A social realist approach to research in applied linguistics
Conclusion
We began by summarizing the core claims of a social realism for applied linguistics, and went on to elaborate on each of them. Thus, we argued for applied linguistics research problems to be seen as social issues, which require social theoretical insights. To exemplify the range of research problems which arise in the discipline, we provided an illustrative list of the kinds of question with which it is concerned, all of which have components that can be located in each of the 'social domains'. We reiterated the claim that the social world is stratified, and that what is real about it is not fully accessible to, nor exhausted by, empirical evidence. We advocated the rejection of a variables-based approach to the explanation of social phenomena such as language use, in favor of a relational, emergentist perspective, and explored this contrast with reference to the notion of 'motivation' in second language learning. We explained that social realism is not in itself a methodological approach, and outlined the various social research methods which are best deployed in combination to explain something as complex as human language behavior. Throughout these sections, examples of actual studies were provided, some of which derive from applied linguistics, although we found that we had to turn to other areas of social research, including health and epidemiology, prison education and recidivism, and primary school pedagogy, for examples of studies of an explicitly realist kind. We returned to a major preoccupation within applied linguistics – the differential progress towards an additional language by different learners - as the ground on which to work through a research problem in a consistently realist manner.
We conclude by summarizing some key points emerging from this discussion which may guide those readers who are convinced by our arguments as they seek to carry out research in applied linguistics.
• Measurement is important in most research programs, but it does not provide direct access to reality. The implication of this is that, whether you are interested in a learner's current level of proficiency in a 'target' language, or in a speaker's affective identification with a foreign culture, whatever form of measure you use will rest on theoretical claims about social reality. 'Facts' never 'speak for themselves'.
• The social world is complex and emergent. This entails an acceptance of the context-specific operation of causal relations. Byrne (2002: 163) expresses this idea as:
Localism - the recognition that knowledge is inherently contextual and that a crucial component of the specification of any item or system of things and relations known is the delimitation of the spatial and temporal boundaries within which that knowledge might hold good.
That is to say, some kinds of teaching will work for some learners in some circumstances. The purpose of research becomes to discover which circumstances are associated with progress for which learners. The replicability of studies is much reduced in salience, since the search for covering laws can safely be abandoned. This kind of research entails a case-driven methodology, which is able to connect outcomes with contexts and causes.
• However, 'case-driven' does not equate with 'idiosyncratic', and 'complexity' does not equate with 'randomness'. We would expect studies of many different kinds to illustrate similar kinds of relations between contexts, mechanisms and outcomes. Contexts, such as class relations and global inequalities, are already structured when encountered by new language learners. This is why we are able to predict that people born in less privileged regions of the world are likely to struggle more determinedly to learn a globally dominant language than those born in Western countries to learn a dying one. Empirical data act as a trace of how structures such as international capitalist relations constrain social action consistently in particular directions.
We have provided here a first indication of how a distinctively social realist orientation might have a role in steering applied linguistic research away from the kinds of impasse which seem to threaten many social science disciplines as policy-makers grow increasingly impatient for answers to the question 'what works?' The process has at its heart the explanation of the dynamic relationship between agency and structure; the focus is on people making constrained choices in structured contexts, and what we are proposing is an appropriate research methodology for investigating precisely that.
