BEYOND UNIT THINKING
Beyond
Unit Thinking
Beyond Unit Thinking is an innovative pedagogic approach that challenge the notion of language as discrete, bounded, countable units based on Neriko Musha Doerr's theoretical framework called Post-Unit Thinking. We will provide ideas, models, resources, and communities to achieve liberators teaching/learning experience that treat language as fluid, dynamic, and heterogeneous.
Why We need to Go Beyond
Unit Thinking
Commonly, language teaching involves teaching what is considered the "standard" language. Doing so perpetuates the power relations because the standard language is chosen because its speakers are the politically powerful ones.
The standardization process produces and perpetuate power relations in two ways. First, it views the dominant group's language (i.e., "the standard") as the only "correct one." It creates a hierarchy of language practices, rending those who speak differently as "wrong" or less desirable. Second, it forces others to conform to the speech practices of the dominant group.
We tend to think of language as a discrete bounded unit. There is clear boundary of language and crossing that boundary means "borrowing" words. Inside the language is viewed as homogeneous. It is what we call "unit thinking" of language.
Unit thinking in language support standardization process of language because it needs one single speech practice to be perceived as the language and it usually uses the standard language for that purpose.
Language practices are always diverse, dynamic, and shifting. So if we use unit thinking of language, we end up imposing one form of language (usually standard) to represent the unit, and as a result, treating it as better than others and creating hierarchy among various speech practices.
That is why we need to go beyond unit thinking in thinking about and teaching language.
Our Story
We are researchers/educators that are interested in thinking about and teaching language without creating hierarchy among various linguistic practices.
Neriko Musha Doerr was developing the theoretical framework of "unit thinking" in understanding culture, race, language, and other things in relation to the nation-state ideology.
Kimiko Suzuki and Jisuk Park were developing teaching approaches that let students realize language is diverse, fluid, dynamic, and every changing in their Japanese language classrooms.
We have been friends and colleagues for a while discussing the problems of standardization, but when Suzuki heard the recording of Doerr's talk (the Nessa Wolfson Colloquium Lecture at the Convocation for the Educational Linguistic Program at the Graduate School of Education, University of Pennsylvania in January, 2022 where she introduced the notion of unit thinking), she contacted Doerr and suggested working together to explore concrete ways to implement critique of unit thinking in language education. Park who has also been working on such pedagogical approach joined us.
For Doerr, it will be implementation of the theoretical framework she has developed. For Suzuki and Park, it will be having theoretical backing for the pedagogies they have been developing. This is how Beyond Unit Thinking pedagogy project started.​
WHAT WE DO
We offer workshops for teachers to think and explore together ways to teach Beyond Unit Thinking. We present at conferences, offer workshops in colleges and other organizations and groups, and provide theoretical and practical resources. Please contact us if you are interested. Looking forward to working together to teach Beyond Unit Thinking!!
Key Concepts
These are several key concepts we use in thinking about teaching Beyond Unit Thinking.
Unit Thinking
Unit Thinking is an approach to see the world as consisting of discrete, bounded units. An example of unit thinking is to understand color not as a spectrum but as made up of discrete bounded units of colors--e.g., red, blue, yellow--is unit thinking.
The Nation State
The Nation-State is a model of political organization in which people (i.e., the nation) and the governing body (i.e. the state) correspond with each other. It has specific territory with clear borderline and is considered as a bounded unit. The idea of the Nation State emerged in the late eighteenth century with the deep connection to modernity.
Normative Unit Thinking
Normative Unit Thinking is the kind of unit thinking with homogenizing impulses. Normative Unit Thinking (a) imposes the "ideal model" onto all and (b) hierarchies the variation based on its proximity to the "ideal model." An example of Normative Unit Thinking is language that often involves standardization.
The Nation-States Ideology
The Nation-State ideology suggests that the nation-state is a bounded, discrete unit and consists of "one nation, one people, one culture, one language," all homologous to each other and internally homogeneous.
Standardization
Standardization creates hierarchy of linguistic practices with the "standard" at the top (usually called "language") and others as lower (usually called "dialects" or "broken language"). Usually the speech of the politically powerful is chosen as the standard and it is nothing to do with linguistic "correctness" or "beauty."
Imagined Communities
A political scientist, Benedict Anderson, called the nation as an imagined community in the sense that not all members meet each other. The nation is imagined as bounded and horizontal unit, where individuals are treated as interchangeable.
