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Book Reviews

131

Joan Kelly Hall, 2012, Teaching and Researching Language and Culture
(2nd edn.). Longman, 264 p. ISBN: 9781 408205068
Reviewed by Mairin Hennebry University of Edinburgh

This second edition of Teaching and Researching Language and Culture by Joan
Kelly Hall aims to revise and update the first edition of this work after a
decade that has seen the interplay between language, culture and social
interaction raised to the status of a clearly identifiable approach to the study of
the uses of language within a culture, as a stated sociocultural activity.
The author herself very clearly delimits her work in this volume,
circumscribing it as from a specifically sociocultural persepective with
reference to the branch of Applied Linguistics addressing the relationship
between language and culture.
Applied Linguistics, referring as it does to the human acitivities involved in
the acquisition and uses of language, points by definition to the interaction
between human beings through the medium of these language. As Aristotle
proposes, a human being is a zoon politikon, that is, a social being. His claim
goes further: only humans above or below their humanity could fail to engage
in sociocultural activities, providing perhaps a basis for the assumption that
there always appears to exist a sociocultutral background in relation to Applied
Linguistics, a point that Hall consistently emphasises in her work.
The first section of this book centres on the theoretical basis for the
interaction between language in general within its culture. With only brief
references to second or additional language acquisition or use, the section has
an implied focus on first language. A strong emphasis is placed on the social
activities accompanying the use of language within its society in general,
through which the author seeks to demonstrate that language is shaped and in
turn shapes back, the aforesaid activities. In developing this perspective the
author draws on the work of key authors such as Whorf (1956), Wittgenstein
(1963), Halliday (1973, 1975, 1978) and Sapir (1985) among others. The author
then moves on to a theoretical discussion of the relationship between
language, culture and identity, always referring exclusively to its existence
through a specifically sociocultural view. Section 1 thus provides a detailed
exposition of the sociocultural view supported by a range of empirical studies
limitedly unfurled, which would perhaps be enhanced through fuller detail
of what these studies entailed. Within this exposition a range of topics are
covered, albeit briefly, from the significance of interactional sociolinguistics
in communicative events, passing through the authors perception of the
interaction between language, culture and identity, to the importance
attributed to the contexts in analysis of language and culture development. In
addressing context, the author very briefly raises the impact of globalisation
on our understanding of sites of language and culture learning, an issue that
could eventually lead to a considerable in-depth discussion. In summarising
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the theoretical ground, Hall identifies avenues for further possible research,
useful for those considering work in this field.
Since the section reflects the unintentional inherent difficulty of the
sociocultural view in defining what is meant by culture and language, readers
should approach the book with an open mind not expecting clear definitions
of such concepts but rather allowing themselves to be immersed in the fluidity
that this particular epistemology might require.
In section 2, through a range of topics of interest to the author, the
reader is offered a development of possible applications of a sociocultural
perspective on language and culture in relation to the general use of language
in the classroom setting and in generic curricula, as a tool for learning about
the culture. The section provides exemplifications of how a sociocultural view
of language and culture may be evidenced in the classroom, ranging from
curriculum level to more specific instances of classroom discourse. This is
helpful in allowing the reader to see some of the pedagogical application of
such a view including several kinds of evidences that can be taken to
constitute the social communicative activities discussed in the first section. An
expansion of such means of identifying language practices might prove useful
to the novice seeking to teach or research in this field. Also interesting in this
section is the discussion of the intersection of the learners sociocultural world
with institutional settings, helping the reader to see the learner as situated in
wider social contexts wherein multiple identities, cultures and language uses
may meet.
Chapter 5 adds a timely contribution on the implications of electronically
mediated sites for shaping learner identities in social contexts, while chapter
6 goes on to propose benefits offered by technologies for expanding the scope
of communicative activities and the resources available to learners for
meaning constructions.
The section provides examples of educational innovations, based primarily
in the United States, that have sought to apply a sociocultural perspective
to language and culture pedagogies. Two particular models of curriculum
redesign and instruction are outlined for the reader, namely a conceptualisation of classrooms as communities of learners, drawing on the work of
those such as Lave and Wenger (1991) and Rogoff et al. (1996) and the other
the incorporation of co-operative learning practices, stemming from the
work of Allport (1954). The section helpfully outlines the specific components
of these two approaches and provides specific examples of how these models
might be applied in teaching methods.
It is within Section 2 that the understandings of culture that arguably more
explicitly address second language and culture, emanating from the work of
Byram, Celce-Murcia, Kramsch and so on, are presented through their
applications to language classrooms and curricula, though, perhaps, as a
result of locating them in a section dedicated to curriculum and pedagogy the
novice reader might view them as somewhat removed from the theoretical
conceptualisations of culture and language that in fact would underpin them.
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Section 3 is dedicated to recounting ways of conducting research in the

