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Theory Construction in Second Language Acquisition is a wonderful book. The author makes a stand, defending the rationalists' thinking of SLA. This, you may not concur with. But you may praise his approach to the problem of theory construction in SLA. He tackles the problem within a well-established epistemological framework. This was also one of my ambitious attempts, but abandoned because of my poor knowledge in epistemology and philosophy in general. I pasted the abstract of the book here, to encourage students of applied linguistics and alike to read the book. You will, at least, have a closer look at the map of the whole field of SLA after reading it.

Abstract

Whereas ten years ago most SLA researchers assumed a rationalist, even "scientific", approach to theory construction, recently, growing numbers in the ranks have adopted relativist positions that strongly criticise the methods and authority of the rationalist/ empiricist paradigm. Apart from the fundamental problem of research methodology, other problems make progress in the construction of a theory of SLA difficult: the proliferation of theories, contradictions among theories, and, most important of all, confusion about the
domain and objectives of a theory of SLA.

This book addresses the problems outlined above by returning to first principles and asking what it is that we can know about the world, whether there is any such thing as reliable knowledge, what is special about scientific methodology, and what the best way of tackling the complex task of explaining SLA might be. While previous surveys of SLA research exist, no previous attempt has been made to examine SLA research in terms of its epistemological
underpinnings and its relation to scientific method, or to evaluate different research programmes and putative theories in terms of how they form part of, and contribute towards, a rational explanation of the phenomena of SLA.

Having outlined basic terms and the main problems to be dealt with, I give a brief history of scientific method and explain the objections to a rationalist methodology that various relativists have raised. I then attempt to defend rationality against relativists' attacks and suggest criteria that can guide a rationalist research programme in SLA. The questions of the domain of SLA theories, what counts as an explanation, and different theory types are examined. Having suggested guidelines for a rationalist approach to SLA theory construction, I examine different approaches to SLA in the history of SLA, assessing them in terms of the guidelines. Finally I suggest what the domain of a theory of SLA should be and discuss to what extent theories to date offer a satisfactory explanation of the phenomena within that domain.

Jordan, Geoff. Theory Construction in Second Language Acquisition.
Philadelphia, PA, USA: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2004. p xv.
http://site.ebrary.com/lib/uon/Doc?id=10052876&ppg=15

Copyright © 2004.  John Benjamins Publishing Company.  All rights reserved.