Applied Linguistics and Culture: Social Contexts of Identity and Agency

Applied Linguistics and Culture: Social Contexts of Identity and Agency

The recent epistemological controversy surrounding Firth and Wagner’s (1997) call for a greater inclusion of the socio-cultural aspects of language into the corpus of Applied Linguistic Theory has served to focus theoretical attention on the relationship between language and culture. However, Linguistic and Social theorists such as Fairclough (1989), Pennycook (2001), Foucault (1984), and Bourdieu (1991) posit the interrelationship of language, culture, and power through post-structural theories of discourse. This paper extends the epistemological debate by interrogating how issues of power may affect the motivations for second language learning, second language identity formation, and second language literacy and social agency. In doing so, the author contends that the current theories and pedagogies may not only be insufficient to student needs, but may also have deleterious aspects.