9.1 Beyond Unit Thinking: Post-Standardization in Language Teaching
Neriko Musha Doerr; Jisuk Park; and Kimiko Suzuki
INITIAL REFLECTIONS
- When we label language courses and materials, we tend to refer to what we are teaching as national languages, e.g., Japanese, Spanish, or Vietnamese. Sometimes we may also refer to specific dialects or varieties, such as Cockney or youth slang. This way of naming and conceptualizing languages can be viewed as unit thinking. Think about the titles of courses you teach or otherwise know and the textbooks used within them. Is language designated as a unit (that is, as bounded, countable, and internally homogeneous)? How does it show up? For example, is language designated by national language, by dialect, otherwise?
- What do you think are the effects of labeling languages in this way?
- Can you think of any alternatives to unit thinking? What effects might those have?
Unit Thinking in Language Education
Language education is usually framed by the unit of language, such as “English,” “Spanish,” or “Japanese.” Classes and textbooks are designated by such units of language. Although it appears harmless, this unit thinking (Doerr, 2022) can be problematic. It can lead to normative practices that hierarchize diversity and push linguistic practices that are deemed undesirable to conform to those that are considered desirable. Desirability is usually decided by what represents that unit (i.e., the standard language).
Unit thinking is a common way of seeing the world as made up of bounded, countable units that are thought of as internally homogeneous. For example, race and culture are such examples. They designate people and ways of thinking or doing, respectively, as all the same within these units, although they are actually diverse and changeable. Unit thinking is so ingrained that arbitrary divisions can appear as natural units. Although many things that are on a spectrum can be seen as units via unit thinking—such as color—some unit thinking is normative. This means it establishes hierarchies (e.g., some speech is designated as “accented”) and forces conformity (e.g., standardization of language, cultural assimilation). Doerr (2022) calls this normative unit thinking, a specific kind of unit thinking that has deeper social impacts.
To think of language as a bounded unit is one example of normative unit thinking. Language is diverse and constantly changing. Everyone speaks differently with varied vocabulary and pronunciations—what linguists call an idiolect. Some linguists argue that there is no such thing as “language,” and no such thing as systematic and unchanging grammar rules or meaning of words. Instead, they propose that all we have are temporal communicational streams that are always created in the here-and-now with shifting rules, without a guarantee of mutual understanding among speakers. What we conventionally consider “language,” “grammar,” or “meaning” are by-products of such communication, figured out after the fact (Harris, 1990; Pennycook, 2004; Volosinov, 1973).
Nonetheless, language is usually viewed as a bounded, internally homogeneous, stable unit, overlapping with the border of a nation, as this unit thinking developed alongside the nation-state ideology of one nation, one culture, and one language (Balibar, 1994; Bauman & Briggs, 2003; Whiteley, 2003; Wimmer & Glick Schiller, 2002). This ideology shaped some linguistic theories—e.g., structural linguistics that posits language as a system (Bauman & Briggs, 2003)—and notions such as monolingual, bilingual, and multilingual, as well as language-mixing or language-borrowing. Even notions like dialects, which seemingly acknowledge diversity within the unit of a language, also support unit thinking if they too are seen as bounded units: focusing on dialects instead of languages then merely shifts the unit to a different scale, viewing one language as having many countable and bounded dialects inside.
Standardization often arises because the language a nation uses is supposed to be internally homogeneous but in actuality never is. Therefore, forceful standardization attempts to homogenize this diversity, which is the central feature of normative unit thinking. Standardization is also an ongoing process because language always changes (Milroy & Milroy, 1991).
There are two aspects of standardization (Doerr, 2009). First, among “native speakers,[1]” the type of speech prevalent among the dominant group is designated as the standard, chosen based on the speakers’ social status rather than linguistic attributes, and imposed on the rest of the population as the ideal form of the language. Standardization occurs through the educational system sanctioned by the government and supported by dictionaries and grammar books, with the media acting diversely to either promote or subvert such a standard. Through this process, various linguistic forms become hierarchized, with the standard positioned as the most desirable. Since the dominant group usually decides what becomes the standard, their own speech is often viewed as the most desirable. This means that standardization processes reproduce structures of power (Bourdieu, 1991; Milroy & Milroy, 1991). Second (the focus of this chapter), in second and foreign language education, the speech of “native speakers” (presented as a single, unified standard) becomes the model for language learners (i.e., “non-native speakers”) to copy. Relatedly, the native speaker is positioned as the judge of learners.
In the United States, for example, the speaking guidelines from the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Language (ACTFL) describe a speaker at the “superior level” as possibly making sporadic errors that “do not distract the native interlocutor or interfere with communication” (ACTFL, 2012, p. 5, emphasis added; see also Doerr & Kumagai, 2009). The writing guidelines also allow for some errors, as long as they “do not interfere with comprehension, and they rarely distract the native reader” (ACTFL, 2012, p. 11, emphasis added). In this way, native speaker speech is seen as always “correct”, while language learners’ speech is ranked lower on a hierarchy (Firth & Wagner, 2007).
