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Cesar Millan is widely known among dog lovers through his Emmy-nominated television series Dog Whisperer with Cesar Millan. His unique approach as a dog trainer—who aims to train humans and not just their dogs—makes him a household name.
Cesar grew up with animals in rural Culiacán, Sinaloa, Mexico, where his grandfather was a tenant farmer. After illegally crossing the border into the United States when he turned 19, he started working as a dog groomer and walker, and impressed many of his clients by his natural way with dogs despite having no formal training. Eventually, he got noticed and invited to do a reality TV series, which became the most popular show on the National Geographic Channel. The rest is history.
During the pandemic lockdown, I binge-watched the Dog Whisperer in no time. Families throughout the U.S. would submit videos to the producer of the show that captured their canine chaos at home, desperately vying with each other for a visit from Cesar to fix their dog problems.
What does dog training have to do with language teaching and learning? I’m getting there, but first let me explain a bit about what makes Cesar’s approach special. Mind you, I’m not here to defend him, knowing that he has been criticized for a lack of formal qualifications and for being too “physical” with dogs (his touches or kicks are perceived as disregarding the dogs’ feelings). What interests me, though, is his animal-centric approach and his emphasis on retraining human caregivers to treat animals in a way more aligned with what nature has intended. His championing for balance and harmony for the cohabitation of dogs and humans on planet earth is what piques my interest.
On every one of his visits, as the dog owners eagerly awaited his verdict on their dog behavioural issues, Cesar would often turn it around to the owners, nudging them to see how some of their daily practices have inadvertently molded aggressive, fearful, and/or anxious canine behaviours. In his book How to Raise the Perfect Dog (Millan & Peltier, 2009), Cesar divulges that one of his cardinal rules in life is to “respect animals as the beings they are, rather than as the near-human companions we might wish them to be” (p. 3). The most typical mistake dog owners make is that they “co-opt” their dogs into being babies or friends without first “celebrating and honouring its animal nature” (ibid).
This imbalance can contribute to dysfunctional family relationships: grandchildren cannot visit grandparents because of the threatening presence of a territorial chihuahua, or children can no longer invite friends over as their over-anxious puppy jumps on, chases after, or even bites visitors. The list goes on. Many a time, family members are found to be out of sync in their way of treating their dog and each other. The dog whisperer upholds exercise, discipline, and affection to engage with the body, mind, and heart of our animal companions. Exercising and walking (with) the dogs daily help create not only a bond with the canine friends but also structures, rhythm, and mutual respect. Discipline is not about punishing, but rather supporting the animal to understand boundaries and structures so that they can feel safe and protected, as they respect, and are respected by, their humans in the spaces they share. Structures and discipline are integral to affection, which naturally follows when the first two are in place to maintain a balance. Many owners, however, shower their dogs solely with affection, thinking that is the best way to raise them. Little do they know that affection without boundaries only nurtures fearful energies or aggressive tendencies.
Cesar’s mantra “better humans, better planet” rings true on so many levels. His training method prompts us to move from a me- to an other-centered orientation, expanding our purview to recognise how we have to work in concert with other life forms, minds, bodies, and materials in our environment for harmonious co-existence. He often reminds the audience that dogs perceive the world through (and in the order of) “nose, eyes, and ears”, in contrast with the human way of “eyes, ears, and nose”. Allowing dogs to experience our scent first before engaging them in eye contact or speaking to them is important. Rather than yelling “Stop!” at the top of our lungs, standing up tall and using our body with assertive calmness command attention in a more effective way. Cesar often calls out dog owners when their body posture and energy do not match with their communicative intentions. Moreover, working with what is offered in the environment, whether it is another dog or human, a plant, a slope, a table, an open door, or a narrow corridor, creates synergies that can reinforce and shape how we relate to other living forms and objects within the shared space. When interacting with animals, how we carry ourselves and interact with other living and non-living objects in the environment sends a stronger and more impactful message than the verbal language we use.
