AILA Review - Volume 28, Issue 1, 2015

Saussurean and Chomskyan “conduit” views of meaning in communication, dominant in much of expert and lay linguistic semantics, presuppose a simple, closed and linear system in which outcomes can be predicted and explained in terms of finite sets of rules. Summarizing critical traditions of scholarship, notably those driven by Bateson’s view of systems infused with more recent linguistic-anthropological insights into the ideologically mediated and indexically organized “total linguistic fact”, this paper argues for a view of meaning in terms of complex open systems in which complex units of analysis invite more precise distinctions within “meaning”. Using online viral memes and the metapragmatic qualifier of “cool” as cases in point, we see that the meaning of such memes is better described as a range of “effects”, most of them nonlinear and not predictable on the basis of the features of the sign itself. Such effects suggest a revised and broader notion of nonlinear “perlocution”.

Complex dynamic systems (CDS) theory offers a powerful metaphorical model of applied linguistic processes, allowing holistic descriptions of situated phenomena, and addressing the connectedness and change that often characterise issues in our field. A recent study of Kenyan conflict transformation illustrates application of a CDS perspective. Key CDS concepts and tools for thinking are described. I argue that the CDS perspective can, and should, include an inherent ethical/moral dimension that applies to every choice made by researcher and participants. Adding the ecological notion of ‘affordances’ allows the CDS metaphor to better address human creativity. Methodological principles for a CDS perspective are described. The author’s Discourse Dynamics model is presented for further development and research.

This article imagines a tussle between Multimodality, focused on ‘modes’, and Applied Linguistics (AL), based on ‘language’. A Social Semiotic approach to MM treats speech and writing as modes with distinct affordances, and, as all modes, treats them as ‘partial’ means of communication. The implications of partiality confound long-held assumptions of the sufficiency of ‘language’ for all communicational needs: an assumption shared by AL. Given MM’s plurality of modes and the diversity of audiences, design moves into focus, with a shift from competent performance to apt design. Principles of composition — e.g. linearity versus modularity — become crucial, raising the question at the heart of this paper: how do AL and MM deal with the shape of the contemporary semiotic landscape?

This paper draws attention to the ways in which spatial configurations operate as constitutive dimensions of sociolinguistic phenomena and vice versa; that is, the way in which communicative practices frame daily life and the broader urban reality. The paper presents an approach which integrates the study of Linguistic Landscapes, the dynamics of deterritorialisation/reterritorialisation, proposed by Deleuze and Guattari (1987), and Bourdieu’s concept of social field. The paper shows that whilst there are possibilities of agency in urban space transformation, such opportunities are restricted by social agents’ positioning in the different social fields (e.g. tourism vs. local commerce), and by their positioning in relation to the social processes of assimilation, integration, segregation or marginalization.

This paper focuses on the lack of impact on language education of recent paradigm shifts in the study of language and society such as the recognition of the ideology of language[s] as stable, discrete or bounded entities and the reality of heteroglossic languaging and semiotic practices in everyday life. Using South Africa as a case, the paper explores the implications of heteroglossic conceptualising of language as social practice for language education through three ethnographically informed case studies of classroom discourse. I will argue that monoglossic orientations which ironically underpin both monolingual and “multilingual” approaches have wide-ranging constraining effects on how children are positioned in schooling, and on children’s participation in classrooms, resulting in a form of ‘epistemic injustice’ (Fricker, 2007).

Drawing on 95 text histories from a longitudinal project on writing for publication in 4 national contexts, this article analyses the language ideologies enacted in referees’ and editors’ comments on articles submitted for publication in English-medium ‘international’ journals. It considers how orientations to ‘English’, ‘language’ and ‘language work’ are enacted in practices of reviewer uptake and the consequences of such practices for knowledge production, evaluation and circulation. In exploring evaluation practices, the article problematizes three foundational categories in applied linguistics: (1) The treating of English as a single stable semiotic resource over which the ‘native’ speaker is attributed a privileged evaluative position; (2) The overriding transparency approach to language and communication; (3) The focus on production as distinct from uptake.