mind language and epistemology

Mind, Language, and Epistemology:Toward a Language SocializationParadigm for SLAKAREN ANN WATSONGEGEOSchool of EducationUniversity of California, Davis81 Bonnie LaneBerkeley, CA 94708Email: [email protected]

For some time now second language acquisition (SLA) research has been hampered by un-helpful debates between the cognitivist and sociocultural camps that have generatedmore acrimony than useful theory. Recent developments in second generation cognitive sci-ence, first language acquisition studies, cognitive anthropology, and human development re-search, however, have opened the way for a new synthesis. This synthesis involves a reconsid-eration of mind, language, and epistemology, and a recognition that cognition originates insocial interaction and is shaped by cultural and sociopolitical processes: These processes arecentral rather than incidental to cognitive development. Here I lay out the issues and arguefor a language socialization paradigm for SLA that is consistent with and embracive of thenew research.

WE ARE AT THE BEGINNING OF A PARADIGMshift in the human and social sciences that is revo-lutionizing the way we view mind, language, epis-temology, and learning, and that is fundamen-tally transforming second language acquisition(SLA) and educational theory and research. Thisparadigm shift is being stimulated by new re-search in the cognitive sciences (Churchland,2002; Fauconnier & Turner, 2002; Levy,Bairaktaris, Gullinaria, & Cairns, 1995; Rumel-hart, McClelland et al., 1986; Schwartz & Begley,2002; Solso & Massaro, 1995; Spitzer, 1999;Varella, Thompson, & Rosch, 2000), human andchild development (Burman, 1994; James &Prout, 1997; Jessor, Colby, & Shweder, 1996;Lewis & Watson-Gegeo, 2004; Mayall, 2002; Shon-koff & Phillips, 2000; Wozniak & Fischer, 1993),first language acquisition and socialization (Gib-son, 1982; K. Nelson, 1996; Schieffelin & Ochs,1986; Seidenberg, 1997; Slobin, 1985; Watson-Gegeo, 2001), cognitive anthropology (Chaiklin& Lave, 1996; Gumperz & Levinson, 1996; Hol-

land & Quinn, 1987; Lave & Wenger, 1991; Shore,1991; Strauss & Quinn, 1997; Watson-Gegeo &Gegeo, 1999a), cognitive linguistics (Ungerer &Schmid, 1996), and the critical social sciences, in-cluding cultural and cross-cultural psychology(M. Cole, 1996; L. M. W. Martin, Nelson, & To-bach, 1995; Segall, Dasen, Berry, & Poortinga,1999; Sinha, 1997; Stigler, Sweder, & Herdt,1990).

The shift is also prompted by the flow of re-search from the periphery to the center of politi-cal power. Third wave feminist studies (Alcoff &Potter, 1993; Bhavnani, Foran, & Kurian, 2003;Weedon, 1997), and ethnic studies from colonialand postcolonial societies, including currentlycolonized indigenous and ethnic minority peo-ples within dominant societies, are consonantwith the new findings in the human sciences.And in turn, the voices of these scholars andtheir claims for indigenous and other standpointepistemologies (Collins, 2000; Gegeo, 1994;Gegeo & Watson-Gegeo, 2001, 2003; Wautischer,1998) are supported by the new research. Theemergence of formerly silenced voices is part ofthe contemporary process of globalization inwhich peoples on the periphery within and out-

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side dominant or center societies, rather thanbeing passively affected by globalization, are ac-tively reacting to and participating in it. They arespeaking on their own behalf to the centers ofknowledge construction and power, in order topromote their interests and the ongoing decolo-nization process. This remarkable and creativecombination of sociopolitical events and tra-jectories in mainstream and non-mainstreamresearch has already seriously eroded the univer-salist assumptions that have until now deter-mined mainstream theory and method and thatare anchored in Anglo-Euro-American culturalontology and epistemology.

The paradigm shift has begun to be felt in SLAscholarly social spaces through new cognitive sci-ence-based theories of language (see Doughty &Long, 2003; also Atkinson, 2002; Martinez,2001), including emergentism theory (N. C.Ellis, 1998; MacWhinney, 1999), and criticalistsociocultural studies of second language learn-ing and teaching (e.g., Canagarajah, 1999; Tol-lefson, 1995). The conventional paradigm forSLA research has come under increasing criti-cism since the late 1970s for (a) its exclusive reli-ance on Cartesian, positivistic assumptions aboutreality, (b) its experimental modes of inquirythat cannot incorporate cultural and socio-political context into its models, (c) its basis instructuralist or other problematic linguistic theo-ries, and (d) its inability to produce implicationsfor pedagogy that actually work for second lan-guage teaching, especially in the periphery (i.e.,third- and fourth-world situations; Block, 1996;Crookes, 1997; Firth & Wagner, 1997; Jacobs &Schumann, 1992; Kramsch, 1995; Lantolf, 1996;Liddicoat, 1997; Pallotti, 1996; Pennycook, 1994;Rampton, 1997a, 1997b).

However, recent developments have openedthe way for a new synthesis involving a reconsid-eration of mind, language, epistemology, andlearning, based on the recognition that cog-nition originates in social interaction and isshaped by cultural and sociopolitical processes.That is, cultural and sociopolitical processes arecentral, rather than incidental, to cognitive de-velopment.

My purpose here is twofold. First, I overview inbrief, outline fashion some of the diverse lines ofresearch and thinking that converge on a set ofgeneral principles for cognitive developmentand social practice, which are still to be under-stood in full through further research. In beingindicative rather than exhaustive, I highlightsome of the subtleties in issues of social influ-ences and experience in shaping mind and lan-

guage skills that are undertheorized in SLA, andI identify lines of work that have not yet enteredSLA social spaces. Second, I argue for a languagesocialization paradigm for SLA. Such a paradigmwould be embracive of and consistent with thenew research.

NEW UNDERSTANDINGS ABOUTMIND AND LANGUAGE FROM THECOGNITIVE SCIENCES

What do we now know about cognitive pro-cesses and the human brain? The shift from cogni-tion to mind in much of the research discourse oncognitive development reflects current under-standings about the brain and thinking. First,neuroscience research (Churchland, 1986, 2002;Dacey, 2001; Edelman, 1992; Fauconnier &Turner, 2002; Goldblum, 2001; Quartz & Sej-nowski, 2002) has demonstrated that the body-mind dualism of Western philosophical andmainstream scientific thought, in which cogni-tion rides in a detached fashion above the bodyand is in some sense distinct from itan idea stillimplicit in much educational and SLA researchand teachingis fundamentally mistaken. Whatwe humans understand about the world we un-derstand because we have the kinds of bodies andpotential for neural development that we have(Regier, 1995, 1996; Varela et al., 2000). Evenour scientific instruments are an extension of ourbodily capacities, and built on the assumptionswe make about the nature of reality (ontology)and our way(s) of creating knowledge about real-ity (epistemology), and based on our bodys waysof detecting and relating to the world. All cogni-tive processes are thus embodied.

