An elephant among the firs

In their paper, the Douglas Fir authors argue for a wider framework for studies within the field that has been traditionally known as SLA to embrace and encourage greater transdisciplinarity among approaches to research and theory development. They offer ten ‘fundamental themes’ (p. 26) for future research in this field, which recognise, among others, complexity, dynamism, multimodality and multilingualism, identity and agency as key areas of focus. However, there appears to have been an elephant in the Douglas Fir room that neither they, nor subsequent commentators on the piece, seem to have noticed.

Twice in the paper (p. 19, p. 21) they provide definitions of their field of study, and on both occasions, in the definition itself, they avoid the terms ‘second’ and ‘acquisition’, opting for a more logical, more equitable and more inclusive phrase:

In the paper itself they use variants of the same phrase ‘additional language learning’ no fewer than 20 times, also frequently referencing ‘additional language teaching’, and more occasionally ‘development in an additional language’. What is more, this is consistent with everything they argue for: a conceptualisation of multilingualism that not only goes beyond but also rejects the oversimplistic implications of the term ‘second’, and a recognition that we need to move beyond the overly cognitive focus inherent in the term ‘acquisition’. Yet, despite this implicit recognition of ‘additional language learning’ as the most appropriate expression to capture this new transdisciplinarity, and despite critical discussion of terminology in the field (p. 21), they pass up this seemingly perfect opportunity to propose renaming the field itself, continuing throughout to retain the acronym ‘SLA’ to refer to it.

In this essay, I will argue that there is no valid reason for retaining the term ‘second language acquisition’, excluding, arguably, tradition, which is unlikely to be solid ground upon which applied linguists can succeed in moving beyond the limitations and biases of past paradigmatic perspectives, as the DFG, and others (e.g., Leung & Valdés, Reference Leung and Valdés2019; Ortega, Reference Ortega and May2014), clearly aim to do. To replace it, I will propose a choice between ‘additional language learning’ and ‘additional language development’ as more logical, more inclusive alternatives. But first, I begin with a historical perspective to illustrate the fact that, for all but a minority of scholars, the term has never been fit for purpose.

A troubled adolescence

The phrase ‘second language acquisition’ seems to have been first used as a scientific term, and possibly coined, by Wallace E. Lambert in the 1950s (e.g., Lambert, Reference Lambert1956), who uses it to describe ‘the linguistic behavior of those who are at different stages of development in a language, where that language is not the only one known’ (p. 83). However, SLA studies as a distinct field of research is usually seen to trace its origins back to the late 1960s/early 1970s, when two seminal papers (Corder, Reference Corder1967; Selinker, Reference Selinker1972) offered important insights into the processes involved in additional language learning.Footnote ¹ SLA was heavily influenced by the field from which it separated, (first/child) language acquisition studies, and particularly by the work of Chomsky (e.g., Reference Chomsky1965), whose construct of competence strongly influenced the (mainly cognitive) focus of early SLA research (Ellis, Reference Ellis1985). Hymes's (Reference Hymes1971) wider construct of communicative competence, while a key influence on a second, parallel movement (communicative language teaching; see Howatt, Reference Howatt and Widdowson2004), seems to have been less influential for early SLA research.Footnote ² Key scholars in this field, most notably Stephen Krashen (e.g., Reference Krashen1976), championed the use of the term ‘acquisition’ to refer to processes of deeper, more implicit cognitive restructuring, contrasting this with ‘learning’ – used somewhat derogatively – to refer to a different type of explicit knowledge gain that, he argued, could not influence the underlying competence that (more highly valued) acquisition was perceived to change. This argument later became known as the ‘non-interface position’, and was controversial from its inception (e.g., Hatch, Reference Hatch1979), and widely rejected since, even within the primarily psycholinguistic frame of reference adopted by SLA scholars at the time (see Larsen-Freeman & Long, Reference Larsen-Freeman and Long1991).

By 1994, Rod Ellis, in his authoritative The study of second language acquisition, had already rejected Krashen's dichotomy, noting ‘no distinction is made [in this book] between ‘acquisition’ and ‘learning’, the two terms being used interchangeably’ (p. 6). Five pages later, Ellis also acknowledged the inadequacy of ‘second’ in SLA, observing that for more complex multilingual contexts (generic reference is made to ‘many African and Asian countries’) ‘the term ‘additional language’ may be more appropriate and more acceptable’ (p. 11).

Millennium bugs

At approximately the same time, the field began to experience fin de siècle schisms, both with regard to research approaches (rationalists versus constructivists; e.g., Lantolf, Reference Lantolf1996; Long, Reference Long1993) and the object of study (innatist theories of cognition versus sociocultural theories of development; e.g., Firth & Wagner, Reference Firth and Wagner1997; Kasper, Reference Kasper1997). Among these exchanges appears Rampton's (Reference Rampton1997) postmodern critique of SLA for its ‘overly hasty pursuit’ of universals and native-speaker norms (p. 330), in which he also proposes, albeit in passing, two alternatives to ‘second’: ‘other’ and ‘additional’ (p. 329).

As these scholars emerged into the new century, somewhat battle-weary from these impassioned debates,Footnote ³ new perspectives began to gather momentum. In his now-seminal title The social turn in second language acquisition (Reference Block2003), Block devoted a chapter each to deconstructing the terms ‘second’, ‘language’ and ‘acquisition’. He argued that ‘second’ could not capture the experiences of more complex multilinguals, nor the range of contexts of much language learning, and that the primary focus of ‘acquisition’ had become the overly-cognitive information processing model, owing, in part, to Krashen's early dominance in the field. On two occasions in the book, he proposes alternatives to SLA; ‘additional language acquisition’ (p. 57) and, following Lantolf and Pavlenko (Reference Lantolf, Pavlenko and Breen2001), ‘second language activity’ (p. 115). However, he nowhere combines these (‘additional language activity’) and seems to be dismissive of his ability to influence change, noting for the first of his proposals, ‘I am all too aware that changing SLA to ALA (additional language acquisition) would be the kind of seismic shift that academic fields seldom, if ever, impose on themselves’ (p. 57). Given the subsequent influence of the sociocultural turn, and its clear acknowledgement by the DFG (2016), I wonder if he would still bet against such change today?

Also emerging at this time was interest in dynamic and complex systems theory in language learning and teaching (de Bot, Reference de Bot2015). Leading scholars in this field further problematised ‘acquisition’. Cameron and Larsen-Freeman (Reference Cameron and Larsen-Freeman2007), for example, preferred ‘development’, observing ‘[a] complex systems view of language rejects the notion of language as something that is taken in – a static commodity that one acquires and therefore possesses’ (p. 231).

Perhaps the most impassioned critique of the deleterious effect of inappropriate labels in SLA comes from Ortega (Reference Ortega and May2014) in her proposal for usage-based linguistics as a more solid foundation on which to build an equitable, productive future for psychocognitive research in the field. Despite referencing numerous critiques of SLA, which she describes as ‘suffering in its very core’ (p. 32), despite extensive discussion of the damaging deficit discourses of ‘nativeness’ and ‘monolingualism’ in SLA, and despite herself using the phrase ‘additional-language learning’ 14 times in her chapter, she nonetheless chooses to refer to her field of study as ‘linguistic-cognitive SLA’, retaining this term uncritically, even when she defines it as ‘[seeking] to investigate linguistic and cognitive dimensions of additional-language learning’(p. 33).

Over this period, there has been a steady, consistent increase in the use of the phrases ‘additional language learning’, ‘ … development’ and ‘ … teaching’, as evidenced in Figure 1, a Google n-gram result that testifies to the gradual increase in popularity of these terms,Footnote ⁴ such that the first could figure at the core of the DFG's definition without apparent acknowledgement by the authors that SLA had essentially become additional language learning in everything but name.

Figure 1.

The emergence of a clear alternative. © google books ngram viewer, 2021

Since their paper, in a response adopting a translingual perspective, Leung and Valdés (Reference Leung and Valdés2019) move close to rejecting ‘SLA’, also opting for ‘additional language’, but preferring the more formally situated ‘education/instruction’ in their definition (although they use ‘additional language learning’ more often in the paper itself):

They note that SLA ‘has totemic value at the present time’ (p. 5) and retain it to refer to the historical canon only. Following Leung and Valdés, Anderson (Reference Anderson2020), in his integrated curriculum framework for language teaching, also avoids SLA, preferring ‘additional language learning’ (p. 175) as his alternative. Numerous other articles over the last ten years have also made use of ‘additional language learning’, it being particularly noticeable in papers discussing the paradigmatic changes that the DFG seek to emphasise (e.g., Atkinson, Reference Atkinson2019; Cenoz & Gorter, Reference Cenoz and Gorter2019; Johnson, Reference Johnson2019; Larsen-Freeman, Reference Larsen-Freeman2019; Li, Reference Li2018; May, Reference May2019; Mori & Sanuth, Reference Mori and Sanuth2018; Ortega, Reference Ortega2019). This shift has been paralleled by a gradual decrease in psychocognitive themes and an increase in sociocultural themes in applied linguistics research in general (see Lee & Liu, Reference Lee and Liu2019) – further evidence of the gradual paradigm shift afoot.

The arguments for the alternatives

This essay aims to argue for change with regard to how we name, and thereby perceive, this key field of study within linguistics. The above description of largely historical and epistemological developments has, I hope, prepared the ground well for my proposal, providing evidence of change occurring almost unconsciously within our discourse community. It is from the same discourse community that I take the two logical alternatives to replace ‘second language acquisition’ for consideration: ‘additional language learning’ (ALL), and the less popular, but potentially more appropriate ‘additional language development’ (ALD). The basic arguments are as follows, many having been made before:

Translingually inclusive

A key advantage of the proposed terms is that they are potentially inclusive of a rapidly evolving and already influential paradigm underlying recent changes in our understandings of language learning and use – that of translanguaging and translingual practice (Canagarajah, Reference Canagarajah2018; Leung & Valdés, Reference Leung and Valdés2019; Li, Reference Li2018). Advocates of translanguaging, both as theoretical paradigm and social practice, question or even reject named languages as valid psychocognitive and/or sociocultural entities, seeing these much more as sociopolitical constructs (García & Lin, Reference García, Lin, García, Lin and May2017; Pennycook & Makoni, Reference Pennycook and Makoni2020). A field that is inclusive of translingual perspectives requires a term that can describe language development without needing to ‘count’ or distinguish in a rigid way between languages. In this sense, ‘additional language learning/development’ may be seen to refer not to specific named languages, but to the learning of additional resources within a holistic language ‘competence’, or, as Canagarajah (Reference Canagarajah2018) might argue, the ‘emplacement’ of additional resources within ‘spatial repertoires’ (p. 48). Language, in this sense, is used as a non-count noun, the subject of languaging, consistent with Li's (Reference Li2018) discussion of translanguaging as ‘a practical theory of language’ (p. 10).

From a translanguaging perspective, the phrase ‘second language acquisition’ is painfully primitive, capturing everything that is wrong about the monolingual bias that has clouded so much research and theorisation in both applied, and arguably even pure, linguistics (e.g., Love & Ansaldo, Reference Love and Ansaldo2010). It is simultaneously a relic of prejudice, and an indicator of how far we have come in our understanding not only of language and its development, but also of who we are today – our shared heritage as a more diverse community of multilingual, multimodal professionals investigating language in all its manifestations, developments and uses.