 Epistemic positioning of researchers in Applied Linguistics in the UK Hah Sixian For PAD, Nov 2015

Why Applied Linguistics?  Applied Linguistics is now so fragmented in its range of interests that one can no longer rely on a common basis of shared assumptions between people who are called ‘Applied Linguists’ (Meara 1989: 66 in Seidlhofer 2003: 270).

Epistemic territories  Interlocutors are preoccupied with this question: what they know relative to others, what they are entitled to know, and what they are entitled to describe or communicate (Heritage, 2009: 309)

Positioning theory  Positioning refers to “the discursive construction of personal stories that make a person’s actions intelligible and relatively determinate as social acts” (Harré & Langenhove 1999: 16)  deliberate self-positioning: if a person tries to achieve specific goals with their act of self- positioning  forced self-positioning by an institution  And sometimes, one is positioned by others.

Epistemic positioning in academic discourse  To enter a discourse … one cannot not occupy certain discursive positions (Angermuller 2013: 268)  Researchers are always taking a position on something and seeking to position others in an evaluation process (of citing and ratifying one another’s claims. (Hyland & Diani, 2009)  Epistemic positioning can refer to:  Which academic field or sub-fields of knowledge researchers present or situate their research to be in  With which other researchers they want to align with or distance away from

Why do researchers need to position themselves?  To exist as a researcher, one needs to claim epistemic territories in the vast epistemic landscape of academia

How is epistemic positioning done?  Researchers are often simultaneously trying to maintain rapport with readers, argue a position and signal their allegiance to a particular orientation or group in academic writing (Hyland & Diani, 2009: 06)  Hedging acts as a politeness strategy when it marks a claim… as being provisional, pending acceptance by the community – in other words, acceptance by the readers. (Myers, 1989)  Could there be differences in how epistemic positioning is done in written and spoken academic discourse?

Epistemic positioning – Aligning with a ‘tradition’ in citation [Discussing a recent paper published by R1 & a co-author on a corpus-based analysis of UK security documents; pilot interview] And the beginning of methodology I always: (.) well, in this phase of my research er:m I find it (.) very important to very quickly locate the er:m methods that (.) my co-writer and I used (.) within a contemporary literature (.) so I got this this bank of citations in the methodology (.) section (.) er:m to the mainly Lancaster people er Paul Baker features largely here er: they are almost all of Lancaster origin reachin-er situating I guess our corpus based methodology within, /ei/ erm critical tradition, and /bi ː / one I think er also draws upon certain qualitative (.) Transcription Key: (.) micropause e::r lengthening sound word emphasis -Abrupt cut-off /ei/phonemic alphabet for sound created

References Angermuller, J. (2013). How to become an academic philosopher: Academic discourse as a multileveled positioning practice. Sociología Histórica: Revista de investigación acerca de la dimensión histórica de los fenómenos sociales, (2), Harré, R., & Van Langenhove, L. (Eds.). (1999). Positioning theory: Moral contexts of international action. USA: Blackwell. Heritage, J. (2009). Conversation analysis as social theory. The new Blackwell companion to social theory, Heritage, J. (2012). Epistemics in action: Action formation and territories of knowledge. Research on Language & Social Interaction, 45(1), Latour, B. (1987). Science in action: How to follow scientists and engineers through society. Harvard university press. Myers, G. (1990). Writing biology: The social construction of popular science. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.