Applied Linguistics Can Cover a Wider Area than Language Teaching
Those who write about applied linguistics usually accept that the label ‘applied linguistics’ refers to language teaching in the broadest sense (including language planning, translation studies etc.). Sealer and Carter are not an exception. In the part where they explore specific research issues through the joint lens of social sciences and applied linguistics (Chapter 4), the authors turn to language education as ‘a research field which involves a significant proportion of the people who are identified as applied linguists’ (p. 85).
However, there have been suggestions that applied linguistics can cover a wider area than language teaching (Davies, 1999) which the authors might have taken into account. There are a growing proportion of studies which already successfully apply critical theory in the investigations of language in various social settings beyond language education and planning, for example numerous studies carried out within the framework of Critical Linguistics and Critical Discourse Analysis. These socially oriented approaches to language studies are only briefly acknowledged in the book. A further concern about the book is the limited discussion of existing research studies that utilise the social realist approach to applied linguistics advocated by the authors. A reference is made only to one study (Belz, 2002), but instead of discussing it in detail, the authors describe other applied linguistic studies which have elements in common with their approach, and then proceed to cite sociological studies using methods which may be transferable to applied linguistics. As a result, the readers are not given any extended illustration of how, in practice, research within the social realist framework would look and what outcomes could be expected. Nonetheless, the authors should be congratulated on presenting an important discussion of what Derek Layder refers to in the foreword as the ‘protean questions of epistemology and ontology’ (p. xi).
The book provides many interesting areas of debate from which linguistics can benefit, such as looking for complex rather than simplified solutions to the agency-structure problem. As far as the discipline of sociology is concerned, the crucial contribution of this volume is its focus on the centrality of language in sociological research which could help to move the study of language away from the periphery of sociological enquiries. Overall, the book is an example of a critical and profound analysis of the interface between applied linguistics and social theory and one which is bound to inspire further reflection and discussion.
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