Transdisciplinary Approach to Language Study

The Complexity Theory Perspective

J. Filipovi?

• Publisher: Palgrave Pivot
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781137538451
• eBook ISBN: 9781137538468
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Teaching Languages
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

This book is about complexity-driven, trandsisciplinary approach to language study. It illustrates how complexity science can be applied in the research of language and society in order to create and sustain a transdisciplinary dialogue across interested communities of practice which may be beneficial in improving living conditions of real people.

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Language Study, Complexity Theory, and Transdisciplinary Research

Abstract: In Chapter 1, an overview of the history of the scientific method and the history of methodological and conceptual approaches to language study is outlined. Empiricism/positivism, on one hand, and critical theory, constructivism and participatory research on the other, are sketched in order to provide an argumentation for a new approach to the study of language I propose in the continuation of this book. A trajectory of the history of linguistics is also outlined. Language is presented as a social phenomenon, dependent on a series of social, political, economic, cultural and other extralinguistic factors which determine its social status, relevance and power within and across groups and communities.

Keywords: competence and performance; constructivism; empiricism; ideology of science; interdisciplinarity; language and speech; modernity; participatory research; politics of science; positivism; practice of science; qualitative research; scientific method; social action; social knowledge; sociolinguistics; sociology of language; structural linguistics; transdisciplinarity

Filipović, Jelena. Transdisciplinary Approach to Language Study: The Complexity Theory Perspective. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. DOI: 10.1057/9781137538468.0005.

1.1History of the scientific method in general

Even though most people would agree that “science is our most reliable source of knowledge in a wide variety of areas” (Hanson, 2014), it is very difficult to find an exact definition of science. A thorough search of online Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy (http://plato.stanford.edu/about.html), an extensive and regularly updated, web-based database of terms and concepts from a wide range of subjects, does not have an independent entry for the word “science.” The term appears in a number of phrases, such as “science and pseudo-science”, “Einstein’s philosophy of science”, “Locke’s philosophy of science”, “the social dimensions of scientific knowledge”, “scientific progress”, “scientific objectivity”, “scientific revolutions”, and the like, but a singular definition of the term itself does not appear as an entry or within entries containing the word.

According to Burns et al. (2003: 185), “Defining science is notoriously difficult. The Panel on Public Affairs of the American Physical Society, for example, proposed a definition that some describe as pure science: ‘Science is the systematic enterprise of gathering knowledge about the world and organizing and condensing that knowledge into testable laws and theories.’” As Phelan (2001: 121) points out, “One could be forgiven for thinking that a working definition of science would be easily obtainable, given the enormous volume of work in science and the vast number of people working on scientific endeavors. However, nothing could be further from the truth.”

Rather than making yet another (futile) attempt at defining the concept, I will herein try to outline the scientific method through the lens of empiricism/positivism on one hand, and critical theory, constructivism and participatory research on the other hand, as two very broad scientific research paradigms. The objective behind this endeavor is to underline some of the issues I find relevant to linguistic research and to a new approach to study of language I propose in the continuation of this book.

1.1.1Empiricist/positivist science and modernity

Empiricist science is directly related to the capacity to systematically observe and describe selected, sampled natural (and by default social) phenomena in order to design models of reality suitable to account for and/or predict nature and behavior of other phenomena belonging to the same group, species, category, and so on. It has its roots in the modern European science from the 18th century onwards, with firm foundations in the rationalist views of the world introduced and widely disseminated by the scientific elite of the Enlightenment also known as the Age of Reason. The overarching ramifications of the rationalist view of science and society defined during the Enlightenment are still very much operational in the present-day ideologies of those parts of the world that have been impacted by the European worldview, and are by some authors defined as a phenomenon in itself, known as modernity. “The project of modernity formulated in the 18th century by the philosophers of the Enlightenment consisted in their efforts to develop objective science, universal morality and law, and autonomous art according to their inner logic” (Haberemas, 1981: 9; also see Bauman & Briggs, 2003, for a detailed account). Empiricism is also known as scientific positivism: “Epistemologically, the positivist paradigm assumes a knowable reality, with a single, absolute truth accessible through objective methodology. This framework of inquiry strives to establish causal relationships between variables so that laws can be established and predictions made” (van de Riet, 2004: 547).

