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world's other scientic and linguistic communities and, therefore, by language centre policy makers. As I remarked earlier, I have discussed only a limited number of the topics dealt with in the two collections under review. Although this was inevitable given the sheer volume of the material they contain, it does risk giving a somewhat misleading picture of their overall contents. I have not mentioned, for example, the various articles on testing or certication, or languages for specic purposes. One last thought: the spread of university language centres continues apace, especially in southeast AsiaHong Kong probably has the greatest number in the world per head of student population. Why has nobody thought of a Confederation Mondiale F F F ? References
Riley, P, 1991. ``There's nothing as practical as a good theory'': research, teaching and learning functions in language centres. In: Prat Zagrebelsky, M.T. (Ed.), The Study of English in Italian Universities. Edizioni dell' Orso, Alessandria, Italy, pp.

P. Riley Centre de Recherches et d'Applications Pedagogiques en Langues Universite de Nancy II Place Godefroi de Bouillon F-54015 Nancy Cedex, France
0346-251X/99/$ - see front matter # 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. PII: S0346-251X(99)00038-X

Pennycook, Alastair, English and the Discourses of Colonialism. London: Routledge, 1998, 239 pp., US $75.00, UK 50.00 hb/US $22.99, UK $15.99 pb. It has long been the central conceit of Alastair Pennycook's work that there can be no universal knowledge, no facts or truth, but rather the `facts' and `truth eects' produced by the vortex of Foucauldian discourses that denes our world for us. With the fervour of an evangelist he has sought to rescue applied linguistics from its silent servitude to the Enlightenment and have it walk instead down the heterogeneous and contingent byways of postmodernism. Once freed from the tyranny of fact and reason, applied linguistics can, perhaps, play a part in the racial and sexual emancipation of those whose lives it aects. At the very least its practitioners, particularly in the area of ELT, can be held accountable for their actions. This present volume is an extension of this project. It seeks to expand upon themes rst touched on in Pennycook's previous (Pennycook, 1994) book, namely,

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the complex role played by the English language in British colonialism and the part played by that colonialism in the formation of the discourse of ELT. Pennycook also wishes to show that, ``The practice of colonialism produced ways of thinking, saying and doing that permeated back into the cultures and discourses of the colonial nations'' (p. 2), In general terms this is all to the good. Citizens of nations that once had large overseas colonies cannot be reminded often enough of the degree to which their present economic and cultural circumstances have been formed by their colonial past. It is also true that there is a certain strand of inward-looking technicism present in applied linguistics and ELT, and any attempt to make practitionersin the latter area in particularthink of their activities in broader terms than the promotion of eective second language acquisition must be welcome. However, in spite of the many telling points that are made, the credibility of Pennycook's central arguments is fatally undermined by his reliance on a totalising Foucauldian critique, the epistemological basis of which contradicts its own performance. It is to a brief exposition of this contradiction that I will now turn. It is only a small exaggeration to say that for Pennycook discourse is all. Discourse here is not to be understood in the usual applied linguistics sense of language used at the suprasentential level. It refers rather to organisations of knowledge that dene and limit how we look at and understand the world. The word ``knowledge'' in the previous sentence does not refer to any, objective or independent phenomenon. As discourses shift and change over time, what is taken to be knowledge does likewise. As there is no Archimedean point from which to view the world, all knowledge, all notions of truth, are held to be of strictly local validity and relevance. Examples abound in this book of Pennycook's continued adherence to a strong form of this idea: ``there is no reality outside the discourses that construct our realities, only the possibility of critically analysing the truth eects of these discourses'' (p. 164). This relativistic view, which sees knowledge as rooted solely in the situation and condition from which it springs and denies it any degree of universality, cannot be advanced without a performative self-contradiction. If it is impossible to step outside local and particular circumstances to make statements of universal validity, then it must be impossible for Pennycook too, even if that is exactly the point he wishes to make. In eect, he is saying to his readers that all claims to universal validity are groundless with the exception of his own: while everyone else is stuck in the quagmire of particularity, he jumps up to make his claim for universality. The viewpoint of Olympian detachment implicitly claimed by the statement quoted above cannot, by its own account, exist. Some serious consequences ow from this contradiction. It is not possible simultaneously to be concerned with the state of the world and to believe that an objective description of that state (however tentative) is impossible. The whole thrust of this book indicates that Pennycook does believe that an objective description of the world is possible. If that is not so, then it is dicult to understand to take one example from many possiblehis deployment of household income statistics to support his argument that colonial education policy has helped to foster economic inequality in Hong Kong (p. 197). While he explicitly rejects facts

