Reading Pennycook Critically 10 Years Later: A Group's Reflections On and Questions About Critical Applied Linguistics

Abstract

As we, an instructor and her students, read through Alastair Pennycook's Critical Applied Linguistics (2001) in a PhD seminar by the same name, we found ourselves contrasting and comparing the insights provided in that book with those in other critical texts and wondering what the ten years since the work's publication had meant. This article is a collection of such reflections, one that is guided by our belief that activities relating to language use, change, and teaching are inherently political and dynamic, and that therefore we must be prepared for the challenges that operating within this paradigm always brings. After a brief introduction to the work itself, we present our thoughts on what critical approaches do—in particular what Critical Applied Linguistics as proposed by Pennycook intends to do—the relationship between the critical and linguistics, the possibility of change through the critical, and the role of questioning and skepticism in forging a different reality.

Keywords:

• Critical Applied Linguistics
• critical pedagogies
• language change
• language education

Notes

¹Although we acknowledge that critical applied linguistics should deal with linguistic issues beyond English, we focus on that language because of our combined expertise in it. Work on critical issues should extend itself to all languages and the interactions between them.