Consequently, observation is the focal point of empiricist/positivist scientific activity and it needs to be connected to reality and the physical world. “It follows that meaningful expressions must be empirically testable by observation and experiment. Nontestable statements are literally nonsensical and meaningless” (Phelan, 2001: 122).¹ The notions of experiment and scientific method form integral parts of the empiricist/positivist science as well. Observation through experiment must be systematic, well described and documented in a way that its results (which lead to theory or model formation) can be tested and validated by repetition, with an assumption that if done properly the first-time around, all future experiments carried out in the same manner would yield the same results and conclusions. Presupposed objectivity and emotional or individual detachment of the researchers in face of the objects/subjects of their research is another feature of empiricist/positivist science. “Heisenberg (1958/2000) asserts: ‘In classical physics science started from the belief— or should one say from the illusion?—that we could describe the world or at least parts of the world without any reference to ourselves’ (p. 22)” (Cantley, 2015: 3).

Quantitative methodology is another crucial element of empiricist/positivist science. And, as Guba and Lincoln (1994: 106) point out, the reason for this is quite obvious: quantification has always been considered the most reliable tool of verification of scientific data, based on “mathematical (quantitative) propositions or propositions that can be easily converted into precise mathematical formulas expressing functional relationships. Formulaic precision has enormous utility when the aim of science is the prediction and control of natural phenomena.” Spicer (2005) very accurately explains some of the reasoning behind the insistence on quantification and empiricism in the study of social phenomena: “If Newton was able in principle to explain every movement of every particular constituent of physical nature in terms of a small number of laws of great generality, is it not reasonable to suppose that psychological events, which constitute the conscious and unconscious lives of individuals, as well as social facts—the internal relationships and activities and ‘experiences of societies—could be explained by the use of similar methods? ... [I]s there any objection in principle to the view that a sufficiently scrupulous and imaginative investigation of human beings might, one day, reveal laws capable of yielding predictions as powerful and as precise as those which are now possible in the natural sciences’” (Berlin, 1969: 56, cit. in Spicer, 2005: 257). This can very easily be identified as a paradigm of positivist social science and humanities which have since their recognition within scientific communities at large “mimicked” the underlying assumptions and methodological restrictiveness of natural sciences, often known as “hard” sciences.

Quantitative research “aims to classify features, count them and construct statistical models in an attempt to explain what is observed” (McCusker & Gunyadin, 2014: 2). It is based on clearly defined and normally non-changeable, introductory hypotheses, research methodology which is designed before the research is initiated and including research techniques aimed at collecting numerical data. The objectivity and impartiality of the researchers is an underlying assumption of the field work in empirical, quantitative science (see McCusker & Gunyadin, 2014 for further discussion). The notion of objectivity brings us to the key question relevant to this particular overview: can we be completely objective when engaging in scientific research? Without entering into a broader, more general, philosophical consideration questioning the existence of an objective world completely independent from our experience, I would like to consider more mundane issues regarding the relationship between practice of science, undoubtedly relevant and important in the history of the human kind, whose foundations are to be found in the empiricist research paradigm outlined in the previous paragraphs, and the ideology of science (Hacking, 1999) derived from the European modernity and the society-science relationship based on it: “the success of science has given it a privileged, or ideological, status that has the effect of suppressing dissent, molding worldviews, and supporting élites (typically white, Anglo-Saxon, protestant males), regardless of the merits of their position vis-à-vis others’ reality” (Phelan, 2001: 129).

According to Bauman & Briggs (2003), ever since the Enlightenment period, an attempt has been made to separate the true achievements of the scientific engagement from the societal implications they carry (i.e., practice of science vs. ideology of science). I add to the above the notion of the politics of science, defined as institutionalized, epistemological orientations and methodological procedures used to identify and analyze phenomena in a wide range of scientific disciplines. These procedures are then applied to the processes of defining scientific facts about the investigated phenomena and stand in direct correlation with narrative and rhetorical means and registers used to structure, classify, define and describe acquired bodies of information which are then disseminated through formal educational systems and institutions of culture, politics, and so on as absolute and unquestionable bodies of knowledge. These are canonized scientific frameworks, to the largest extent embodied in the scientific and political institutions of the Western world, designed in alignment with the Eurocentric (or Euro-American, Atkinson, 2008: 190) model of society and science, since the Enlightenment onwards. This particular politics of science seeks its epistemological affirmation in the notions of “objectivity”, “reason”, “reliability of data”, “universal scientific truth” and the like, using positivist-science-related terminology to create the great divide between those who “get to do science” and those who are not given access to this privileged field of human activity.² Bauman and Briggs (2003: 31) offer, in my opinion, an exceptional example of this intrinsic relationship between the politics and ideology of science and language, bringing us one step closer to the rationale for a socially engaged language study which is at the core of transdisciplinary linguistic research: “Тhe practices of purification, ..., tools for stripping language of direct connection to things of social forms, would come to form some of the most important bases for constructing modern subjects in terms of their rationality and their availability to speak within the public sphere – and thus for evaluating each individual and community and determining his or her proper place in the emerging social order.”

