8 Trends III
The dynamic turn
As mentioned in the previous chapters, one of the great changes or trends in the
last decades has been what is called“the social turn”,whichreflects the awareness
that language development is not a solitary cognitive activity but one that is
embedded, connected and embodied. Though this social turn represented a
significant shift in perspective, it was not what in Kuhnian terms would be called
a paradigm shift. Even though some of the points of difference were difficult to
incorporate into the status quo at the time, thefield wasflexible enough to adopt
and integrate this new development. However, Complex Dynamic Systems
Theory (CDST) is different. Many of the informants see CDST as the new
paradigm thatfills the gap left by formal linguistic models, the disembodied
psycholinguistic approach and various theories that either look exclusively at
the psycholinguistic side or at the sociolinguistic and sociocultural side only.
This chapter is different from the other chapters on trends in that it is
more of my own voice than that of my informants that will be represented
here. In this chapter it will be argued that the end of the period covered in
this overview has seen the beginning of what is likely a real paradigm shift:
the dynamic turn. I will argue that CDST does represent a paradigm shift and
is relevant to many aspects of AL. I will also argue that the CDST perspec-
tive provides us with concepts and tools for various aspects of AL that other
theories have not been able to deal with. The topics reflect my own interests
and areas of expertise, and it is entirely possible that other areas could also
benefit from a CDST approach. As Diane Larsen-Freeman (p.c.) suggests,
CDST has been taken up in language planning and policy, instructional
technology, English as a lingua franca, language awareness and teacher cognition,
to name only some of the newer applications.
In this chapter I will try to show that CDST is relevant for many aspects
of AL, with a focus on bilingual processing and code switching, variation in
SLD and the role of motivation. First I will briefly sketch the development
of CDST and its main components.
8.1 Complex Dynamic Systems Theory (CDST)
Though the emergence of CDST has a long history in mathematics and
the hard sciences, the interest from an AL perspective started with Diane