Watching how Cesar communicates with dogs is quite humbling, because he wills himself to be sensitive to, and to learn, the way the dogs want him to interact with them. His human de-centering, ecological worldview is what makes Cesar’s way relevant to language teaching and learning.
For many years, language and education have been solely conceptualized from a human-centric perspective. Not only is language privileged over other multimodal means of communication (cf. lingualism, Block, 2014), it is also perceived primarily from a cognitive standpoint. The eventual social turn in applied linguistics at the beginning of the century has pushed researchers and practitioners to consider the socio-cultural and -political aspects of language, including the intersectional influences of identities, race, gender, cultures, and other forms of power relations (Block, 2003; Firth & Wagner, 2007). These considerations are very important to language education, except that they are still rooted in an anthropocentric paradigm.
Recent scholarship in language and literacy is beginning to turn to new materialism and posthumanism to inform what language and language practice mean. No doubt, language involves cognition, but let’s not forget its related bodily processes—the auditory, vocal, and visual activities, facial expressions, gestures, to name a few. The way we say things (with passion and conviction, for example), how we act and carry ourselves all affect the meaning, conveying a certain intended or unintended affective intensity to our interlocutors. When we communicate, we draw on not only these linguistic, cognitive, and biological features but also other semiotic sense-making resources, whether material, cultural and technological, available in the physical or virtual environment, to create and negotiate meaning and affective relationships with people, animals, and other living and non-living things.
From this ecological standpoint, space is not mere “dead matter” (Canagarajah, 2018, p. 33), nor are living things in the environment (such as dogs or trees) passive or pliant objects, waiting to serve our needs. Living things, material, and space can be agentive and generative, shaping and affecting the way we feel and relate, act and interact, with other thinking and feeling bodies and minds. In Van Viegen’s (2020) study, the researcher and the teacher worked with grade 5 children on a unit on environmental protection. Their approach went beyond vocabulary, spelling and pronunciation, or memorization of the targeted concepts. They used a nearby ravine as an extension of the classroom where the children could see, smell, and touch the plants and the stream, which sparked conversations in situ about tangible environmental issues. The children’s mind, body, and heart were affected as they gained an embodied understanding of how urban development contributed to plastic pollution and global warming in material ways (read also Van Viegen & Lau, 2022).
I’m not here to just talk about experiential learning. Nor am I merely proposing Cesar’s way for a more other-centered way of relating and interacting with students and other bodies. Rather, I’m proffering an expansive view of translanguaging that traverses and transcends languages. It is an invitation to teachers to recognise and valorise all meaning-making resources available in the ecology of their classroom, school, and communities for in-depth embodied learning that touches their students’ mind, body, and heart.
References
Block, D. (2003). The social turn in second language acquisition. Georgetown University Press.
Block, D. (2014). Moving beyond “lingualism”: Multilingual embodiment and multimodality in SLA. In S. May (Ed.), The multilingual turn: Implications for SLA, TESOL and bilingual education (pp. 54-77). Routledge.
Canagarajah, A. S. (2018). Translingual practice as spatial repertoires: Expanding the paradigm beyond structuralist orientations. Applied Linguistics, 39(1), 31-54.
Firth, A., & Wagner, J. (2007). Second/foreign language learning as a social accomplishment: Elaborations on a reconceptualized SLA. The Modern Language Journal, 91, 800-819.
Millan, C., & Peltier, M. (2009). How to raise the perfect dog: Through puppyhood and beyond. Three Rivers Press.
Van Viegen, S. (2020). Becoming posthuman – bodies, affect, earth at the school garden. In K. Toohey, Smythe, S., Dagenais, D., & Forte, M. (Ed.), Transforming Language and Literacy Education: New Materialism, Posthumanism and Ontoethics (pp. 54-71). Routledge.
Van Viegen, S., & Lau, S. M. C. (2022). Becoming critical sociolinguists in TESOL through translanguaging and embodied practice. TESL Canada, 38(2), 199–213. https://doi.org/10.18806/tesl.v38i2.1361
