Languages ontologies in higher education: the world-making practices of language teachers

1.1 Theoretical framework: political ontology and language(s)/languaging

To frame ontology, and to provide a novel account of what language is or might be, we draw on the ontological turn in anthropology (Heywood 2017; Holbraad and Pedersen 2017; Paleček and Risjord 2013) and the frame of political ontology – in particular the work of Mario Blaser and colleagues (Blaser 2009, 2013, 2016, 2018; de la Cadena and Blaser 2018). This approach allows us to explore language as a multiplicity, rather than attempting to establish, add to, or embellish a singular definition. It also steers us away from the quest to arrive at an ultimately ‘true’ or ‘correct’ definition of what language is, although recognising anything as a multiplicity inevitably brings about questions concerning how the practices and performances that make it up fit together. However, if we approach language as a form of social practice, then the quest to define language definitively (that is, once and for all) is not particularly useful. Rather, the aim here is to better comprehend and explore what language means to those who use it, and how it is brought into being through practices, across individuals and groups. In addition, we step away from the hierarchization of language practices and accounts, and resist casting any of these as (in)complete, (un)comprehensive, or (in)accurate.

There is a significant amount of work in applied linguistics which does orient towards arriving at a comprehensive definition of language, much of which is ontological in nature, although it is not always labelled as such. Much of this work is critical of entrenched approaches in the field and includes the significant and growing body of work in (trans)languaging and semiotic assemblages (Li 2011, 2018; Otheguy et al. 2015; Pennycook 2017; Pennycook and Otsuji 2017). The multilingual turn has generated a productive and lively debate around what language is and how we can better understand it as we use, encounter and attempt to teach it. Finding merit in this debate, we have contributed to this body of work ourselves (Gurney and Demuro 2022a, 2022b). It is not our aim here to critique or defend such work, or to assert language ontologies as ‘the’ definitive account of language(s)/languaging. Furthermore, we do not wish to locate any form of ‘truth’ concerning language within individuals, reinscribing solipsism or recentering the individual as the sole locus of enunciation^[1] (Grosfoguel 2008). In this article, we do something different. That is, we attempt to understand language(s)/languaging from the ground up: through the accounts and practices of language users, who are based within particular social and professional contexts, but are also able to reflect on their circumstances and arrive at their own stories and interpretations. We have chosen as the participants language educators and researchers working in higher education in Australia and New Zealand. As we explore in relation to the data, this group of participants provides an insightful link between academic discussions in applied linguistics and adjacent fields, and the ways in which language is understood beyond research and educational contexts. Their roles are often transformative – in that they engage in academic research concerning a range of topics relevant to language education – and pragmatic, as they practice within contexts defined by student expectations, teaching and assessment policies, and the expectations of stakeholders beyond higher education, including students’ future employers.

Similarly, our task with this paper is as much pragmatic as it is critical, considering the stories of language(s)/languaging circulating broadly within the contexts in which participants operate, live and work, as well as their own accounts which may support or subvert these. Our participant group is uniquely well-positioned to provide these reflections.

The connection between participants’ accounts, or understandings, and their practices is acutely captured by Blaser (2013): the stories that we tell are not purely denotive, nor problematic or partial renderings of practices, but rather ‘partake in the performance of that which they narrate’ (552). Blaser (2013) clarifies:

[p]olitical ontology is intended neither as a pedagogic project to illuminate a reality that deficient theorizing cannot grasp, nor as a proselytizing project to show the virtues of other, nonmodern blueprints for a good life … Political ontology is closer to hard-nosed pragmatism than to liberal desire to understand everyone. (559)

Blaser (2013) states that ‘ontology works with the contradictions between a set of initial assumptions and some body of material that appears to contradict it’ (551). In relation to the nature of the realities that we are discussing, we align with Blaser in casting ontology is a way of worlding or enacting some form or aspect of reality. Citing science and technology scholars (Law 2015; Mol 1999, amongst others), Blaser (2013) clarifies that his position is underpinned by a material-semiotic foundation and posits two main points: 1) avoiding the assumption that reality is ‘out there’, and 2) that ‘reality is always in the making through the dynamic relations of hybrid assemblages’ (551–552). There is scope within this research to investigate power and agency, or affect, as channeled through such hybrid assemblages – for instance, the differences and affordances associated with particular worldings, which may also overlap (see the contributions in de la Cadena et al. 2015 for many examples).

