Research Methods in Applied Linguistics – serie

This book illustrates the use of ethnography as an analytical approach to investigate academic writing, and provides critical insights into how academic writing research can benefit from the use of ethnographic methods. Throughout its six theoretical and practice-oriented studies, together with the introductory chapter, foreword and afterword, ethnography-related concepts like thick description, deep theorizing, participatory research, research reflexivity or ethics are discussed against the affordances of ethnography for the study of academic writing. The book is key reading for scholars, researchers and instructors in the areas of applied linguistics, academic writing, academic literacies and genre studies. It will also be useful to those lecturers and postgraduate students working in English for Academic Purposes and disciplinary writing. The volume provides ethnographically-oriented researchers with clear pointers about how to incorporate the telling of the inside story into their traditional main role as observers.Winner of the 9th edition of the AELFE's Enrique Alcaraz Research Award

Researchers who study multilingual literacy development face the reality of complex and ever evolving conceptualizations of multilingualism and literacy across dynamic contexts, languages, and modalities. To unlock the full potential of continuous developments in Applied Linguistics, innovative rethinking of methodological approaches is needed to keep pushing the boundaries of our understanding of multilingual literacy development and our ethical commitments to humanizing research. This book provides powerful and wide-ranging examples of qualitative research that foreground a rethinking of data, theory, and positionality in their exploration of multilingual literacy development. The volume showcases how qualitative research designs and tools can allow scholars not only to “study” the literacy development of multilingual learners from immigrant, transnational, and refugee backgrounds, but also to engage in ethical research approaches to learn from and amplify literacy practices and experiences that cross borders, languages, and modalities.

This book serves as an introduction to corpus linguistics (CL) for graduate students and researchers in Applied Linguistics, especially in the domains of language learning and teaching. It provides a structured and accessible approach for those new to CL, equipping readers with the foundational concepts and tools required to analyse language corpora autonomously in research related to language learning and teaching. It also contextualises CL’s development over the past four decades, offering critical reflections on its practices and applications. Each chapter integrates recommended readings and highlights central concepts, guiding readers in applying CL methods to their own studies. By the end of the book, readers will have gained the knowledge and practical expertise needed to apply corpus linguistics methods in conducting robust and innovative research.

This edited volume is a timely and significant contribution to second language development research from a Complex Dynamic Systems Theory (CDST) perspective. The book addresses the growing need for consistent and practical methodologies for CDST research. Each chapter presents an innovative method or approach, illustrating its use in concrete applications to empirical studies and highlighting its value in capturing the dynamic, time-sensitive, and interconnected nature of L2 development. The volume emphasizes a shift from static outcomes to developmental processes, offering tools to explore intra-learner variability, network analysis, dynamic modeling, and more. By bridging theory and practice, it equips researchers with methodological guidance to investigate the process of second language development. Building on and extending previous volumes on CDST research methods by Verspoor et al. (2011) and Hiver and Al-Hoorie (2019), this book serves as a crucial reference for future CDST-informed research in Applied Linguistics.