Discourse, Critique and Subject in Vocational Language Education in Germany: An Outline of the Concept of Critical Foreign Language Didactics

The paper offers an attempt at including the critical-discursive perspective in the reflection on vocational language education in Germany; its aim is to outline a base for critical foreign language didactics drawing on the critical and post-Foucauldian discourse analysis. The first part of the paper forms a reconstruction of the enmeshment of vocational language education in a number of contexts (political, migrational, and integrative). Constituting a transformative variant of language didactics and examining vocational language education, critical foreign language didactics will be perceived as a research program pertaining to the reflection on education and pedagogical activity (under the framework of critical pedagogy), teaching and learning (from the standpoint of the critical trend in general didactics), and language education and its specificity within teaching and learning particular languages (in the context of foreign language didactics). The final part of the paper will present methodological implications by indicating potential directions for – and levels of – vocational language education analysis. It will also offer an attempt at their further clarification aimed at a critical analysis of subject formation and forms of subjectification.


The Contexts of Vocational Language Education in Germany
Amadeus Hempel, a member of the board of IBH (Intercultural Education Hamburg), believes that politics is currently very much interested in making refugees quickly undertake employment, and not in supporting them on their way to university. It is indicated by the regulation on vocational language support based on the example of the German language ('Verordnung über die berufsbezogene Deutschsprachförderung'), abbreviated as DeuFöV, which has been in force for a solid year now. DeuFöV courses are to increase the refugees' chances on the labor and training markets.
Hempel sees it as follows: half a million of people ought to be promptly incorporated into the labor market. 1 The cited passage, concerned with German language courses in the vocational context, points to several issues that are crucial for vocational language education 2 in Germany. First and foremost, 1 "Cramming for the dream of university studies," Marianne Wellershoff, 2 Sept. 2017, Spiegel Panorama, https://www.spiegel. de/panorama/gesellschaft/fluechtlingsheim-am-grenzweg-safouh-hussain-macht-die-abschlusspruefung-im-sprachkurs-a-1165734.html, author's own translation). "IBH-Vorstand Amadeus Hempel meint, dass es in der Politik inzwischen ein großes Interesse daran gebe, Flüchtlinge eher schnell in Arbeit zu bringen, als sie beim Weg ins Hochschulstudium zu unterstützen. Indiz ist für ihn die "Verordnung über die berufsbezogene Deutschsprachförderung," kurz DeuFöV, die seit gut einem Jahr in Kraft ist. Diese DeuFöV-Kurse sollen die Chancen der Flüchtlinge auf dem Arbeits-und Ausbildungsmarkt verbessern." Hempel sieht es so: "Eine halbe Million Menschen soll schnell in den Arbeitsmarkt integriert werden." 2 As an element of both language education and education as such, vocational language education will denote on the operationalizational level of an offer of courses implemented under the above-mentioned resolution on the vocational language support based on the example of the German language ("Verordnung über die berufsbezogene Deutschsprachförderung"). On the conceptual level, its particular determinant will be preparation of migrants for entering the (specifically understood) labor market and, by the same token, it will denote the realization of a specific vocational discourse immersed in the development of language competencies in response to defined and empirically verified needs (cf. Vogt 2011;Huhta et al. 2013). it is about its enmeshment in the political context, which in the case of Germany is tinged with specifically understood multiculturalism. There is nothing revelatory about this observation. What is cognitively interesting, however, is the reconstruction of mechanisms of the said enmeshment. Education is, has been, and will always be an element of some logic of a political nature. In the framework of vocational language education directed at refugees -or, more broadly, migrants -this logic appears to play one of the key roles. It determines the preferred direction for the development of the vocational language offer through being firmly anchored in state institutions (e.g. the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees, BAMF) and, what is essential, it remains in line with the expectations of the greater part of the host society, which needs to be linked with the labor market. The strong feedback loopespecially in the context of research on integrationbetween the vocational language education and the labor market is not without significance for various stages of the implementation and execution of language education. Apparently, it is the labor market (specifically understood, i.e. in neoliberal categories) that will determine the concepts and contents of language education. There is nothing wrong about it as long as such a perspective does not become devoid of nuance, and the recipients of the variety of designed solutions -together with their accompanying migrational, cultural, humanitarian or, finally, political contexts -do not assume the character of a silent voice. Consequently, vocational language education takes the form of an instrument for specifically understood integration. This wording denotes a change in perspective with regard to the critique On the level of the field of study, vocational language education is embedded in the framework of reflection, concept and program solutions of foreign language didactics, which, in this context, will require to be included in discursive and critical perspectives. These considerations help to understand changes in the attitude to (broadly understood) language education in Germany as well as the specificity of vocational language education. The changes mostly concern moving away from language education predominantly 'serving' the cognitive-cultural in- illustration of a specific empirical area (vocative language education in Germany) and its broad contextualization is connected with the critical-discursive approach, which is preferred in this area as a research program due to its problem-centric dimension. In the following part of the paper, vocational language education will be placed within the framework of foreign language didactics, with all its indispensable clarifications and modifications. This is aimed at posing questions about the possibility and validity of its broad opening for critical-discursive reflection, and drawing the foundation for critical foreign language didactics understood as a research program.  the "life subjected to the existing authorities, their rationality and their interests" (Szkudlarek 2010:18) that -importantly for the critical trend -is 'sold' in this viewpoint as something natural or obvious. The goal is to unmask the vision of the socio-economic reality constructed as obviousness. In the perspective delineated in such a manner, teachers will be the representatives of the system, while learners will be its passive recipients. It follows from the above description that in the context of education the system will determine the economic reproduction more strongly than the cultural reproduction. These models will serve as an invi- Moreover, it introduces critical thought to the reflection on education in the context of other disciplines, thereby heading even further toward establishing detailed contexts and elements of vocational language education. One such discipline will be general didactics, which -due to academic and conceptual ties with critical pedagogy -opened up to the critical approach.

