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 selfpositioning
 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)
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 /biː/ one I think er
also draws upon certain qualitative (.) <procedures>
Transcription Key:
(.)
micropause
<slower talk>
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), 263-289.
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, 300-320.
Heritage, J. (2012). Epistemics in action: Action formation and territories of knowledge. Research on
Language & Social Interaction, 45(1), 1-29.
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.