English Language Teaching in its Social Context

NAVIGATING THE DISCOURSE 309individual’s activity is a system in the system of social relations. It docs not existwithout these relations.The specific form in whch it exists is determined by the formsand means of material and mental social interaction.(Leont’ev 198 1 : 47)Leont’ev is suggesting that an activity like learning a language is a mental processinevitably interwoven in our social identity and our social relationships. But he goes furtherthan this. He is also asserting that the object or content on which we focus in our learningis, by its nature, a social and cultural construct. And linguists such as Halliday support sucha claim in revealing that social structure and system may be seen to permeate the wholetexture of a language (Halliday 1978). This perspective implies that the interpretative,accommodating, and strategic work of learners as revealed by mainstream SLA research isnot merely an act of cognition but that it is simultaneously social action.If we learn a language in the company of others in a classroom, then the nature of thissocial action is not merely a superficial frame for our work on language data. Socialrelationships in the classroom orchestrate what is made available for learning, how learningis done, and what we achieve.These relationships and the purposeful social action of teachingand learning are directly realiscd through the discourse in which we participate duringlessons. The data made available to learners are socially filtered through the particulardiscourse of the classroom and, thereby, rendered distinctive from what we might describeas naturally occurring language data in a different context. Furthermore, because the datamade available to learners in a classroom arc a collective product with which teacher andlearners interact actively as both creators and interpreters, because what learners actuallylearn from the classroom is socially rather than individually constructed, any explanationof how language is learned must locate the process withm the discourse of language lessons.This implies that language learners need not only be interpretative, accommodating,and strategic as SLA research suggests, but also active practitioners within the discourse ofthe learning context in which they find themselves. If the context happens to be a classroom,it will provide very particular opportunities for and specific constraints upon languagelearning. These opportunities and constraints can be identified in the discourse of languagelessons and a crucial variable which can contribute to our understanding of the relativesuccess or failure of learners is how they themselves are obliged to navigate within it.We can express this central issue in terms of a question: Does a learner’s success inlearning language in a classroom depend upon the learner’s successful navigation of theopportunities and constraints inherent in discourse of lessons? This is a difficult questionthat needs further elaboration and I will offer this by looking more closely at some of theprevailing features of classroom discourse. I will address the question with reference to anumber of findings from SLA research.Dimensions of discourseDiscourse is a difficult concept because, like SLA research, discourse analysis is a relativelyyoung discipline and there are several conflicting and overlapping definitions deriving froma rangc of theoretical and analytical positions (van Dijk 1985, Macdonnell 1986). Early workin discourse analysis sought to uncover pattern and system at a higher level of organisationthan the sentence and to analyse the properties of dialogue such as speech acts, turn taking,topicalisation, and so on. Descriptive discourse analysis was also undertaken in relation towhat were seen as distinctive discourses such as media discourse, medical discourse, or legal