area, always from the sociocultural perspective of interaction between
language and culture. As such, major roles are reserved for ethnography,
communications, conversation and discourse analysis and other specific
methods for investigating the use of language. Two new additions updating
this second edition are systemic functional linguistics and linguistic
ethnography. Indications of how research should be approached to embrace
these and other more peripheral fields, together with pronouncements on
contexts for such research activities, complete this section. The novice reader
might find Chapter 9 particularly useful in that it details the process of
planning research as well as brief accounts of the tools typically used for it.
Also valuable is the framework provided for evaluating research in the field.
For those wishing to adopt a sociocultural perspective to the study of language
and culture, the book provides an overview of corresponding current methods
and goes further by offering detailed summaries of previous studies in this
field while also suggesting possibilities for further studies and providing
guidance on the considerations the researcher would need to undertake.
The final section aims to provide a list of such resources as would
be available in order to undertake the teaching and researching of
the aforementioned relationships between language, culture and its
corresponding sociocultural activities. Many of the contents and materials
have been designed as markers to give some idea of the range of possibilities
for the exploration of this current of thought in the field.
The title of the book promises a volume that comprehensively addresses a
growing branch of Applied Linguistics, thus potentially constituting an
essential component of the Applied Linguistics in Action Series. It is
interesting in this regard that, while the volume proposes itself as an
invaluable resource to students and professionals new to the field it adopts
a very specific and focused perspective on language and culture, through a
sociocultural lens in almost absolute preference to other perspectives. The
author questions other efforts in Applied Linguistics that she asserts have till
recently adopted a linguistics applied approach to the investigation of
language and culture, building therefore, a justification for the preferred
angle the book adopts. From this standpoint only, Hall develops a robust
presentation of language and culture as being socially constructed, varied,
intrinsically tied to specific contexts and places and in a constant process of
flux and change. Systematic investigation of language and culture within such
a continuous change-based view, by implication becomes somewhat elusive;
a complexity that the book reflects. An interesting question for the field more
generally and for those engaging with this volume, might be the extent to
which the established approach of applied linguistics and the emerging
sociocultural approach could be seen as complementary rather than polarised
and exclusive. In line with the developing co-operation between second
language acquisition and neurolinguistics, perhaps the field of language and
culture might benefit from a collaboration that would allow the cognitive
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Mairin Hennebry

aspects of applied linguistics to inform understandings of language and

culture processes and vice versa.
Overall, the book is clearly structured and provides useful quotations from
the wider literature that help to focus the reader on key concepts in the field,
drawn from sociocultural perspectives. In particular, the resources section
provides a useful range of academic and professional sources that might
guide the reader interested in further pursuing the issues addressed in the
book through a sociocultural approach.
The emphasis on the sociocultural view, situated as it is within a critique of
the proposed exclusivity of other approaches to culture and language study,
presents the reader with a challenge to independently contextualise the issues
covered in the broader field of applied linguistics as a means of developing a
complete picture of the culture and language learner, user and creator. Indeed
it is supposed that Halls suggestion that cognitive approaches to language
learning all too often exclude the influence of context might also be reversed
to ensure that some sociocultural approaches do not exclude the cognitive
aspects of language and culture learning and use in its varied applications.
The volume provides a detailed account of the sociocultural perspective on
the relationship between language and culture; a valuable perspective which
has allowed for the classification of social communicative situations in which
language is used as a discursive or interactive tool of analysis.

References
Allport, G. (1954) The nature of prejudice. Cambridge: Addison Wesley
Halliday, M. A. K. (1973) Explorations in the functions of language. London: Edward
Arnold
(1975) Learning how to mean: explorations in the development of language. London:
Edward Arnold.
(1978) Language as social semiotic: the social interpretation of language and meaning.
London: Edward Arnold.
Lave, J. and Wenger, E. (1991) Situated Learning: legitimate peripheral participation
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Rogoff, B., Matusov, E. and White, C. (1996) Models of teaching and learning:
participation in a community of learners. In D. Olson and N. Torrance (eds.) The
handbook of education and human development: new models of learning, teaching and
schooling. New York: Guilford Press, 388415.
Sapir, E. (1985 [1929]) The status of linguistics as a science. In D.G. Mandelbaum (ed.),
Selected writings of Edward Sapir in language, culture and personality. Berkeley, CA:
University of California Press, 160166.
Wittgenstein, L. (1963) Philosophical investigations, trans. G.E.M. Anscombe, Oxford:
Basil Blackwell
Whorf, B. L. (1956) Language thought and reality: selected writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf,
ed. J.B. Carroll. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
email: mairin.hennebry@ed.ac.uk
2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd