Ge Chuangui's English Works Republished
I hadn't checked for a while but I just googled him and found that a Shanghai publisher has in the last few years issued, as best as I can discern, three volumes of his work. (Check Amazon.cn here, for example.) These appear to be collected essays, some of them originally collected in books in the 1930s-40s (?).
The picture is from this blog which sheds a little light on the subject, though it's mostly in Chinese.
What interests me most about Ge is what we can learn about the history of the discourse of English in China from him. I don't mean to imply that if we can discern his ideology, methodology, etc of English education we can prove that for sure that's what China was all about in the 1930s, it could at least be one source of triangulation. (If triangulation is even a thing in what I will now audaciously refer to as "historical applied linguistics," a phrase I do not see used very often if at all.)
What little I know about his work is intriguing, though; at the very least, his work and its prominence suggest certain things like:
- an emphasis on vocabulary knowledge as a measure of English proficiency (his most famous work, after all, is a dictionary)
- a deep connection to the "foreign" sources of English, in a kind of humanistic tradition; certainly this is related to the ti-yong thing
- A deep emphasis on correctness, but also practicality
- crucially, the use of English among Chinese speakers for personal/professional/cultural reasons (what those reasons are, I can't say without evidence, and more serious thinking; Lu Xun certainly thought that Chinese intellectuals were peculiar for speaking English to each other)
This just scratches the surface, of course. I need to get my hands on these books, and as soon as I can figure out how, I will order them shipped here to Canada posthaste.
Cut and pasted below is a letter purportedly from the venerable British lexicographer H.W. Fowler, a month before he died, to Ge (or as he was somewhat unsually known, "Hertz C.K. Ke"). I don't know much about its veracity, but it's often said of Ge that he wrote to Fowler to correct alleged mistakes in Fowler's work. The first two sentences seem to me to say so much about the state of English in the world, and in China, both in 1933 and now:
I find no difficulty in believing that you will attain, if you have not already attained, your ambition of writing English as no other Chinese can; for your letter is in faultless English, and, long as it is, nowhere betrays, as nearly all foreigners' letters do by some trifling lapse in idiom, that its writer is not an Englishman.
I often say this, and sometimes it is not true, but: more on this later.
24 Nov., 1933
Dear Sir,
I find no difficulty in believing that you will attain, if you have not already attained,your ambition of writing English as no other Chinese can; for your letter is in faultless English, and, long as it is, nowhere betrays, as nearly all foreigners' letters do by some trifling lapse in idiom, that its writer is not an Englishman. I receive many letters in English from foreigners, but do not remember ever having had occasion to say this before. If this statement can serve you in anyway, you are free to make use of it.
Your comments upon points in The King's English are all acute and pertinent, and I am greatly accepting the corrections of misprints and wrong references that are among them. The wrong reference are due to the change of paging for the third edition; I corrected many such, but some escaped me.
I have read all your criticisms with care, and find that I should be ready to defend what we wrote in all, or nearly all, cases; but I regret that, owing to pressure of work, old age (75), and failing eye-sight, I cannot comply with your request for explanations, or argument -- except for one or two general remarks. Many of your criticisms turn on the fact that advice given in M.E.U is not acted upon in K. E. Well, K. E was written some 20 years earlier, and M.E.U represents my later views and is to be taken as superseding the earlier book where the two books differ; It was hardly possible to bring K.E into conformity on points where what is laid down in M.E.U is merely advisory and suggests reforms that are still far from general acceptance. It is not to be expected that views should undergo no change in 20 years, but only that the later ones should be the result of careful consideration. But you remarks show the care with which you have read the two books, and I accept the compliment with much pleasure.
Yours very truly.
H. W. Fowler
On a difficult question
Recently (very recently!) I was asked, in an interview, about my take on a controversy in applied linguistics: what's your political stance, I was asked, on Ryuko Kubota's critique of "multi/pluri" approaches, which she argues are essentially supportive of neoliberalism:
the conceptual features of the multi/plural turn overlap with neoliberalism and neoliberal multiculturalism, which uncritically support diversity, plurality, flexibility, individualism, and cosmopolitanism, while perpetuating color-blindness and racism.
(Kubota 2014)
The question, I take it, was: what do you think of this? Do you agree or disagree? Why or why not?
I'm a bit haunted by the answer I gave; I think this question is so complicated that I find it almost impossible to answer. What I remember saying was something like: "I have to be honest, I don't really have a political stance on this." I continued to say some things I don't remember well, but mentioning my having studied with Terry Santos and having been impressed by her straightforward defense of pragmatism; having later encountered scholars like Pennycook and Canagarajah, the latter of whom is probably the contemporary scholar whose approach to language I most resonate with, and seen great value in their work; choosing not to enter into "debates" about critical perspectives because I don't find it productive to declare myself in one "camp" or the other.
Several people in the room went back and forth on this -- am I declaring myself "neutral?" Some seemed to think I was. I said I don't think anyone can be politically "neutral," just that I don't have a strong opinion on one side this debate; another asked a question about what the source of my values in this area was, and I cannot remember exactly what I said -- I believe this is where I talked about using different approaches, and mentioned using Matsuda & Matsuda's (2010) approach of teaching about differences and consequences of unconventional language use.
The final few things I remember saying were that it isn't that I want to evade the question of politics in EAP/applied linguistics (in fact literally the first article I can remember reading on second language writing was about this!), but that I think about these questions constantly, that my mind is paralyzed by them, and that I'm still working out what I believe. I described my research as being driven by a kind of "naive, dumb curiosity' about my work -- who am I teaching? what is this class about? why is it done this way? who are my students? how do they write and why? what do they believe? and so on -- rather than theoretical commitments per se.
I remain unsatisfied by my answer -- and I'm sure some others in the room did too -- because there is so much more to say. I've never been able to finish the paper based on a presentation I did about using Wendell Berry's theory of language to critique the embrace of globalization that seems to be inevitable the ELT profession, because I see the issues as so complex, personal, and intractable.
Here are some points I might have wished to mention in my answer, if I could do it over:
1. I am unequivocally "against" any understanding of the world that would emphasize economic benefits to countries and corporations (rather than individuals and families), the "progress" of technology and science (often to the detriment of traditional ways of living and working), and an economic view of people as “human capital” rather than unique beings with inherent dignity. This to me is antithetical to The Good Life, for anybody.
2. In that sense, I'm "against" supporting "neoliberalism." It might be true that promoting "fluid" approaches to language resonates with "fluid" approaches to economic globalization, which harms a lot of people, but it might also be true that these approaches represent an accurate understanding of how language functions for many people in the world, and it might even lead to better language teaching. I don't think we know yet.
3. Despite all this, we have to recognize where we live and work, who we are and who our students are, in the world of higher education. We all find ourselves -- perhaps for different reasons -- in a world of unimaginable privilege, comfort, and ease, by both historical and present-day standards. The university as we know it is modern western post-industrial middle-class Thing. (Perhaps it doesn't have to be so; it wasn't always; many other models of education are possible.) Many of our students -- and clearly, we ourselves, I myself, as a well-paid, medically-benefitted, defined-contribution-pension-planned faculty member -- am deeply invested in the continuing success of the global economic order even though I believe it is probably, in some ways, intrinsically evil. (Not a term I use flippantly!) This is a bitter pill, a troubling paradox, and not something I expect to be able to come to terms with for a long time.
4. On a personal note, when I got into this field, I assumed I would teach immigrants and refugees, who I assumed would be poor and marginalized. Instead, I've found myself teaching mainly relatively affluent international students. There's nothing wrong with being either one of these types of people, of course. I want to teach my students well, and to help them to grow into the types of people they want to be -- to succeed, to flourish, to make lives for themselves that are meaningful. I desire -- I often fail, but I desire -- to live a life that is other-oriented, selfless, driven by compassion and service. I might hope this for everyone else, too, but I don't know exactly what beliefs, what habits of mind and life, will lead to the world I say I want. I shy away from traditional "critical pedagogy" because I don't think its politics are self-evidently truer than any other honest approaches to positive social change, but I want to teach language and about language in a way that will encourage students to use it in ways that contribute to a better world -- however they might understand that.
5. One thing about Kubota's pushing back against "multi/pluri" approaches that I agree with is questioning the degree to which it benefits the scholars who promote it -- among whom I count myself. A troubling aspect of social science publishing is that it can look like a kind of "mining" -- we, affluent scholars in peaceful, developed countries, clearly use research about and thinking about people in other parts of the world, people who don't have it as well as we do, to further our careers. We just do. We can work for justice and help those people in whatever ways we deem appropriate; I try -- I often fail, but I try -- to literally give a percentage of my income to benefit them, but I benefit from my writing about them just the same. This is troubling, but it also don't feel totally wrong to me. I am reminded of what the writer Chris Hoke, whose work is about Latin drug gangs, said when I asked him whether he felt conflicted about telling other peoples' stories when he himself is a middle-class white dude. He said that the typical response he gets from his gang-member friends is, "Yeah, I want you to tell my f---in' story!"
I wish I could have said all this, and more -- that ultimately, I believe, if you couldn't tell by the somewhat coded religious language I frequently use when talking about this stuff -- that every human person is of infinite worth and dignity, that the only possible way forward in education and in life is "acting intentionally, in sympathetic response to others...to promote well-being when responding to acts or structures of existence that promote ill-being” (to quote the theologian Thomas Oord), and that I don't know what that means when it comes to debates in contemporary applied linguistics but that I want to continue pursuing it, even if I do it badly, at all costs.
But I didn't say any of this; at the time, I felt like Winona Ryder in Reality Bites when an editor asks her to define "irony." Today I feel a little more like Ethan Hawke. (Not a sentence I often produce.)
starting year 3 (or 11?)
1. Starting the schoolyear with a concussion feels like an apt metaphor for my present life. Everything makes me tired, and I have aches and pains that come and go unexpectedly and are troubling, but underneath it there's a grim determination to carry on and do good work under the circumstances. Maybe a little more slowly.
2. I watched a small boy throw up on his desk in a kindergarten classroom this morning. This also felt apt.
3. I'm realizing more and more that I can't force people who have more power than I do to make better (in my eyes) decisions. The challenge is to figure out how to balance what "the System" says you have to do with what you think is genuinely beneficial to students. If I let myself get too discouraged by fighting losing battles about curriculum, I'll go nuts.
4. I'm less certain than ever about how research intersects with my job, but still plugging away at some possibly interesting projects.
5. From Sept 1, 2015 to Sept 1, 2017, my yearly salary has increased by approx. 13%. This is mostly due to union stuff -- collective bargaining, cost of living increases, etc. -- but some of it is merit-based, and I feel very blessed.
6. On an unrelated note -- or perhaps not -- a senior colleague recently commented that it was too bad I couldn't get a "good position." I feel more acutely the TT/NTT divide than I used to. I'm not sure if this will continue, and I hope that whichever side of that divide I were on I'd want to engage it, because it's weird and bad.
7. Somewhat related to #3: one of my main goals for the centre where I work this year is to lead a committee looking at an initiative to implement a university-wide first year EAP program. I'm really excited about this, but I can also imagine getting so wrapped up in it that I get really burned out and disappointed by the inevitable roadblocks. Looking at student language/writing stuff from the institution's perspective -- or from administrators' perspectives, I guess -- can be very disorienting and discouraging to a workaday instructor. But it doesn't have to be.
8. Another major project this year: I'm co-chairing the Symposium on Second Language Writing here in Vancouver, the first weekend in August. It'll be held at the downtown campus of my university. This will be a ton of work, but I'm looking forward to it.
9. I'm also supposed to be working on/finishing a book for Cascade, which I really want to do but haven't been able to find the time to.
10. Also, I have to apply for permanent residency in Canada this year, ASAP, so I can keep my job. Yeep!
Tips on (or Genre Features of) Academic Blogging
Academic blog posts can be written in a freer and looser style than traditional academic writing. Feel free to write about academic subjects in a more conversational way – using contractions, slang, and colloquialisms is appropriate, to a degree. You don’t have to do this, but getting your point across is more important than following the conventions of Writing a Good Term Paper or whatever.
Think about how much ground you’re trying to cover. A short blog post (1000 words is more like a maximum than a minimum for blog posts) can only probably cover one issue in detail – don’t try to tackle every aspect of a complex issue, but focus in on what interests you (and readers) the most.
Write for a “general reader.” (Even though multiple editors have told me that no such person exists.) Imagine a well-educated reader who does not know much about your topic – maybe a well-read fellow student who hasn’t studied the things you have. This will mean avoiding jargon and explaining things that might not be familiar to non-specialists.
Linking is one of the great advantages of academic blogging – rather than having to scroll down to a reference list, readers can click right on whatever you want to point them to. There are no rules about how to do this, but in general, it helps to give readers a sense of what they’re getting into when they click – probably at least some combination of author, title, publication, and general topic will be useful. Feel free to link to anything you think will be of interest.
Brevity and readability are probably bigger concerns in blogging than they are in traditional academic writing. Consider writing in relatively short paragraphs. (Speaking of paragraphs, indentation is not necessary and looks weird online – leave a space between paragraphs instead.) The use of lists and bullet points can be beneficial in getting your point across.
On a related note, images and other design considerations, like headings, fonts, the use of space, and so on, are much more important in blogging than in traditional academic writing. Think about how the visual organization of your post impacts the reader. Would supplementing a post with an image of the thing you’re writing about help readers understand your topic? Would headings help readers understand where you make shifts in topic or argument? Could visuals that are not directly related to your argument add something to the post?
