PEDAGOGIES: AN INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL, 2(2), 125–129 Copyright © 2007, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

Dialogue with Bakhtin on Second and Foreign Language Learning: New Perspectives. Joan K. Hall, Gergana Vitanova, and Ludmila Marchenkova (Eds.). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., 2005, xii + 241 pp., $75.00 (hardcover). ISBN: 0-8058-5021-X Lawrence Jun Zhang Nanyang Techonological University, Singapore Recent research interest in multiple perspectives on second-language acquisition theories, especially a shift of attention away from cognitive towards sociocultural perspectives, has indicated important contributions that sociocultural approaches can offer in explaining second- and foreign-language learning (Lantolf, 2000; Oxford, 2003; Pierce, 1995; Zuengler & Miller, 2006). Zuengler and Miller (2006), in particular, challenged the traditional positivist paradigm and argued that it is no longer the only prominent paradigm and that with relativism (e.g., social-cultural theory and social constructivism, among others) becoming an alternative paradigm, “language use in real world situations is fundamental, not ancillary, to learning” (p. 37). The publication of Dialogue with Bakhtin is a valuable addition to this expanding paradigm. Beginning with a preface and an introduction, Dialogue with Bakhtin is a collection of papers based on the theory of the Russian linguist and philosopher of language, Mikhail Bakhtin. It is divided into two parts. Part I, “Investigations into Contexts of Language Learning and Teaching,” includes seven chapters (chapters 2–8), and Part II, “Implications for Theory and Practice,” has three chapters (chapters 9–11). Chapter 1, “Introduction: Dialogue with Bakhtin on Second and Foreign Language Learning,” stands out legitimately as a discrete chapter, apart from the others in the book. It is here that the editors, Hall, Vitanova, and Marchenkova present a highly systematic view of Bakhtin in relation to second- and foreignlanguage learning. They start with a very brief historical review of the development of second- and foreign-language learning traditions, explaining that scholars usually “looked to the fields of linguistics and psycholinguistics for its epistemological foundations” (p. 1). They then argue that such theoretical orientations have limitations and that, as a result, scholars started turning to other disciplines in search of new ways to conceptualise the field. With such a swift but clear grounding in place, the editors then conclude the introduction by sketching how the succeeding chapters are arranged. Chapter 2, the first chapter of Part I, “Mastering Academic English: International Graduate Students’ Use of Dialogue and Speech Genres to Meet Correspondence should be sent to Lawrence Jun Zhang, National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, 1 Nanyang Walk, Singapore 637616. E-mail: [email protected]

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the Writing Demands of Graduate School,” addresses issues from a dialogic perspective, which are related to international graduate students’ use of speech genres. Braxley first explains what dialogism and speech genres mean in Bakhtin’s original works. She then reports her study against a background where the difficulty that English-as-a-second-language students face in writing in English is overwhelming. Braxley focuses on aspects relating to “dialogue with friends,” “dialogue with tutors and instructors,” and “dialogue with the text,” as facilitative to the mastery of academic English among “successful writers” (p. 19). She discusses her findings in relation to individuality in academic genres, writing authoritatively within genres and the constraints of international students who need to master genres. Her conclusion presents useful implications derived from this study. Given that the centrality of Bakhtin’s thinking about knowledge is to observe language use in dialogue, Iddings, Haught, and Devlin’s chapter 3 examines “Multimodal Representations of Self and Meaning for Second Language Learners in English-Dominant Classrooms.” Similar to the preceding chapter, they also examine dialogism in much detail, but with a slightly different focus before they present their empirical study conducted in a third-grade classroom. By framing dialogism as “sharedness of human experience,” they examine how the use of multimodal representation enhanced participants’ “access to the social life of their English-dominant classroom” (p. 50). As the title indicates, Orr’s chapter 4, “Dialogic Investigations: Cultural Artifacts in ESOL Composition Classes,” investigates English-for-speakers-of-other-languages (ESOL) student composition classes in relation to the cultural artefacts, ideologies, and schemata they bring with them into the classroom from different countries. These schemata, as Orr argues, “position ESOL students as potentially and uniquely available to dialogic investigations” (p. 55). This is also because inherent in Bakhtin’s theory is the “social situatedness of communication,” which gives a solid grounding in teaching writing. Teachers can help students to focus on a purpose, adopt appropriate voice, tone, or level of formality, and/or write in several genres. Orr’s study shows that students’ responses in classes are indicative of the dialogic nature of language, that they use reciprocal discursive adaptation, and that they index familiarity, dialogic history, identification, and evaluation. Lin and Luk’s chapter 5, “Local Creativity in the Face of Global Domination: Insights of Bakhtin for Teaching English for Dialogic Communication,” starts with a quick survey of globalisation, global capitalism, and the global domination of English. Lin and Luk report that students in a secondary school in Hong Kong “parrot English textbook dialogues.” They are also concerned about the students’ “accentuation practices.” They do so by analysing segments of lessons that create opportunities for dialogue and “carnival laughter.” The other important aspect they report on is the Bakhtinian insight into teaching English for dialogic communication. The authors further report that “the students’ accentuation and

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dialogising practices in the lessons impressed us with the resilience of human agency and creativity, the human need to go beyond monoglossia, that is, the types of social languages imposed on them in school and society, the drive to turn them into future worker commodities, disciplining them in the social languages expected of them in the adult worker world, forcing them to parrot worker languages, and constituting their voices for them” (p. 93). They suggest that teachers laugh with students and co-create heteroglossic, internally persuasive dialogues so that English can become a tool that students can use to construct their own preferred worlds, preferred identities, and preferred voices. In chapter 6, “Metalinguistic Awareness in Dialogues: Bakhtinian Considerations,” Dufva and Alanen report on their longitudinal study that investigates a small group of Finnish schoolchildren’s metalinguistic awareness in language learning by combining Bakhtinian and Vygotskian perspectives. They make it clear that the predominant cognitivist view of metalinguistic awareness is far from sufficient in explaining the phenomenon. Instead, by drawing on their data, they argue that children’s metalinguistic awareness is multivoiced and bears traces of many contexts and that children’s view of language and foreignlanguage learning is mediated by the discourses to which they are exposed. They also argue that children’s metalinguistic awareness reflects various social and cultural practices and that language is objectified. Chapter 7 by Platt starts with a discussion of Bakhtinian terms such as dialogism, intersubjectivity, meaning, and the self before the study aimed at examining them is presented. Drawing on multiple data sources such as personal information, a two-way information-gap task, and post-hoc interviews, Platt focuses on two novice learners of Swahili: Florentine from Romania and Majidah from Malaysia. She finds that the participants brought to the task very different perspectives on language, different preferences, and different goals. She also discusses how the two participants struggled to establish and maintain intersubjectivity and construct meanings through various linguistic and nonlinguistic strategies due to their limited lexicon in Swahili, only to realise that they, too, are good language learners. Chapter 8, “Authoring the Self in a Non-Native Language: A Dialogic Approach to Agency and Subjectivity,” approaches agency and subjectivity through examination of voice, consciousness, and answerability. Vitanova argues that the narrative is a form of authorship by looking at the “languaged” self when one’s voice is in the second language. She also shows that acts of authoring are expressed in creative answerability and that resistance is also an act of agency. Because Bakhtin’s theory of dialogue focuses on cultural and interpersonal dimensions of language and examines discourses in multiple voices, in chapter 9, “Language, Culture, and Self: The Bakhtin-Vygotsky Encounter,” Marchenkova attempts to “build parallels between Bakhtin’s theory of dialogue and Vygotsky’s psychological theory” (p. 173) and reexamines dialogue of cultures, self, and

