Dichotomies as points of departure: A response to Truscott and Sharwood Smith (2024)

We here respond to a 2024 discussion and commentary article entitled Dangerous dichotomies and misunderstandings in second language research by Truscott and Sharwood Smith (T&SS), who argue that several dichotomies pervade the field of second language acquisition (SLA) that negatively impact progress in the field. T&SS focus on four dichotomies, all of which imply an opposition of generative and usage-based approaches: (i) Cognitive vs. Generative, (ii) Usage-based vs. Generative, (iii) Dynamic vs. Static/Fixed, and (iv) Innatist vs. What? We find T&SS’s specific approach problematic as corrections are overly skewed towards a single side; some imprecisions are simply swapped for others; and at times, crucial developments in both generative and usage-based approaches are ignored. Thus, we – two usage-based and one generative language researcher – combine forces here to offer our perspective. For the ‘dangers’ that T&SS list regarding each of the four dichotomies they discuss, we provide a synopsis of where we agree with T&SS and where we do not; and, based on where we see contemporary generative and usage-based approaches stand with regard to these four dichotomies, we offer an alternative set of statements that we consider more balanced and nuanced than the ‘corrective statements’ initially offered in T&SS (2024).