widdoson vs. sincliar & stubbs

Widdowson vs. Sinclair & Stubbs | James Hobbs | March 12, 2003

I just stumbled across a fascinating series of exchanges in Applied Linguistics that might interest anyone on the lookout for a TDA focus.

It all starts with Widdowson, H (2000) On the limitations of linguistics applied. AL 21/1:3-25, which is a very wide-ranging paper launching a three-pronged attack on corpus linguistics (in particular Sinclair and Stubbs), critical discourse analysis (Fairclough), and to a lesser extent systemic functional grammar (Halliday). For the most part, it follows the standard 'I acknowledge the contribution made by these distinguished scholars, but beg to differ' line.

Not surprisingly, this is followed by a couple of papers responding to the criticism:

De Beaugrande, R (2001) interpreting the discourse of H. G. Widdowson: A corpus-based critical discourse analysis. AL 22/1:101-121

Stubbs, M (2001) Texts, corpora and problems of interpretation: A response to Widdowson. AL 22/2:149-172 and then it ends with the usual "the author responds":

Widdowson (2001) Scoring points by critical analysis: A reaction to Beaugrande (22/2:266-272)

Widdowson (2001) Interpretations and correlations: A reply to Stubbs (22/4:531-538)

I must admit, I skipped large sections of the first three papers, as I found some sections rather heavy going, but what interested me was the contrast between Stubbs standard 'I respect your position and thank you for your contribution but I politely disagree' type paper, which is what I've come to expect in such journals, and De Beaugrande's more personal attack, much more on the lines of 'this is not your territory and you don't know what you're talking about'. You can see that even in the title of his paper, de Beaugrande already seems to have dismissed Widdowson's arguments out of hand. To give you a taste, contrast the standard acknowledgement in Stubbs with the extra comment added by de Beaugrande:

"I am most grateful to..[list of names]...and Henry Widdowson. Any errors are my own, and Henry Widdowson certainly wishes to reserve his position." (Stubbs p.169)

"I am also grateful to Henry Widdowson for many fresh and lively discussions, even though he remained adamant in all his positions." (de Beaugrande p.120)

This feeds into Widdowson's 2 responses, where you can see that his tone to Stubbs is still that of polite, cordial disagreement, whereas his response to de Beaugrande is a fascinating read; personal, sarcastic, often verging on outright contempt. I know the gloves often come off in such responses, but this is real vintage stuff. Even with the reference in the title to 'Scoring points' you can see that it not so much de Beaugrande's position as the rhetorical devices he uses to defend it that Widdowson objects to.

For example, he picks up on de Beaugrande's comment "EVEN THOUGH he remained adamant..." and says "it would seem that he will use any rhetorical tactic that comes to hand to expose my failings and put me in the wrong." (p.272)

If you don't have easy access Applied Linguistics, I at least recommend trying to get hold of Widdowson's reply to de Beaugrande. It could definitely form the basis of an interesting TDA assignment.

James Hobbs

p.s. Please note that I am NOT trying to start a discussion about the actual arguments in the papers!!