The Cambridge Introduction to Applied Linguistics

For the average person without training in linguistics, language is usually viewed prescriptively, as something for which there are grammars and dictionaries – for example, rule books that state, definitively, correct forms of the language and how it should be used. What is lost in this standard view is the fact that people use language every day to get things done (order a pizza, ask a favor of someone, apologize, borrow a pencil, greet a friend) without ever consulting the rule books. The anthropological linguist William Hanks (1996) has noted that language has been defined as both an abstract system and an everyday practice; a set of generalizable forms and as temporal action; a cultural fact as well as an individual’s utterances. This chapter will focus on the second part of each of these pairs and will introduce theories of, and methods for, observing and analyzing language as it is used in real time. We take language to be the primary symbolic and signifying (semiotic) resource used by humans for meaning-making, one that is adapted to and influenced by the contexts in which it is used. Our work is inspired by ecological views of cognitive and communicative activity. These views posit that language not only resides in the heads of individuals but is also distributed across and emerges in human interaction with one another and the material world. In particular, our research is informed by functional theories of linguistics, such as integrational and interactional linguistics, as well as by recent work in cognitive science. Understanding communication and cognition under these theories involves exploring units of analysis that capture coordination between brains, bodies, and the material world.