Is the Second Language Acquisition discipline disintegrating?
3 December 2013
Last update: 03/12/13 11:54
Post written by Jan H. Hulstijn, based on an article in Language Teaching
The second language acquisition (SLA) field is characterized by a wide variety of issues and theoretical perspectives. Is this a bad thing? Are there signs of disintegration?
In applied linguistics in general, and in particular in the field of SLA, it is not uncommon to distinguish between quantitative and qualitative approaches or between cognitive and socio-cultural approaches. In my view, what is potentially more threatening to the field than a split between quantitative and qualitative subfields is the proportion of nonempirical theories. If an academic discipline is characterized by too many nonempirical ideas and too few empirical ideas, it runs the risk of losing credit in the scientific community at large (and in society).
In this paper, I propose to distinguish, instead, between theories formulated in a way that allows empirical testing and theories that are not, or not yet, empirical in this sense. I am not advocating banishing all nonempirical ideas from the SLA field, but what would really make the field more transparent for both SLA-ers and outsiders is if scholars who propose theories were to indicate to what extent their theory is ready for empirical scrutiny. It does not matter whether the field of SLA is inhabited by many theories. However, it would be a good thing if we viewed the field not only in terms of the ‘issues’, as do most of the textbooks, but also in terms of their empirical or nonempirical status. This would also help us gain a better view of the agenda of our discipline.
For this purpose, I provide a list of theory-classification criteria. Sticking out my neck, I categorize a number of theories as having a more or less falsfiable status. While welcoming theories not yet ready for empirical falsification, I also express my concern about the possibility that the non-empirical theories may outnumber the theories that lend themselves to falsification.
Access the full article without charge until January 31st 2014 here.
Related Posts
Where Physical and Digital Worlds Collide
In this blog for Data-Centric Engineering, Paul Clarke (Chief Technology Officer at Ocado) documents Ocado’s journey with building synthetic models of its business, its platforms and its underlying technologies, including the use of simulations, emulations, visualisations and digital twins. He explores the potential benefits of digital twins, including the opportunities for creating digital twins at […]
International Women’s Day 2020: Influential women in STEM
International Women’s Day 2020 falls on Sunday, 8th March this year. In the run up to this date, each week day we’ll be highlighting one woman whose accomplishments in science, technology, engineering and/or mathematics not only elevated their fields but also took us one step closer to a gender-equal world. We hope you’ll join us […]
Cambridge Journals: 2014 Impact Factor Results
This blog post is a detailed summary of the Cambridge Journals performance in the 2014 Thomson Reuters JCR® Impact Factor results. Summary Impact Factors for Cambridge Journals on the Social Sciences category increased by an average 10.2%. Science journals rose by an average of 6.9%. Across all journals the average change was an increase of 8.7%. For […]
Wisconsin’s Response to the Coronavirus Pandemic – Now updated
From time to time, until the crisis has passed, the HEPL blog series authors will be given the opportunity to provide short updates on their country/region’s continuing response to this worldwide catastrophe and their further reflections on those responses. Each update will be labelled accordingly with the original response at the bottom of each post. […]
;