Bringing this into the context of our work in language studies, we use political ontology as follows:

1. As a deliberate step away from a ‘one-world world’, in which all accounts and practices are assessed against a single framework (Law 2015). As applied to language studies, this can look like the hierarchization of language practices as more or less valid or legitimate based on their adherence to a single version of what language is. It also manifests in assumptions about what language is across all users – for instance, asserting that language is fundamentally a code, or that language is fundamentally a tool for communication, and that language users may hold more or less complete understandings of this definition.

2. To engage with social practices and stories in relation to how they make worlds for individuals. This means ‘taking seriously’ (Holbraad and Pedersen 2017) the stories which are told about language, and suspending the inclination to apply one’s own frameworks or beliefs in an evaluative assessment of others’ accounts and practices. It also means thinking critically about the application of frameworks to situations in which those frameworks might not apply. It can involve asking ourselves, as language researchers, about the basis on which we apply the frames we do: for instance, does translanguaging (or any other theoretical concept) necessarily fit in this situation?

While our work dovetails with – and, in part, draws inspiration from – critical work within language studies to problematize singular frames for apprehending language, we particularly want to understand how language teachers and researchers understand and create language(s)/languaging as professionals, and through their self-reported practices.

Language teachers are highly influential professionals. They model and shape language practice for their students; they create, employ and critique curricula and materials; and they assess language performance. Those who hold dual roles as teachers and researchers are doubly implicated within the practice and study of language, dealing with both the theoretical and the practical elements of language. The forms which language(s)/languaging take for these practitioners – and the ways in which these intersect with other concepts which may be associated with language education, such as culture – are highly relevant in the development of a more comprehensive and grounded understanding of how language is realized and created within the domains in which these participants operate.

Much has been written on languages in higher education, and the significant body of work investigating language teacher cognition argues that what practitioners know, think, believe and feel strongly shapes what they do (Borg 2019). Teachers have agency and the capacity to reflect on their practice, albeit within certain constraints. However, these matters have not yet been framed through the notion of political ontology with a view to understand more expansively what language(s)/languaging is to these practitioners and in the contexts where they operate.

3.1 Language as a tool for communication

We begin with the account of language as a tool for communication, which was the most salient in the data. The word ‘tool’ was used by participants to capture the primarily functional role that language plays in transferring, communicating, and negotiating meaning from person to person. The notion of language as tool was located within shared human experience: language is a way to make sense of things, coordinate and accomplish actions, and build relationships. A comprehensive explanation of language as tool was provided by participant Alessandro, a French language and culture teacher working in New Zealand:

So, I think communication and language, as probably implicit in my definition of language, they are fundamentally intertwined. The language isn’t just about communication […] But I do think, to kind of link back to your previous question on the history of language, the etymology of communication is, is sharing, right? So, what is it that we share? We share ideas, we share values, we share information, and we exchange. So, I do think that that is absolutely fundamental to what defines us as, as human beings, really. (Alessandro)

Like Alessandro’s comments, others’ accounts of language as a tool treat language expansively, through reference to broad social goals such as sharing and exchanging. Across the range of participants’ responses, there is a commonality in defining language as playing a fundamental role in human social behavior.

