Applied Linguistics as Social Science

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 pur￾poses 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 ofresearch 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

With a foreword by Derek Layder

Continuum

The Tower Building

11 York Road

London, SEl 7NX

15 East 26th Street

New York

NY 10010

© Alison Sealey and Bob Carter 2004

Foreword © Derek Layder 2004

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or

transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including

photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system,

without prior permission in writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 0-8264-5519-0 (hardback)

0-8264-5520-4 (paperback)

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

Typeset by YHT Ltd, London

Printed and bound in Great Britain by MPG Books Ltd, Bodmin, Cornwall

Contents

Acknowledgements

Foreword

Derek Layder

Preface

Christopher N. Candlin and Srikant Sarangi

Introduction

Vll

ix

xiii

1

1 Making connections: some key issues in social theory

and applied linguistics 5

2 Sociology and ideas about language 34

3 Language as a cultural emergent property 60

4 Researching language learning: theories, evidence,

claims 85

5 Social categories and theoretical descriptions 107

6 Social domain theory: interpreting intercultural

communication 128

7 Language in the world: properties and powers 156

8 A social realist approach to research in applied

linguistics 183

References

Index

211

235

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Acknowledgements

As a project spanning two disciplines, this book necessarily owes a

debt to a large number of contributors to both applied linguistics and

social theory. Many of those who have influenced the ideas presented

here are cited in the text, and some of them have had a more direct

influence through discussions and debates. Amongst these we would

particularly like to thank participants in the ESRC-funded seminar

series Realizing the Potential: Realism and Empirical Research, as well

as delegates to recent conferences of the British Association for

Applied Linguistics and Sociolinguistics Symposia. Support from the

University of Warwick is acknowledged in providing one of us with a

period of study leave to work on the manuscript.

We have also benefited from discussions and correspondence

with Margaret Archer, Allan Bell, Grace Boas, Dave Byrne, Lynne

Cameron, Guy Cook, Geoff Hall, Martyn Hammersley, Alan How,

Susan Hunston, Paul Kerswill, Caroline New, Ray Pawson, Andrew

Sayer, Michael Stubbs, Paul Thompson, Eddie Williams and Malcolm

Williams, many of whom have offered constructive criticism on earlier

drafts of parts of the text. We are also grateful to the series editors,

Chris Candlin and Srikant Sarangi, for their support of the project and

their detailed and helpful comments on a draft of the complete book,

and Jenny Lovell at Continuum for her editorial assistance. Finally, we

are especially indebted to Derek Layder, both for his important con￾tribution to social theory, on which we have drawn extensively, and

also for his careful reading of, and constructive response to, our text.

Its shortcomings, of course, are entirely our own responsibility.

Chapter 5 uses material from Sealey, A. and Carter, B. (2001)

'Social categories and sociolinguistics: applying a realist approach'

which appeared in the International Journal of the Sociology of Lan￾guage 152, 1-19, published by Mouton de Gruyter.

This page intentionally left blank

Foreword

In this innovative and incisively argued book Alison Sealey and Bob

Carter attempt something all too rare in present-day academic debate.

They straddle disciplinary boundaries in an effort to constructively

bring together elements that cry out for some kind of rapprochement or

integration. They start out with a simple but far from obvious question

'how may applied linguistics benefit sociology and how can social

theory benefit applied linguistics?' Of course, although such questions

may appear deceptively simple on the surface, they actually pose some

very complex problems that require rather extended and sophisticated

consideration.

Perhaps one reason why attempts at establishing creative con￾nections are not common is that they inevitably attract negative critical

responses. This is often because interdisciplinary explorations are

regarded with suspicion by those concerned to 'protect' their home

discipline from uninvited incursions from 'outside' - presumably for

fear of dilution or destabilization. I have no doubt that this present work

will be met with some hostility by self-appointed disciplinary 'mind￾ers', but any truly innovative work must inevitably bump up against the

forces of conservatism that are typically organized against radical

advances in knowledge. On the other hand, a book that makes some

giant leaps, as this one does, will also be embraced and recognized by

those who are more receptive to challenging and progressive ideas.

Of course, any attempt at productive dialogue and interchange

will involve some critical confrontation and painful self-examination

and Sealey and Carter do not shrink from these important and chal￾lenging issues. But they do so in an even-handed and charitable

manner that makes their arguments and style of presentation seem

amenable and fair to the sternest of critics. Moreover, by endeavouring

to extract the positive 'cores' from applied linguistics and realist social

theory while subjecting each to far-reaching critique, they salvage

something of inestimable value.

Chapter 1 outlines the broad lineaments of their argument by

indicating both the overlaps and the differences between the study of

society and the study of language. They go on to specify what they

mean by realist social theory and applied linguistics - the two

Foreword

disciplinary strands with which they are most concerned. A central

reason why they prefer 'realist' social theory is because it claims that

'agency' and 'structure' have distinct properties and powers and sees

language as a property emergent from their interplay.

The authors develop this theme by examining the way that

sociology has dealt with the relationship between language and society

(Chapter 2) and the continuing debate between 'autonomous' linguists

and 'applied' linguists about the importance oflanguage practice to the

analysis of language (Chapter 3). But these considerations are not

simply of theoretical pertinence. From the vantage of their realist

framework Sealey and Carter consistently bring together questions of

social theory and research methods, with substantive questions.

Thus practical research problems are employed as illustrative

examples throughout the book, such as, what works in foreign lan￾guage teaching (Chapter 4), how groups and the language they use are

identified in sociolinguistic research (Chapter 5), intercultural com￾munication (Chapter 6), literacy, language and literacy education

policy in England and global and threatened languages (Chapter 7).

The dovetailing of theoretical and empirical concerns is a great

strength of the book and further contributes to the coherence and

continuity of their overall argument.

