Posthumanist Applied Linguistics (1).ppt

posthumanist applied linguistics

1. Posthumanist Applied Linguistics
Dr Farida Panhwar

2. Posthumanist Applied Linguistics
One of the important synonym for AL is the
Posthumanist Applied Linguistics.


3. Posthumanist Applied Linguistics
The notion of takes us into the terrain of
posthumanist thought, with a stronger and
more dynamic role for objects and space,
focusing on ‘how the composite ecology of
human and nonhuman interactions in
public space works on sociality and
political orientation’ (Amin 2015: 239)

4. Posthumanist Applied Linguistics
From this point of view, there is a strong
focus on both practices—those repeated
social and material acts or ‘performative and
correspondence(oral or sign).

5. Posthumanist Applied Linguistics
This shift in thinking has major implications for applied
linguistics.
Posthumanist thinking is closely related to a number of
themes that have been emerging over the past decade.
There has been a move to expand the semiotic terrain
(beyond language more narrowly construed) in relation to
material surrounds and space, with an increased focus on
place, objects, and semiotics (linguistic landscapes).
As well as on
emergent and distributed accounts of identity and cognition
(language ecology, sociocultural theory, poststructuralism).

6. Posthumanist Applied Linguistics
Integrational linguists have argued something
similar for a long time (without necessarily
subscribing to a posthumanist perspective).
Instead of standard linguistic assumptions—that
the linguistic sign is arbitrary, that words have
meanings, that grammar has rules, that
languages exist, that we need to speak
the same language to communicate.

7. Posthumanist Applied Linguistics
Contrary, Harris (2009) and others have argued
for a wider and more distributed version of
language (Cowley, 2012) which
places communication (broadly understood) at
the core and suggests languages are not central
to this process.
This urges us to rethink what is at stake when
we look at language.

8. Posthumanist Applied Linguistics
As applied linguists we have a broader view of
communication than is common in linguistics.
But the point here is not merely that language serves
communicative purposes but rather that language
is part of a much broader set of semiotic possibilities.
Likewise, while understanding literacy as situated social
practice has greatly enhanced the contextual understanding
of literacy practices, it has not yet opened up to a more
posthumanist understanding of the role of ‘material artefacts
of literacy such as
paper, pens, keyboards and mobile devices’ (Gourlay 2015:
485).

9. Posthumanist Applied Linguistics
To the extent that linguistics has often supported
the view that language separates us from the
animals, it has played a key role in the
maintenance of human exceptionalism.
Human language is considered unique and
unrelated to animal communication (Evans 2014), a
necessary proposition for the belief
that language is a system separate from broader
modes of communication, a system that sprang into
being in an evolutionary jump rather than a more
commonplace development from animal modes of
communication.

10. Posthumanist Applied Linguistics
A central goal of linguistics has long been to uncover the
laws that ‘pertain to all human languages, representing
the universal properties of language’ that are part of ‘the
human biologically endowed language faculty’.
Universalism and nativism, as well as such notions as
human nature, are the flipside of human exceptionalism:
in order to posit a notion of humans as distinct from other
animals (or objects), humanism also had to posit a
commonality across humans, hence universalism
(applying to all but only humans) and nativism (human
characteristics are biologically endowed), though the
latter is by no means a prerequisite for a belief in the

11. Posthumanist Applied Linguistics
Posthumanist thought can help us think through
a more distributed understanding of the location
of semiotic resources and cognition.
The notion of extended mind takes us one step
towards an alternative understanding of human
thought, emphasizing how particular objects and
tools—such as a mobile phone—may extend our
thinking outside our own heads (Clark
2008).

12. Posthumanist Applied Linguistics
Neither language use nor language learning
occurs solely inside our skulls.
The emergence of a language is a cognitive
process that takes place in an evolving cognitive
ecosystem that includes a hared world of objects
and events as well as adaptive resources
internal to each member of the community’

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