Poststructuralism and its Challenges for Applied Linguistics

Abstract

This Special Issue argues for the relevance to applied linguistics of the thinking about language, discourse, subjectivity, and power within the movement in philosophy known as poststructuralism. It is an attempt to bring into more productive contact work on language within applied linguistics as a social science on the one hand, and within the humanities, particularly philosophy, social theory, and literary studies, on the other hand. It aims to demonstrate how incorporating poststructuralist perspectives challenges many of the underlying assumptions of work in applied linguistics, including work with a socially critical focus, and suggests new possibilities for methodologies of research, and new ways of writing. Ever since the foundational work of Saussure, linguistics (and subsequently applied linguistics) has been constituted as a field within the social and behavioural sciences. This has led to an odd split. The study of language has continued within other disciplines to the point where language and discourse have assumed a central role within the humanities in theorizing concepts of culture, society, individual identity, the psyche, and relations of power. Parallel to this, within linguistics and applied linguistics, a social science account of language has been richly elaborated in the century since Saussure. The split raises the question of how work on language on either side might become known to each and act as a potential for mutually beneficial influence.