Poststructuralism and Applied Linguistics

Abstract

Applied linguistics and poststructuralism offer varied perspectives on language, culture, and identity. The purpose of this chapter is to establish key theoretical and pedagogical contrasts, as well as to sketch out future areas of complementarity. Applied linguists tend to view language as a site in which social and cultural differences are displayed, whereas poststructuralists tend to view language as a vehicle through which differences between and within identity categories (e.g., gender, race, ethnicity) are created and realized. By extension, applied linguists often provide rigorous descriptions of particular features (e.g., pragmatic norms, literacy practices) that define minority identities and place students at potential risk. Such mappings, for poststructuralists, are illusory. Language is fundamentally unstable (cf. Derrida’s notion of différance), and identities are multiple, contradictory, and subject to change across settings and through interaction. Representation becomes acrucial area of debate here. Many applied linguists rightfully claim that academic achievement and social justice are advanced when non-dominant varieties of language are systematically described and valorized in schools. Poststructuralists correctly warn, however, that power relations are always implicated when we formalize particular language/identity correlations. Such representations are always shaped by discourses, and are hence “dangerous,” in that they potentially reify the marginal positions and practices that they name.