Perspectives on Motivation in Second Language Acquisition: Lessons from the Ryoanji Garden

The importance of contemplating perspectives can be illustrated by a famous garden at the Ryoanji Temple in Kyoto, Japan. Built in the late 1400s, the garden has 15 simple stones laid in meticulously raked white gravel. A veranda allows visitors to view the layout of the stones and pause for a moment of reflection. The positioning of the stones is fascinating; from any vantage point an observer will see 14 stones, never all 15. Shifting one’s gaze in the direction of the 15th stone always will cause another stone to slip out of view. Visiting the garden is a powerful experience. Contemplating the meaning of the garden at Ryoanji raised for us a two-part question: what does it mean to take a perspective and how can those lessons be applied to the study of motivation in second language acquisition (SLA)? In the pages that follow we will discuss research into motivation in SLA, along with methodological issues and their corresponding epistemological concerns. We join authors such as Dörnyei (2007) in advocating a research approach for this area that moves beyond the tired quantitative-qualitative divide, and even beyond a simple call for mixed methods. We will conclude with lessons based on the garden at Ryoanji.