A social realist approach to research in applied linguistics
Summary of key claims
A relational view of the world
Since social relations are not observable, and because they are symbolically managed, epistemology has a critical role in social research.
The researcher's task cannot therefore be reduced to the identification of discrete elements - or variables - in the empirically observable world, for two reasons. Firstly, any supposed 'variable' within the social world cannot be taken as empirically given, and cannot be accessed in a theory-neutral way. Thus studies which isolate variables such as ethnicity, say, or distribution of income are likely to be misleading insofar as they neglect to identify the theoretical claims on which they rest: whose definition of 'ethnic group'? based on what criteria? what is to count as 'income'? how is it to be measured? While observable patterns may tell us something, the important part of the researcher's task is to specify what they tell us, rather than to identify the constituents of the patterns. Secondly, patterns are relationally generated, since the world is quintessentially relational. That is, it is the combination of the powers and properties of things in the world and not their individual, isolable operation - that makes the world what it is. 'Social phenomena are what they are', observe Danermark et al, (1997: 97), 'by virtue of the internal relations they have to other phenomena.' Thus it does violence to the phenomena in which we are interested (such as the situated language practices of individuals and groups) to attempt to sever parts of the social world (such as the motivation of different language learners, for example) from their relational contexts (such as their relations with each other and their structural location in a particular geo-political moment). As Layder (1993) notes: '... structural features of society are not best thought of simply as measurable variables' (p.29), so that power relations, for example, 'are best thought of as mechanisms which underlie and generate routine activities' (p.30).
