Agency and language policy: a view from social navigation
Authors
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Adriana Patiño Santos
University of Southampton
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1950-3954
Abstract
In this article, I discuss the various contributions to this volume. Vigh’s (2009) notion of social navigation allowed me to bring together the ways in which the various contributors capture the discursive and practical agency displayed by the studied social actors in each site. Even though most of the researchers draw on the concept of ‘agency’, as introduced by Ahearn (2001), in order to analyse their data, some of them invoke other definitions to capture different forms of agency: individual but also collective. The methodological decisions made by most of the contributors prove that qualitative procedures and methods continue to be those most suitable for capturing the complexities around what counts as ‘agentive actions and agentive discourses’ in the various studied contexts. It is only by interacting with the participants of our research and spending time with them during our fieldwork that we can make sense of the life stories they recount and the decisions they make under the particular circumstances in which they (try to) live.Keywords:
Agency, Discourse, Social action, Social navigation, Qualitative methodsReferences
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