Bringing structure to the unpredictable: Take a breath and allow yourself time to meander through a bit of Theory before thinking of reactive Teaching.
a chat on theory, practice and historicization for teachers.
Working with language may generate multifarious concerns, and at times teachers are expected to work under crushing pressure with no room to diffuse the tensions and get things into perspective. In this line of thinking, while hashing out some ideas with some of my colleagues, I couldn't help but write this rough draft on the importance of theory for those dallying with a more reactive teaching.
Although I do not intend to delve into the nitty-gritty of his book, since that is not the primary goal of my text, I felt compelled to contextualize my thoughts on language within a setting where linguistic differences are bound to loom large in their broadest sense. By weaving the fabric of reality and its non-tangible components, Roland Barthes, in a frenzy of curating and dissecting Ferdinand Saussure's idea, drew visceral attention to the cost of relying on a single, unilateral linguistic science.
Despite Saussure's contribution to the discussion around language, parole and signs, Barthes, in general terms, unlocked the floodgates to the sea of possibilities a more close-knit look at language may offer, juxtaposing the increasingly more difficult articulation of signs, language [língua, speech, parole], and reality, realising that this suffocating tension is, in fact, fertile ground for an epistemology that chips away at the hierarchical structures Saussure had arranged and solidified before.
He gets to the heart of this thorny issue by showing how these dynamics may disrupt the representational plenitude of what a substance signifies, by rethinking its parlous state and coming to terms with its limitation: it inevitably falls back on the individuation of language.
To Barthes, semiology is required, sooner or later, to find language not only as a model, but also as a component made of larger fragments of discourses referring to objects and episodes whose meaning underlies language, showing its failing engagement with an independent system, since language as parole [speech, língua], can never exist independently.
From a theoretical standpoint, the language we teach, especially thinking in terms of speech [parole], is embedded in an island of the dialectics of language and speech: there is no language without speech, and no speech outside language, however.
As Barthes perfectly stated, one cannot handle speech except by drawing on the language, its circulation that wades through its heterogeneous unicity. In this sense, language is, at the same time, the product and the instrument of speech. With that in mind, there is an ineffable nature of language that should not be overlooked, and this is primarily and essentially grounded in this counter-discourse that wades against the rigid and muddy waters of Saussure's linguistic course. Its chameleonic nature is given by the inner contradiction that places language as both an individual and always socialized system.
This contradiction explains the pinballing nature of language and its variants. Indeed, after Saussure, a merry-go-round of ideas began to percolate through his theory, shrewdly articulated by theorists from various backgrounds and theoretical scopes, but this is a whole new ball game, and something we may dissect in another post so that it makes sense to all and sundry.
In the end, in what ways can theory impact and shift our practice as teachers? I'm rather inclined to say that it's, hands down, a game-changer, since it's the satnav that will guide us in forging our path while thinking about the language that emerges during sessions.
This line holds a kernel of truth in the idea that we, as speakers and human beings, are constantly changing and retracing our steps in the course of our lives, allowing ourselves to experience difficult lifestyles, cultures, class affiliations, and social diversity. There's no spontaneity, co-construction, experimentation, and deconstruction without theoretical guidance.