(Don't forget to use images that you have permission to use without paying for – read this for a useful primer.)
-
Seven reasons why blogging can make you a better academic writer
Pat Thomson, Times Higher Education
https://www.timeshighereducation.com/blog/seven-reasons-why-blogging-can-make-you-better- academic-writer
-
Effective Academic Blogging
Joe Essid, Writer’s Web http://writing2.richmond.edu/writing/wweb/blogging.html
-
How to Write an Academic Blog
Corey Tomsons, Thought Capital https://thoughtcapital.wordpress.com/2007/03/11/how-to-write-an-academic-blog/
On Shadow Academia
I've been kicking around this notion of "shadow academia" for a couple of years, inspired by the definition of Shadow Cabinet from the British parliament system:
The Shadow Cabinet is a feature of the Westminster system of government. It consists of a senior group of opposition spokespeople who, under the leadership of the Leader of the Opposition, form an alternative cabinet to that of the government, and whose members shadow or mark each individual member of the Cabinet.[Wikipedia]
Shadow Academia as I am coming to conceptualize it describes the activities of a group of academics usually (but not always) outside of the Anglophone Centre (US, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand) whose activities and scholarly output resemble those of the Anglophone centre at a surface level and are done in ways that somehow mimic "traditional" Anglophone-centre academia, but are not recognized by and/or are clearly and deeply sub-par when compared to "traditional" academia. I have to be careful here, because good work can be and is done in shadow academia, but its key feature is mimicry or aspiration to appear to be Anglophone-centre without being so. This is a loose definition that I'm just trying to develop, so bear with me, but I think Shadow Academia includes, on both the student side and the scholar side, what I'd call "para-academic" institutions and practices.
These include, on the scholarly side:
(Potentially) predatory journals and publishers: Much has been written about this, and a colleague and I have a book chapter on the subject out soon, but essentially these are publishers that charge a premium for a rubber-stamped "peer-reviewed" publication. Crucially, these journals/publishers are frequently branded as "international" and are published in English, and the majority of the scholars who publish in them are from the Middle East, Asia, Africa, and Eastern Europe -- places where the requirements for promotion are strict and involve publishing in English-language international journals. Not all these publishers are strictly "predatory" -- many exist in a copacetic and symbiotic relationship with academics in non-Anglophone-centre contexts who need the publication venues and are unable to get published in more "mainstream" journals. Graduate students in the Anglophone centre are often taken in by these publishers, publishing articles in journals that only sound legitimate or publishing dissertations with vanity presses. While these things can help scholars in other contexts, they can damage the careers of people aspiring to work in the Anglophone centre.
Spamferences - Similar to predatory publishers, these are conferences that exist pretty much solely to pad CVs, make money for organizers, and, occasionally, give academics excuses to travel to tourist destinations.
The next two on my list are more student-facing, and rather than mimicking Anglophone-centre practices, they exist in tandem with or in a sort of meta-relationship to Anglophone-centre academic institutions and practices:
Ghostwriting/contract cheating services: These exist in an interesting grey area between legitimate and necessary services like editing and tutoring. Often targeted at international students via flyers on university campuses or social media platforms, these are basically paper-writing services staffed by grad students or out-of-work PhDs who will write pretty much any academic paper, from a short essay to a thesis or dissertation, for a chunk of cash. I can say anecdotally that there's a perception among academic staff that this type of cheating is rampant among international students -- particularly those from China -- in the Anglophone centre. I personally don't believe this, but I've been surprised in the past and hope to do more research on it.
Test prep, study abroad prep, and study abroad agencies -- I mostly know these in a context that involves the Chinese international student diaspora, if you will, though they all exist across the globe. This is basically a para-academic industry focused on prepping students to go abroad. New Oriental is the prime example, but there are myriad businesses with varying degrees of legitimacy and/or shadiness. Some are clearly unethical/illegal -- stories of faking credentials abound -- but others are more ambiguous, like the tutoring/exam prep services advertised at my institution, taught by recent graduates who can provide current students with notes, copies of old exams, etc.
There are probably more businesses that would fit into the rubric of Shadow Academia (holler at me with suggestions), and I'm not sure that all four things listed above all belong in the same general category. But the fact is, these mini-industries would not exist if there were not a huge demand for education and/or scholarly activity that is perceived to have at least the four following allegedly positive qualities:
English-medium
International
"Western"
Association with "Highly ranked" universities
This is what I'm thinking so far. This is more complex than I've had time to get into here, but this is developing. Let me know what you think.