The hierarchy among native speakers’ language variation is thus strengthened in second and foreign language classrooms because what is usually taught there is the standard language. This reinforces complex power relations around “speaker legitimacy,” especially when a non-native speaker uses a dialect (see Takeuchi, 2020b). Dialects are typically considered undesirable in a language classroom, and students are often penalized for using them. This encourages a hierarchical understanding of linguistic diversity, preventing new speakers from being exposed to diverse speech patterns important in language learning (Kinginger, 2011; Smith, 1992).
Language teacher training also perpetuates this hierarchy. For example, Japanese language teachers are often trained to teach standard Japanese, regardless of the learners’ wishes as to which variety to learn or with whom they will be using the language (Mori et al., 2020; Takeuchi, 2020a). Even if the learners are planning to live in Osaka, they learn the Tokyo-based standard in class, having to later learn the variations used in Osaka. This sends a message to people in Osaka who interact with non-native speakers that their speech is less valuable than the standard that learners are taught.
Reflect for a moment on languages you speak and teach. What examples of standardization can you think of, and how does this connect to unit thinking in the ways described here?
Critiques of Normative Unit Thinking
As indicated above, the linguistic hierarchies imposed by normative unit thinking are reinforced in language education through seemingly reasonable yet profoundly problematic notions. Examples include models of correctness that use the standard language as their fixed reference point (Milroy & Milroy, 1991); views of appropriateness that ignore how contexts are also ranked (e.g., dialect is not appropriate in government offices, which are given more social importance than casual conversations); and notions of intelligibility, communicability, and avoiding misunderstanding that disregard the fact that contextual clues usually override the use of “incorrect” grammar or words (Firth & Wagner, 2007). These concepts overlook and perpetuate the violent histories of the imposition of the standard language that is now widely shared (Lee, 2004; Yasuda, 1999, 2003).
Important to all these notions are the questions: who gets to decide what is correct, appropriate, intelligible, communicable, or understood, and who must modify their language for the sake of these terms (Doerr, 2014)? Disregarding these questions and claiming that “not teaching what is valued in the society—the standard—to students unfairly disadvantages the students” perpetuates the social hierarchy and encourages students to join the higher status group so they can be in a position to dominate others, rather than challenging that hierarchy and encouraging students to understand how such a hierarchy is produced so they can challenge it (for critiques of prescriptive language teaching in general, see Matsumoto & Okamoto, 2003; Siegal & Okamoto, 2003).
In language education, normative unit thinking has been critiqued in two ways. First, the standardization of the non-native speaker to the native speaker model and the resultant hierarchy between them has been challenged by pluralizing the model of speech to be emulated. For example, in a study of English-language teaching, Braj Kachru (1992) suggests the need to recognize and legitimize separate linguistic norms in places where people use English as their second language among themselves. He dubs these “World Englishes” in the plural. This same logic can be applied to the use of dialects in language education by teaching dialects as legitimate linguistic varieties. It is important to note, however, that unit thinking continues in this notion of World Englishes (or dialects) insofar as they are seen as bounded units, excluding “any other possibilities that destabilize this notion of global English in more fundamental ways” (Pennycook, 2007, p. 104; see also Canagarajah, 1999).
Alternatively, research on English-as-a-Lingua-Franca (ELF) – a language “developed independently, with a great deal of variation but enough stability to be viable for lingua franca communication” (Seidlhofer, 2001, p. 138) among non-native speakers of English – seeks to render obsolete the idea that there is only one correct form of language based on native speaker speech (Jenkins, 2006). By not measuring the deviation of ELF speakers’ speech from that of native speakers, the ELF framework rejects the use of a single yardstick to measure proficiency, reframing what are often considered linguistic deficits as viable communication strategies (Canagarajah, 2007; Seidlhofer, 2001). However, we should seek alternatives to using a label, such as “English,” to avoid unit thinking. For example, we do not have a name for communication tools used by automobile drivers on the road, yet communication still occurs effectively.
The second critique of normative unit thinking in language education involves moving away from evaluating students’ linguistic ability in terms of the named language, i.e., the target language seen as a unit (including World Englishes or dialects or ELF). Within this view, normative unit thinking is criticized as a deficit approach because it does not focus on the students’ ability to communicate.
One alternative, the translanguaging framework, suggests instead viewing students’ linguistic ability in terms of each student’s unique linguistic repertoire developed without separating units of language (Garcia & Kleyn, 2016). This framework rejects normative unit thinking in that it rejects measuring students’ linguistic proficiency in terms of the named language (i.e., unit thinking of language) and instead starts with an individual student’s idiolect or linguistic repertoire— a language system developed through interaction with various people.
As such, linguistic repertoire does not align with any single named language; researchers then examine the deployment of an individual’s full linguistic repertoire rather than their proficiency in light of named languages (Garcia & Kleyn, 2016; Garcia & Li Wei, 2014; Li Wei, 2018; Paulsrud et al., 2017). This form of translanguaging pedagogy is said to empower students to use their own linguistic repertoire in class without requiring them to adhere only to the target language (Rosiers et al., 2018).
While translanguaging can be effective as a pedagogical approach to move away from named languages, as a theoretical framework, it logically reverts to the very unit thinking it condemns (Doerr, 2018, 2020). This is because it assumes there exists non-translanguaging or monolingual practices of using only a single discrete language, which then is mixed to become a translanguaging practice. That is, identifying translanguaging practices necessarily involves unit thinking because it is done by ascertaining named languages that are being mixed, assigning one language (as a unit) to words. For example, deciding if the statement, “I ate a croissant,” is translanguaging or not depends on whether we see the word “croissant” as English or French— a decision based on the notion of English and French as two separate units of language.
Doerr (2023, 2024) proposes another framework called neo-immersion to challenge normative unit thinking in language learning, without reverting to unit thinking as the translanguaging framework does. Neo-immersion is based on and modifies a successful indigenous language revitalization method called the Master-Apprentice Language Learning Program (MALLP) (Hinton et al., 2002), which pairs the language speaker/teacher and the learner to engage in hands-on task-based activities. The learner learns the idiolect of the teacher without resorting to the standard language.
Although this pedagogical method was developed because there were not enough teaching materials (i.e., grammar books and textbooks), Doerr borrows the model for its teaching of language without using a standard language (or named language) as the goal or the measurement for proficiency. Hammine (2024) provides an example of a similar modification done successfully. Doerr further modifies the approach (including moving away from the hierarchical Master-Apprentice relationship where one is the teacher and the other is the learner, similar to the relationship between native and non-native speakers) to incorporate it into a daily immersion context to learn through interaction, hence the term “neo-immersion.”
The MALLP and neo-immersion approaches focus on learning language, not just classroom teaching. Teaching a language class in an institutional setting often requires grading students’ linguistic practices, which is conducive to needing a static standard language for correctness, against which students’ linguistic practices are judged. This often ignores the communication achieved through contextual clues.
Project-based and content-based approaches move away from such a correctness focus as well, often highlighting the communicative goal of language and its contextuality (Doerr & Sato, 2011; Fukai, 2010; Fukai & Sato, 2008; Kumagai, 2007; Nazikian, 2021; Sato & Kumagai, 2011; Tohsaku et al., 2021). Though these approaches are valuable for going beyond unit thinking, explicitly challenging normative unit thinking and its manifestation in language education—the notion of correctness—is also important.
In this chapter, we offer this new approach—involving students in actively thinking and challenging the normative unit thinking of language—within the current structure of language classrooms. Two examples introduced in the later section (kanji and role-based language, often called “role language”) focus on the notion of correctness in language. This concept is based on two key ideas: (1) the idea that there is a stable system of language—unit thinking—that defines what is “correct,” and (2) the acceptance of standard language as the only correct one—normative unit thinking—ignoring the relations of power that establish it. Examining the notion of correctness is important because language classrooms often push students to strive to be correct.
These examples are part of the collaborative project that Doerr, Suzuki, and Park have been working on called Beyond Unit Thinking. This project aims to offer concrete ways to challenge normative unit thinking by connecting the theoretical discussions of Doerr (2022) and the model practice of developed by Suzuki and Park in language education. Our goal is to share these practices with other language instructors through workshops and booklets (Beyond Unit Thinking, 2023; see NERIKO Institute, 2023). Although we work as the core members, we are open to suggestions and collaborations to make this project grow, hoping that the examples below will inspire and invite other researchers and teachers to join us in sharing our ideas and approaches.
- “The notion of the “native speaker” assumes the existence of a bounded unit of language (i.e., unit thinking) of which such “native speakers” have innate competence. It is a false idea not only because of its assumption of unit thinking but also because the notion of competence assumes there is one “correct” version of the language, which is based on the problematic standardization ideology, as this chapter elaborates.” ↵
A way of perceiving the world as made up of bounded, discrete, countable units that are internally homogeneous; coined by Neriko Musha Doerr.
A specific kind of unit thinking that has deeper social impacts as it hierarchizes diversity and forces conformity to the dominant norm that represents the unit; coined by Neriko Musha Doerr.
An understanding that there is a homology among the nation, culture, language, and territory of the nation-state, often expressed as “one nation, one people, one culture, one language, one territory.”
A practice of pushing diverse linguistic practices to conform to the practices designated as the standard, which was chosen based on the speakers’ high social status. It is always in process and never complete; it reproduces power hierarchy in society by imposing the dominant group’s speech as the standard and hierarchizing linguistic variations based on their distance from the standard.
A notion often used in the framework of translanguaging to mean the socially constructed notions of language as discrete units; similar to unit thinking.
An individual’s unique collection of linguistic resources.
One-on-one language learning via hands-on activities aimed at learning the idiolect of the teacher without resorting to the standard language, built on but also modified the Master-Apprentice Language Learning Program model of indigenous language revitalization; a pedagogy suggested by Neriko Musha Doerr.