, but also between
language use and evolution.