Re-Examining and Re-Envisioning Criticality in Language Studies: Theories and Praxis

Abstract

As critical perspectives in language studies have gained legitimacy and even mainstream status in applied linguistics, it is necessary to re-examine the meaning of criticality in language studies and to re-envision criticality for further development. The authors explore criticality from several theoretical perspectives as well as from the notion of praxis. They review three major theoretical threads—namely, postmodernist constructionism including poststructuralist theory, Marxist-influenced theories, and postcolonial theories—and examine how these frameworks have influenced critical applied linguistics and how their criticisms of other perspectives within the critical framework are historically, ideologically, and geopolitically implicated. Although these theories constitute the core of conceptual criticality, praxis is essential for critical enactment. The authors thus unpack the meaning of praxis and discuss how reflexivity, action, and transformation must inform the continuing (re)envisioning of criticality in contemporary society and institutions where it is necessary to confront neoliberalism as a new kind of domination