Meaning matters: multimodality, (new) materialism and co-production in applied linguistics

I describe the intersections of visual and material phenomena with written and spoken language, as I found them entangled in home and community contexts (Pahl and Rowsell 2010). The complex entanglements of everyday speech, and the process of moving between and across languages and objects requires new languages of description (Budach, Kell and Patrick 2015). This involves research encounters with multimodal communicational ensembles (Maybin 2013). Co-producing ideas about language adds another layer of complexity to what applied linguistics as a field could be (Escott and Pahl 2017). A meaning infused applied linguistics can acknowledge ordinary people’s understandings of speech and language (Rymes and Leone 2014) while recognising the more-than-human encounters that make up the everyday (Taylor and Hughes 2016). What does broadening the horizons in this way mean for the field of applied linguistics and how does it translate into research practices? References Budach, G. Kell, C. and Patrick, D. (2015) Objects and language in transcontextual Communication. Social Semiotics (2015), 25(4), 387-400 Escott, H. and Pahl, K. (2017) ‘Learning from Ninjas: young people’s films as a lens for an expanded view of literacy and language’ Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Educationdoi/full/10.1080/01596306.2017.1405911 Maybin, J. (2013) Working towards a more complex sociolinguistics. Journal of Sociolinguistics17/4, 2013: 547–555 Pahl, K. and Rowsell, J. (2010) Artifactual Literacies: Every object tells a story. New York: Teachers College Press Rymes, B., Leone, A., (2014). ‘Citizen sociolinguistics: a new media methodology for understanding language and social life’. Working Papers in Educational Linguistics29 (2), 25–43 Taylor, C. and Hughes, C (eds) (2016) Posthuman Research Practices in Education. Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan.