Chaos/Complexity Theory in Language Learning: An Ideological Look

Traditionally the process of learning is assumed to be a linear process; there exists a cause-andeffect, logical, and deterministic view of the world's system.In science and scientific realm, we are searching for the cause-and-effect connections while in chaos/complexity theory such a connection is not that much straightforward, as it seems to be unpredictable.Chaos/complexity scientists are interested in how disorder gives way to order in order to find, at least, one mind map for every single phenomenon, and how complexity arises in nature.With the advances in science, especially in meteorology, we have movements towards more uncertainty and unpredictability (Larsen-Freeman, 2002).The authors in the present paper provide some evidence to support that there are many striking similarities between chaos/complexity theory and language learning.In fact, chaos/complexity theory can be used as a metaphor in language learning, but more importantly it can replace the discourses which dominate and inform much of our current practice (Mallows, 2002).As Gleick (1987) holds the theory is a science rather than state, of becoming rather than being.In this paper, we will tend to outline the main ideas behind this theory, and relate them to language learning.