Postmodern (applied) linguistics
Abstract
Starting from defining the terms “linguistics,” “applied linguistics” (AL), and “postmodern,” I will show which different interpretations can be attributed to the compound expression “postmodern applied linguistics”: “applied linguistics today,” “applied linguistics from a plural(istic), anti-essentialist, antiuniversalistic, etc., point of view,” “explicit” versus “implicit postmodern AL,” etc. The discussion refers to AL as a “plural whole,” but also to a few of subsdisciplines such as translation studies, intercultural communication, gender linguistics, technical communication, educational linguistics, critical applied linguistics, and language policy. The paper will also discuss the role of a postmodern theory of science as a premise for theories in every scientific discipline. I will plead for a concept of plural theories that could often take more into account the complexity of “reality” than strictly monistic theories. Since AL should be the discipline that mediates between linguists and non-linguists, I will finally refer to the language awareness of lay people, which is still under the almost exclusive influence of “modern” rather than “postmodern” models of reasoning.
© 2011 Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin/New York
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- Introduction
- Post-modernism, post-structuralism, post-semiotics? Sign theory at the fin de siècle
- Postmodernity as the unmasking of objectivity: Identifying the positive essence of postmodernity as a distinct new era in the history of philosophy
- Signs of the times: Mind, evolution, and the twilight of postmodernity
- Conformity and resistance as cultural process in postmodern globalizing times
- Tourism as a postmodern semiotic activity
- Socio-semiotics and the new mega spaces of tourism: Some comments on Las Vegas and Dubai
- Subjectivism, postmodernism, and social space
- The laboring birth of doors
- Self-referential postmodernity
- Semiotics of art, life, and thought: Three scenarios for (post)modernity
- Semiotic approaches to advertising texts and strategies: Narrative, passion, marketing
- Return of the referent: Italian cinema for the new millennium
- The postmodern in music
- Strauss's Capriccio and the terror of time
- Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan: the strange destiny of a singing mystic. When music travels . . .
- Postmodern (applied) linguistics
- Bi-paradigmatic irony as a postmodern sign
Articles in the same Issue
- Introduction
- Post-modernism, post-structuralism, post-semiotics? Sign theory at the fin de siècle
- Postmodernity as the unmasking of objectivity: Identifying the positive essence of postmodernity as a distinct new era in the history of philosophy
- Signs of the times: Mind, evolution, and the twilight of postmodernity
- Conformity and resistance as cultural process in postmodern globalizing times
- Tourism as a postmodern semiotic activity
- Socio-semiotics and the new mega spaces of tourism: Some comments on Las Vegas and Dubai
- Subjectivism, postmodernism, and social space
- The laboring birth of doors
- Self-referential postmodernity
- Semiotics of art, life, and thought: Three scenarios for (post)modernity
- Semiotic approaches to advertising texts and strategies: Narrative, passion, marketing
- Return of the referent: Italian cinema for the new millennium
- The postmodern in music
- Strauss's Capriccio and the terror of time
- Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan: the strange destiny of a singing mystic. When music travels . . .
- Postmodern (applied) linguistics
- Bi-paradigmatic irony as a postmodern sign
