AILA 2023 Anniversary - Plenary Conference 5 : Alexandre Duchêne

Title : Linguistics Applied ? Controversies and Dilemmas.
In this talk, I will address some controversies and dilemmas that Applied Linguistics as an academic field has faced across time and space. Indeed, this subfield of linguistics puts in the forefront of its existence the idea that language science has something to say and to do about solving - or at least contributing to solving - social problems. Therefore, applied linguists have been active for decades in various social spheres such as education, forensics, healthcare, new technologies, state and policy matters, migration, etc. This involvement makes linguistics not a merely theoretical matter, but a key actor in civil society and private corporations, informing various kinds of stakeholders about how the knowledge produced in academia can be transposed onto and transferred into real-world issues. It is not contested that Applied Linguistics played a major role in the last four decades in making linguistics available on the market, but this talk aims to address possible problems in this transposition of knowledge. Taking a historiographic approach, this talk will highlight some of the issues that Applied Linguistics faces when its knowledge circulates. It will pinpoint some theoretical, methodological, and political problems in three specific areas of intervention: the educational field (in relation to linguistic diversity at school), the legal field (in relation to asylum procedures), and the technological field (in relation to language technologies applied to corporations). I will argue that applying linguistics knowledge is not a neutral task: It inherently implies controversies and dilemmas - and collusions and complicity - that have to be taken into account fully when reclaiming the applied dimension of linguistics.
References
Duchêne, A. & Heller, M. (eds.) (2012). Language in Late Capitalism: Pride and Profit. New York: Routledge.
Duchêne, A (2018[2016]). Investissement langagier et économie politique. Language investment and political economy. Langage et Société 157 : 73-96
Duchêne, A. (2020). Multilingualism: an insufficient answer to sociolinguistic inequalities. The International Journal of the Sociology of language 2020, 263: 91-97. (French translation in Education et Société 48, 2020 / Spanish translation in AGlo 5, 2022)
Meier-Lorente-Muth-Duchêne, B.A.S.S. (eds) (2021). Figures of interpretation. London: Multilingual Matters.
Duchêne, A, Ellece, S., Sabate, M., Tupas, R., Unamuno, V., Urla, J. (ed.) (2021). Prefiguring Knowledge Production in the Sociology of Language. The International Journal of the Sociology of Language 267-26