Critical Applied Linguistics: A Critical Introduction

Rating:
Summary: who saves us from deconstruction?
Review: While his previous work revealed many interesting facts about ELT, Pennycook's post-modern ideology leads to disaster in "Critical Applied Linguistics". Indeed, the book's structure is so postmodern that there is hardly any frame left for reader to cling to. The only overarching structure is Pennycook's construction of the four schools of applied linguistics and this classification is extremely questionable. Often one scholar is taken as representing a whole school. In the case of Widdowson, his argument is misrepresented to suit the construction of "liberal ostricism".

But the basic fallacy of the book is Pennycook's attitude towards research.Pennycook argues that, as objectivity is not possible, there is no need to try to be objective. While it is certainly true that notions such as "objectivity" and "rationalism" are often biased, the answer is not to discharge these notions but to use them while being aware of their problematic nature.