Second, most cognitive scientists estimate thatmore than 95% of all thought is unconsciouswhat Lakoff and Johnson (1999) called thecognitive unconsciousand it is this uncon-scious thought, lying outside our awareness, thatshapes and structures all conscious thought (p.13; see also Baumgartner & Payr, 1995; Jacoby,1991; Naatanen, 1992; Schneider, Pimm-Smith,& Worden, 1994; Solso & Massaro, 1995). In-cluded in the cognitive unconscious is all im-plicit knowledge that we have learned throughsocialization beginning in the prenatal months.

Third, mind is a better term than cognition be-cause the latter tends to focus on only parts of themind, typically what Vygotsky (1981) called thehigher mental functions of voluntary memory,logical reasoning, language, metacognitive skills,and some forms of categorization. Most of ourtheoretical models of cognitive skills acquisition

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assume that these higher-order cognitive skillsare independent of other mental processes. How-ever, through research on patients who have lostemotional capacity via brain damage, cognitivescientists have shown that without emotional ca-pacity, people cannot make rational judgments,including moral decisions. Emotions are essen-tial to logical reasoning (Damasio, 1994). Asdevelopmentalist Kurt Fischer and his colleaguesargued (Fischer, Wang, Kennedy, & Chang,1998), emotions have well-defined roles in hu-man activity and are not opposed to cognition,as is assumed in Western culture; to the contrary,[emotion] links closely with cognition to shapeaction, thought, and long-term development(pp. 2223). Three neuroscientific models havebeen proposed and are being investigated to ac-count for emotions and their role in human activ-ity (network, Halgren & Marinkovic, 1995; poly-vagal, Porges, 1995; and hemispheric asymmetry,Davidson, 1992, Fox 1991; see Byrnes, 2001, for asummary).

Fourth, our earlier conception of cognitionhas been further expanded to incorporate manyother components of a human mental life, in-cluding symbolic capacity, self, will, belief, anddesire (e.g., Ingvar, 1999; E. K. Miller, 2000;Schwartz & Begley, 2002; Shweder, 1996; Silber-sweig & Stern, 1998).

Fifth, not only is language metaphorical, butbecause of the kind of neural networks we buildin our brains, thought itself is metaphorical andmade possible through categorization that is typ-ically conceptualized as prototypes (Rosch &Lloyd, 1978; Smith & Medin, 1981; Taylor,1989). Some categories and prototypes are in-herent in the kind of body and mind we humanbeings have, and therefore may be said to be uni-versal. A great many categories and prototypes,however, in fact probably the majority, are socio-culturally constructed and therefore vary cross-culturally.

Sixth, until now we have conceptualized thebrain metaphorically as a container of intelli-gence, knowledge, and cognitive skills, and theindividual as a container for the brain and as pos-sessing (or failing to possess) societally desiredcognitive skills. Our metaphor has thus verymuch determined the way we look at humanthinking and behavior, and certainly the way wemeasure and assess the cognitive abilities of stu-dents in schools and language classes. Some ofthe most interesting research in human develop-ment over the past several years has up-endedthis conception of cognition. Research demon-strates that both the content and process of

thinking . . . are distributed as much among indi-viduals as they are packed within them (M. Cole& Engestrm, 1993, p. 1). The discovery ofdistributed cognitionsthat people think in con-junction with others, that cognition is sociallyconstructed through collaboration (Resnick, Le-vine, & Teasley, 1991; Salomon, 1993)links tothe work that is going on in cognitive anthropol-ogy and by standpoint epistemologists on the na-ture of knowledge construction (see below).Even Vygotskian theory (1978, 1981; Rogoff,1990) is subject to the critique of not being socialenough, and as yet continuing to treat the mindas a container for the transfer of knowledge(Atkinson, 2002; Brandt, 2000; Watson-Gegeo,1990).

What have we discovered about language fromcognitive science research? First, research hasdiscovered no structure in the brain that corre-sponds to a Language Acquisition Device as ar-gued by Chomsky and others. Language is notcompletely a human genetic innovation becauseits central aspects arise via evolutionary processesfrom neural systems that are present in so-calledlower animals (Bates, Thal, & Marchman,1991). There can be no pure syntax separatefrom meaning, emotion, action, and other dy-namic aspects of the mind and communication.Linguistic concepts, like all other cognitive pro-cesses, arise from the embodied nature of humanexistence and through experience (Langacker,1990, 1991). Language develops through thesame general processes as other cognitive skills,and grammar is a matter of highly structuredneural connections (Churchland & Sejnowski,1992; Elman, Bates, Johnson, Karmiloff-Smith,Parisi, & Plunkett, 1996; Plunket & Elman, 1997).

Second, innateness is usually equated withlanguage universals. However, if we are to beconsistent with cognitive science, emergentism,connectionism, and cognitive linguistics, whatwe take to be universal typically involves univer-sals of common human experience starting afterbirth. In other words, it is not just a matter ofwhat we are born with, but the fact that we hu-man beings occupy a set of environments withand within which our body-mind has co-evolvedand that present us with common experiences.These experiences include, as Lakoff and John-son (1999) phrased it, the conceptual poles ofgrammatic constructions, universals of spatial re-lations, and universals of metaphor (p. 508; seealso Fauconnier, 1997; Koenig, 1998). The rest isculturally variable (see Chafe & Nichols, 1986); itis shaped by gender, ethnicity, social class, andsociohistorical, sociopolitical processes (Chaik-

Karen Ann Watson-Gegeo 333

lin & Lave, 1996; Segall et al., 1999; Stephens,1995) in very powerful ways that affect percep-tions, assumptions, language(s), and other un-derstandings of the world.

While some theorists continue to defend or re-invent Chomskys theories, or both (e.g., Chom-sky, 1995; Fodor, 1998; Pinker, 1994; White,2003), biologists and neuroscientists have shownthat a built-in Universal Grammar (UG) or lan-guage acquisition structure is unnecessary for ex-plaining language universals. Chomskyian the-ory failed a major test when McWhorter (1997)devastatingly critiqued Bickertons (1988, 1990)Chomsky-based bioprogram model of creolelanguage formation, showing that, for instance,the grammatical structures that Bickertonclaimed Surinam Creole speakers had suppos-edly created from UG turned out to be trans-ferred from the African substrate. Evolutionarybiologist/primatologist Terence Deacon (1997)convincingly demonstrated that languages havehad to adapt to childrens spontaneous as-sumptions about communication, learning, so-cial interaction, and even symbolic reference(p. 109)placing the social in the center of thelinguistic:

The theory that there are innate rules for grammarcommits the fallacy of collapsing the irreducible so-cial evolutionary process [of language evolution andchange] into a static formal structure. . . . The linkfrom psychological universals to linguistic universalsis exceedingly indirect at best. . . . The brain hasco-evolved with respect to language, but languageshave done most of the adapting. (pp. 121122)

Chomskyian theory is but one account of lan-guage in linguistic theory, yet Pinkers (1994)and Krashens (1985) works have been read by awider public, and language teachers at all levelsoften assume a Chomskyian perspective (per-haps unconsciously) on language that affectsteaching moments with students, even if they areattempting to teach according to best practicethat incorporates language use and socioculturalissues (as modeled or argued in, e.g., Berns,1990; Kramsch, 1995; Kern, 2000; McGroarty,1998; or Larsen-Freeman, 2000).