From this perspective, participants problematized the idea that language was bounded within structured written and spoken systems. Similar accounts to Alessandro’s, which prioritized sharing and communication, were provided by participants Teresa, a Spanish language teacher and researcher in New Zealand, and Amanda, an EAL, Spanish and German teacher in Australia. These two participants defined ‘any system of communication’ and ‘all of the […] things that we use to communicate’ as language:

There is a narrow definition of language which will be, when we talk about verbal or written languages or languages, as well, or other languages, but then we could consider language any system of communication. In that sense, we should include music as a type of universal language because it goes directly to our emotions, and you communicate somehow when we listen. (Teresa)

I think language is so much more than grammar, linguistics, than a lot of what we typically think about with language. I think itʼs all of the multimodal and trans-semiotic things that we use to communicate. I think that when we think about signed languages, that thatʼs a whole other mode of using a language. And thatʼs definitely language. I think thereʼs all the things that are not vocalized, like […] affect and emotion that come into it, that it does imperceptible things that that form part of language and how we communicate. (Amanda)

Michaela, an EAL teacher in New Zealand, also discussed a broad range of practices and artefacts, from physical gestures to symbols and drawings, which met the goal of communication and therefore were seen to constitute language:

So, what I think is that language is the way it is, the way we communicate, one of the ways we communicate to others, what is arising in our consciousness, basically. So, um, it doesnʼt have to be verbal. So, I would say some examples of language could be of course, using your hands, body gestures, um, even drawings, pictographs, and of course words because they all represent particular things differently. […] probably, um, facial expression would, would show whatʼs coming up in the brain. Um, I guess, yeah, mainly it would be, it would come out through the body in some way. And then, um, if you can speak a language with your vocal cords as humans can do, but no one else can do, as far as we know, then it is more likely to come out that way. But yeah. Also express through the body and the facial expressions and the eyes, I guess. (Michaela)

This account has clear implications for how language teachers teach, provide feedback, and evaluate student progress. If language is a tool for communication, then, arguably, the role of the language teacher is to foster students’ abilities to use language and to communicate with others. Participants Min, an EAL teacher and student researcher, and Brett, a language teacher and teacher educator specializing in Te Reo Māori, both working in New Zealand, spoke about language as communication in the contexts of language teaching and learning:

So, my principal in language teaching is, I teach students not to know the language, but to use the language. So it goes back to my belief that language is a tool. (emphasis added, Min)

You know, Iʼm quite a practical person, language has always been about learning about, learning how to speak another language, so at a practical level itʼs about gaining knowledge of the structures of the language, but being … traditionally, weʼve talked about, you know, reading, writing, listening, and speaking and those four modes, but to try and encompass a language, that is, you know, very narrow, and it has to involve more than one person. So, communication is an important, a critical feature of it. (Brett)

Ana, a Spanish language teacher and researcher in Australia, prioritized teaching language learners to become effective communicators. This involved explicitly acknowledging language as a tool for communication during interactions with her students – for instance, Ana spoke about encouraging her students to prioritize effective communication over concerns about grammatical correctness. Although she acknowledged that providing corrective feedback played a necessary part in her teaching, she downplayed the role of grammar in interactions beyond the language classroom:

This is something that I say to the students. In real life, at the end of the day, if you want to communicate something, you will communicate it. It does, people will understand you if theyʼre willing to open themselves up to understand you, and no one is going to correct your grammar. So sometimes the kind of work that we do in class is, I try and contextualize it as, this is a space where your grammar will be corrected, where youʼre, where Iʼm trying to teach you about the language structure and system and so on. But, in reality, if you meet people, that will be out the window, you know, like if they really want to talk to you. (Ana)

3.2 Language as thought

While the above account of language addressed communication between people, sharing ideas, and coordinating actions, other participants took a step further back to examine the role of language in developing and/or mediating thought. Here, language was related to the formulation of thought into speech or text, the expression of thought, and the parameters for thought itself. The presence of an interlocutor was not essential for language to occur; rather, it played a critical role within individual cognition.

