This presentation has been prepared to help 'the readers concerned' push the boundaries of complexities they face while differentiating between what 'critical' stands for and how it functions in the very current discipline.

1. Hülya Fidan

2.  Criticality is a process of engaging with power
and social inequality both within and outside
applied linguistics. Nonetheless, critical
applied linguistics (CAL) is not opposed to
power but to its effects. (Makoni, 2013)
 CAL is skeptical of concepts such as the
native speaker, language, identity, and
agency. (Makoni, 2013)

3.  Davies (1999) provides the following
definition: “a judgmental approach by some
applied linguists to „normal‟ applied
linguistics on the grounds that it is not
concerned with the transformation of society”
(p. 145).
 Indeed, elsewhere in his book, Davies (1999)
is prepared to accord a broader role to critical
applied linguistics as both a mode of critique,
and, in critical pedagogy, as a mode of
practice.

4.  By critical applied linguistics, I refer to that
view of language teaching, which directly
confronts and contests the power issues that
abound in language education. (Martinez, The
University of Arizona)
 Pennycook (2010) sees critical applied
linguistics as a constantly shifting and
dynamic approach to questions of language
in multiple contexts, rather than a method, a
set of techniques, or a fixed body of
knowledge.

5.  Critical applied linguistics is not about
developing a set of skills that will make the
doing of applied linguistics more rigorous,
more objective, but about making applied
linguistics more politically accountable.
(Pennycook, 2010)

6.  Critical Thinking (Liberalism)
 Social Relevance (Liberal-Pluralism)
 Emancipatory modernism (Neo-Marxism)
 Problematizing practice (Feminism,
postcolonialism, queer theory, etc.)

7.  Critical thinking is used to describe a way of
bringing more rigorous analysis to problem
solving or textual understanding, a way of
developing more “critical distance” as it is
sometimes called. (Pennycook, 2010)
 Skilled critical questioning (Brookfield, 1987)

8.  CAL is concerned not merely with relating
language contexts to social contexts, but
rather does so from a point of view that views
social relations as problematic. (Pennycook,
2010)
 A central element of critical applied
linguistics, therefore, is a way of exploring
language in social contexts that goes beyond
mere correlations between language and
society, and instead raises more critical
questions to do with access, power, disparity,
desire, difference, and resistance.

9.  Critical work in this sense, has to engage with
questions of inequality, injustice, rights,
wrongs. (Pennycook, 2010)
 Critical here means taking social inequality and
social transformation as central to one‟s work.
(Pennycook, 2010)
Key words: Materialism, Enlightenment, Marxism, Neo-Marxism

10.  This is a critical practice because “it is
unwilling to accept the taken-for-granted
components of our reality and the „official‟
accounts of how they came to be the way they
are”. (Dean, 1994)
 Thus, a crucial component of critical work is
always turning a skeptical eye toward
assumptions, ideas that have become
“naturalized,” notions that are no longer
questioned. (Dean,1994)
 Dean (1994) describes such practice as “the
restive problematization of the given” (p. 4).

11.  Applied Linguistics
 Praxis
 Being critical
 Micro and Macro Relations
 Critical Social Inquiry
 Critical Theory
 Problematizing givens
 Self-Reflexivity
 Preferred Futures
 CAL as Heterosis

12.  Applied linguistics is an area of work that
deals with language use in professional
setting, translation, speech pathology,
literacy, and language education; and it is not
merely the application of linguistic knowledge
to such settings but is a semi-autonomous
and interdisciplinary domain of work that
draws on but is not dependent on areas such
as sociology, education, anthropology,
cultural studies, and psychology. (Quang,
2007)
 Critical applied linguistics adds many new
domains to this. (Quang, 2007)

13.  A distinction between theory and practice
 We prefer to avoid the theory-into-practice
direction and instead see these as more
comlexly intermingled. (Quang, 2007)

14.  Critical Thinking
 Social Relevance
 Emancipatory modernism
 Problematizing practice

15.  One of the key challenges for critical applied
linguistics is to find ways of mapping micro and
macro relations, ways of understanding a
relation between concepts of society, ideology,
global capitalism, colonialism, education,
gender, racism, sexuality, class and classroom
utterances, translations, conversions, genres,
second language acquisition, media texts.
(Quang,2007)
 A central issue always concerns how the
classroom, text, or conversation is related to
broader social cultural and political relations.
(Quang, 2007)

16.  Critical applied linguistics is concerned not
merely with relating language contexts to
social contexts but rather does so from a
point of view that views social relations as
problematic. (Quang, 2007)

17.  Critical work in this sense has to engage with
questions of inequality, injustice, rights, and
wrongs. (Quang, 2007)
 “critical” here means taking social inequality
and social transformation as central to one‟s
work. (Quang 2007)
 Marc Poster (1989:3) suggests that “critical
theory springs from an assumption that we
live amid a world of pain, that much can be
done to alleviate that pain, and that theory
has a crucial role to play in that process”.

18.  Dean (1994) suggests this is a critical practice
because” it is unwilling to accept the taken-for-
granted components of our reality and the “official”
accounts of how they came to be the way they are”.
 Thus, a crucial component of critical work is always
turning a skeptical eye toward assumptions, ideas
that have become “naturalized”, notions that are no
longer questioned. (Quang, 2007)
 Dean (1994:4) describes such pratice as “the
restive problematization of the given”.
 “Constant questioning of all categories.” (Quang,
2007))

19.  If critical applied linguistics needs to retain a
constant skepticism, a constant questioning
of the givens of applied linguistics, this
problematizing stance must also be turned
on itself. (Quang, 2007)
 The notion of “critical” also needs to imply an
awareness “of the limits of knowing”. (Quang,
2007)
 CAL is concerned with raising a host of new
and difficult questions about knowledge,
politics, and ethics. (Quang, 2007)

20.  Critical applied linguistics also needs to
operate with some sort of vision of what is
preferable. (Quang, 2007)
 Perhaps the notion of preferred futures offers
us a slightly more restrained and plural view
of where we might want to head. (Quang,
2007)
 Ethics has to become a key building block for
CAL. (Quang, 2007)

21.  The notion of heterosis hereby understood as the
creative expansion of possibilities resulting from
hybridity. (Quang,2007)
 it opens up a whole new array of questions and
concerns, issues such as identity, sexuality, or the
reproduction of Otherness that have hitherto not
been considered as concerns related to applied
linguistics. (Quang, 2007)
 The notion of heterosis helps deal with a final
concern, the question of normativity. (Quang,
2007) – constant skeptism- normative
assumptions of AL.

22.  Critical Discourse Analysis and Critical
Literacy
 Critical Approaches to Translation
 Language Teaching
 Language Testing
 Language Planning and Language Rights
 Language, Literacy and Workplace Settings

23.  CDA and critical literacy are sometimes also
combined under the rubric of critical language
awareness, since the aim of this
work is to “empower learners by providing them
with a critical analytical framework
to help them reflect on their own language
experiences and practices
and on the language practices of others in the
institutions of which they are
a part and in the wider society within which they
live” (Clark & Ivanic, 1997,
p. 217).

24.  The politics of translation, the ways in which
translating and interpreting are related to
concerns such as class, gender, difference,
ideology, and social context. (Pennycook,
2010)

25.  The domain or area of interest – to what
extent do particular domains define a critical
approach?
 A self-reflexive stance on critical theory – to
what extent does the work constantly
question common assumptions, including its
own?
 And transformative pedagogy – how does the
particular approach to education hope to
change things?

26.  Shohamy (2001) has developed a notion of
critical language testing (CLT) which “implies
the need to develop critical strategies to
examine the uses and consequences of tests,
to monitor their power, minimize their
detrimental force, reveal the misuses, and
empower the test takers” (p. 131).
 CLT starts with the assumption that “the act
of language testing is not neutral.” (Shohamy,
2001)

27.  Norton Peirce and Stein (1995) also point to
concerns about the politics of testing when
they suggest that “if test makers are drawn
from a particular class, a particular race, and
a particular gender, then test takers who
share these characteristics will be at an
advantage relative to other test takers” (p.
62).

28.  Tollefson (1991) claims that language policy has
been uncritically developed and implemented.
 According to Luke, McHoul, and Mey (1990),
while maintaining a “veneer of scientific
objectivity” language planning has “tended to
avoid directly addressing larger social and
political matters within which language change,
use and development, and indeed language
planning itself are embedded”
 Ricento (2000) has similarly taken much of the
earlier work in language policy and planning to
account for its apolitical naivety.

29.  Critical applied linguistic approaches to
contexts of workplace communication focus
far more on questions of access, power,
disparity, and difference. (Pennycook, 2010)
 An important aspect of this work has been to
draw connections between workplace uses of
language and relations of power at the
institutional and broader social levels.
(Pennycook, 2010)

30. THANK YOU FOR LISTENING AND PAYING
ATTENTION!!!


31.  Brookfield, S. (1987) Developing critical thinkers. Milton
Keyness: Open University Press
 Clark, R. & Ivanic, R. (1997) The politics of writing.
London: Routledge
 Davies, A. (1999) An introduction to applied linguistics:
from theory to practice. Edinburgh University Press.
 Dean, M. (1994) Critical and effective histories:
Foucault‟s methods and historical sociology. London:
Routledge.
 Luke, A., McHoul, A., & Mey, J. L. (1990) On the limits of
language planning: class, state, power. In R. B. Baldauf,
Jr. & A. Luke (eds.), Language planning and education in
Australia and the South Pacific (pp.25-44).

32.  Makoni, S. (2013) Critical applied linguistics. The
Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics. Blackwell.
 Martinez, G. A. Classroom based dialect awareness in
heritage language instruction: A Critical Applied
Linguistics Approach. The University of Arizona.
 Norton Pierce, B. &Stein. P. (1995) Why the „Monkeys
passage‟ bombed: tests, genres, and teaching. Harvard
Educational Review, 65(1), 50-65
 Pennycook, A. (1999) Introduction: Critical approaches
to TESOL. TESOL Quarterly, 33, 329- 48
 Pennycook, A. (2010) Language a a local practice.
London: Routledge.

33.  Quang, V. D. (2007) Critical applied linguistics:
Concerns and Domains. Colledge of Foreign Languages.
 Ricento, T. (2000) Historical and theoretical
perspectives in language policy and planning. Journal of
sociolinguistics, 4(2), 196-213
 Shohamy, E. (2001) The power of tests: a critical
perspective on the uses of language language tests.
London: Longman
 Tollefson, J. (1991) Planning languages, planning
inequality: language policy in the community. London:
Longman.