The aim of this book is to make a case for regarding the discipline of applied linguistics as a social science. Social theory and applied linguistics, then, share some common areas of interest, although the concepts used by each to discuss these have their own emphases and history. Throughout the book, we shall be considering what each discipline can contribute to our understanding of a number of key questions in the social science. Both disciplines are, in effect, concerned with ways of knowing the social world. In pursuit of this, each deals with a range of objects of knowledge.
This requires a theory of language and a view of social analysis as social science, both of which the book attempts to provide. ‘applied linguistics’ is construed here very inclusively, to refer to those areas of language description and anlysis which locate language itself within the social world, and which understand language use as a form of social practice.
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