Mapping peace and violence in the TESOL classroom

Abstract

In a globalised world the value and importance of languages have been redefined and as such it has been argued that the field of Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) should be at the forefront of promoting peace. Through drawing on Deleuze s transcendental empiricism and working from the position that English language teaching can never be neutral or value-free but should rather be understood as a social, political, and cultural act, this study explores how understandings and experiences of peace and violence intersect with the field of TESOL. In particular, it is concerned with how adult language learners understand and experience peace and violence. Multiple Literacies Theory (MLT) was employed to foreground how adult language learners, through investment in becoming-literate, read the world, the word and the self as texts intensively and immanently, and how such readings produce corporeal and incorporeal transformations. Over a period of four months, seven adult English language learners took part in this qualitative research study. On-site research actions included individual interviews, classroom observations, and the sharing of artefacts. In keeping with transcendental empiricism, which informs MLT, rhizomatic analysis is employed to map these research materials. In treating analysis as an intensive, immanent and experimental activity, rhizomatic analysis allows for disparate connections to be made and for the research materials to be reported on as cartographic assemblages. The cartographic assemblages mapped explore how peace and violence becomes actualised during the immediacy of the event through investment in becoming-literate. This actualisation is considered specifically in the relation to the emerging TESOL landscape in South Africa. Based on this consideration I posit the learning community as mass-pack hybrid and conceptualise the curriculum as rhizomatic experiment. Together these two concepts become a communo-rhizocurriculum, which as instance of minor-curriculum, allows for the majoritarian tendencies in TESOL to be challenged.