A Gestaltist Approach to Foreign Language

Teaching

by Kenneth Sélin

This approach views audio mental processing affair as an gestalt-configuration dynamic interplay between two poles: the first having existed before the person, the macro meta-linguistic, cultural subconscious level and the second, the personal language interests of the individual as s/he matures developmentally. This approach advocates a dynamic understanding of language acquisition that is an interplay between the two aforementioned pole but is also based thirdly on the individual's own intuitive and learned insights (ses lumières propre à lui: his/her own inner lights) to better manager the process of acquisition in learning to more economically and effectively bring his/her mental resources to bear on the acquisition process.

This approach allows for the studying of language at various levels of audio processing from the micro level of phonemes and morphemes up to the macro level of social subconscious quasi-automatic discourse at the cultural meta-language level and subtends that of the individual while sharing a basic collective commonality is distinct and unique and adds richness to the social communal linguistic resonance from which his/her voice has issued and whose markings are a product of the collective historical linguistic on a given geographical territory.

I see the Saussure notion of le signifiant as residing at the societal meta-linguistic schematic level where as I perceive le signifié to be more at the purview of the individual member of a given society. I explain the underlying dynamic as being a vital elastic linguistic ping-pong like interplay between this two overlapping yet distinct dimensions. The best example I can provide is that of a referential term used by a parent in a general (le signifiant) sense and child further defining or tweaking the term giving it a more limited specific scope at his level rendering more particular and thereby giving it a a more specific (le signifié) sense to better suit the meaning that he wants to assign to it. In listening to the child's own more specific definition of the referential term based on his own personal insight, the parent rediscovers firstly, the rich meaning possibilities of the general term rediscovering the versatile possibilities that language offers and secondly, recognizing that the meaning boundaries of a term is not fixed, not fossilized at the signifiant level, but is sensitive to transformation over time at the signifié level. Becoming conscious of this dynamic interplay between these two overlapping dimensions leads to greater insights into the multicoloured meanings that can occur at the more specific (le signifié) level which may change over time as it is more context specific and less architectural than its general (le signifiant) shell. For example, the word "homely" today and a hundred years ago mean two different things at the le signifié level: at one time it was a complementary notion and today it is a derogatory notion.

Verbal definition management in a particular context is in function of the interplay between the two poles, one cultural, the signifiant level and the other being the signifié level, the level at which the individual demonstrates his verbal dexterity in his/her assignment of meaning to a general term based on her/his insightful usage and testing of the versatility of linguistic apparatus.

Just as knowing the big picture is key to having a general understanding of a phenomenon, so too is the meta-linguistic language of culture important to having a better appreciation of the societal linguistic conventions including the dynamics of the language banter.

The field of linguistics have been in my view too much under the dismal ideological influence of behavioristic notion of the human being being an evolutionary animal whose abilities are more limited genetically than s/he likes to admit and whose phsyical environment circumscribes his relativistic view of reality.

This gestalt approach sees the person as basically an autonomous being capable on drawing upon his/her personal insights to arrive at the same understanding of the basic truths of reality and universal architypes that others may have in other parts of the world.

In my view behaviorism is insiduously deceptive in its simplicity and it denies such things as an invisibility reality as collective wisdom of a society that a foreigner will notice and pick up on. From a behaviorist point of view culture never enters into the equations regarding the study of humanity because of its intrinsic myopic view of a rich, varied, and multifaceted world.

In short, behaviorism succeeds in framing and reducing reality to such simplicity that it becomes very deceptive if not just out right stupid. For example it implicitly suggests that man is almost uniquely a sensorial creature whose intellect is more or less dubious and secondary to those of his senses almost as if postulating that the senses are by far more reliable and that the intellect plays very much as secondary role and that though essential it is limited in the evolutionary scheme of things. Hence, it does not see any particular benefit that can be had from the field of philosophy. Gestaltism relies on the philosophical notion of personal insight which propels the individual to ask questions and by so doing arrive at possible answers with which s/he can build his understanding of the world without having necessarily recourse to his/her senses.