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and reason as part of the enslaving discourse of the Enlightenment, he repeatedly resorts to a combination of them to convince his readers of the veracity of his argument. There is anotherperhaps deeperproblem with Pennycook's brand of epistemological relativism. If the notion of truth is wholly relativised to particular discourses or social practices, then it must be open to very grave doubt whether any notion of justice or injustice is tenable. The consequences of this for Pennycook's critique are not dicult to see. To take one example, he makes a convincing attack on the privileges enjoyed by foreign educational sta in Hong Kong. However, if we are to take him at his epistemological word, the authors of that system of privilege would have a ready response to his criticisms. They would only have to claim that within their discourse of education and development the privileges enjoyed by overseas sta are entirely justied. It is dicult to see how he could respond to such a retort. If he held to his stated beliefs, then he would be obliged to accept an equally valid perception of the situationmerely an alternative `truth eect' to his ownand fall silent. The only other option for him would be to oer a rejoinder based on some universally valid notion of truth and knowledge complete with a supporting array of facts and reasons. For this reader at least, the performative contradiction at the heart of this book renders it incoherent and a failure. In spite of this, though, it is to Pennycook's credit that he manages to make a few useful points along the way. For me some the best parts of the book come in Chapter 6. Here he takes issue with the tendency, still common in ELT, to regard learners as no more than ciphers for whatever the prevalent notion of their culture is. A kind of poor man's Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, this style of thought tends to view `them' as vague and ambiguous, depersonalised embodiments of their culture, without a voice and history of their own. `We' on the other hand, are rational and direct. We communicate clearly, without ambiguity and with appropriate supporting evidence. We speak our language, their language speaks them. Pennycook's attack on this kind of thinking is well merited and cogent. It also has its ironic aspects as there is a fair element of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis in Pennycook's own notion that certain discourses adhere to certain languages (p. 5, 7f). The cogency dissolves, however, when he gets to the end of the chapter. After extending his critique with an equally worthwhile attack on colonialist tropes in travel writing, he is undone by his allegiance to the contradictory Foucauldian views outlined above: ``it is not the truth or falsity of discourse that is the interestingor even the possiblequestion here'' (p. 181). The profound wrong-headedness of this view is hard to fathom. How is the lazy stereotyping of learners that he so rightly condemns to be combated if not by exposing its falsity? Indeed with regard to Chinese learners, a group obviously close to Pennycook's heart, a start in this direction was made more than a decade ago. Mohan and Au-Yeung Lo's work led them to conclude that ``we might expect accomplished Chinese writers to have a positive advantage in English composition. In other words positive transfer is likely to be important'' (Mohan and Au-Yeung Lo, 1985, p. 521). Nothing could more sharply contradict the usual stereotype of the Chinese learner of English. Serious studies such as this,

