The Machine Stops

This is an attempt at a spatial explanation of language learner agency. Agency refers to different things. Some refer to it as the power someone has over their lives, others refer to it as the capacity to act. The former definition implies an individualistic and internal will or desire, while the later allows a more flexible understanding which lets us explore how different agencies work together. Agency, then is an emergent property of the interaction between things which have the capacity to act. A man with a knife is a different agent to the same man with a gun because he has different capacities. So it is not possible to separate the actor from the material contexts in which they act.

A spatial understanding requires us to think about how space constrains or enables human capacities. Space has obvious limits; if someone is locked up in a prison cell, they obviously have their agency taken away. But space can be used as a resource, a particular layout of a room can change the way people in it behave. A language class lined up in rows is going to be different than one where students can face each other. An interactive white board or TV screen placed on a wall will orient students attention towards it, and maybe even to compel teachers to use it (which isn't very agentic). Meanwhile, in augmented spaces, such as those enhanced by digital technology like Pokemon Go, a real space can be experienced in completely different ways.

Classic social theory (e.g. Michel Foucault's panopticon) emphasises the passive power of space, where human behaviour is governed at a distance through architectural design. This has some explanatory powers, for example it helps us understand how a classroom can reflect a desire to control the behaviour of students rather than facilitate interaction. But it doesn't tell us how learners make sense of and use the space they're in.

Phenomenological approaches to understanding space help provide ways of explaining the experiences and perspectives of people in a particular space. Peter Sloterdijk, in his Spheres trilogy, conceives of space as permeable bubbles, each place experienced within itself but closed off from each other. To Sloterdijk, bubbles are everywhere, from the womb to cathedral archways, our own skulls and the sun and the stars, they are all enclosed systems interacting within themselves but sealed off from external chaos. Each system has its own layout, with its own rules and means of functioning.

A typical language classroom is laid out in a particular way – the way I was trained, it was a u-shaped class, teacher and a space at the front, where students could look to the front or to each other. Typically there would be a whiteboard and a screen at the front, and posters on the wall with a phonemic chart, or perhaps a map there too.

In a very interesting paper, Canagarajah uses a methodology called semiotic repertoires to explore how people communicate using the space around them (e.g. nodding or using gestures towards the thing they're taking about). In this way, we can see space as a shared resource for communicating that goes beyond language. The topology of a space can therefore have a shaping effect on learner agency.