Applied Linguistics and Politics

Book excerpt: In the current climate of extreme nationalism and fear-mongering, a new politics for a socially just world is needed more than ever. Featuring internationally-renowned scholars, Applied Linguistics and Politics explores how innovative theories, methodologies and pedagogies in applied linguistics can address the political challenges and issues arising in the 21st century. Adopting a Gramscian theoretical framework, the five parts of this volume focus on the various ways in which the political is discursively and materially realized in its dialogic co-constructions within the media, the economy, culture and identity, affect, and education. Examining the power instantiations of sociolinguistic and semiotic practices in society from a variety of critical perspectives, this book questions how applied linguists can respond to, and challenge, current discourses of issues such as militarism, nationalism, Islamophobia, sexism, racism and the free market, and suggests future directions for research. Making use of a range of methodologies from discourse analysis, sociolinguistics, semiotics and political science, Applied Linguistics and Politics demonstrates how linguistics can intervene in the political and help mobilize and organize for an economically and socially just society.