Lang. Teach. (2017), 50.1, 32–64
c
Cambridge University Press 2016
doi:10.1017/S0261444816000288
State-of-the-Art Article
Political economy in applied linguistics research
David Block Instituci
´
o Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avanc¸ats/Universitat de Lleidad
block@dal.udl.cat
This state-of-the-art review is based on the fundamental idea that political economy should
be adopted as a frame for research and discussion in applied linguistics as part of a general
social turn which has taken hold in the field over the past three decades. It starts with Susan
Gal’s (1989) early call for such a move in sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology, that is,
for ‘investigations of the links among language structure, language use, and political
economy’ (Gal 1989: 346), and moves from a consideration of theoretical bases to the
discussion and critique of concrete examples of research. Thus, after a fairly detailed
discussion of political economy and the key constructs neoliberalism and social class, the
paper moves to a review of research in three broad areas. First, it focuses on how issues and
constructs from political economy have been incorporated into discussions of education, work
and leisure by a growing number of sociolinguists. This is followed by a review of research
which has focused specifically on social class as a central organising construct and then a
third section on political economy in language teaching and learning research. The review
ends with a consideration of the future of political economy in applied linguistics research.
1. Introduction
Over 25 years ago, Susan Gal published her oft-cited paper ‘Language and political economy’,
stating that her aim was ‘to point to a set of themes in current anthropological and linguistic
research that can be read as investigations of the links among language structure, language
use, and political economy’ (Gal 1989: 346). She further noted that this research was either
‘explicitly inspired by an array of (neo-)Marxist concepts’, or was grounded in Hymes’s
‘socially constituted linguistics’ (Hymes 1974) and interpretative ethnographic research which
aimed to provide fine-grained descriptions and analyses of ‘local linguistic practices’ (Gal
1989: 346). Gal went on to focus on research which, at the time, had brought together
language and society issues and political economic concerns such as inequality, social class
and ideology, as she very effectively weaved into her narrative the work of scholars such as
Hymes (1974), Bourdieu (1991), Labov (1966)andBernstein(1971), all of whom contributed
to the laying of the foundations for what sociolinguistics is today.
The same year, Judith Irvine provided a companion piece to Gal’s article. In ‘When talk
isn’t cheap: Language and political economy’, she argued that ‘the study of economy must
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POLITICAL ECONOMY IN APPLIED LINGUISTICS RESEARCH 33
include institutions, practices, and values’ given that ‘the dichotomy that excludes linguistic
phenomena from the economic realm’ (Irvine 1989: 249) had become obsolete. She called
for researchers to relate the study of language practices not only to society and culture but
also to political economy. In doing so, Irvine was following Hymes (1974) in suggesting that
while linguistic forms no doubt denote and index relations of production and socioeconomic
differentiations and inequalities, ‘they may also be among those forces, and they may be
objects of economic activity’ (Irvine 1989: 255). Irvine was calling for the kind of synthesis
of the material and the symbolic which has gathered some steam in recent years (see below),
even if, some two decades later, Paul Bruthiaux felt compelled to lament how:
the reluctance of many applied linguists to consider the economic dimension of globalization and the
tendency for discussions of that dimension to be cursory and one-sided severely limit the contribution the
field might make to key contemporary debate. . . . In the end, it undermines the credibility of applied
linguists and makes it unlikely they will play a significant role in solving the social injustices they so rightly
deplore.
(Bruthiaux 2008: 20)
Elsewhere, I have expressed agreement with Bruthiaux on this point (Block 2012a, 2014)
and now, writing in mid-2016, I face the challenge of finding and discussing current applied
linguistics research which explores how language practices interrelate with economic forces
and activities (Irvine 1989) and ‘can be read as investigations of the links among language
structure, language use, and political economy’ (Gal 1989: 346). My task is difficult, not least
because there has been a lack of theoretical work on what is meant by political economy in
applied linguistics. With this gap in mind, I begin this paper with a discussion of political
economy, providing a synoptic historical perspective, which ends in the present, and includes
the economic crisis of 2007 (the effects of which are still being felt in many parts of the world a
decade later). I make the point that the version of political economy which has been taken up
by applied linguists in recent years is Marxist (or quasi-Marxist) in inspiration, even if authors
do not normally engage explicitly with Marxist theory. I then move to consider neoliberalism
as the key construct for the times in which we live, including social class in this discussion.
All of this theoretical background is then drawn on in the ensuing survey of work in applied
linguistics which has contained a political economic angle. I conclude with some thoughts
about future research.
Following previous publications (Block 2003; Block, Gray & Holborow 2012), here I
understand applied linguistics to be a field of enquir y which focuses on ‘real-world problems
in which language is a central issue’ (Brumfit 1991: 46). Importantly, applied linguistics has
expanded and become more interdisciplinary over the past four decades: if initially it was
a field of enquiry with a near-exclusive association with linguistics as a source discipline
and language teaching and learning as its applied angle, it now includes a great deal of
research activity along the lines of what Hymes (1974) had in mind when he wrote about
a ‘socially constituted linguistics’, in which the ‘starting point is the study of culture and
social organisation and the view is that language plays an integral part in the enactment
of social action and communication’ (Block 2003: 2). Moving from this more social starting
point, applied linguistics has become an umbrella term for the study of a broad range of
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34 DAVID BLOCK
language-related issues, such as literacies, bi/multilingualism, language policy, identity,
discourse in society and, of course, language teaching and learning.
Exploring the links of political economy with these dif ferent areas of enquiry, in this
paper I focus primarily on recent publications. I do this because, in effect, a political
economic angle on applied linguistics concerns is a relatively recent trend, very much
linked to the early twenty-first century. Of course, before this recent timeframe there were
occasional mentions and incorporations of political economy in applied linguistics work.
Thus, apart from Gal’s article cited above, there is Holborow’s (1999) The politics of English,
which examines the global spread of Eng lish, standard English and language and sexism
from a Marxist perspective, relating these phenomena to global capitalism, ideology and
colonialism. Elsewhere, in Gee, Hull & Lankshear’s (1996) The new work order: Behind the
language of the new capitalism, the authors discuss how the new information/digital age is
not so much the harbinger of a new democratic order, but the wingman of neoliberal
capitalism, mediating deepening socioeconomic inequality rather than the creation of more
just and fair societies. There is also Florian Coulmas’s (1993) somewhat forgotten (if one
is to judge by the references sections of recent publications) Language and economy,inwhich
the author presciently wrote about many of the issues which concern researchers today:
how the economy shapes language-related phenomena, how languages may be framed as
economically valuable and the interrelationships between languages and inequality. And,
of course, even earlier, there was Rossi-Landi’s (1968, 1983) suggestion that ‘words and
messages’ are not given naturally, but are the products of labour. Finally, in ethnographic
studies which have enhanced our understanding of the sociology of language education, some
researchers have provided infor mation about the economic backdrops enveloping the objects
of their enquiries. Notable examples are Heath’s (1983) exploration of literacy practices
in a mill town in the southern United States; Eckert’s (1989) study of linguistic variation
and change in an American high school in Michigan; Foley’s (1990)accountofAnglo-Latino
relations and sociocultural/linguistic practices in a small-town Texas high school; and Heller’s
(1999) discussion of bilingual policies and practices in a bilingual French immersion school
in Ang lophone Canada. These works, along with others published in the 1970s, 80s and
90s, fall outside the scope of this paper (even if they will be mentioned again below) as the
discussion will focus above all on publications from 2000 onwards.
2. Political economy
The Encyclopaedia Britannica defines political economy as a ‘branch of social sciences that
studies the relationships between individuals and society and between markets and the state,
using a diverse set of tools and methods drawn largely from economics, political science,
and sociology’. Elsewhere, Mosco writes that ‘[o]ne can think about political economy as
the study of the social relations, particularly the power relations, that mutually constitute the production,
distribution, and consumption of resources’ (Mosco 2009: 24; italics in the original). And, in the
introduction to a collection on
GLOBAL political economy, Ravenhill (2014: 18) writes of
a ‘field of enquiry . . . whose central focus is the interrelationship between public and
private power in the allocation of scarce resources’. In both cases, political economy is
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POLITICAL ECONOMY IN APPLIED LINGUISTICS RESEARCH 35
understood as an area of enquiry with roots in the work of Adam Smith (2012 [1776]), David
Ricardo (2004 [1817]) and John Stuart Mill (2004 [1848, 1865]), who laid out the basics
of liberal economic theory which Karl Marx was later to critique (Marx 1990 [1867]).
1
It
focuses on and analyses the relationship between the individual and society and between the
market and the state, and it seeks to understand how social institutions, their activities and
capitalism interrelate. Thinking and writing within a political economy frame means working
in an interdisciplinary manner, drawing on work in human geography, sociology, political
theory, anthropology and cultural studies. The focus is on the interrelatedness of political
and economic processes and phenomena such as aggregate economic activity, resource
allocation, capital accumulation, income inequality, globalisation and imperial power
(Block et al. 2012).
Part and parcel of any move to adopt political economy as a frame for research
and discussion in applied linguists is the belief that the latter should be situated more
firmly within the social sciences and that the social sciences should be at the centre of
discussions of issues in applied linguistics. If a decade and a half ago I wrote about a
‘social turn’ in second language acquisition research (Block 2003), today there is space
for what we could call a ‘political economy turn’ in applied linguistics (Block 2017a).This
new turn would mean taking on board themes arising in political economy literature and
applying them to the study of ‘real-world problems in which language is a central issue’
(Brumfit 1991: 46).