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rather than quixotic attempts ``to articulate both counterdiscursive arguments and alternative realities'' (p. 217) are what is required. Chapter 2 also illustrates both the limited merits and grave limitations of Pennycook's approach. Much of it consists of a rehearsal of familiar bi-polar colonialist tropes such as the indolent native versus the industrious coloniser, and a lamentation of their continued vigour. There is nothing here that will come as a shock to anyone who has done any reading in the area over the last 20 years, but I think the points Pennycook makes bear repeating and, in any case, the audience for this book may well not be familiar with them. The usual problems soon intrude, however. He makes his customary declarations of contempt for facts (p. 40) before going on to declare that ``the overwhelming mass of writing on colonialism F F F has extolled the virtues of the colonial enterprise'' (p. 43). He may possibly have a point if he is referring to the ood of nostalgic coee-table books occasioned by the return of Hong Kong to China. If he is referring to more serious academic work, then his view reects a regrettable lack of knowledge. Defenders of colonialism in the academy are notable for their rarity. I think there is little to be gained by examining the rest of the book in the degree of detail aorded to Chapters 2 and 6. The pattern is similar throughout. Many worthwhile points are made, but the fog of the author's contradictory theoretical views obscures all. To summarise briey then, Chapter 3 oers an interesting view of colonial education policy in India, but needs to be more thoroughly grounded in primary sources. Chapter 4 points out that the colonial history of Hong Kong was not as seamlessly smooth as imperial nostalgia mongers would seem to believe: a fair point, but hardly a new or surprising one. Chapter 5 makes some valid criticisms of writers who seem to think that English has a unique set of merits unavailable to speakers of other languages. It would be improved greatly by a more comparative approach. And nally, Chapter 7 oers a rather pessimistic view of the possibility of dislodging the discourses of colonialism and replacing them with something better. To conclude, even though Pennycook states: ``My argument is not that economic, physical, political and material aspects of colonialism are inconsequential'' (p. 39), the overall eect of his book is to make them seem so. His rejection of the brute facticity of the experience of the colonised cannot fail to do this. It must be doubted whether anyone so thoroughly in the thrall of postmodernist epistemology can say anything useful about the world, or, more accurately, can say anything useful consistently. It is not the people who suer yet from the legacy of colonialism that have given up on universalism, truth and justice, but those comfortably ensconced in the western academy who already enjoy the benets of them. As I hope I have shown, this book is not without merits, but they are merits that will never be fully realised until its author abandons the contradictory doctrines of postmodernism and instead preaches what, in large measure, he already practises. In other words, instead of condemning fact and reason while simultaneously having continual resort to them, he ought instead to endorse them as the only sound basis for understanding the world and seeking to change it.

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References
Mohan, B.A., Au-Yeung Lo, W., 1985. Academic writing and Chinese students: transfer and developmental factors. TESOL Quarterly 19 (3), 515534. Pennycook, A, 1994. The Cultural Politics of English as an International Language. Longman, London.

E. McDonagh E. Frias 24, 7A (1414) Buenos Aires, Argentina E-mail: eamonn85@hotmail.com

0346-251X/99/$ - see front matter # 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. PII: S0346-251X(99)00039-1

Jager, Sake, Nerbonne, John and Van Essen, Arthur (Eds.), Language Teaching and Language Technology. Lisse, The Netherlands: Swets and Zeitlinger, 1998, 234 pp. Intelligent CALL (ICALL) is not really part of the mainstream of technological development in language education. In part, this has to do with the fact that more accessible technologies abound, so that second language practitioners and theorists can be closely involved in all phases of development eorts. Motivated teachers, linguists and materials designers can themselves turn their hand to HTML and multimedia authoring, for example, while the ways of articial intelligence (AI) remain closed to the non-specialist. In addition, there is some active resistance to the enterprise. It is not uncommon to hear arguments that in the realm of pedagogy, AI will not lead us anywhere really worth going in the near future. Doubtless this scepticism arises partly out of encounters with uncomprehending grammar checkers and with the lamentably inadequate speech recognition functions of some language learning software. The evidence of such experiences leads many to suspect that, in particular, natural language processing (NLP) is not yet robust enough to be put in the hands of learners. A more considered reason for doubt is the suspicion that many ICALL development eorts amount to quests for an electronic teacher that will in practice function like Higgins's (1988) ``magister''controlling, judging, correctingand that in this sense they run counter to today's learnercentred ethos. Language Teaching and Language Technology is a collection of papers taken from a 1997 conference at the University of Groningen, organized ``to promote an exchange of ideas on how best to harness language technology to improve language teaching'' (p. 1). The term ``language technology'' signals a focus not on ICALL in general, which encompasses the use of AI techniques of all kinds, but specically on NLP-based software. The editors' list of examples of language technology comprises speech recognition, lemmatization, syntactic categorization (or part-ofspeech disambiguation), vocabulary extraction, parsing, text generation, and speech synthesis.