During the course of their explorations and discussions Sealey

and Carter raise some important questions and cover a wide range of

ground - all of which are succinctly tied together in the concluding

chapter. I cannot hope to do justice to this full range here but there are

some issues I find irresistible. In particular I find their argument about

the nature of the relationship between agency and structure and its

implications for wider theoretical accounts of social phenomena, as

well as for the practice of social research, very compelling.

Now this may be, in part, because they draw on and develop some

of my own (and others') ideas in this respect and so I am already in

tune with the general drift of some of their arguments. But insofar as

they develop independent ideas about the agency-structure connec￾tion in relation to examples from sociolinguistic research, they add an

interesting new emphasis and angle to this topic. Sealey and Carter's

overall assessment is that the structuration account does not do justice

to the detailed interplay between agency and structure. Instead, agency

and structure must be understood as possessing distinct properties and

powers and structuration theory does not allow for this. It simply

compacts and conflates the two into a unity that dissolves their very

properties and hence cannot account for their mutual impact or causal

interrelationship.

Again, for Sealey and Carter the social research implications are

x

Foreword

never very far away from the surface of such seemingly abstract issues.

In this respect the concluding chapter rounds off the discussion by

returning to the contribution that realist social theory can make to the

design and evaluation of social research in general and more specifi￾cally to that concerned with applied linguistics. A great advantage of

the realist position in this respect is that it appreciates the way in

which measurement and theory are closely related. It thus provides for

the possibility of steering a course between the two extremes of

rejecting all (quantifiable) measurement or elevating its importance out

of all proportion.

This also allows Sealey and Carter to adopt a stance that 'stresses

the links between theory and the empirical world, seeking to steer

between an approach in which the world tells us, as it were, what

theories to have, and an alternative approach which suggests that the

connection between the empirical world and theory formation is

arbitrary or contingent: that is that theories can be of little help with

developing knowledge of the empirical world'. This also is a position

that I feel happy with mainly because it seems to offer a constructive

alternative to some of the more restrictive and 'closed' research posi￾tions to be found in the social and human sciences.

For those who expect this book to be a comfortable or easy read,

the quotation above is a stark reminder that these are inherently dif￾ficult and complex issues. They are so, I think, for two reasons. First,

basic issues of theory and practice like this are at an important juncture

in which established and entrenched positions are being questioned

and new alternatives being offered. Articulating new conceptual space

is a difficult process which, for the reader, is often quite demanding.

But the difficulty is also to do with the profundity of the issues that are

being posed, involving as they do protean questions of epistemology

and ontology. It is to Sealey and Carter's immense credit that they have

produced such a lucid and coherent argument that shines through the

book as a whole.

More generally for sociology and applied linguistics this book

opens up new areas of debate that could only have arisen from the

cross-fertilization of ideas that follows from interdisciplinary investi￾gation. Sociology has always had something of an ambivalent

relationship with the topic of language - both its study and by way of

acknowledgement of its importance more generally for social analysis,

interpretation and theory. As Sealey and Carter note, while there have

been strands of sociology that have recognized the pivotal importance

of language, it remains at the periphery, as it were, of mainstream

preoccupations. It is crucial that in the future it should occupy a more

central position.

xi

Foreword

On the other hand, applied sociolinguistics is in need of a social

theory that can do justice to the variegated nature of social reality and

is not content with easy answers to the agency-structure problem -

especially ones that simply obviate the problem by erasing or dissol￾ving the dualism itself. Moreover, the social theory in question must

have an analytic apparatus and set ofresearch strategies that are able to

productively engage with a variegated social reality without doing

violence to its properties and characteristics. In this book Sealey and

Carter have gone some way in providing for the needs of both sociology

and applied linguistics in this respect by focusing on their common

problems and suggesting the kinds of solutions that potentially may be

acceptable to both.

Derek Layder

xii

Preface

Applied Linguistics as Social Science is a welcome addition to the

Advances in Applied Linguistics Series, partly because, unlike its

predecessors, it makes applied linguistics the subject of its enquiry and

achieves this by bringing together two voices - that of an applied

linguist and a social scientist. Not that we wish to emphasize polar￾ities, but it is clear that although the book as written is a monologic

text, it is not difficult to see how much dialogue has gone into the

process of writing, and how much effort has gone into orienting the

book to an interdisciplinary audience, evident from the authors'

explicit signposting of what can be skim-read by whom, and without

appearing in any way to be 'writing-down'.

As we see it, the title underscores an ecological relationship

between the two disciplines, which is far from casting them in hier￾archical terms, as if one discipline is in the process of colonizing the

other. It represents the first book-length study to engage with this

relation, pursuing as its key theme how the ways in which applied

linguistics has viewed the social world have in turn defined how the

social is constructed in applied linguistics. The presence in the book of

an authoritative Foreword from the sociologist Derek Layder, identi￾fying for the reader the significant themes from his perspective, makes

it necessary for us to highlight only briefly the significance of the book

from our applied linguistic persuasion.

The book as a whole is an exercise in (inter)disciplinary reflec￾tion, but not at a level of generality. It goes beyond a sheer reminder

about the language-society interrelationship, but makes a definitive

stride towards delineating the different levels of this interrelationship,

illuminated through adequate exemplification. A distinct hallmark of

the book is Sealey and Carter's engagement with the core tensions in

social science between agency - the self-conscious reflexive actions of

human beings - and structure - the enduring, affording and con￾straining influences of the social order - and the ways in which they

make this engagement relevant to issues of explanation in applied

linguistics. In turn, their identification of, and detailed analytic atten￾tion to, a set of core themes in mainstream applied linguistics such as

language teaching and learning, language planning and policy, lit-