Book review of ontologies of English: Conceptualising the Language for Learning, Teaching, and Assessment

In an interview in 1989, Noam Chomsky argued, in response to a question about how particular languages change over time, that ‘there is no such thing as a language’ (2014 [1989]). The idea that particular named languages – English, French, Chinese, etc. – do not actually exist has been put forward as a provocation on a number of occasions over the past few decades by scholars from camps scattered across the field of linguistics (e.g. Makoni and Pennycook 2007), and has gained a certain traction in endeavours to problematize some of the assumptions that underpin both scholarly and folk linguistics. But the idea presents an obvious challenge for those interested in questions of ontology. After all, if ontology deals in the existential nature of things, then where does arguing that languages – and possibly even language itself (Harris 1981) – do not exist, leave investigations into the nature of their existence? If ‘there is no such thing’ as English, what exactly is the English Language Teaching industry doing day in, day out, all around the globe? The importance of ontology for both theorising and practice is that it provides the foundations for prettymuch everything else. As Heidegger pointed out, science presupposes ontology (1962 [1927]). Or as Saussure put it, the ‘object [of investigation] is not given in advance of the viewpoint... Rather, one might say that it is the viewpoint adopted which creates the object’ ([1916] 1983, p. 8). And just as this is the case for science, so it also applies to teaching. The axiomatic concept you have about the phenomenon that figures as the subject of your teaching determines (or at least influences) what it is you teach. Your ontological understanding of English, for example, will create the parameters for the type of English you teach, along with the uses to which it is put, the status it has, and so on. Everything else flows from this.