Critical applied linguistics

[Extract] Their substantive differences in theory and method aside, Foucault and Bourdieu shared a will towards making transparent the first principles, assumptions, and practices of academic fields. Bourdieu’s (1972) reflexive sociology is an attempt to “objectify the objectification”, to turn the lenses of the field upon itself as if it were a hierarchical system of cultural exchange. Whereas Foucault’s (1972) archaeological and genealogical methods divorced texts from historical speakers and reconceptualized disciplines as discourses, Bourdieu’s approach was to structurally outline the relationships within a field, looking for the field’s codification in formal academic institutions and structures, and naming its operational principles of exchange and teleological principles of capital. In so doing, both stepped away from traditional assumptions about the scientific disinterest or paradigmatic coherence of disciplinary inquiry (see Albright and Luke 2008, Grenfell et al. 2012).

This chapter takes English studies and critical applied linguistics as historically situated social fields. We make the case that state and corporate institutions, and specific political economies that redefined the English language as a form of national and transnational capital, drove its genealogy. Our aim here is to document three genealogies of the formation of the study of the English language and applied linguistics:

1. the emergence of applied linguistics as a service technology for the postwar development and aid paradigm of English-speaking geopolitical and economic empire;

2. the turn towards “critical” applied linguistics and language studies over the second half of the century in relation to 1960s social movements in the west, and liberationist movements in postcolonial and neocolonial contexts (see also Chapter 20); and

3. current reformations of applied linguistics as a normative model for promoting linguistic and cultural diversity in the contexts of globalization and transnationalization (see also Chapters 3, 5, 6 and 9).

Our aim is to move away from the description of the field as a set of foundational truths about language (see Cumming 2008), and to identify and anticipate its historical re-objectification and reformation in relation to current geopolitical, material, and cultural contexts (see Chapters 1, 2 and 29).