A Reply to Kanpol

Abstract

EXCHANGE A Reply to Kanpol Alastair Pennycook Ontario Institute for Studies in Education Barry Kanpol has written an interesting response to the article I wrote for the inaugural issue of this journal (Pennycook, 1990). In many ways, his essay does not require a reply since it is largely additive rather than oppositional in spirit. Nevertheless, since his response not only stimulated my thinking but also gave me certain cause for concern, I would like to take this opportunity to make a few comments. Kanpol (1990) argues that while he agrees with my call for a more political and critical applied linguistics, my approach falls short of providing a basis for critical practice since I both failed to consider some of the favorable aspects of modernism and the negative aspects of postmodernism and failed to generate a practical agenda for teaching. In response to these shortcomings, Kanpol proposes a theory of 'similarity within difference,' and provides examples from actual classes that exemplify this theory. In responding to this, I would like first of all briefly to reiterate my own position. I am interested in postmodern thought not merely because it is part of the current intellectual climate (though you would not suspect this if you read only applied linguistic literature), but rather because it provides a position from which the metanarratives of applied linguistics can be brought into question. As Lyotard (1984) has argued in general, and as Cherryholmes (1988) has argued with respect to education, modernist and structuralist thought tends to be based on metanarratives that lay claim to rationality, linearity, progress, and control. While these grand narratives of modernist thought have doubtless brought major developments to our material and intellectual well-being, they also seem indelibly linked to some of the most appalling horrors of the modern world, from Auschwitz to Hiroshima, from sexist and racist bigotries to nationalist idolatries, from stark poverty to excessive wealth, from massive pollution to Issues in Applied Linguistics ©Regents of the University of California ISSN 1050-4273 V o l . 2 No. 2 1991 305-312