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  3. Key Topics in Applied Linguistics

Books in this series provide critical accounts of the most important topics in applied linguistics, conceptualised as an interdisciplinary field of research and practice dealing with practical problems of language and communication. Some topics have been the subject of applied linguistics for many years and will be re-examined in the light of new developments in the field; others are issues of growing importance that have not so far been given a sustained treatment. The topics of the series are nuanced and specialised, providing an opportunity for further reading around a particular concept. The concept examined may be theoretical or practice-oriented. Written by leading experts, the books in the series can be used on courses and in seminars, or as succinct guides to a particular topic for individual students and researchers.

  • General Editors: Zhu Hua, UCL Institute of Education, University College London, Claire Kramsch, University of California, Berkeley

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6 results in Key Topics in Applied Linguistics

The Language Work of Speechwriters
  • Gwynne Mapes
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    August 2025
    Print publication:
    31 August 2025
  • The work of speechwriters is prominent in political discourse, yet the writers themselves remain in the shadows of the powerful, public figures they work for. This book throws the spotlight on these invisible wordsmiths, illuminating not only what they do, but also why it matters. Based on ethnographic research in the US American speechwriting community, it investigates the ways in which speechwriters talk about their professional practices, and also the material procedures which guide the production of their deliverables. Relying on a robust collection of various genres of discursive data, Mapes focuses on the primary rhetorical strategies which characterize speechwriters' discourse, neatly exposing how they are beholden to a linguistic marketplace entrenched in ideological and socioeconomic struggle. Providing fascinating insights into an understudied and relatively misunderstood profession, this book is essential reading for academic researchers and students in applied linguistics, discourse studies, linguistic and cultural anthropology, and sociolinguistics.

Language Assemblages
  • Alastair Pennycook
  • Published online:
    20 June 2024
    Print publication:
    27 June 2024
  • What are languages? An assemblage approach to language gives us ways of thinking about language as dynamic, constructed, open-ended, and in and of the world. This book unsettles regular accounts of knowledge about language in several ways, presenting an innovative and provocative framework for a new understanding of language from within applied linguistics. The idea of assemblages allows for a flexibility about what languages are, not just in terms of having fuzzy linguistic boundaries but in terms of what constitutes language more generally. Languages are assembled from different elements, both linguistic elements as traditionally understood, as well as items less commonly included. Language from this point of view is embedded in diverse social and physical environments, distributed across the material world and part of our embodied existence. This book looks at what language is and what languages are with a view to understanding applied linguistics itself as a practical assemblage.

Locating Translingualism
  • Jerry Won Lee
  • Published online:
    31 March 2022
    Print publication:
    28 April 2022
  • Encounters involving different cultures and languages are increasingly the norm in the era of globalization. While considerable attention has been paid to how languages and cultures transform in the era of globalization, their characteristic features prior to transformation are frequently taken for granted. This pioneering book argues that globalization offers an unprecedented opportunity to revisit fundamental assumptions about what distinguishes languages and cultures from each other in the first place. It takes the case of global Korea, showing how the notion of 'culture' is both represented but also reinvented in public space, with examples from numerous sites across Korea and Koreatowns around the world. It is not merely about locating spaces where translingualism happens but also about exploring the various ways in which linguistic and cultural difference come to be located via translingualism. It will appeal to anyone interested in the globalization of language and culture.

The Invention of Multilingualism
  • David Gramling
  • Published online:
    04 June 2021
    Print publication:
    17 June 2021
  • Multilingualism is a meaningful and capacious idea about human meaning-making practice, one with a promising, tumultuous, and flawed present - and a future worth caring for in research and public life. In this book, David Gramling presents original new insights into the topical subject of multilingualism, describing its powerful social, economic and political discourses. On one hand, it is under acute pressure to bear the demands of new global supply-chains, profit margins, and supranational unions, and on the other it is under pressure to make way for what some consider to be better descriptors of linguistic practice, such as translanguaging. The book shows how multilingualism is usefully able to encompass complex, divergent, and sometimes opposing experiences and ideas, in a wide array of planetary contexts - fictitious and real, political and social, North and South, colonial and decolonial, individual and collective, oppressive and liberatory, embodied and prosthetic, present and past.

Language as Symbolic Power
  • Claire Kramsch
  • Published online:
    15 October 2020
    Print publication:
    29 October 2020
  • Language is not simply a tool for communication - symbolic power struggles underlie any speech act, discourse move, or verbal interaction, be it in face-to-face conversations, online tweets or political debates. This book provides a clear and accessible introduction to the topic of language and power from an applied linguistics perspective. It is clearly split into three sections: the power of symbolic representation, the power of symbolic action and the power to create symbolic reality. It draws upon a wide range of existing work by philosophers, sociolinguists, sociologists and applied linguists, and includes current real-world examples, to provide a fresh insight into a topic that is of particular significance and interest in the current political climate and in our increasingly digital age. The book shows the workings of language as symbolic power in educational, social, cultural and political settings and discusses ways to respond to and even resist symbolic violence.

Language and Subjectivity
  • Tim McNamara
  • Published online:
    20 February 2019
    Print publication:
    28 February 2019
  • Understanding the role of language within the formation of a sense of self has been revolutionised by developments in social theory, particularly poststructuralism. There is now a new emphasis on the way in which subjects are vulnerable in the face of powerful discourses such as nation, gender, race and sexuality. This book is a clear and engaging introduction to these developments and their relevance to students of language. Using lively and often personal examples throughout, Tim McNamara explores the role of language within processes of subjectivity using the insights of conversation analysis (CA), creating an original conceptual and methodological bridge between the macro- and micro-dimensions of social discourse and everyday conversational interaction.