Reflexivity and social change in applied linguistics

Recently, attempts have been made to revise foundational categories in Applied Linguistics (AL, hereafter). Following up on Brumfit’s (1995) definition of the field as the theoretical and empirical investigation of real-world problems in which language is a central issue, Lillis (2015) invites us to re-theorize the dominant approaches to the very concepts of language and communication. A similar endeavor can also be noted in Block’s call for more explicit theoretical attention to social class as a construct in applied linguistics (2014). This interest in theoretical revisiting echoes earlier statements by Sarangi and Candlin (2003) in their editorial in the inaugural issue of Journal of Applied Linguistics: