Language and Globalization

Series Editors: Sue Wright, University of Portsmouth, UK; and Helen Kelly- Holmes, University of Limerick, Ireland.

In the context of current political and social developments, where the national group is not so clearly defi ned and delineated, the state language not so clearly dominant in every domain, and cross-border fl ows and transfers affect more than a small elite, new patterns of language use will develop. The series aims to provide a framework for reporting on and analysing the linguistic outcomes of globaliza- tion and localization.

Titles include: David Block MULTILINGUAL IDENTITIES IN A GLOBAL CITY London Stories Julian Edge (editor) (RE-)LOCATING TESOL IN AN AGE OF EMPIRE Clare Mar-Molinero and Patrick Stevenson (editors) LANGUAGE IDEOLOGIES, POLICIES AND PRACTICES Language and the Future of Europe Ulrike Hanna Meinhof and Dariusz Galasinski THE LANGUAGE OF BELONGING Forthcoming titles: Roxy Harris NEW ETHNICITIES AND LANGUAGE USE Clare Mar-Molinero and Miranda Stewart (editors) GLOBALIZATION AND LANGUAGE IN THE SPANISH-SPEAKING WORLD Macro and Micro Perspectives Leigh Oakes and Jane Warren LANGUAGE, CITIZENSHIP AND IDENTITY IN QUEBEC Colin Williams LINGUISTIC MINORITIES IN DEMOCRATIC CONTEXT

Language and Globalization Series Standing Order ISBN 1–4039–9731–4 (outside North America only) You can receive future titles in this series as they are published by placing a standing order. Please contact your bookseller or, in case of diffi culty, write to us at the address below with your name and address, the title of the series and the ISBN quoted above. Customer Services Department, Macmillan Distribution Ltd, Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS, England Also by Julian Edge

CONTINUING COOPERATIVE DEVELOPMENT: A Discourse Framework for Individuals as Colleagues CONTINUING PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT: Some of Our Perspectives CASE STUDIES IN ACTION RESEARCH TEACHERS DEVELOP TEACHERS’ RESEARCH (edited with Keith Richards) COOPERATIVE DEVELOPMENT ESSENTIALS OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING MISTAKES AND CORRECTIONS (Re-)Locating TESOL in an Age of Empire

Edited by

Julian Edge School of Education University of Manchester Editorial matter and selection © Julian Edge 2006 Individual chapters © contributors 2006 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2006 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1T 4LP. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identifi ed as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2006 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 Companies and representatives throughout the world PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin’s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN 978-0-230-58006-0 ISBN 978-0-230-50223-9 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/978-0-230-50223-9 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data (Re-)locating TESOL in an age of empire / edited by Julian Edge. p. cm. – (Language and globalization) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978- 1–4039–8530–8 (alk. paper) 1. English language – Study and teaching – Foreign speakers. 2. English language – Commonwealth countries. 3. English language – Political aspects – Commonwealth countries. 4. Globalization. I. Title: Relocating TESOL in an age of empire. II. Edge, Julian, 1948- III. Series. PE1066.R43 2006 428.0071–dc22 2005056575

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 To teachers of English, as they make their way ‘We do not permit the free expression of ideas because some individual may have the right one. No individual alone can have the right one. We permit free expression because we need the resources of the whole group to get us the ideas we need. Thinking is a social activity. I tolerate your thought because it is a part of my thought – even when my thought defi nes itself in opposition to yours.’ – Louis Menand, The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America, 2001, p. 431 Contents

Notes on the Contributors ix Background and Overview xii

1 Dangerous Liaison: Globalization, Empire and TESOL 1 B. Kumaravadivelu 2 What, then, Must We Do? Or Who Gets Hurt when We Speak, Write and Teach? 27 Christopher Brumfi t 3 Critical Media Awareness: Teaching Resistance to Interpellation 49 Sarah Benesch 4 The (Re-)Framing Process as a Collaborative Locus for Change 65 Branca F. Fabrício and Denise Santos 5 Ideology and Language: Interconnections between Neo-liberalism and English 84 Marnie Holborow 6 Non-judgemental Discourse: Role and Relevance 104 Julian Edge 7 Teaching Second Languages for National Security Purposes: A Case of Post-9/11 USA 119 Ryuko Kubota 8 Equity and English in South African Higher Education: Ambiguity and Colonial Language Legacy 139 John Katunich 9 Negotiating ELT Assumptions in EIL Classrooms 158 Aya Matsuda 10 Slaves of Sex, Money and Alcohol: (Re-)Locating the Target Culture of TESOL 171 Abdellatif Sellami

vii viii Contents

11 Neo-imperialism, Evangelism, and ELT: Modernist Missions and a Postmodern Profession 195 Bill Johnston and Manka M. Varghese 12 ‘The Hedgehog and the Fox’: Two Approaches to English for the Military 208 Paul Woods

Index 227 Notes on the Contributors

Sarah Benesch is professor of English, College of Staten Island, the City University of New York, USA. Her research interests include English for academic purposes, critical pedagogy, critical discourse analysis, and identity. Her publications include Critical English for Academic Purposes and articles in TESOL Quarterly, English for Specifi c Purposes, and College ESL.

Christopher Brumfi t holds a Chair in Applied Linguistics in the School of Humanities, University of Southampton, United Kingdom. He is a former Chair of the British Association for Applied Linguistics and Vice- President of AILA, and is an Academician of the UK Academy of Social Sciences. He has published widely, with specifi c focuses on the role of explicit knowledge in language learning, language policy, the develop- ment of criticality among higher education students, and the relation- ships between applied linguistics, postmodernism and science. His most recent book is Individual Freedom in Language Teaching.

Julian Edge is a lecturer in TESOL at Manchester University, UK, having been a senior lecturer at Aston University, Birmingham, when he began to edit this collection, and an associate professor at Macquarie Univer- sity, Sydney when he completed the manuscript. In the light of this trajectory, it is perhaps understandably with some postmodern irony that he identifi es his major research interest as professional develop- ment. He has published widely and regards Continuing Cooperative Devel- opment (2002) to be his most worthwhile contribution to the fi eld thus far.

Branca Falabella Fabrício holds an MA in Applied Linguistics and a PhD in Language Studies. She is a lecturer at Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and her main research interests are the construc- tion of discourse and interactional and identity practices in traditional institutional contexts, as well as in institutional contexts undergoing change (school, media, family, work settings, etc.).

Marnie Holborow is a lecturer in ESOL at Dublin City University, Ireland. Besides teaching exchange students, she lectures on the MA

ix x Notes on the Contributors programme in Intercultural Studies and is the coordinator of a new language and culture degree for non-native speakers of English. Her research interests are World Englishes and language and ideology. She is the author of The Politics of English.

Bill Johnston is an associate professor of TESOL and Applied Linguistics at Indiana University, USA. His research interests are in teacher educa- tion and development, and the moral dimensions of education. He is the author of Values in English Language Teaching (2003), The Moral Dimensions of Teaching: Language, Power, and Culture in Classroom Inter- action (with Cary Buzzelli, 2002), and numerous articles and book chapters.

John Katunich is a lecturer in the English Department of the Faculty of Foreign Studies at the University of Kitakyushu, Japan and a doctoral student at the Center for the Study of Higher and Postsecondary Educa- tion at the University of Michigan, USA. His research interests include language and identity, language practices in higher education, and the use of practice theory in EAP/ESP.

Ryuko Kubota an associate professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA, is a second-language teacher and teacher educator. Her scholarly interests include second-language writing, the culture and politics of second-language education, critical multicultural education, and critical pedagogies. Her articles have appeared in such journals as Canadian Modern Language Review, Critical Inquiries in Language Studies, English Journal, Foreign Language Annals, Journal of Second Language Writing, TESOL Quarterly, World Englishes, and Written Communication.

B. Kumaravadivelu is a professor of Applied Linguistics and TESOL at San Jose State University, California, USA. His research interests are: language teaching methods, postmethod pedagogy, classroom discourse analysis, and intercultural communication. His recent publications include: Beyond Methods: Macrostrategies for Language Teaching (2003) and Understanding Language Teaching: From Method to Postmethod (2005).

Aya Matsuda is an assistant professor of Applied Linguistics at the University of New Hampshire, USA, where she teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in TESOL and linguistics. Her research focuses on the linguistic, social, political, and pedagogical implications of the Notes on the Contributors xi global spread of English. She has published in TESOL Quarterly, World Englishes, JALT Journal, English Today, and CATESOL Journal.

Denise Santos is a sessional lecturer at Reading University, UK, where her PhD work is an investigation of teacher–student interaction mediated by the EFL textbook. She has been involved in L2 education, teacher development and materials writing for over twenty years and her main interests are discourse analysis, literacy development and social issues related to teaching and learning.

Abdellatif Sellami is an assistant professor of Composition and Linguistics at Zayed University, Dubai, UAE. His interests include discourse analysis, language and culture, and language and identity.

Manka M. Varghese is an assistant professor in Language, Literacy, and Culture at the University of Washington in Seattle, USA. Her teaching and research interests are in language teacher education and teacher identity. She has recently co-edited Bilingualism and Language Pedagogy (with J. Brutt-Griffl er).

Paul Woods manages the British Council’s Peacekeeping English Project in 27 countries, mainly in Central/Eastern Europe and Central Asia. He has been Director of the British Council in Mozambique, managed English Language programmes in Brazil, the Philippines, and Manchester, trained teachers in Tanzania, Sierra Leone and Brunei and taught English in Nigeria. He is the author of English for Teachers. Background and Overview

In London, in 1961, an Iraqi student of engineering named Tahseen Ali Hassan met a young Irishwoman named Margaret Fitzgerald. They later married and moved to Iraq, where Margaret became a teacher of English as a foreign language. She went on to be Assistant Director of Studies, and then Director of Studies, of the British Council’s English teaching centre in Baghdad. She moved out of the fi eld of TESOL only when the British Council closed its Baghdad operation following the 1990 Desert Storm operation that drove the Iraqi army out of Kuwait. She became local director of the Belgium-based relief organization, Care Inter- national. In this role, and as an Iraqi citizen, she regularly briefed the international press and visiting politicians, speaking out against the sanctions imposed on Iraq by the United Nations. On 19 October 2004, following the overthrow of Saddam Hussein and the occupation of Iraq by a USA-led coalition, Margaret Hassan was taken from her car by Iraqi insurgents. Deeply disturbing videotapes of her subsequent treatment and condition were made and broadcast worldwide. She is believed to have been killed around 14 November 2004 in an execution that was videotaped and sent to, but not shown by, the Al-Jazeera television network. It is diffi cult to think of a more harrowing example of the way in which a person’s own life and values can count for nothing when that person is seen as iconic in other people’s struggles. We shall probably never know whether Margaret Hassan was killed despite having dedi- cated her life to the well-being of Iraqis, or because of it. It is not our purpose in this collection to attempt to unpick the logic of terror, whether practised by individuals, groups, or governments. The bitter relevance of this appalling story to our actual theme is Mrs Hassan’s occupation of that blurred no-man’s land where to work to improve the quality of experience available to the inhabitants of a situation can be seen, from another perspective, as working to support those in power in that situation. The same point can be made with regard to the fi ve doctors working for Medecins sans Frontiers who were killed in Afghanistan in 2003, or indeed, with regard to every Iraqi civilian killed while trying to go about his or her daily business

