You shouldn’t separate skills and theory.

Remember my last post where I talked about how devs and UX professionals should know the theory, or the “why” behind what they’re doing? The same thing applies to language teaching and learning.

Language and culture are inextricably connected

If you’ve ever taken a foreign language class, I’m sure you’ve encountered some pretty ineffective teaching methods. For some reason, people thought/think you can teach language divorced from any form of culture.

This doesn’t work.

You might end up with people who speak a language rather grammatically well, but they won’t be able to approach native-like abilities. Why is that? Because language and culture condition one another.

I spoke briefly about this at MinneWebCon 2017, and basically the tl;dr is that metaphor, idioms, jokes, anything that isn’t plain and boring and antiseptic about language, is rooted deeply in culture.

Bless your heart. That’s… interesting.

As I explained in my talk, there is so much more that goes into how we communicate with one another. We use common shared knowledge (often ideologies) to make meaning of things that don’t mean what they literally say. I was speaking to a room full of Minnesotans/Midwesterners, and when I threw the example of “that’s interesting” out there, there was a very loud mixture of laughs and groans. Someone from, say, Australia, may not grok on to the underlying meaning associated to that phrase. It takes learning the culture to really become “fluent” in “Midwestern English.” So while they speak English, they aren’t really able to fully participate in communication the way a “native” of Minnesota would.

This is overly simplified, but I think you get the point. Unless you know the culture, you can’t be a full participant in communication because there will necessarily be parts that you will miss. This doesn’t mean you are not effective as a communicator, it just means you are missing an important piece. This piece may impede full ability to develop relationships with others and fully immerse in the community.

Language learners usually acquire this competence in two ways. One way is in the classroom, when the teacher employs a content-based language teaching curriculum, where students learn language with the use of cultural artifacts. The other way is in an immersive experience like study abroad, where the language learner is surrounded by culture. *

*P.S. Culture isn’t a monolith, btw, so knowing the culture/language of Spain, for example, doesn’t mean you can interact fully in all Spanish-speaking environments, just like the Aussie/Minnesotan example above.

Okay, what does this have to do with devs?

Just like language learners who learn language divorced of culture, devs who learn their craft as a set of skills without any theory or principles behind why they do what they do will be superficially good at their craft. Just because you know syntax doesn’t mean you’re good at writing code in all contexts.

Devs who understand the principles behind the languages they use will be able to employ deep understanding of context, language strengths/weaknesses, and purpose to solve problems in the workplace. People who are walking skill sets with no deep knowledge will not be able to critically think about the problems they are trying to solve and will be limited in their problem solving abilities and creativity. They will take longer to onboard. They won’t be able to justify their decisions. They won’t be able to argue their choices to stakeholders who insist something be done a different way.

(I know, sometimes you can do all that and the stakeholders still win, but we have to try.)

That isn’t to say that a dev who knows only syntax can’t learn the principles behind their work, but why can’t they learn them at the same time they are learning the languages?

I have a real problem with the narrative that devs and UXers just need “skills” and don’t need “theory” to get a job. If I were hiring, I’d take someone with a solid theoretical background over a person who has little understanding of their craft but a huge list of competencies. I want to talk to the person who speaks the same language as I do, with the cultural knowledge to go with it.

P.S. I also want the liberal arts major, but that’s a different post.