This new approach basically views the speech act as a volitional expression grounded in the cultural identity and historical experience of the volk in a here and now state of Buddhist consciousness that's capable of re-energizing the meta-linguistic underpinnings of the collective societal meta-language and renewing it dynamism and its abilities to mutate in accord with the new and ever-changing historical realities and global perceptions. Basically, I believe the individual takes the language that his/her culture gives him/her along with its insights and s/he transforms and adapts it to better accommodate the new historical relevant realities of the day. This approach suggests that the fullness of verbal meaning tends to be better understood when the cultural backdrop of the of the day is taken into account in conjunction with the meta-language of the culture.

A behavioristic framework seems to construe the speech act more in terms of an environmental response conditioned by the person's need for pleasure and his/her need to avoid pain emitted in reaction to an external stimulus whose message content is determined by the environment to ensure that it is politically correct. This view reduces human behavior to one of quasi mindless obedience to convention and what is socially accepted as being arbitrarily correct. I find this zombie approach to framing reality purely anti-intellectual and once rampant in former communist countries. It does not acknowledge that the discourse of the individual is nuanced by the general social discourse of those of his society and that of his family to some extent and which help to to better anchor his/her personal identity spatially and temporally .

In summary, I believe that from a gestalt audio point of view, the processing of someone's speech act is initially an act of sensual cognition which is interiorized and given an arbitrary "personal value" that will determine its order of significance which will impact on its degree of memory permanency. This view of language acknowledges that the very "beingness" of the human being is expressed and reflected most fully through the communicative medium of the arts whose basic medium is language whose verbal expression is but one facet. This audio facet of language is the most dynamic manifestation of language as it attempts to express the ebb and flow of the human experience and the manner in which thoughts are actively exchanged in the active listening process commonly referred to as "talk".

This "talk" or "discourse"between two persons is by its very nature interactive, and demonstrates by virtue of its mental gymnastics involved in the conveying of meaning reveals the speech act to be first and foremost an intellectual act that manifests his/her degree of humanness though the act itself naturally biological and mechanical.

This gestaltist vision is very much in line with the postmodern ideals of the French Revolution that constitute the underpinnings of authentic human discourse: fraternité (brotherliness), égalité (equality) et liberté (freedom).

The preoccupation of Modernism dating back to the beginning of the sixteenth century was dwelled on the individual and his/her personal interest in ideology, the body, and personal success while postmodernism, I believed, officially replaced Modernism on November 18, 1989 with the "crumbling" of the Berlin Wall. Post-modernism sheds the modernist ghettos or isolational towers of babel of self-interest and ethnocentricity to create a flat, barrier-free landscape of interconnectivity and interrelatedness. It allows for the creation not so much "a" global village so much as one human family where individuals of different cultures are appreciated and embraced for their cultural diversity that is seen as a rich, value-added characteristic of the person.

In conclusion, the interrelatedness of societal and personal talk is not cheap, but the key to language learning and to developing one's understanding of reality, one's role, and one's unique identity anchored in collective, subconscious meta-language of culture.

This gestaltist approach diametrically opposes the relativistic, animalistic, and anti-religious notions of the human race as conceived by the materiality of behaviorism because it implicitly affirms that there are invisible realities such as the collective meta-language of culture as expressed both verbally and ritually reflecting an intrinsic wisdom of the collective experience that resides at a subconscious (i.e. hidden) level that provides the individual initially with the whole process of insight by which s/he can learn to develop his/her own insights in order to have a better personal understanding of the realities of his/her world (i.e. in order to have an expanded world view).

This gestaltist model is based upon listening, imitating, and eventually individualizing the collective meta-language apparatus to better serve his/her needs and in turn those of the collectivity.

I strongly feel that it correctly hypothesizes that language learning is best achieved when the language is taught within its native cultural context. This gestaltist view opposes the behavioristic view of language learning as a behavioristic repetitive behavioral shaping dynamic that becomes reflexive through usage and applied almost unconsciously in various situational contexts. Behaviorism sees verbal expression as being principally reactive to any stimulus rather than a volitional reflective response as indicated by this gestaltist model. I submit that the dynamics of reading would strongly indicate the justification for the gestaltist model and clearly demonstrate the intrinsic inadequacies of behaviorism when exploring the higher processes of cognition and learning.

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Updated: January 14, 1999