Only those who speak the “proper” language (those who have at their disposal codified, standardized linguistic varieties with developed alphabets and written body of knowledge and literature, and those who have access, that is financial and other resources, to education (read: white, economically secure males) are allowed to engage in public practices and decision making to the exclusion of any possible participation of all others who do not have access to the acquisition/learning of a privileged linguistic variety. This ideological point of view, hand in hand with the secularization of European societies brought about by modernity, resulted in the creation of a new privileged social group, the scientific elite. The linguistic competence became one of the key criteria for individual’s positioning on the social hierarchy scale. Adding to this socio-cultural and political background, is what Bauman and Briggs (2003: 14) also call the “culture of the printed world”, in which the attention is drawn to the “ideological construction of modernity in terms related to print culture and its associated discursive formations”, which declares the introduction of otherness in the “modernity project”: “Ways of speaking and writing make social classes, genders, races and nations seem real and enable them to elicit feelings and justify relations of power, making subalterns seem to speak in ways that necessitate their subordination” (Bauman & Briggs, 2003: 17).

In other words, even though scientific positivism born out of Enlightenment initially represented an attempt to separate the reason from the canonical restrictions in social, religious and political life and thought of the previous eras (Atkinson, 2008), very early on it acquired another dogmatic ideological facet of “technocratic consciousness” (Held, 1980: 296), which has been maintained in many areas of science to the present day. Consequently, all of the above has been accounted for by the notion of scientific progress, viewed as modern science, with an underlying assumption that the search for universal truths and natural laws is unbiased and objective. And I agree with the assertion that “[i]n order for the discourse of leading scientists to become a model for transparency and order for speech and civil society, it took a lot of social work to construct a scientific realm and project it as authoritative and disinterested” (Bauman & Briggs, 2003: 4). This particular “social work”, or we can even call it “social engineering”, was extremely consequential and influential among researchers in social sciences and humanities: “They were the ‘new kids on the block’; if quantification could lead to fulfillment of Mill’s³ promise, status and political leverage would accrue that would enormously profit the new practitioners. Imitating might thus lead both to greater acceptance and to more valid knowledge” (Guba & Lincoln, 1994: 106).

In the last couple of decades of the 20th century, however, a nonpositivist orientation in scientific research was introduced, clearly recognizing the need to contextualize research in a way which would account for meaning and purpose that humans attach to their actions; which would take into consideration local voices and voices of others and stay away from the grand scientific narratives in the interpretation of the research findings; and, which would allow for a range of points of view and interpretations. Points of view and interpretations in a sense that they not only shape in a number of ways our initial research postulates and research questions (hypotheses), but also provide space for inherent change of course and maturation during the research process itself, through the creation of the grounded theory. “The term ‘grounded theory’ refers both to a method of inquiry and to the product of inquiry. ... Essentially, grounded theory methods are a set of flexible analytic guidelines that enable researchers to focus their data collection and to build inductive middle-range theories through successive levels of data analysis and conceptual development” (Charmaz, 2005: 507; see Guba & Lincoln, 1994, for a detailed discussion). What this means is that contemporary constructivist science allows for, and even encourages, researchers’ maturation during the investigation process. The researchers continuously learn from the circumstances in which they investigate; they learn from the participants who they interact with throughout their study and adjust accordingly (in terms of hypotheses, methods, analysis and interpretation).

1.1.2Constructivism, participatory research and qualitative research as epistemological stands and scientific methodologies

I would like to start this section with a quote from a philosopher Paul Feyerbend (1975/1988/1993), who is sometimes credited as the first voice of social constructivism,⁴ although, the author himself (as well as many other philosophers) would not agree with this particular acclaim (O...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Introduction: An Autoethnographic Journey
• 1  Language Study, Complexity Theory, and Transdisciplinary Research
• 2  Language Study and Complexity Theory
• 3  Complexity-Driven Transdisciplinary Approach to Language Study
• 4  Participatory Action Research and Autoethnography: QUALIROM
• 5  Language Education and Language Leadership: A Case Study
• 6  Final Remarks
• References
• Index