xii Background and Overview xiii and build a normal life in a war zone. But Margaret Hassan was a long- term ELT professional. As far as most readers of this book are con- cerned, she was one of us. She confronts us head-on with a set of questions. If we English teachers work in a country such as Iraq following the 2003 invasion, can we (not) legitimately be seen as a part of the occupa- tion? Are we (not) there as a part of the effort to normalize the country, and thereby bring it to heel? Is this (not) true whether we are foreign nationals or Iraqis – Margaret Hassan, after all, was both. And if this is the case in the extreme example, is it less true in less extreme cases, or simply less obvious? Is it (not) reasonable to see the whole operation of teaching English to speakers of other languages (and this is how the acronym TESOL is to be understood throughout the collection) as one strand of the USA-led globalization process that adds up to a new age of empire, with English as the imperial language and teachers of English as imperial auxiliaries? Or is it actually rather the case that ESOL teachers are, to the extent that one wishes to pursue these political questions at all, engaged in empowering their students by giving them access to the currently domi- nant world language, giving them an opportunity to articulate their own destinies, individual and national, in local, regional and global forums? We can, of course, be more subtle than that. We can point to the overarching conceptual framework of hegemony – a type of power that maintains its dominance by inviting those who fall under its sway to support the status quo because to do so is to serve their own interests. In other words, it is impossible to be engaged in the teaching of English to speakers of other languages at the beginning of the twenty-fi rst century without at one and the same time being engaged in helping one’s students achieve their aspirations and in supporting the linguistic, cultural, commercial and increasingly military dominance of the USA and its allies. Equally, it would be absurd to assert that a relationship between lan- guage teaching and politics, or military aggression, began with the 2003 invasion of Iraq; the literature amply referred to throughout the follow- ing chapters demonstrates that this is not the case. However, the inva- sion of Iraq seemed to many to be somehow different, perhaps offering a defi ning moment as the USA moved from its age of republic to its age of empire, and the steely power of hegemony translated into a willing- ness, almost a desire, to employ military aggression in pursuit of strate- gic objectives. xiv Background and Overview

Certainly, the 2003 invasion of Iraq was catalytic in the creation of this volume. The correspondence between the coalition of US, British and Australian military forces involved and the role of those countries as major regional and international providers of ESOL was too obtrusive to be overlooked. Some of the book’s chapters have developed from papers presented at an eponymous symposium organized by the Centre for the Study of Professional Discourse and Development at Aston Uni- versity, Birmingham, England in December 2003; others have emerged since, as the idea of the collection grew. The continuing challenge to TESOL professionals is to fi nd ways to have our contributions somehow serve the goals of liberation more than those of domination. The impli- cation of our title and its spatial metaphor is that, as the situations in which we work change, we, too, have constantly and consistently to monitor our own positions, purposes and actions in order to defi ne, and sometimes redefi ne, where we are coming from – to use three more spatial metaphors. It is in this sense that we write about the (re-)location of TESOL. The authors have been asked to go beyond review and analysis and respond to the fundamental question, ‘What is to be done?’ How might we proceed as teachers, as teacher educators, as curriculum planners, as TESOL professionals, in order to make a small difference through our own work? We know that there is no easy answer, but a decision to deny the political implications of what we do for a living no longer seems credible. It is this need to forge not a response – how ironic would that be in a profession that takes as axiomatic the proposition that there is no single best way? – but responses that give this collection its underlying coher- ence. What is not to be found here is a common position. Some authors would clearly agree on most things, some would clearly not. For the most part, however, the shifting and overlapping perspectives provide sources of light, and cast their own shadows, in ways more subtle than agreement or disagreement can capture. The chapters are of different lengths and are expressed in different accents, as each writer fi nds his or her voice for this particular purpose. Beyond the needs of standardization appropriate to undisturbed reading, and of academic courtesy with regard to referencing, further homogeni- zation has not been imposed. Furthermore, some authors prefer to stay nearer to the analytical end of the spectrum than the interventionist and, of those who would intervene, some prefer to make their recommendations in the form of principle, rather than practice. Some, on the other hand, prefer to move Background and Overview xv more directly to styles of action. What is important is that we respect the contribution that each has to make without ranking them on this basis. While academe has traditionally favoured abstract principle above the detail of aware implementation, episteme above phronesis, and the reverse snobbery of many teachers has traditionally scorned any discus- sion of principle as alright in theory but useless in practice, the time has come to move beyond such easy and destructive dichotomies. Respon- sibility passes to readers to ask of themselves,

‘If this principle appears convincing, what is it that I must actually do in terms of my own actions?’ and

‘If this action appears fi tting, what beliefs, values and principles am I thereby bringing into play?’