Language Education Within Academic
General didactics prompts the reflection on teaching and, increasingly more often, also learning.
Thus, in relation to pedagogy, it is a discipline that narrows down the area of research, if pedagogy is to be defined broadly as the academic discipline of pedagogical activity. Klus-Stańska Similarly to critical pedagogy, critical didactics -being consistent in perceiving itself as a discipline immersed in the transformative paradigm -will also set change as its goal, stating this change as "rec- Moving on to track constructivism, which opens the critical perspective within foreign language didactics, one can find references to that thought. They also indicate, against that background, certain new or newly defined aspects of the didactic process.
Żylińska (2009)  Analysis) and it is defined as a "communicative event" which comprises three elements: cognitive processes, the use of language, and interactions under specific socio-cultural conditions (Lewicka 2007:109-110). According to that concept, discourse is understood through the place where these phenomena of verbal processes are articulated. In glottodidactics with the discursive angle, it denotes the inclusion into its spectrum of the development of the discursively understood "communicative competence," defined as "the ability to participate in the discourse." Here it is necessary to pose the first ques-tion -why is not discursive competence taken into account in this context? Secondly, the limitation of the category of discourse to the process of language learning only (developing the "communicative competence") -an an unmistakably important, yet not the sole element of the whole glottodidactic process -appears not to exhaust its potential, especially when one takes a closer look at theoretical, methodological, and methodical grounds of the interdisciplinarily perceived studies on discourse, including the Critical Discourse Analysis itself. The following part of the paper will move along that trail in search for critically-and, therefore, discursively-oriented foreign language didactics.
A separate topic thematized within the preparation and evaluation of glottodidactic aids is the hidden curriculum (Stankiewicz and Żurek 2016).
What is interesting is that the concept of hidden

Critical Discourse Analysis and Vocational Language Education: Theoretical Assumptions
The author of this paper takes the view that the category merging the multidimensionality of different forms of language education through its integrating character is the category of discourse and its whole theoretical, methodological, and methodical background in the form of (inter)disciplinary studies on discourse, mostly those that draw on Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and Post-Foucauldian Discourse Analysis (PDA). Therefore, when considering foreign language didactics in the above-outlined context, one must begin with the category that is crucial for this perspective.
Undoubtedly, it will be the category of discourse 6 ; a category only seemingly ambiguous, as it will appropriately -i.e. being constructed in connection with specific theoretical traditions -attempt In modern reflections, the notion of "glottodidactics" is increasingly often treated as the synonym for the term "foreign language didactics" (cf. Gebal 2019). This symbiosis plays a discipline-enhancing role for the whole area of studies on language learning and teaching, reinforcing its academic autonomy.
Discourse, Critique and Subject in Vocational Language Education in Germany: An Outline of the Concept of Critical Foreign Language Didactics of the glottodidactic system, which is further on extended to cover social topics such as: objective reality, social environment, school environment, and state education policy, which form a nod to the constructing of the didactic process in a discursive manner, taking into account its social context. In his model, Gębal (2013) Returning to the question that is fundamental here, namely the possibility to include the critical-discursive tradition in reflections on vocational language education, it is necessary to evoke its main assumptions, which Duszak and Fairclough (2008:15-18) specify synthetically -in a bird's eye view on a number of variants of CDA 8 -in the following way: • "CDA deals with social processes and problems"; • "Discourse is the key factor in the construction of social life"; • "Discourse is an important element of power relations"; • "Critical discourse analysis contains an element of a detailed text analysis." 9 This means that CDA is a research program with the problem-centric slant, drawing on constructivism, stressing the power-forming aspect of discourse and the significance of an in-depth analysis of texts treated in the categories of discursive fragments and traces of broader social processes.
In the course of logical operations, this will denote treating vocational language education as: 1) a social process and problem, which will imply its broad contextualization; 2) discourse which (co)creates the social reality; 3) an element reproducing complex power relations; and 4) the phenomenon that is reconstructed through texts.
As a consequence of the adopted assumptions, one distinguishes three levels of vocational language education in terms of discursive categories: • the level connected with institutions responsible for vocational language education (the discourse of vocational language education); • the level connected with non-education institutions, speaking or writing about vocational language education (the discourse about vocational language education); • the level connected with those teaching and those learning [the discourse of subjects of vocational language education (cf. Kumięga and Nawracka 2020)].
When related to vocational language education together with the distinction of its three levels, CDA assumptions outlined above send one back to the question of the specificity of a particular empirical area that is to be subjected to analysis. This area is the didactic reality in Germany in connection with migrational processes.

The Empirical Context: Vocational-Language Education in Germany
It is now necessary to have a closer look at the offer of language education in Germany which is direct- • lower significance of the social origin and status; • more emphasis on individual behaviors (as opposed to behaviors shaped by social groups); 14 When examining the policy of German publishers, one can distinguish three types of didactic aids, i.e. coursebooks concurrently 'attending to' the specialist language and general language in everyday, colloquial use; communicative aids and activity-oriented tools directed at developing strategic competencies in the area of specialist communication without particular regard for specific variants of specialist languages; and, finally, specialist materials dedicated to particular occupations, e.g. medical. On the level of state institutions as well as publishing houses themselves, there is a visible preference for general language education oriented at broadly understood professional needs. At this point, one allows CDA, supplemented with the post-Foucauldian perspective, to don the robes of analyses interested in the category of the subject.
In a direct reference to the 'entrepreneur of the self,' the subject will be understood in Foucauldian terms, i.e., as noted by Nowicka (2016), not as "an agent of an autonomous, free action, but as a personage that is subjugated and, therefore, subjected to external and internal control." Beside knowledge and power, the subject will be one of the key aspects of the Foucauldian understanding of discourse. Returning to the above-mentioned ways of understanding the category of discourse in research practices, this perspective will fall into understanding discourse as "knowledge selection and process of negotiating collective meanings" (Czachur 2020:138).
To consider in more detail turning the subject into one of the key topics of the intended research, it is necessary to clarify the ways in which it is to be understood and methodologically represented. Two categories will become helpful to this end, namely subject formation and forms of subjectification.
Forms of subjectification concern the manner in

Critical Foreign Language Didactics: Perspectives
The above considerations were aimed at a wide contextualization of vocational language education in Germany in relation to the multi-perspective character of the discourse category, with which this education is being connected (indicating its political, social, economic, and integrational-inclusive character, as well as its knowledge-, power-. subjectivity-, and identity-forming character). Drawing on the critical-discursive and post-Foucauldian approaches, it led the author to profile the discourse analy- is included in the glottodidactic reflection; secondly, when all institutions and players engaged in vocational language education, as well as all elements of the didactic process, are treated as entities (re)producing social systems; and, thirdly and lastly, when critical foreign language didactics is treated as a research program of a transformative character. This means that critical foreign language didactics will form another critical voice in the discussion on education. It will pose questions about the boundaries of government and, in its vocational language context, it will reverse the trend of the critical pedagogy oriented at the critique from the liberal perspective, revealing its traps and limitations. This critique will not be concerned with total criticism, demanding absolute rejection of vocational language education based on the neoliberal discourse, but it will turn attention toward: extricating the nuances of that discourse, the necessity to notice its 'naturalization,' and the need to allow for other, probably less 'popular' perspectives in this extremely significant educational context. Objections regarding the creation of the pretence of emancipation, present in the critical commentary on the critical trends, will become more nuanced along with the references to the Foucauldian understanding of the critique whenever the discussion will be concerned with how not to be governed like that, by that, in the name of those principles, with such an such an objective in mind and by means of such producers, not like that, not for that, not by them (Foucault 1990:36-39, as cited in Nowicka 2016). As an important consequence, the 16 The multiperspectivity of the category of discourse and the multiplicity of its definitions will also open a possibility to construct it differently for the needs of a further broadening of this viewpoint within research on various forms of education.
Łukasz Kumięga aforesaid critique might be conducted on three levels: textual, social, and prognostic, i.e. firstly, when it is related to revealing inconsistencies or internal contradictions of the analysed texts while simultaneously pointing out their functions; secondly, when it reconstructs manipulative and persuasive strategies in discourses; and, thirdly, when it identifies "moments problematic from the point of view of government" (cf. Kopytowska and Kumięga 2017).
In this triad, one can discern a special function of To conclude, critical foreign language didactics will bridge an important gap in the humanistic reflection on vocational language education, significantly extending the insufficient presence of references to this tradition of thinking in foreign language didactics. The perspectives illustrated in this paper constitute the first attempt at drafting the foundation for foreign language didactics profiled in such a manner, and they form an invitation to further, indepth reflections that deal with this very complex academic and empirical area.