This account was shared by participants William and James, both of whom were based in New Zealand and had worked as English language teachers, language teacher educators, and researchers at various points in their respective careers. William, who had worked as a teacher educator for many years, described the roles of language in both expressing and mediating thought:

Language is a tool for the creation and expression of understanding and, and, in Hallidayan terms, of expressing emotions, as well as facts, and itʼs cognitive and affective. Itʼs a mediating tool for the creation, expression of affective and cognitive domains, means of communication. (William)

William then negated the definition of language as a tool for communication, as he believed that this underplayed its true nature:

But to say that language is communication, or is a tool of communication, is to underplay its importance in the creation of understanding, not merely the expression of understanding […] Yes, language as thought. As the expression of mind and emotion, well, mind embraces emotion. (emphasis added, William)

Developing this account through reference to his own experience, James provided an example of language as thought by discussing the expansion of his own lexicon – and, subsequently, his worldview – when he first read George Orwell:

When you get a word for something – I think back, way back, when I was about 18, 19, reading George Orwell, you know, one of his essays, and he talked about the difference between nationalism and patriotism. And once you’ve made that distinction, and sort of given me the two words, you know, then it all made sense to me, and I’ve never, sort of, forgotten about what that distinction was. So, I think just learning a word, getting something in your lexicon, then enables you to kind of, maybe have more complex thoughts, or something? (James)

William and James’ reflections recalled the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis^[2] which many language teachers are likely familiar with, concerning the extent to which language systems shape the thoughts, worldviews, and perceptions of those who use them (Kay and Kempton 1984). James’ comment, that enhancing one’s lexicon enables one to have ‘more complex thoughts’ – not simply to express or articulate these thoughts – suggests some alignment with this hypothesis. William’s comments about ‘language as thought’ also aligned with this but took one step further to address the point at which meaning, or understanding, is created.

3.3 Language as culture

The ontology of language as culture did not separate language and culture into two differentiated entities. However, it did constitute two facets. The first positioned language as reflecting and channeling culture. The second extended beyond this, positioning language as itself a form of culture. The distinction between these accounts was subtle, but it is instantiated in the participants’ reflections included below.

Brett and Michaela discussed culture as patterns of behavior that wrap around a language system. The system could be broken down and taught without specific reference to culture, although participants reflected that this would not be an effective way to prepare learners for interaction. Ultimately, learners needed to understand how to use the language system within interactions, which meant that cultural practices needed to be included in language teaching. As an example of this, Brett provided the following explanation:

Language is not just about the structures we use. Itʼs about how we are communicating ideas with one another, then it also has impact on culture. Because how you communicate is culturally driven, culturally influenced. You know, if you say the wrong thing to the wrong person in the wrong way, or you try and say something and you say it in the wrong way, then you could get into real trouble. [laughs] (Brett)

Michaela also saw culture as very important to how language is conceptualized. In relation to language teaching, she discussed cultural practices as key to fostering students’ capacities to interact with others. However, she also acknowledged the difficulty of associating language with culture for global languages, such as English, which she taught as an additional language in New Zealand:

To teach a language is to basically break something very complex down into small learnable chunks and then make sure that the chunks somehow make sense together. And then, um, I didnʼt specify English here, but I said to teach a specific language, it also often means you are using it to teach a particular culture or even an aspect of a culture. So, I guess that would apply to English as well, where weʼre teaching them somehow the ways that, um, that English speaking countries, obviously they all have very different cultures, um, that, that we, um, that we interact with other people who speak the same language, I guess. (Michaela)

Other participants, however, held a more ‘integrated’ approach to language and culture, questioning whether it was possible to separate them or teach each in isolation. Luong, an English teacher and PhD candidate in New Zealand, did not consider it possible to study language and culture separately from one another, as they are ‘two sides in a coin’. She explained that:

[…] language and culture is [sic] interrelated, and can’t be, I mean, separated, because they, I think language and culture are two sides in a coin. And very complementary roles. So, when you study a language, that means you study, you understand about the culture of a country and the ways people speak, also express their culture as well. (Luong)

Luong discussed cultures in a pragmatic sense, as pertaining to groups of people and mediating their communicative practices: she referenced ‘the culture of a country and the ways people speak’.