On doing writing but not composition
On the artificiality and the realness of academic writing
After a longish lecture on introductions, paragraphs, and conclusions yesterday, I attempted to explain this to one of my classes. (I tried again in the second class and was able to get it across in a more abbreviated fashion.)
As a teacher of writing in a high-stakes "foundational" writing course which in some ways exists in relationship to the dreaded "writing-as-skill" discourse (which frankly I am not as scared of as some people), I feel a tension between:
a) the fact that what I teach, assign, and assess are basically "mutt genres," or rather all a part of the meta-genre that I call "Prove You Can Do What I Asked You To Do So You Can Pass This Class and Get On With It." (Formerly known as "Prove You Can Write an Essay," but not everything we assign in the course is an essay.) In other words, we have very specific types of assignments with very specific rubrics, and we do practice versions and then final in-class versions in which students are tested on whether than can write a summary, a critique, and an "essay" based on fairly explicit, strict conventions laid out in a textbook and/our lectures; and
b) the fact that I truly believe that aside from that somewhat artificial, overly school-ish rhetorical setting, which does not feel very "real" or "writery" -- not even when compared to what I believe/assume is assigned in other courses at the university -- when it just comes down to the rhetorical triangle of writer-topic-(imagined-or-real) audience, something true, good, and powerful can happen, that if somehow one of the in-class essays a student wrote blew away and ended up on a streetcorner in Saskatoon or Cleveland or Bristol or Mumbai, someone could pick it up, read it, and go "Huh! I never thought of that before! That's really interesting! That changes how I think about this thing!" ...Or that even I, the teacher who grimly sits down to grade 36 very similar essays, could have the same experience.
In a way this is a tension between camps in writing studies -- very broadly, current-traditional vs. expressivist (except I wouldn't claim either of those traditions, really, being an applied linguist by training) -- but I can't help feeling there's a dynamic tension here that could produce a new way of looking at the kind of class I teach.
"Everything adds to being in another world."
The ideal lecture theatre is vast, truly vast. It is a very sombre, very old amphitheatre, and very uncomfortable. The professor is lodged in his chair which is raised high enough to see him; there is no question that he might get down and pester you. You can hear him quite well, because he doesn’t move. Only his mouth moves. Preferably he has white hair, a stiff neck and a Protestant air about him. There are a great many students and each is perfectly anonymous. To reach the amphitheatre, you have to climb some stairs, and then, with the leather lined doors closed behind, the silence is absolute, every sound stifled; the walls rise very high, daubed with rough paintings in half-tones in which the moving silhouettes of various monsters can be detected. Everything adds to being in another world. So one works religiously.
from an interview with a student in Bourdieu & Passeron's "Language and Relationship to Language in the Teaching Situation"
On the eve of a new academic year
2. I am not sure I could tell my students what my professor told me, and think they would believe it.
3. Even though I am not evaluated on research, I have been attempted to carve out a small program of it over the last year. It hasn't quite come together right. I've become obsessed, for some reason, with understanding writing and language from what I seem to think of as an "institutional" perspective, even though when I really think about it, I can't imagine what an "institutional" perspective would be. (That in itself is interesting, I suppose). I have been warned away, by multiple people, from doing this kind of research that digs into institutional policies, practices, etc., to avoid stirring up negative vibes. I understand this, and even though I think it would be arrogant of me to assume I'm important enough to be a nuisance to anyone who'd be implicated in this research, my goal really isn't to cause trouble. It isn't to tell everyone that they're doing it wrong.
I want to learn about the place where I work so I can do my work better, and I want to find a way to do this without getting in anyone's way. I'll probably have to think about this for a while longer before I can do it well. I am probably placing myself in the middle of conversations I don't really understand by trying to understand the 10+ year history of my institution's approach to writing and language.
4. This is going to be a much busier year than my first year was. I'm just coming off a glorious summer of parental leave (stressful in its own way, yes), looking down the barrel of a 2-2-1 year with 3 releases for admin work (including team teaching a course in the first semester, so it's really more like 3-2-1) and 4 or 5 conferences I need/want/hope to go to. Time management - never my forte - is going to be more important than ever.
5. I somehow wrote $15,000 worth of grants last year, which is really not bad considering I'd never written a grant before.
6. I also somehow became co-editor of a Canadian academic journal, which is pretty daunting, but exciting. So I'll be doing that.
7. What do I want from this year? To do my job better, to serve my students better, to collaborate with colleagues more on their projects, not mine, to avoid cynicism, to not work evenings or weekends. I don't know how much of all that will happen. Some can, I think.