I see such an approach as entailing a substantial and sustained engagement with (1) the
foundational work of Smith (2012 [1776]) and Marx (1990 [1867]); (2) the later work of
Gramsci (1971 [1935]) on capitalism and political dominance, Luk
´
acs (1971[1923]) on class
consciousness, Polanyi (1944) on the market and political responses to it and Baran & Sweezy’s
(1966) analysis of the domination of corporations and the rise of monopoly capitalism;
and (3) more contemporary work, such as Blyth’s (2013) Keynesian critique of neoliberal
austerity, Boltanski & Chiapello (2006) and Fleming (2015) on the rise of individualism and
managerialism in the twenty-first century workplace, Dardot & Laval (2013) on neoliberalism
as a rationality, Panitch & Gindlin (2013) on the symbiotic relationship between the United
States and global capitalism, Piketty (2014) on inequality in the twentieth and twenty-first
centuries, Dum
´
enil & L
´
evy (2011), Callinicos (2010) and Harvey (2005, 2014) on the rise
of neoliberalism and the contradictions inherent to capitalism, and finally, Stedman-Jones
(2012)andMirowski(2013) on the intellectual traditions and activities leading to the rise of
neoliberalism. It also means moving away from the practice of merely mentioning in passing
key political economy constructs and frameworks to a more in-de pth engagement with and
utilization of said constructs and frameworks. The literature review that I carry out in this
paper will discuss applied linguistics research which has included a political economy angle,
although I can advance at this point that this angle is often not very thoroughly developed (a
point to which I return in the final section).
1
A note on references. When citing newer editions of sources first published decades ago (e.g. Marx’s Capital was first
published in 1867 but the edition consulted for this article was published in 1990), I provide the latter year followed by
the former as follows: Marx 1990 [1867].
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0261444816000288 Published online by Cambridge University Press
36 DAVID BLOCK
The turn to political economy in applied linguistics scholarship, timid though it may be at
present, is not accidental or a matter of chance. It comes at a time when many people, lay
and academic alike, are coming to the collective realisation that we are living in times – the
neoliberal era and the economic crisis wrought by neoliberal policies – in which societies are
becoming more socioeconomically stratified and unequal instead of less so. In the midst of
this realisation, there is an additional realisation that the famous expression ‘It’s the economy,
stupid’, which was first coined in 1992 by James Carville, American president Bill Clinton’s
campaign strategist, is relevant today with even greater urgency. In this sense, no one who
has accessed the media (television, newspapers, online publications) at any time since 2007
will have escaped the constant flow of bad news about debt – bailouts, home repossessions,
corrupt politicians and bankers, and of course the ubiquitous ‘markets’ – all of which are
political economy issues. In short, we have moved from the heady times of celebratory
globalisation of the 1990s and the early part of this century, to the hard-core realities that
globalisation, at least in part, has bequeathed. In doing so, we have moved from what might
be called a culture-dominant way of understanding events going on around us to a move
economics-based one (Block 2012a).
This survey will appear in 2017, a decade after the beginning of the current worldwide
economic crisis. And although governing politicians in many of the countries most affected by
the crisis have tried to convince citizens that recovery has arrived (my home country of Spain
comes to mind), there is by now little doubt that this crisis, of a virulence not witnessed (or felt!)
since the great depression of 1929, has left an indelible mark on societies around the world
and, of course, academics who attempt to make sense of them. As a consequence, the recent
interest in political economy, be it via popularised texts or more academic works, is not likely
to subside in the immediate future no matter what kind of economic recovery takes place
around the world. In short, the political economy turn mentioned above will become more
prevalent and it will take on greater strength through the second decade of the twenty-first
century. Indeed, at the time of writing, a fair number of publications with a political economy
perspective have appeared as collections and monographs (e.g. Erregeyers & Jacobs 2005;
McElhinny 2007;Stroud&Wee2008; Tan & Rubdy 2008; Grin, Sfreddo & Vaillancourt
2010; Kelly-Holmes & Mautner 2010; Mautner 2010; Block et al. 2012;Duch
ˆ
ene & Heller
2012;Park&Wee2012;Duch
ˆ
ene, Moyer & Roberts 2013;Block2014; Callahan & G
´
andara
2014; Jaworski, Thurlow & Heller 2014; Kanno & Vandrick 2014; Bernstein et al. 2015;
Holborow 2015a;Ricento2015; Gazzola & Wickstr
¨
om 2016;Shin&Park2016a), as well as
one-off articles and book chapters (e.g. Holborow 2006, 2007; Urciuoli 2008; Gerson 2011;
Holborow 2012a, 2012b, 2012c; Cavanaugh & Shankar 2012; Holborow 2013; Piller & Cho
2013; Urciuoli & LaDousa 2013; Cavanaugh & Shankar 2014; Gazzola, Grin & Wickstr
¨
om
2015; Holborow 2015b;Shin&Park2016b).
In the midst of this relatively new interest in political economy in applied linguistics, one
key question which arises is what political economy we are talking about. As we can see in
the definitions with which I opened this section, political economy is, like many academic
disciplines, a broad church. In addition, and again like many academic disciplines, it has been
sourced (often very selectively) by scholars situated in many other well-established disciplines
in the humanities and the social sciences. Thus, there are philosophers (
ˇ
Zi
ˇ
zek 2009), literature
specialists (Gallagher
2008), communication specialists (Fuchs 2014), geographer s (Harvey
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0261444816000288 Published online by Cambridge University Press