Third, language structure, language use, andlanguage acquisition are inseparable because ex-perience shapes all our neural networks. Theseprocesses are therefore also shaped by socio-historical, sociocultural, and sociopolitical pro-cesses, because language change, use, and learn-ing occur in social, cultural, and political contextsthat constrain and shape linguistic forms in vari-ous ways, and mark their significance. The politi-

cal nature of language learning and use is increas-ingly a focus of research in complex first languageand second language situations, from a variety ofcritical perspectives (Caldas-Coulthard & Coult-hard, 1996; Canagarajah, 1999; Chouliaraki &Fairclough, 1999; Huebner & Davis, 1999;Kroskrity, 2000; Peirce, 1995a, 1995b; Penny-cook, 1994; Phillipson, 1992; Tollefson, 1995;Watson-Gegeo & Gegeo, 1994, 1995).

The latter issues are at the heart of ontology,epistemology, and learning. To move into issuesof ontology and epistemology, we first need toexamine what we currently understand abouthow knowledge is organized by and in the em-bodied mind.

ONTOLOGY, CULTURAL MODELS,AND EPISTEMOLOGY: COGNITIVEANTHROPOLOGY AND THE VOICESOF THE OTHER

Ontology refers to what there is, and episte-mology to how we know. Work in cognitive an-thropology over the past two decades has revis-ited the once discredited issue of linguisticrelativity, and through empirical research, hasdemonstrated that differences in languages dohave a significant impact on differences in think-ing (Gumperz & Levinson, 1996). Levinson(1996), Lee (1996), and Silverstein (2000), inparticular, have launched brilliant reconsider-ations of Whorfs (1956) principle of linguisticrelativity and the data at its basis, correcting thegross misrepresentations of the past. Lees devas-tating critique of Pinkers (1994) carelessness inconfusing data completely undermines his dis-missal of Whorfs ideas, for instance.

The new work on linguistic relativity is closelyrelated to empirical research on cultural modelsfor thinking and behaving by cognitive anthro-pologists using schema and prototype theory(DAndrade & Strauss, 1992; Holland, Lachi-cotte, Skinner, & Cain, 1998; Holland & Quinn,1987; Shore, 1991). In turn, the work on culturalmodels is parallel to research by psycholinguistK. Nelson (1996) and her colleagues on chil-drens language development, which also drawson schema and script theory. Nelson (1996) ar-gued that Human minds are equipped to con-struct complicated mental models that rep-resent . . . the complexities of the social andcultural world (p. 12). She proposed the termMental Event Representation (MER) for the basicflexible structures of childrens cognitive devel-opment, in the form of schemas and scripts that


become a mental context for future behavior insimilar situations.

Cognitive anthropologists argue that cultur-ally shared knowledge is organized into culturalmodels, defined as prototypical event sequencesin simplified worlds (Quinn & Holland, 1987, p.24; Holland et al., 1998, expanded this idea intofigured worlds). Cultural models frame and in-terpret experience and guide a variety of cogni-tive tasks, including setting goals, planning, di-recting action, making sense of action, andverbalization (Quinn & Holland, 1987). Theyoperate below the surface level of behavior andthe linguistic level of morphology and syntax, toshape perception, information processing, andthe assignment of values (Gegeo & Watson-Gegeo, 1999). Analytically, cultural models arecompatible with a neural network model of theembodied mind.

Typically in psycholinguistic research, the com-plex interrelationships among forms of culturalknowledge across domains are not addressed. Incontrast, an important insight from cognitive an-thropology is the relationship between culturalmodels and the systematic or thematic nature ofcultural knowledge. Quinn and Holland (1987)argued that this thematicity is the result of asmall number of very general purpose culturalmodels that are repeatedly incorporated intoother cultural models (pp. 1011) in hierarchi-cal and other arrangements. General-purposemodels or premises operating across several cul-tural domains give a culture its distinctivenessand reduce the total amount of cultural knowl-edge to be mastered by the learner.

Knowledge encoded in cultural models isbrought to bear on specific tasks in the form ofmetaphorical proposition-schemas and image-schemas (Lakoff, 1984; Quinn & Holland, 1987).A proposition-schema specifies concepts and therelations which hold among them (Quinn &Holland, 1987, p. 25), such as (among Ameri-cans), ARGUMENT IS WAR (Lakoff & Johnson,1980), versus, for instance, in Kwaraae, SolomonIslands, ARGUMENTATION IS STRAIGHTEN-ING OUT (Watson-Gegeo, 1995), or, to take an-other example from Kwaraae, FAMILIESSHARE FOOD WITHOUT EXPECTATION OFRETURN. An image-schema is more gestalt-likeand usually metaphorical, such as the Americanimage-schema MARRIAGE IS A JOURNEY(Quinn, 1987, 1997), or the Kwaraae image-schema EXTENDED FAMILY MEMBERS AREALL ONE HEARTH (or one basket/house-hold/garden/cluster of baking stones). This lat-ter image-schema means that extended family

members are all one family, and thus theproposition-schema FAMILIES SHARE FOODWITHOUT EXPECTATION OF RETURN ap-plies to all of them.

Cultural modelswhich are usually tacitlyunderstood, and often unconsciouslie at theheart of cultural identity, ontology, and indige-nous and local epistemology. Until very recently,ontology and epistemology were treated as whatWestern philosophy and science had invented,while everybody else had only a world-view andcommonsense strategies for discovering knowl-edge needed to survive in the local environment.Today, scholars from third-world societies andfrom indigenous societies living under colonialconditions in first- and second-world societies arechallenging the privileging of Western ontologyand scientific epistemology. This challenging hascome in the wake of the critique of mainstreamepistemology by third wave feminist scholarsagainst the Anglo-Euro-American patriarchal po-sitioning of mainstream epistemology.

Epistemology refers to both the theory ofknowledge and theorizing knowledge (Gold-man, 1986, 1999). Epistemology is concernedwith who can be a knower, what can be known,what constitutes knowledge, sources of evidencefor constructing knowledge, what constitutestruth, how truth is to be verified, how evidencebecomes truth, how valid inferences are to bedrawn, the role of belief in evidence, and relatedissues (Gegeo & Watson-Gegeo, 2001; see alsoWilliams & Muchena, 1991). Social epistemolo-gists (e.g., Fuller, 1988) and feminist epistemolo-gists (e.g., Code, 1991; Grosz, 1990; Haraway,1988; L. H. Nelson, 1993) recognize with sociolo-gists of knowledge (Bloor, 1991; Dant, 1991;Stehr, 1994) that epistemological agents arecommunities rather than individuals. In otherwords, knowledge is constructed by communi-tiesepistemological communitiesrather thancollections of independently knowing individu-als (Gegeo & Watson-Gegeo, 2001, p. 58), andsuch communities are epistemologically prior toindividuals who know (L. H. Nelson, 1993, p.124). Feminist epistemologists, parallel to neuro-scientists, recognize the embodiment of knowl-edge. Grosz (1993) cogently argued that the cur-rent crisis of reason in Western culture andphilosophy is a consequence of the historicalprivileging of the purely conceptual or mentalover the corporeal, and the inability of Westernknowledges to conceive their own processes of(material) production, processes that simulta-neously rely on and disavow the role of the body(p. 187). Both of these points are consistent with


the new findings of cognitive science and devel-opmentalist research just reviewed. However,feminists add the additional and crucial insightthat human bodies are not all the same. In partic-ular, Western positivistic research typically as-sumes a male body and usually a White middle-class heterosexual male experience of and in theworld.

