[Edling] Sune Vork Steffensen @ UCL Centre for Applied Linguistics - 14th January - Distributed Language and Applied Linguistics: Interactivity, Enskillment, and the Harnessing of Temporality

[Li, Wei]

UCL Applied Linguistics Seminar

UCL Centre for Applied Linguistics

Institute of Education, University College London



Distributed Language and Applied Linguistics:

Interactivity, Enskillment, and the Harnessing of Temporality



Sune Vork Steffensen, Professor, Ph.D.

Centre for Human Interactivity, University of Southern Denmark



17:30-18:30 Monday 14th January 2019

Nunn Hall, 20 Bedford Way, London WC1H 0AL



The past 10-15 years have witnessed the emergence of a “Distributed Language Perspective” (DLP) (Cowley, 2011; Steffensen, 2015). Drawing on integrational (Harris, 1981), dialogical (Linell, 2009), ecological (Gibson, 1979), and radical embodied (Chemero, 2011) tenets, DLP pursues a symbiotic view on language as both dynamical and symbolic (Rączaszek-Leonardi, 2011; Rączaszek-Leonardi & Scott Kelso, 2008). On that view, language has to be seen “as fully integrated with human existence” (Cowley, 2011), which implies a non-representational view on language (Kravchenko, 2007), as well as a perspective that does not reduce the research interest to language-in-communication (Steffensen & Harvey, 2018)



In this talk, I will illustrate how one can study the situated interplay between human agents and their environment. Starting from the key concept of interactivity (Harvey, Gahrn-Andersen, & Steffensen, 2016; Pedersen, 2015; Steffensen, 2013, 2016; Steffensen, Vallée-Tourangeau, & Vallée-Tourangeau, 2016), I illustrate a distributed perspective on language by focusing on examples from intercultural communication, cognitive problem-solving, and psychotherapy.



My focus is on how linguistic patterns are integrated in the situated and ecological behaviour of human agents. I illustrate how particular ecological outcomes are achieved through the harnessing of temporality: human agents constrain their here-and-now agency by exploiting stabilised, supra-individual patterns on longer timescales (including linguistic symbols and other sociocultural resources). On such a view, human action and agency are multi-scalar and multi-causal.



At the end of the lecture, I discuss the implications of a distributed perspective for applied linguistics. In the light of my three examples, I discuss the feasibility of a distributed perspective on applied linguistics, picking up on the cultural, cognitive, and transformational aspects of language learning. As a non-expert in language learning, I will discuss these topics in an exploratory and tentative way, inviting for further dialogue.


Free event

All welcome


Professor Li Wei • PhD, FAcSS, FRSA • Director, ESRC UCL, Bloomsbury and East London (UBEL) Doctoral Training Partnership (DTP) • Chair of Applied Linguistics • Director, UCL Centre for Applied Linguistics • UCL Institute of Education, University College London • 20 Bedford Way, London WC1H 0AL, UK • Email: li.wei at ucl.ac.uk<mailto:li.wei at ucl.ac.uk>



Current Funded Projects:

Early Childhood Bilingualism: Effects on brain structure and function (Leverhulme, 2018-2021)

Family Language Policy: A multi-level investigation of multilingual practices in transnational Families (ESRC: 2017-2019)



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