The volume opens with two broad surveys of English in the world, and of the world of English language teaching, that range across historical, philosophical, political and linguistic perspectives, but never lose sight of the guiding question, ‘What is to be done?’ Unsurprisingly, the recommendations, like the analyses, are neither simple, nor easily summarized. Kumaravadivelu, writing as an India-born, western-educated academic now based in the USA, is unambiguous about the threats of global hegemony. Following a sweeping review of the processes of globaliza- tion and empire, and of the role of English in those processes, he con- cludes by providing the basis of a reasoned response for TESOL. He argues for the philosophical, pedagogical and attitudinal relocation of English language teaching, based on a set of principles that allow for context-specifi c responses which, in turn, foreground the strengths of the participants involved. Brumfi t, writing from the perspective of a British, UK-based, educa- tional internationalist, covers recognizably similar ground but, unsur- prisingly, provides different perspectives as he surveys it. He advocates a realistic idealism that recognizes asymmetrical power relations as unavoidable historical facts, and warns against the arrogant assumption that English-using intellectuals know better than adult learners of English what is, or is not, in their best interests. He formulates his rec- ommendations as a series of ethical imperatives. xvi Background and Overview

With regard to my earlier comment on shadows and light, one notes that both writers conjure the image of native speakers of the major dialects of English becoming the only educated monolinguals in the world. To Kumaravadivelu, this represents the luxury of power, to Brumfi t, his most pessimistic foreboding. With regard to earlier comments on episteme and phronesis, Ben- esch’s chapter provides a master class in congruent movement from intellectual exploration to pedagogic action. She focuses most particu- larly on the Althusserian concept of interpellation: the naming of indi- viduals, groups or classes of people by others in such ways that this naming is accepted by all as describing (and thus creating) an unques- tioned reality. She then reports on ways in which her critical media awareness classes raise her students’ consciousness of this and related phenomena, before demonstrating strategies of resistance that are avail- able to them. In a way that is intellectually and ideologically related, but contextu- ally and methodologically utterly distinct, Fabrício and Santos also present awareness-raising data, this time from Brazil. In ways reminis- cent of the Freirian tradition, they work from the presence of English words and phrases in the everyday Portuguese contexts of their learners’ lives and towards a sense of burgeoning identity. More broadly, they lament the lack of English learning materials that feature contexts in which English functions in multilingual settings, thus foregrounding the issues of hybridity that are a component part of contemporary communication. Holborow seizes on ways in which our communication itself has been extensively colonized by the same political and ideological forces that underpin commercial and cultural globalization, as well as the USA’s more aggressive military stance post 9/11. As we attempt to function in our confl icted role of ‘symbolic globalizers’ and ‘instinctive multicultur- alists’, we fi nd that what were our students are now referred to as our customers. At its simplest, then, if the customer is always right, what price education? What ‘price’, indeed. Holborow’s suggestion, that we should begin to respond by at least taking care of the metaphors that we choose to live by, sets a challenge worthy of language professionals. The use of language among professionals is also central to Edge’s chapter, while the topic under discussion in the example he provides is directly related to the overall theme of this collection as a whole. We observe a small group of colleagues working together as one of them attempts to defi ne her own position as a teacher of English in an ideo- logically charged environment. The disciplined use of non-judgemental Background and Overview xvii discourse in this work, Edge claims, facilitates the type of individual and context-sensitive decision-making, along with the kind of respect for difference, that our contemporary scene requires. Kubota explores the contradictions inherent in USAmerican language policy that seeks to insist on English-only approaches to the education of its bilingual and multilingual communities, while valorizing foreign language learning among its English-speaking elites, and, since 9/11, while seeking also to support the development of ‘heritage languages’ to the extent that they can be seen as explicitly useful in terms of fur- thering national security and economic effi ciency. In response, Kubota formulates an alternative set of goals for language teaching, one that resonates clearly with the (re-)location of TESOL for the twenty-fi rst century. She categorizes these goals in terms of knowledge, skills and dispositions that might help establish a counter-discourse to the cur- rently dominant one of disadvantage and exploitation. Katunich’s study lies very close to the issues of liberation and domination discussed above. With reference to the conceptual tools of the communities of practice literature, he explores the sociolinguistic situation of university students who have consciously learned English in South Africa, where the legacy of apartheid can still be seen in the racial categorizations that people apply to themselves, and in the legacy of differential education. He makes clear how the good intentions underlying policy decisions cannot easily undo ingrained disadvantage. More hopefully, he shows how individuals fi nd different ways of establishing an educational trajectory that will allow them to move from marginalized positions towards increased participation. The demands that the support of such trajectories make on the sensitivity of English-language educators are clear. Matsuda uses Kachru’s well-established model of inner, outer and expanding circles of English to argue for increased localization of English, accompanied by a more open-minded commitment to the existence of a variety of Englishes and a need to communicate among them. In this diffusion, she argues, lies not only a respectful recognition of how English is actually developing in the world, but also a way to set the TESOL professional apart from appearing as a straightforward representative of an overbearing linguistic hegemony and a dominant culture. Subtly, she also makes clear that there is no a priori reason not to choose USAmerican or British English as a target dialect, but this needs to be a deliberate choice, not an unconscious assumption. Anyone who continues to see English in the world as representative of a ‘western’ target culture, might be brought up short by the vision of that culture that Abdellatif Sellami elicits from his Arab students: a xviii Background and Overview vision of vice-ridden immorality that places material goods and plea- sures above family. And if, Sellami asks us, we were to inquire further and to fi nd that such perspectives are widespread, how should we respond? Should we increase our efforts to redefi ne that culture more accurately for our students, by helping them resist the easy stereotyping that they practise? Or should we invest our efforts into more effectively decoupling the English language that they are learning from the idea of a ‘target’ culture stereotypically located in the USA, Britain and Australia? While Sellami shows us the importance of religious background to the learners that he interviewed, the chapter by Johnston and Varghese reminds us that teachers are also not unaffected by their spiritual beliefs. English language teaching and missionary work have a long history of mutual involvement, although it is only quite recently that the taken- for-granted usefulness of English teaching to evangelical Christians has begun to come under question from ELT professionals who see their own values as being compromised by the connection. Also recent is the explicit commitment of a born-again US President, buoyed up by re- election, to a radical, evangelical agenda. Johnston and Varghese raise fundamental questions about how TESOL as a profession is to locate itself with regard to these highly sensitive issues. Woods’s chapter comes last partly in order to give the fi nal word to a minority voice. Like others, he emphasizes the importance of TESOL professionals taking a moral and ethical stance. Unlike the other authors here, however, Woods takes up the challenge of defending the teaching of English for military purposes. He outlines the advantages that a common language can have for military interoperability, and the consequent benefi ts that accrue to countries and cultures that continue to need to be defended. Arguing from the perspective of a methodologist, he then contends that the key to the morality of the work lies in how it is done. In his pedagogic argument, we see again an assertion of the need to tip the scales away from blanket responses to frag- mented situations, and towards situated opportunities and specifi c responsibilities. From the wide variety of responses here, and in spite of the differing perspectives that engender them, core themes emerge – albeit possibly different ones for different readers. For me, two stand out very clearly. One is an insistence on the importance of context – whether seen in layperson’s terms with regard to time, place and participants, or as a more complex phenomenon constructed by people through interaction with the affordances that they themselves create in their environment. Background and Overview xix

Second, and closely related to the fi rst, is a respect for difference, and a desire among TESOL professionals to extend the borders of that respect as far as we can without undermining the very values on which such respect is based. If these thematized observations are accurate, and if it is the case that members of the English-language teaching community can, by their own efforts, effectively infl uence the development of their profession and the style of its presence in the world, then we can expect to live henceforth in a more complicated environment than the one that we have been used to constructing. This may be an environment in which we afford to difference a great deal of the respect that we have previously afforded to conformity. To express that in more directly pedagogic terms, we shall need curricula, materials, methods and tests that foreground not only accuracy, fl uency and appropriacy, but also fl exibility. Are we entering a new age of empire? And whatever one’s answer to that question, is there a meaningful sense in which we need to re-locate TESOL if we are to feel comfortable inhabiting the space that it offers us? The authors of this collection suggest that these questions deserve answers. By offering their own, they invite further exchanges in the various channels of communication available to us, including action.

Acknowledgement

I have taken the details of the life of Margaret Hassan from her obituary, written by Jason Burke, in The Guardian Weekly of 26 November– 2 December 2004.