A social realist approach to research in applied linguistics
The stratified social world and applied linguistic research
The majority of the questions we have cited as examples of applied linguistic research are most obviously focused on the domain of situated activity. This is understandable, since it is situated activity which is the most directly accessible domain of the social world. Such a focus is not in itself problematic for a social realist approach, but it is important to be alert to the limitations of research that concentrates exclusively on this - or indeed any - one domain. We have claimed above that the isolation of specific variables does violence to the relational nature of the social reality under investigation. Similar distortions are likely to result from research approaches which assume an independence of the domains most concerned with agency from the structural domains of social settings and contextual resources. Thus, in the absence of the explicit theorizing we propose, it is possible that studies which are most obviously about situated activity - lessons in foreign language classrooms, instances of speakers making requests, exchanges of business letters and so on - confine themselves, in their formulation of hypotheses and collection of data, to only this domain. On our account, the embedded nature of the four domains of the social world requires a research design which takes all of them into account.
One illustration of some research which does implicitly acknowledge the interrelated nature of the different social domains is provided by a comparative study of primary schools in five different locations by Alexander (2000). The 'empirical core' (p.2) of Alexander's study is a comparison of primary education in England, France, India, Russia and the United States, and the analysis is structured at three levels: systems, schools and classrooms. Although its principal focus is on primary school pedagogy, it has direct relevance to applied linguistics because of its recognition of the critical significance of classroom discourse. Language is central to the analysis- as the medium of learning, and thus, in our terms, in the domains of psychobiography and situated activity - but also as a contextual resource:
By being the principle [sic] tool of acculturation language provides a window on culture and in a comparative study to compare how language is used in the classroom is to achieve some insight into the values and worldview of the wider society. ... [I]t seems implausible to suggest that the development of language and the development of social structure are independent and unconnected. ... [I]f we listen to what teachers and children in these five countries say to each other we may understand a little more about what it is to be English, American, Russian, Indian or French. Values will out; identity too, perhaps. (p. 432)
Alexander conceptualizes the schooling process as involving macro, meso and micro levels, claiming that this is necessary because 'pedagogy connects the apparently self-contained act of teaching with culture, structure and mechanisms of social control' (p.540). He does not elaborate on the properties of the different strata - our account involves a recognition that the differences are not just a matter of scale- nor on the irreducibility of structure, culture and agency; but empirical work and analysis are entirely consistent with these theoretical claims. Alexander explores both the political and the economic histories of the countries studied, and series of classroom interactions, finding continuities which would seem necessarily to link structure and agency. We shall have more to say about this study, but its relevance here is in the demonstration it provides of the interaction between domains. Each specific example of classroom interaction ('situated activity', in our terms) is presented within the whole study as explicable partly in terms of aspects of the other domains. Alexander (ibid.: 4) identifies a requirement to:
keep the discussion constantly on the move between micro and macro, school and state, classroom and culture. ... [T]he theory of pedagogy towards which I work depends on an understanding of how nation, school and classroom are intertwined. An account of primary education that neglects this relationship does not take us very far.
So, while, of course, the applied linguistic researcher will be concerned with situated activity (that is, with interviews aimed at assessing language proficiency, or on-line discussions, or encounters between police, detainees and interpreters and so on), we would advocate an awareness also of the relevance of differential distribution of funding for education, the history of relations between national governments - and, indeed, the biographical trajectories of individual participants in these social interactions.