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Other. She concludes that dialogue is understanding. Chapter 10, “Dialogical Imagination of (Inter)cultural spaces: Rethinking the Semiotic Ecology of Second Language and Literacy Learning,” connects very well with the preceding chapter in that Kostogriz addresses issues relating to how Second language acquisition (SLA) is researched by people of different backgrounds. He argues that Bakhtinian perspectives, which are being gradually accepted and adopted, offer fertile ground for researchers and practitioners who seek to make sense of second language and literacy learning in multicultural societies and classrooms. Different from the other two chapters (chapters 9 and 10) of this part, which are expository in nature, Yutsukura’s chapter 11 is based on empirical data. By investigating Japanese business telephone conversations as a particular genre, Yutsukura applied Bakhtinian perspectives to the analysis of Japanese SLA. Based on her data, she argues that second-language learners may benefit in learning directly from authentic interactive dialogues such as telephone conversations. Furthermore, second-language learners benefit from the use of the Bakhtinian notion of addressivity “as a heuristic to explore how participants design appropriate utterances for their audiences” (p. 228). Dialogue with Bakhtin is a timely publication. It can be taken as a constructive and responsible reaction to the long period of domination of cognitivist and formalistic views on language learning and teaching. All the chapters are unified by Bakhtinian concepts such as dialogue, utterance, heteroglossia, voice, and addressivity, which are the main theoretical threads throughout the book. It is within such theoretical perspectives that the contributors examine language learning in real world contexts. Since Bakhtin thought that the study of language should be concerned with the dialogue between linguistic elements and the uses to which they are put in response to the conditions of the moment (Bakhtin, 1981; Holquist, 1990), the significant implications of such a view for current understandings of second- and foreign-language learning are self-evident in the book. Also, although scholars in first-language and literacy education research have already applied Bakhtin’s theory (e.g., Ball & Freedman, 2004) and scholars in the field of second- and foreign-language research have also addressed issues related to this sparingly (e.g., McKay & Wong, 1996; Oxford, 2003; Pennycook, 2001; Pierce, 1995), Dialogue with Bakhtin is the first of its kind that systematically explores how Bakhtin’s theoretical insights into language and practical concerns with second- and foreign-language learning and teaching can be fruitfully connected. The fact that the chapters address elementary- and university-level second-language and foreign-language classrooms and adultlearning situations makes it possible for the book to be widely accepted by a large readership who works at various levels of educational institutions. I anticipate that scholars in applied linguistics, language education, and language studies with an interest in second- and foreign-language learning, teacher educators,

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and language teachers from elementary to university levels will surely find it a valuable collection. Despite some minor imperfections (e.g., a typographical error on p. 7, para. 2, lines 7–8), which can be rectified easily in the next edition, Dialogue with Bakhtin is a highly recommended textbook for graduate students in applied linguistics and second- and foreign-language education. It is also an equally valuable reader for scholars, researchers, and professors who intend to apply Bakhtin’s theory to second- and foreign-language teaching and learning. The chapters in it are good examples of how Bakhtin’s theory can be applied, particularly how it can be used to guide qualitative or ethnographic research and practice in language and literacy studies by virtue of the fact that some excerpts of data can possibly be extemporised by the readers. The author index and the subject index, to which readers can conveniently refer if they wish to quickly locate a particular piece of information, are a great help for many readers who would like to read and want possession of such a book.

REFERENCES Bakhtin, M. (1981). The dialogic imagination: Four essays (C. Emerson & M. Holquist, Trans.). Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Ball, A., & Freedman, S. W. (Eds.). (2004). Bakhtinian perspectives on language, literacy, and learning. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Holquist, M. (1990). Dialogism: Bakhtin and his world. London, UK: Routledge. Lantolf, J. (Ed.). (2000). Sociocultural theory and second language learning. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. McKay, S. L., & Wong, S. C. (1996). Multiple discourses, multiple identities: Investment as agency in second language learning among Chinese adolescent immigrant students. Harvard Education Review, 66, 577–608. Oxford, R. L. (2003). Toward a more systematic model of L2 learner autonomy. In D. Palfreyman & R. Smith (Eds.), Learner autonomy across cultures (pp. 58–91). London, UK: Palgrave. Pennycook, A. (2001). Critical applied linguistics: A critical introduction. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. Pierce, B. N. (1995). Social identity, investment, and language learning. TESOL Quarterly, 29, 9–31. Zuengler, J., & Miller, E. (2006). Cognitive and sociocultural perspectives: Two parallel SLA worlds? TESOL Quarterly, 40, 31–58.