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Applied Linguistics as Social Science surveys the increasing dialogue between linguistics and social theory. The book shows how social theory, applied linguistics and sociolinguistics share a set of common concerns, and how an analysis of these to produce a social scientific account of applied linguistics helps to explain the interaction between social structures, human agents and language. Foreword • Introduction • Making connections: some key issues in social theory and applied linguistics • Sociology and ideas about language • Language as a cultural emergent property • Researching language learning: theories, evidence, claims • Social categories and theoretical descriptions • Social domain theory: interpreting intercultural communication • Language in the world: properties and powers • A social realist approach to research in applied linguistics
E-Book Content
Applied Linguistics as Social Science Alison Sealey Bob Carter Continuum Applied Linguistics as Social Science Advances in Applied Linguistics General editors: Christopher N. Candlin and Srikant Sarangi Editorial Board: Charles Goodwin (UCLA), Jim Martin (University of Sydney), Yoshihiko Ikegami (University of Tokyo), Kari Sajavaara (University of Jyvaskyla), Gabriele Kasper (University of Hawaii), Ron Scollon (Georgetown University), Gunther Kress (Institute of Education, London), Merrill Swain (OISE, University of Toronto) This series offers a number of innovative points of focus. It seeks to represent diversity in applied linguistics but within that diversity to identify ways in which distinct research fields can be coherently related. Such coherence can be achieved by shared subject matter among fields, parallel and shared methodologies of research, mutualities of purposes and goals of research, and collaborative and cooperative work among researchers from different disciplines. Although interdisciplinarity among established disciplines is now common, this series has in mind to open up new and distinctive research areas which lie at the boundaries of such disciplines. Such areas will be distinguished in part by their novel data sets and in part by the innovative combination of research methodologies. The series hopes thereby both to consolidate already well-tried methodologies, data and contexts of research, and to extend the range of applied linguistics research and scholarship to new and under-represented cultural, institutional and social contexts. The philosophy underpinning the series mirrors that of applied linguistics more generally: a problem-based, historically and socially grounded discipline concerned with the reflexive interrogation of research by practice, and practice by research, oriented towards issues of social relevance and concern, and multi-disciplinary in nature. The structure of the series encompasses books of several distinct types: research monographs which address specific areas of concern; reports from well-evidenced research projects; coherent collections of papers from precisely defined colloquia; volumes which provide a thorough historical and conceptual engagement with key applied linguistics fields; and edited accounts of applied linguistics research and scholarship from specific areas of the world. Published titles in the series: Multimodal Teaching and Learning: The Rhetorics of the Science Classroom Gunther Kress, Carey Jewitt, Jon Ogborn and Charalampos Tsatsarelis Metaphor in Educational Discourse Lynne Cameron Language Acquisition and Language Socialization: Ecological Perspectives Edited by Claire Kromsch Second Language Conversations Edited by Rod Gardner and Johannes Wagner Worlds of Discourse: A Genre-Based View Vijay K. Bhatia Applied Linguistics as Social Science Alison Sealey and Bob Carter W