Other participants took a more expansive view of culture. Sandrine, a French and intercultural communication teacher and researcher in Australia, explicitly linked the development of language systems with culture – for Sandrine, language is culture, and vice versa:

… language is alive, language moves with changes within society, and culture. So definitely, thatʼs something Iʼm forever interested in and still learning about it, you know, the development of, the historical development of French and etymology, you know, like, [the students] love it, when I show them that, you know, some simple example. But to get them to think about how language works, itʼs like, thatʼs part of the, you know, when I, when I call myself a language and culture educator. Itʼs very much that, I didnʼt call myself that when I started. (Sandrine)

Like Sandrine, Teresa also drew on the evolution of language through the dynamics of culture:

So, we have mathematical languages and algorithms could be also known as, you know, the morse code or any type of code, but strictly speaking about verbal languages, written languages um, to me they are like organisms, I mean they are they are not fixed, they are not fixed codes, they are alive they are changing they are dynamic. So, in a couple of generations you will see that there is a change in certain expressions. So, the etymology of words tells you the origin, as you the perception of people back then centuries ago, so how the world changed through time and the meanings maybe the same word but different meanings. So that tells you that itʼs like an organism, alive … (emphasis added, Teresa)

Teresa also saw the meanings embedded in historical texts as trapped in time, functioning to provide access to ‘layers of information’ and ‘dimensions’ that are not present in the ways language is contemporarily used:

When you go back to, I donʼt know, 1,000 years and start reading Latin texts, you can see also another perception through the same words maybe, there is this … And you know what they meant these words which we donʼt mean anymore, so it gives us lots of dimensions you know, layers of information in the same word that we used today but it wasnʼt used like that centuries ago, so yeah, itʼs quite complex. (Teresa)

John, an EAL lecturer, teacher educator, and researcher in Australia, separated language from any particular group or set of cultural practices. Rather, he defined language as a human universal necessary for functioning socially, and for existing in the world:

I think language is something that we live and breathe with, and itʼs kind of as essential for functioning in the world as breathing and eating in many ways. Um, we canʼt exist socially without it. Um, you know, there are cases of people that have been language starved, and they never produce language and, famous cases there. Um, but itʼs, yeah, itʼs essential for our functioning in the world. Itʼs, uh, itʼs not just essential. Itʼs a source of, uh, of enjoyment, of expression, of enabling, uh, contact with other people with different worldviews, from different backgrounds and so on. Um, and itʼs something that enables the cohesion of societies in general. (emphasis added, John)

3.4 Language as system

Language was also cast as a system, characterized by a specific architecture. Some participants defined the system as cultural and developed over time through interactions, whereas others understood it to be natural – i.e., acquired through inherited evolutionary processes. In both views, it comprised integrated parts and was organized by a particular structure.

To provide an example of a cultural view of the language system, Ana emphasized the process of creating systems of communication, around which rules were then formalized: ‘at the end of the day, the bottom line is that it is created, it is a creation, as a system of communication […] then people started to create rules around it and to find explanations and, and create prescriptive rules about it’. Similarly, Sandrine emphasized the use of language, as encapsulated in both forms and norms. She compared language to a human body, which has a skeleton as its basic structure, over which other layers are found:

So, to me language, itʼs both forms, norms, and weʼll probably come back to that, and in the context of teaching language, itʼs definitely skills, thereʼs an element of that. That language is also use. So, itʼs also discourse. So, I see really two sides, you know, when I talk about this to students, so the people I, I think of language, if you compare it, to use a metaphor, like a human body, youʼve got the skeleton. And you could say, thatʼs the basic structure. And I know thereʼs variation within that and etcetera, but then you have the flesh under the use of the whole body. And so definitely norms and structure and use. (Sandrine)

