Subjective Academics: A More Realistic Objective…?

While I do believe that the re-visioning of TESOL as TEGCOM, laid out in by Lin et al., is an admirable course to set with for the future of the field, I find that some of their other arguments, especially those by Richardson to be troubling.

When I tried to work out if the dichotomy set up by even the nomenclature  of TESOL or ESL or EFL rely on essesitalizing and othering paradigms, I realized that no matter how you dissect the rhetoric they all offer superior status to those who already have English within their cultural capital. Changing our perspective to observe World Englishes or EIL, through the Teaching English for Glocalized Communication seems to be a powerful forward thinking, and true attempt to neutralize English. My concern however, is that the approach laid out in this article will be met with great opposition by politicians who are not experts in the field.

I understand how "present day applied linguists 'objective' writing is but another example of how unequal power relations between the allegedly rational objective researcher (Self), who is constructed a capable of conducting meta-analysis and rational theorizing on the allegedly subjective researched (Other)" (297), to a certain degree perpetuates dichotomies across the board. Yet, I fear that if we move away from empiricism, no matter if it is merely an appearance, in the humanities (which has been the case for many many years, until recently, at least in literature), then in many respects the credibility of our studies may be lessen. We look to science as a space for factual evidence. Granted the human narrative, both epistemologically and cognitively may be skewed from understanding facts, or unchanging scientific laws, these gray areas of Arts Based Research seem hard pressed to create actual change in government policy.

So while I applaud these brave scholars in their work, and wish them the best, I fear that the improvements that they and I would like to see enacted in our world, may have difficulty coming to fruition.