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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 ¿exibility 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.
List of contents
Preface & Acknowledgements; 1. Why Language Assemblages?; 2. Language, Knowledge, Myths and Being; 3. Structures and Practices; 4. Linguistic, Semiotic and Sociomaterial Assemblages; 5. Other Language Ontologies; 6. Applied Linguistics as Practical Assemblage; References; Index.
About the author
Alastair Pennycook is Professor Emeritus at the University of Technology Sydney. His notable publications include The Cultural Politics of English as an International Language (1994) (now a Routledge Linguistics Classic), Global Englishes and Transcultural Flows (2007), Language and Mobility (2012) and Posthumanist Applied Linguistics (2018) (all winners of the BAAL Book Prize).
Summary
What are languages? This book raises this question in order to develop practical ways of thinking about language. The idea of assemblages helps us understand how languages are constantly under construction, and why it is better to start with an understanding of social action than an assumption about pre-given languages.
Foreword
This book unsettles common accounts of language through a focus on language assemblages as embodied, embedded and distributed artefacts.