James’ account took a more computational approach. He did not explicitly locate the language system as a cultural or social creation, but he did refer to a ‘cognitive machinery’, or internal language, to which humans have access, and which is divided into different aspects of language (lexicon, pronunciation, etc.). He referred to Chomsky’s work in elucidating his account:

Youʼve got that internal language where itʼs kind of a computational system, you know, sort of organizing hierarchy or kind of the grammatical kind of side of it. So [Chomsky] is looking at language in that way. And I get that, and I kind of go along with it, that there is that kind of computational system with those interfaces, with the lexicon and the pronunciation to the systems, and all that kind of stuff, and the other sort of thought systems, so you can see it in that real narrow view. Thatʼs what, that sort of language, he talks about an organ or something for language? Yeah, so the cognitive machinery or something, that real narrow view. Yes. And I kind of I get that as well. I kind of think, you know, it’s probably right. (James)

James referred to this as a ‘narrow view’ of language, although he nonetheless noted that ‘it’s probably right’. Similarly, Amanda hinted towards what she perceived to be tension in language studies insofar as understanding language as a system may be overlooked or cast aside in favor of other approaches. While she understood language as ‘more than linguistics’, she nonetheless included the notion of language as a system in her account:

[…] in my research, at least, although I understand that language is more than linguistics, Iʼm still interested in looking at that. And I donʼt think that they should be completely cast aside, because I think certainly with some of the theoretical frameworks that are out there is such a harsh turn away from it, that that you almost end up not looking at that. (Amanda)

3.5 Languaging as practice

A significant amount of theoretical and empirical work in applied linguistics provides an account of language as action and practice, unrestricted by the separation of language codes; that is, of language in verb form – as languaging – and based within linguistic repertoires developed by individuals (Becker 1991; Bloome and Beauchemin 2016; Lewis et al. 2012; Li 2018; Thibault 2011). This account was also shared by some of the participants.

Min, who had also positioned language as a tool for communication, discussed the notions of plurilingualism and of combining languages when asked how she identified herself as a language user:

So, I used to call myself, or know myself, as multilingual. That was until I came to this term, plurilingualism. Yep. So, Iʼll call myself plurilingualist, something like that. If that makes sense. Because multilingual to my understanding is about two or three languages coexisting with each other. So, you are very well-versed or adept at several languages. But for me, my case, because I grew up in such a multicultural country and I grew up with so many languages, I call them, I call myself plurilingualist, because those languages seem, just seem to merge. They just seem to come together. And so sometimes theyʼre combined, the sentence structures or the words, the vocab […] (Min)

Min’s notion of languages seeming to merge captures the translanguaging notion of language users drawing on their repertoires expansively to make meaning, rather than bracketing languages off as discrete entities (Otheguy et al. 2015).

Amanda associated languaging with more than ‘linguistic resources’, broadening it out to include other forms of data when analyzing communication. She reflected on this in the context of a project she was undertaking at the time of the interview:

I do think we need to continue looking beyond that. So at least in my research, I’m looking for other things in the data. I’m looking for affect and emotion. So, I’ve got things in there, like hesitation, and I’m considering how agency is impacted. And if I see that all as part of the, I suppose languaging process. So thatʼs the term I use, I don’t even think I use language […] So if you look at it like that, in my research, that means I can look at all different types of data. (emphasis added, Amanda)

Finally, William emphasized the practice of co-constructing meaning as core to languaging: ‘because the creation of meaning is a matter of co-construction. I mean, from a, from a very, relatively early age, I realized that people share ideas and create ideas. Um, so whether Iʼm teaching a language or teaching people how to teach language, I believe itʼs important for people to work together, to share understanding’. From this perspective, languaging is a practice which always involves sharing and collaboration; for William, these aspects are important parts of language education.