We start this chapter by addressing and re-contextualizing the frequently docu-mented observation that effective deployment of a capacity requires some level of control over what is deployed (see Burgoon et al. 2000). Part of this control requires an awareness of what is being deployed and for which purposes. So, we need to identify what we believe to be this awareness and which labels are better suited to convey that meaning. We begin with a brief review of some existing labels in order to clarify which parts of the labels refer to necessary parts of our definition of meta awareness. The second part of this chapter focuses on how the framework of Multiplicity can serve as a meta awareness tool for implementing (intercultural) communicative competence in educational settings to the benefit of both the learner and the teacher. Our final section considers another potential benefit of the framework as a tool for meta awareness: how the framework of Multiplicity can be used in teacher education and professional development to explore what theories of Language Education do and do not offer the learner and the educator.
What's in a name? Labels, their promises and pitfalls
A number of labels have been used to refer to the āmeta zoneā (Coupland and Jaworski 2004: 19), the areas of research that focus on knowledge about language. The most common labels used in relation to meta awareness of some or all of the parts of a communicative repertoire are: declarative and procedural knowledge, tacit and explicit knowledge, implicit and explicit knowledge, metalinguistic awareness and metalanguage.
The labels declarative and procedural knowledge capture the psychological pro-cesses involved in increasing fluent control over a new language. Ullman (2005) is careful to discuss that declarative and procedural memory systems do not map in a one-on-one way onto implicit and explicit knowledge. The procedural memory system, for example, holds information that does not require awareness to access it, but awareness is not precluded (Lum and Kidd 2012). Because work on these issues has largely shifted the focus to the neurolinguistic memory systems rather than how users access the knowledge that may be stored there, we have chosen not to employ these labels.
Hymes (1972a) used the label ātacit knowledgeā to describe knowledge of the ways language is used in contrast to the abstract knowledge of ideal speakerāhearer rules encased in Chomsky's view of competence. Hymes sought to clarify what learners have to gain control over but he did not elaborate on a specific definition of tacit knowledge, other than to state that this knowledge involved knowing what was appropriate, feasible, possible and performable. Those working in Community of Practice framework have used the term ātacit knowledgeā to refer to knowledge that users cannot normally fully describe but which can be drawn out through processes such as extensive contact with others, regular interaction and trust in environments which promote the sharing of knowledge (Wenger et al. 2002). Tacit knowledge, in the latter sense, has been used widely in fields of management, psychology and education and has numerous and varied subtypes. Tacit knowledge contrasts with explicit knowledge in these fields and in the field of Applied Linguistics. In Language Education explicit knowledge has an equally long history as a key means of controlling use. In its simplest form, explicit knowledge is used to refer either to what learners can articulate about what they know or the teaching of rules about how particular features should be used. However, its precise meaning is varied and the term itself is used in different ways within both additional language acquisition research and Language Education. 1 In discussions of the learning of grammar, explicit knowledge refers to knowledge of grammatical terminology, to the ability (including that of teachers) to talk about the functions of use, and to the ability to make grammaticality judgements (see for example Elder et al. 2007 for a useful attempt to unpack these distinctions). In additional language acquisition research, explicit knowledge has been centrally associated with the debate about the circumstances in which learners will notice differences between the current state of their developing language system and a feature of the input. In pedagogically focused and applied literature, explicit knowledge contrasts with implicit knowledge, but again definitions of what is counted as implicit are far from straightforward. This can be seen in the extended discussions of the case of recasts as feedback (see Lyster and Saito 2010 for recasts and Hulstijn 2005 for more general discussion). The debates around these labels reveal that the boundaries between āexplicitā and āimplicitā knowledge are both unclear and varied and we (as numerous others before us) consider both more explicit and more implicit aspects of meta awareness to play an important role in language learning (see Nguyen et al. 2012 for the positive effects of both types in learning and Nick Ellis 2005 for the distinct but complementary roles that they play). For us, the central point is that in addition to the learner doing something, there is some level of awareness about what is done and this awareness is implicated in important ways (explicitly and implicitly) in the language learning process (see also Schmidt 2001; Bialystok and Barac 2012). Later in this chapter, we show how our model provides a way for teachers and learners to work together in developing awareness of both needs and possibilities within the communicative repertoire.
Additional labels used to refer to the āmeta zoneā are not ones of contrast. The terms metalinguistic and metalanguage are two of these. We avoid the label meta-linguistic for multiple reasons. First, the research literature in Language Education often uses the label to connate student knowledge (what one has built up as a representation) and the knowledge required by an L2 teacher to talk about language (Andrews 1999: 163). Second, psycholinguistic research has employed the term to refer to part of executive processing and we do not wish to engage with this dimension here (see for example Bialystok et al. 2014). In the latter literature, there is a strong emphasis on testing linguistic features (e.g., word level awareness, syntactic awareness and to a lesser extent phonological awareness) (Bialystok et al. 2003) to the exclusion of engaging in the broader relations between metalinguistic awareness, identity and the deployment of Multiplicity.
The term metalanguage refers to āthe communicative system that is used to describe and represent itselfā (see Jaworski et al. 2004b: 3). We refrain from using this label because of the restricted use of this term. The metalanguage label also contains the lexical item ālanguageā, the singularity of which we wish to avoid. The use of the singular ālanguageā demotes the multilingual and multimodal nature of the repertoire of most if not all selves that was acknowledged as early as Hymes (1972a: 274): āEven an ideally fluent monolingual of course is master of functional varieties within the one language.ā An additional dimension of ambiguity with the label language is its use in linguistic (as an underlying system) circles and in classrooms (as language x, y, z). The label metalanguage also has multiple meanings for di...
