Discourse Analysis and Foreign Language Teacher Education
DATA PRESENTATION AND ANALYSIS
Structure
Dubious yet institutionalized dichotomies: Language vs. literature in US foreign language departments
The language-literature dichotomy or the idea that language teachers are not competent to teach literature and that literature teachers are above teaching language “has been institutionalized in departments of foreign languages and literatures in North American universities” (Kramsch, 1993, p. 7) and rests, in part, on the prevalent and perhaps more perturbing ‘skills versus content’ dichotomy in foreign language and literature study (see also Byrnes, 2001, p. 514, for the “separation of knowledge and language”). From this perspective, language is seen as a skill that is devoid of any intellectual content and “becomes intellectually respectable only when learners are able to use it to express and discuss abstract ideas” (ibid., p. 3).
Despite the efforts of Byrnes (1998; 2000) and others to integrate the study, teaching, and scholarly investigation of language and literature on the theoretical, practical, and curricular levels in US FL departments, the institutionalized chasm between these complementary disciplines remains deep in most units. Bernhardt (1997, p. 13) maintains that there are “two distinct curricula in language departments, a language curriculum and a literature curriculum” each with their own objectives, materials and, sometimes, faculty. These two curricula are distinctly out of sync with one another, although the language curriculum generally has been conceived as a feeder program for the literature curriculum. The institutional dichotomization of language and literature has, in some cases, resulted in the departmental ghettoization of language teaching, language teachers, and language TE.
By way of extension, the applied linguist, (either correctly or incorrectly) conceptualized primarily as the individual who investigates the academically “less sophisticated” field of language teaching (Kramsch, 1993, p. 7), has been marginalized as well in the intellectual work of many US FL departments (Byrnes, 1998). For example, Bernhardt (1997, p. 4) asserts that language teachers “accept low status, higher course loads, lower salaries and often part-time employment” despite the fact that their courses typically generate 90% of a department’s enrollment and, therefore, financial support (see also Kramsch, 1995, p. 6; 2000a, p. 320; Rivers, 1993, p. 4).
Similar characterizations of language learning and teaching abound in the field of ESL where (intensive) English language programs are viewed routinely as a “cash cow” (Eskey, 1997, p. 25; see also Kaplan, 1997, p. 6), capable only of generating revenue for the departmental literature program (Bernhardt, 1997, p. 4). In step with the pervasive misconception that “anyone who can speak a language can teach it” (Eskey, 1997, p. 23), Kaplan (1997, p. 15) notes that language teachers typically are regarded as “second class citizens” in the hierarchy of academic faculty. Kramsch (1993, p. 7) argues that the language-literature dichotomy is not based in intellectual content, but rather that it “serves to maintain a certain academic, political, and economic power structure, where language teachers and literature scholars are careful not to tread on each other’s territories.”
The language-literature dichotomy was firmly in place in Fran and Sam’s academic unit. I restrict my comments on this split to the ways in which it was reflected in the structures of the departmental curriculum (see Patrikis, 1995) as well as in the disciplinary interests of the faculty members. The DA seminar under study was one of the first seminars in applied linguistics to be offered in Fran and Sam’s home department. Soon faculty discussions arose surrounding a proposal for a departmental M.A. in ‘Second Language Acquisition’ or SLA (see Kramsch, 2000, pp. 311-313, for mis/uses of the term ‘SLA’ in FL departments). It was reasoned that this new M.A. would parallel the existing M.A. in literature. The intended bifurcation of the M.A. degree into ‘literature’ and ‘language’ tracks is an example par excellence of the institutionalized split between language and literature in the setting under investigation. If these two disciplines were understood to be inextricably inter-related and mutually co-constituitive (Byrnes, 2001; Kramsch, 2002), then the proposal might be for a single M.A. in which this relationship were reflected at the levels of both theory and praxis. This bifurcation of the departmental curriculum may represent the reluctant acceptance of applied linguistics as a ‘necessary evil’ in the established intellectual practices of the ‘national canonical’ foreign language department in question, but in no way does it reflect the legitimacy of language and FL teaching, the inextricable relationship of language and culture, and their centrality to the study of literature and, thus, to the intellectual work of FL departments (Byrnes, 1998; 2001; Kramsch, 1995, 2002; Patrikis, 1995; Seeba, 1989). According to Byrnes (2001, p. 514), “a separatist construal of knowledge and language”, embedded in the curricular structures and practices of Fran and Sam’s department, “supports the very dichotomy between teaching and scholarship and between teachers and scholars that has for so long sustained the status quo in FL departments, despite growing awareness of its serious flaws.”