Moreover, the feminist and third-world chal-lenge to Western rationality and normal sciencetakes all these arguments a step further to chal-lenge the taken-for-granted objectivity on whichmuch of Western science depends for its claimthat the knowledge it produces is necessarily uni-versal and always superior to all other forms ofknowledge. Particularly relevant to the presentdiscussion is standpoint epistemology as developedby feminists, which recognizes that Knowledgeclaims are always socially situated (Harding,1993, p. 54). That is, all knowledge is subjective,positioned (i.e., from a standpoint, not objectivein a final sense), historically variable, and spe-cific, even when what is constructed turns out tohave universal implications. With the realizationthat all knowledge is situated comes the recogni-tion of the importance of who gets to be theknowledge producers versus those who are onlyallowed or able to be knowledge consumers, andwhy there is so much power in the hands of thosewho control knowledge. Knowledge is politicalas well as cultural, and for this reason, research-ers must ask, who gets to represent whom?Typically, it has been White Anglo-Euro-Ameri-can researchers who study and represent mainlynon-European Others who are not allowedvoice to represent themselves as they wish to beor are positioned. As Yeatman (1994) put it,Who must be silenced in order that these repre-sentations prevail? (p. 31).

However, the prevailing relations are in a veryearly stage of changing, through the new re-search by third-world scholars writing abouttheir own cultures ontologies, epistemologies,and cultural models. Indigenous epistemology re-fers to an indigenous cultural groups ways ofthinking and of creating, reformulating, and the-orizing about knowledge via traditional dis-courses and media of communication, anchor-ing the truth of the discourse in culture (Gegeo& Watson-Gegeo, 2001, p. 58; see also Gegeo,1994; Gegeo & Watson-Gegeo, 2002). Local episte-mology refers to processes of creating knowledgethat are situated in local conditions and relation-ships and may be partially or wholly sharedacross cultural groups. As concepts, indigenousand local epistemology focus on the process

through which knowledge is constructed and val-idated by a cultural group and on the role of thatprocess in shaping thinking and behavior. Un-derlying these concepts is the assumption thatall epistemological systems [are] socially con-structed and (in)formed through sociopolitical,economic, and historical context and processes(Gegeo & Watson-Gegeo, 2001, p. 58). Together,ontology, epistemology, and cultural modelsconstitute deep culture (Watson-Gegeo & Gegeo,2004).

Culture is not uniform and unchanging; it isvariable, an ongoing conversation embodyingconflict and change, shaped by the dialectic ofstructure and agency (Giddens, 1979), inher-ently ideological, and prone to manipulationand distortion by powerful interests (Foucault,1980; Gramsci, 1978; Habermas, 1979). Bhaba(1994) argued that cultures and cultural formsare in a continuous process of hybridity, creatinga third space (p. 38) for new cultural posi-tionings to develop or be constructed, (re)creat-ing current versions of cultures, and so on. Thatmeans, as Chaudhry (1995) pointed out, that hy-brid individuals exhibit hybrid identities as wellas hybrid world-views deriving from different sys-tems of meaning (p. 49). Nevetheless, peopleusually have an internal sense of their culturalpositioning(s). As Hall (1991) argued, culturalidentity and knowledges involve two senses ofthe self: of one shared culture, a sort of collec-tive one true self, hiding inside the many other,more superficial or artificially imposed selves,which people with a shared history and ancestryhold in common; and of identity and knowl-edges produced by the ruptures and discontinu-ities that result in critical points of deep andsignificant difference (p. 223). Although hybrid-ity is associated now with diaspora(s), colonial-ism, postcolonial history, and globalization, thecomplexity it evokes (Canclini, 1995) is perhapsmore easily grasped in multicultural/multilin-gual nations than in the United States (wheremainstream interests try to suppress or downplaymultilingualism and multiculturalism). Evenwith the reality that culture(s) is/are always mov-ing and changing, people undertake their owncritical reflection on culture, history, knowledge,politics, economics, and the sociopolitical con-texts in which they are living their lives. They acton these reflections, and in all known societies,there exist formal contexts for direct teaching ofcultural knowledge and values.

Latour (1986) pointed out that to gain West-ern recognition as useful and meaningful, tra-ditional and local knowledges typically must be


translated into Western scientific discoursethat is, the parts that seem relevant to a West-ern science are extracted from the whole and re-organized into discourse that looks scientific toWesterners, transforming acceptable elementsinto universal knowledge (see also Vos, 2000).This treatment of the knowledge systems of cul-tural Others is an indication of the role of powerand sociopolitical processes in knowledge con-struction and use, including language learningand discourse forms. As anthropologist Raffles(2002) argued:

Explanatory power results less from intrinsic truth-fulness than from the successful collaboration of po-litical, cultural, and biophysical actors. . . . In this ac-count, scientific knowledge is as much a localknowledge [as any other] . . . all knowledges are alsointimate . . . [and] intimacies are necessarily rela-tional. [Intimate knowledge] draws attention to theembeddedness of social practice in relations ofpower. (pp. 327328)

The recognition that all knowledge is posi-tioned and situated in sociohistorical, socio-political contexts brings us to the questions,What do the new understandings about body-mind imply for context? And how do peoplelearn?

CONTEMPORARY UNDERSTANDINGS OFHUMAN DEVELOPMENT, SITUATEDLEARNING, AND CONTEXT

The new research has made older cognitivisttheoretical assumptions about development andlearning obsolete. One of the best accounts ofhow our understandings have changed is foundin the National Academy of Sciences book, pub-lished in 2000, From Neurons to Neighborhoods: TheScience of Early Childhood Development (Shonkoff &Phillips, 2000). First, by asserting that humandevelopment is shaped by a dynamic and contin-uous interaction between biology and culture,the national panel stated that the nature versusnurture debate is thus scientifically obsolete(p. 3). As Spitzer (1999) pointed out:

We have demonstrated that the connections be-tween the neurons in a human brain cannot possiblybe genetically determined, because the entire hu-man genome is by far too small to contain the neces-sary information. Instead, humans learn throughinteractions with the environment that change theconnections in our biological brains. (p. 38)

Second, genetics and environment not only af-fect but are affected by a childs agency in devel-opment. The transmission model of develop-

ment and socialization is therefore also scientifi-cally obsolete. Not only adults, but also childrenare active participants in their own develop-ment and help to shape their environment(Shonkoff & Phillips, 2000, p. 24).

Third, the idea that development is entirelyand necessarily universal with regard to the spe-cifics of stage and trajectory is now obsolete.The effects of culture on child development arepervasive, the panel declared. Culture influ-ences every aspect of human development andis fundamental to what happens (Shonkoff &Phillips, 2000, p. 25; see also P. J. Miller & Good-now, 1995). The determination that culture isformative entails recognizing the influence ofthe family and family organization. Today thereis a turn towards seeing the family rather thanthe individual child as the unit of analysis. Someof the leading human development departmentsin U.S. universities are changing their names toreflect this new emphasis. For instance, the de-partment at the University of WisconsinMadi-son recently changed its name from HumanDevelopment to Human Development andFamily Studies, and faculty have begun collabo-rative research projects, using qualitative andethnographic methods.

Fourth, critical period as a description orboundary for certain kinds of development isnow a dispreferred term, having been replacedin cutting-edge research by sensitive period(Shonkoff & Phillips, 2000, p. 195). Research hasfound that the developing brain is open to in-fluential experiences across broad periods of de-velopment (Shonkoff & Phillips, 2000, p. 183;see also Barlow, Petrinovich, & Main, 1982).

Drawing on activity theory, critical psychology,ecological psychology, and cognitive anthropol-ogy, Lave (1993) defined learning as changingparticipation [and understanding] in the cultur-ally designed settings of everyday life (pp. 56).She pointed out that cognitivist theories of learn-ing have heretofore claimed that actors rela-tions with knowledge-in-activity are static, thatis, they do not change except when subject tospecial periods of learning and development,and that institutional arrangements for incul-cating knowledge are the necessary, special cir-cumstances for learning, separate from everydaylife (p. 12). The weight of evidence, however, ismoving towards sociocultural theories that em-phasize learning as ubiquitous, as an aspect ofall activity (Lave & Wenger, 1991, p. 38). In anysituation, people will learn, even if what theylearn is to fail, an all-too-common consequenceof formal schooling.


Underlying the split between older cognitivisttheories and contemporary sociocultural theo-ries of learning is an epistemological gulf. Oldercognitivist theories viewed knowledge as a collec-tion of real entities, located in heads (the con-tainer metaphor), and learning as a process of in-ternalizing these entities (what Freire, 1970,called the banking model of education in whichdeposits of prepackaged knowledge are madeinto the heads of students). Today some scholarsin education and language teaching are attempt-ing to apply aspects of neuroscience directly,ahead of the research and without regard to thecomplexities of cognitive scientific understand-ings (see Knudson, n.d., and Wolfe, 2001). Incontrast, sociocultural theories, which are receiv-ing support from the new research, regard know-ing and learning as engagement in changingprocesses of human activity (Lave, 1993, p. 12).

Even as cognitivist theories have not recog-nized the heterogeneity of knowledge, they alsodo not take into account situated activity and thefact that conflict is a ubiquitous aspect of hu-man existence (Lave, 1993, p. 15). As we haveseen, power issues cannot be detached fromknowledge, and thus all learning is political innature.

Then what is meant by situated cognition and sit-uated learning ? Both terms have wide usage todayin various pedagogical fields, where their mean-ings are often diluted. Situated cognition refers tothe position that every cognitive act must beviewed as a specific response to a specific set ofcircumstances (Resnick, 1991, p. 4). This fram-ing of cognition challenges experimental psy-chology and psycholinguistic assumptions thatthe research laboratory (or a test-taking situa-tion) is a neutral environment in which validfindings about peoples skills can be discovered,measured, or both. Research has shown, for in-stance, that childrens conversational inexperi-ence, rather than their cognitive incompetence,can produce inaccurate results about their abili-ties in an experimental situation (Siegal, 1991).Research has also shown that adults often attendto figuring out the social meaning of the experi-mental situation rather than the cognitive fea-tures of the task given them (Perret-Clermont,Perret, & Bell, 1991). In short, there is no decon-textualized, neutral environment: Everything oc-curs in and is shaped by context.

Situated learning refers to more than the ideathat learning takes place somewhere and throughdoing, or that the meaning of activity depends onsocial context. Situated learning is a general theo-retical perspective on the relational character of

knowledge and learning, the negotiated char-acter of meaning, and the concerned (engaged,dilemma-driven) nature of the learning activityfor people involved in it. Thus, there is no activ-ity that is not situated, the whole person is in-volved in learning, and agent, activity, and theworld mutually constitute each other, as Lave &Wenger (1991, p. 33) argued. A situated learningperspective rejects the notion that there can everbe decontextualized knowledge or a decontex-tualized activity. By definition, everything thathappens in the human world is in a context withspecifiable characteristics. Even so-called generalknowledge can be learned only in specific contexts.And the usefulness of general knowledge is onlyin its applicability to (re)negotiating or (re)con-structing meaning in specific circumstances(Lave & Wenger, 1991).

Context is also a much more complex conceptthan is usually recognized in experimental SLAresearch (for a review of the history of context as aconcept in linguistics, see Berns, 1990). From anactivity theory point of view, context is histori-cally constituted between persons engaged in so-cioculturally constructed activity and the worldwith which they are engaged (Lave, 1993, p.17). Ongoing social structures shape but do notfully determine context, because context is alsonegotiated, and all interactions involve contra-dictions and political dimensions. Meaning is re-lational, that is, among individuals and activitysystems or institutions. Context is open and ispartially renegotiated in every interaction, but itis not completely so. It is the fluid, dynamic,complex, heterogenous nature of context that isusually reduced to a list of features or elementsin SLA research, a mistaken notion of how con-text is constructed in interaction and across timeand space. Even in communicative languageteaching, much more attention is given to creat-ing lessons that contain examples with specifiedtypical contexts in which the language/discourseto be learned is realistic, than to the relational/contextual, dialogic (Bakhtin, 1981, 1986) na-ture of the learning/teaching interaction withinthe complex context of the classroom. Teachersteach, but they co-create context with others(administrators, institutional culture, students,etc.), and they respond to and are constrained bycontext.

The social construction of cognition and learn-ing challenges our basic notions of cognition,even as second-generation cognitive science haschallenged these notions. Social structures areoften hidden and taken for granted, yet can in-fluence our assumptions about cognition, assess-


ment of cognitive skills, and pedagogy. Lave(1988), for instance, pointed out that our soci-etys organization around capitalist productionand exchange of commodities creates a meta-phor in which work can be divided into sets ofseparate activities and skills. As Resnick (1991)argued:

What we take as knowledge in school and to a largeextent in cognitive research reflects [the] assump-tion that competence can be decomposed into con-stituent parts and decontextualized for purposes ofinstruction and evaluation, without losing anythingessential. So our very definition of the cognitive . . .is subtly colored by assumptions that derive from so-cial and economic arrangements with long histori-cal roots. . . . The social, then, invisibly pervadeseven situations that appear to consist of individualsengaged in private cognitive activity. (p. 7)

How can we move SLA theory onto a firmgrounding that takes into consideration the newresearch we have just reviewed and found to beconverging across the social, human, and behav-ioral sciences and that creates a more realisticand useful basis for research and practice? A lan-guage socialization paradigm for SLA would re-solve many of these issues and have significantapplication to language teaching.

TOWARD A LANGUAGE SOCIALIZATIONPARADIGM FOR SLA

As a theoretical and methodological perspec-tive, language socialization (LS) began as a re-sponse to concerns with the narrowness of main-stream first language acquisition and childdevelopment research models of the 1960s and1970s, and to the realization that language learn-ing and enculturation are part of the same pro-cess (Watson-Gegeo, 1992). Since the early1980s, a series of rigorous, detailed studies ofchildrens first (sometimes involving aspects ofsecond) language socialization have been under-taken in a variety of societies. Initial studies werecarried out in the South Pacific (Papua NewGuinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Hawaii), Af-rica, Asia, Europe, and the diverse cultures of theUnited States (e.g., Boggs, 1985; Cook, 1999;Cook-Gumperz, Corsaro, & Streeck, 1986; De-muth, 1986; Heath, 1983; Kulick, 1992; Ochs,1988; Philips, 1983; Schieffelin, 1990; Schieffelin& Ochs, 1986; Tudge, 1990; Watson, 1975;Watson-Gegeo & Gegeo, 1986a, 1986b).

Language socialization studies of second lan-guage classroom learning, both oral and writtenlanguage, have also begun appearing (e.g., At-kinson & Ramanathan, 1995; Duff, 1995; Eckert,

2000; Harklau, 1994; He, 1997; Hoyle & Adger,1998; Kanagy, 1999; Li, 2000; Losey, 1995; Pal-lotti, 1996; Poole, 1992; Schecter & Bayley, 1997;Siegal, 1996; Watson-Gegeo, 1992, 2001; Wat-son-Gegeo & Gegeo, 1994, 1995, 1999a; Willet,1995; for a review of some of the better LS stud-ies in SLA, see Watson-Gegeo & Nielsen, 2003).The most exciting development in LS studies inSLA is the arrival of Bayley and Schecters (2003)excellent collection of research pieces, mostfrom a critical, sociopolitical perspective, onsecond language socialization in more than 10bilingual/multilingual sociocultural situationsaround the world, in home, school, and commu-nity contexts, across the life-span. This volumesets a new, higher standard for LS research inSLA and pushes the paradigm shift forward. Al-though individual authors in the Bayley andSchecter volume make important statementsabout the shifts going on in LS theory and re-search, an overarching theoretical statementdoes not emerge from the book. What I try to dohere, therefore, is move us towards a LS para-digm for SLA by briefly laying out some of thekey premises of LS theory. We need to recognizethat a new paradigm will be socially constructedby an epistemological community, not individu-ally announced, and that what we are seekingto build is an open, not a closed, paradigm. Inother words, we are not seeking to construct anew grid or new walls, we are instead opening upspaces.

The basic premise of LS is that linguistic andcultural knowledge are constructed through eachother, and that language-acquiring childrenand adults are active and selective agents in bothprocesses (Watson-Gegeo & Nielsen, 2003, p.165, drawing on Schieffelin & Ochs, 1986). Thelearning of language, cultural meanings, and so-cial behavior is experienced by the learner as asingle, continuous (though neither linear nornecessarily unparadoxical) process (Watson-Gegeo & Gegeo, 1995). Learners construct a setof (linguistic and behavioral) practices that en-able them to communicate with and live amongothers (Schieffelin, 1990, p. 15) in the highlycomplex, fluid, and hybridized cultural settingsin which they may find themselves and need toact. This premise coincides with our understand-ings that language and language varieties adaptto human circumstances and biology, that cul-ture shapes development (including languagelearning), and that language, culture, and mindinteractively shape each other through interac-tive practices and discourses. Language socializa-tion research offers us an opportunity, as well, to


extend Whorfs (1956) principle of linguisticrelativity by examining how, in the process oflearning first, second, and additional languages,learners also learn multiple representations (on-tologies and epistemologies) of the world.

A second premise of LS theory is that all ac-tivities in which learners regularly interact withothers in the family, community, workplace, orclassroom are not only by definition socially orga-nized and embedded in cultural meaning sys-tems, but are inherently political. People learnlanguage(s) in social, cultural, and political con-texts that constrain the linguistic forms they hearand use and also mark the social significance oflinguistic and cultural forms in various ways.These insights apply to second language learnersas well as to first language learners because learn-ing is ubiquitous, there is no context-free lan-guage learning, and all communicative contextsinvolve social, cultural, and political dimensionsthat affect which linguistic forms are available ortaught and how they are represented. As Bour-dieu (1985) argued, there is no disinterested so-cial practice. In fact, the study of language social-ization processes allows us to recover howlanguage forms correspond with the values, be-liefs, and practices of a particular group and hownovices can come to adopt them in interaction,because through language, social structures androles are made visible and available (K. Cole &Zuengler, 2003, p. 99). Discourse organizationthen becomes central to understanding in class-rooms, for example, the ways that language vari-eties and forms are used to create expectations,meanings, and judgments about learners, theirknowledge(s) and indigenous/local/standpointepistemologies, and so on, especially throughinteractional routines that invite while limitingagency (Sato & Watson-Gegeo, 1992; Ulichny &Watson-Gegeo, 1989; Watson-Gegeo & Gegeo,1999b).

A third premise of LS theory has to do with thecomplexities of context essential to analysis. Overthe past decade, SLA research has demonstratedthat social identities, roles, discourse patterns,and other aspects of context all affect the processof language learning, including motivation(Peirce, 1995a) and consciousness (Schmidt,1990). Conventional SLA research has oftentreated aspects of context in ways that arereductionist and superficial. R. Ellis and Roberts(1987) approach to context, for example, drewon Hymes (1974) SPEAKING model, whichHymes intended as sensitization for researchersto the multidimensionality of context, but in fact,R. Ellis and Roberts followed Brown and Frasers

(1979) reductionist approach in limiting contextto a few dimensions. Roberts and Simonot (1987)wanted to deepen context beyond such narrowuses, yet included only three levels in their analy-sis, omitting many historical and sociocultural di-mensions that cannot be dismissed beforehand.These problems persist even in the criticalistwork of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL;e.g., Halliday & Hasan, 1989; for excellent cri-tiques of SFL, see Bronson, 2001; Hyon, 1996;Chouliaraki & Fairclough, 1999; J. R. Martin,1997; Sullivan, 1995).

The limitations placed by prior, and often con-temporary, SLA research on what counts as con-text typically derives from the positivistic, experi-mental model of research that attempts tocontrol variables rather than account for thecomplexities of peoples real lived situations,and, in any case, reflects a felt need to reducecomplexity in order to arrive at firm, codable cat-egories. Berns (1990), Resnick (1991), Kramsch(1995), the authors in Bayley and Schecters(2003) work, and especially Lave (1993) repre-sent advances in encompassing the complexitiesof context. In LS research, context refers to thewhole set of relationships in which a phenome-non is situated (Watson-Gegeo, 1992, p. 51), in-corporating macrolevels/macrodimensions ofinstitutional, social, political, and cultural as-pects, and microlevels/microdimensions involv-ing the immediate context of situation (Good-win & Duranti, 1992; Malinowski, 1923). Thehistory of macro- and microdimensions, includ-ing interactants individual experiences and thehistory of relationships and interactions amongthem, are important to the analysis. In this re-spect, LS study aims to go beyond Geertzs(1973) notion of thick descriptionwhich heborrowed from the philosopher Gilbert Ryles (ascited by Geertz, 1973, p. 7)to thick explanation.Thick explanation takes into account all rele-vant and theoretically salient micro- and macro-contextual influences that stand in a systematicrelationship to the behavior or events (Wat-son-Gegeo, 1992, p. 54) to be explained. Sys-tematic relationship is the key for settingboundaries (Diesing, 1971, pp. 137141), withattention to data collection to the point of theo-retical saturation (Glaser & Strauss, 1967). Thispremise of LS theory is consistent with the newunderstandings about the ubiquitous and funda-mental role of context in human experience.

A fourth premise of LS theory, also supportedby research, is that children and adults learn cul-ture largely through participating in linguisti-cally marked events, the structure, integrity, and


characteristics of which they come to understandthrough primarily verbal cues to such meanings.The construction and learning of syntax, seman-tics, and discourse practices is especially funda-mental to learners socialization in framing andstructuring their development of both linguisticand cultural knowledge, including ontology andepistemology. Second language classrooms ex-hibit and teachwith varying degrees of explicit-nessa set of cultural and epistemological as-sumptions that often differ from those of thesecond language learners native culture(s). Cer-tainly such differences have been well docu-mented for linguistic and cultural minorities in avariety of national and international settings andhave often been shown to be problematic forchild and adult second language or second dia-lect learners.

A fifth premise of LS theory incorporates theinsights on cultural models and Mental EventRepresentations from cognitive anthropologyand K. Nelsons (1996) work in human develop-ment. What this means is that cognition is builtfrom experience and is situated in sociohis-torical, sociopolitical contexts, as argued by Lave(1993). The construction of event representa-tions and other cultural models is the building ofnew neural networks or links between networks,from the perspective of cognitive science. Be-cause cognition is created in social interaction,contemporary LS theory is concerned with par-ticipation in communities of practice and learn-ing, more specifically, the learning processwhich Lave and Wenger (1991) called legitimateperipheral participation. They emphasized the cru-cial importance of learners access to participa-tory roles in expert performances of all knowl-edge skills, including language.

The term legitimate peripheral participation refersto the incorporation of learners into the ac-tivities of communities of practice, beginning asa legitimated (recognized) participant on theedges (periphery) of the activity, and movingthrough a series of increasingly expert roles aslearners skills develop. Capacities and skills aretherefore built by active participation in a varietyof different roles associated with a given activityover a period of time, from peripheral to full par-ticipant. Lave and Wenger (1991) thus movedbeyond the Vygotskian notion of internaliza-tion into a more fluid, realistic, and criticalistperspective on learning. Their theory of socialpractice is related to the work of Giddens (1979)and Bourdieu (1977) and is congruent with whatcognitive anthropologist Hanks (1991) de-scribed as the radical shift [in the human sci-

ences] from invariant structures to ones that areless rigid and more deeply adaptive, with struc-ture more the variable outcome of action thanits invariant precondition (p. 17).

Lave and Wengers (1991) formulation speaksto the relational interdependency of agent andworld, activity, meaning, cognition, learning,and knowing, and emphasizes the inherently so-cially situated negotiation and renegotiation ofmeaning in the world (pp. 5051). This per-spective is important to focusing our attentionon how learners are brought into or excludedfrom various activities that shape language learn-ing. The importance of studying access, negotia-tion, and the roles of second language learnersmovement from beginner to advanced secondlanguage speaker status is foregrounded. Theseissues have critical importance for linguistic mi-norities and immigrants, who often face socialand political hostility or exclusion and may reactto that exclusion with resistance. Moreover, if wewere to take Lave and Wengers legitimate pe-ripheral participation model seriously, we wouldneed to rethink education from the ground up,including all the assumptions we have aboutclassrooms as settings for learning.

METHODOLOGICAL ISSUES FOR SECONDLANGUAGE SOCIALIZATION

A language socialization paradigm is eclecticwith regard to research methods and design butemphasizes ethnographic and other forms ofqualitative research as the key empirical meth-ods. In the past few years, a number of discus-sions of qualitative and ethnographic methods inSLA and English as a second language researchhave appeared (Davis, 1995; Edge & Richards,1998; Lazaraton, 1995; Peirce, 1995b; Ramana-than & Atkinson, 1999; Watson-Gegeo, 1990),but only two so far (Watson-Gegeo, 1992;Watson-Gegeo & Nielsen, 2003) flow from a LSperspective. Quality LS research requires a com-bination of ethnographic, sociolinguistic, anddiscourse analytic methods at a minimum, andoften includes quantitative and sometimes ex-perimental methods, as well. However, quantita-tive and experimental work must be ecologicallyvalid (M. Cole, Hood, & McDermott, 1978) thatis, incorporate all relevant macro- and micro-dimensions of context; and, going beyond thepsychologists notion of ecological validity, in-corporate whole events and behavior rather thanshort strips of time with coding into preset cate-gories (Watson-Gegeo, 1992). LS research isbuilt on fine-grained longitudinal studies of lan-


guage and culture learning in community orclassroom settings, or both, systematically docu-mented through audiotape, videotape, and care-ful fieldnote records of interaction. Central tothe analysis are tape-recorded naturally occur-ring interactions that are analyzed for linguisticand sociolinguistic features (including paralin-guistic, kinesic, and suprasegmental features),participant structures, genres, presentation ofself, indexicality, discourse organization, andother aspects of interaction. In-depth ethno-graphic interviews of learners are conducted, fo-cused around their goals, inferences, and otherunderstanding of interactions in which they orothers participated; emergent patterns in data;and theoretical issues salient to the researchquestions that evolve, grounded-theory style,from accumulating data and continuous analysis.(For further discussion of methods in LS re-search, see Watson-Gegeo, 1992, and Watson-Gegeo & Nielsen, 2003.)

CONCLUSION

A language socialization paradigm wouldtransform SLA research, which is already movingtowards becoming consistent with the new re-search in the human, social, and neurosciences,and make it more relevant to learners actual ex-perience (e.g., Kern, 2000). A language socializa-tion paradigm would also transform the way weattempt to teach languages in classrooms. Wewould have to reexamine our pedagogical strate-gies, the assumptions we make about classroomorganization, lesson structure, and effective ma-terials, including current assumptions aboutsociocultural strategies. Our concern with multi-culturalism would be radically changed, as well,from the rather superficial and anemic treat-ment of cultural variability to a serious and inten-sive consideration of how our perceptions of theworld are shaped by the interaction between ourembodied experience in the world and the cul-turally based ontology/ies and epistemology/iesinto and through which we are all socialized inthe course of learning our first language(s) andculture(s) (however hybridized they may be);and then (re)socialized or partially (re)social-ized in the process of learning a second or thirdlanguage and culture.

Moreover, political issues in language, mind,culture, interaction, ontology, epistemology, andlearning would be foregrounded rather thannoted and then treated as peripheral or ignoredaltogether. With criticalist applied linguists andSLA researchers in sociopolitical perspectives, we

would all have to ask ourselves and our students,Why are we teaching/learning English (or an-other language)? What does this teaching/learn-ing imply in our highly diverse but rampantly po-litically structured world? What are the politicalimplications of our teaching, learning, and re-searching language learning and pedagogy?Whom does this work empower and whom does itdisempower?

Finally, I want to address briefly an aspect ofhuman experience that is largely missing fromthe new neuroscience research, and which maymake some readers uncomfortable. So let me be-gin from the periphery. In all known human so-cieties, the schism between transcendentalityand appearances is recognized, as Wautischer(1998, p. 9) argued in the introduction to his ed-ited volume, Tribal Epistemologies: Essays in the Phi-losophy of Anthropology. In the West, we typicallydivide spirituality from science; even those scien-tists who themselves experience or are open tothe notion of spirituality tend to separate spiri-tual matters from their daily professional work.This is not an unimportant issue because, formost indigenous and ethnic minority peoples,spirituality and the sacred are at the core of theirindigenous and local knowledge systems. Manythird- and fourth-world peoples feel that whentheir languages and cultures are recorded andanalyzed by Anglo-Euro-American researchers,they are desanctified in both the spiritual andthe epistemological sense. When indigenous andethnic minority peoples talk about their indige-nous ontologies and epistemologies, much ofwhat they say falls outside any perspective con-sistent with our age of reason, as Wautischer(1998, p. 4) commented. He went on to say thatmainstream researchers own experiences withaspects of body-mind which we cannot explainsuch as intuition or intentionare ubiquitous. . . [and] show that our twentieth century senseof science is incomplete: objectifying methodol-ogies cannot account for qualitative experiences,while introspective methodologies collapse un-der the scrutiny of noetic [i.e., intellectual] in-trusion (p. 4). Nevertheless, spiritual traditionsand formal religions are on the rise in first- andsecond- world societies everywhere.

In Western science, with the exception of a fewpioneers primarily in physics, we have closed offfrom reality-grounded science the recognition ofthe strong human seeking for transcendentaland immanent meaning. The resulting dichot-omy resembles the body-mind dualism that hasbeen so physically and emotionally destructive tous since Descartes and which is now crumbling


under the weight of evidence from a variety ofmethodological perspectives. Part of the post-modern realization is that knowledge is now go-ing to move from the periphery of world powerto the center, instead of always from the centerto the periphery, as has been the case under co-lonialism whether internal or external, and inthe divisions between the formally (especiallyhigher) educated and the less schooled. Post-modernism is able to embrace the diversity ofhuman experience. As Johnson (1999) argued:

Constructivist versions of postmodernism seek toreunite dichotomies between subjective and objec-tive, fact and imagination, secular and sacred . . . im-manent and transcendent. . . . The inclusion of aspiritual perspective may permit acceptance of theparadoxes inherent in these dichotomies. If our cul-ture of separation arises partially from an overem-phasis on the intellect and the ego, then the re-balancing of spirit and rationality are necessary tonurture life. (p. 157)

These issues are even more important in a timewhen the ecological sciences are beginning tomake headway in changing the modernist para-digm. Physicists in the new physics have beendeveloping a quantitative model of local andnonlocal energetic/information healing (Tiller,2003b), demonstrating mathematically andthrough controlled experiments that spiritual ex-periences are real. Tiller (2003a) argued:

Today, we once again have abundant experimentalevidence concerning natures expression that is be-ing swept under the rug by the scientific establish-ment because it doesnt fit into the current prevail-ing paradigm. This concerns the issue of whether ornot human qualities of spirit, mind, emotion, con-sciousness, intention, etc., can significantly influ-ence the materials and processes of physical reality.The current physics paradigm would say no and in-deed there is no place in the mathematical formalismof the paradigm where any human qualities mightenter. However, the database that supports an un-qualified yes response is very substantial. (p. 1)

The new physics posits both individual particlesand wave-like patterns of probabilities of inter-connectedness, reversing the Cartesian notionthat the world is comprised of independent parts(Johnson, 1999, p. 160). Physicist Capra (1983)argued that quantum and relativity theories shareontology with mystics throughout history.

The reconsideration of spirituality in light ofthe entrance of marginalized Others into the on-going conversation about learning, knowledge,language, literacy, and sociopolitical processes, Ibelieve, will become a significant dimension of

the paradigm shift in the human and social sci-ences that revolutionizes the way we view mind,language, epistemology, and learning. It will af-fect how we think about learning languages andcultures and the values we hold in relation to lo-cal/indigenous languages and knowledges, mov-ing us away from instrumentalism towards a gen-uine recognition and appreciation for differingways of being, learning, teaching, and under-standing in language teaching. And it will ex-pand how we think about mind, cognition, andintelligence.

A paradigm shift of the dimensions I have at-tempted to outline in this article is painful be-cause such shifts shatter the old in the interest ofmaking room for new growth and new visions. Bydefinition, paradigm shifts question all that wehold dear, all that we have assumed, the theoriesclose to our hearts, the methods we have be-lieved in, the goals we have set for our careers. Inthis case, normal science which we have taken tobe the hallmark of our very technologically ori-ented (and distorted) society is from here onchallenged. It will be a new kind of science thatemerges, far more holistic and open than in thepast, integrating more of human experience andunderstanding than in the past. It will incorpo-rate voices and knowings from the periphery ofworld power, from standpoints of indigeneity,hybridity, ethnicity, color, gender, and sexualorientation. As noted Nobel laureate (chemis-try) Prigogine commented (as cited in Jantsch1980; see Prigogine, 1980):

The world is far too rich to be expressed in a singlelanguage. Music does not exhaust itself in a se-quence of styles. Equally, the essential aspects of ourexperience can never be condensed into a single de-scription. We have to use many descriptions whichare irreducible to each other. . . . Scientific workconsists of selective exploration and not of discoveryof a given reality. It consists of the choice of ques-tions which have to be posed. (p. 303)

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This revised article was originally presented as an in-vited plenary talk at the Pacific Second Language Re-search Forum (PacSLRF), 5 October 2001, in Hono-lulu, via distance technology. I am indebted toKandace Knudson, Matthew C. Bronson, and Sarah E.Nielsen for our many significant conversations on theissues and sources in cognitive science and SLA dis-cussed here. I am also grateful to Michele Favreau-Haight, Suzanne Romaine, Kathryn Davis, DavidWelchman Gegeo, Julia Menard-Warwick, Sally SieloffMagnan, and three anonymous reviewers, for their


helpful comments on an earlier draft. I dedicate thispaper to Charlie (Charlene) J. Sato, in memory of ourconversations in 1991 when, while working on ourDiscourse Processes in Hawaii Creole English proj-ect, I first began proposing the ideas developed here,catalyzed by our synergistic, free-ranging, and wonder-fully electric discussions of mind, language, culture,and epistemology.

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