Creative practice and applied linguistics

Increasingly, applied linguistics research is engaging with diverse creative and artistic contexts beyond the traditional ones of language learning and use. At one end of the continuum, this research might take in language use and formal and non-formal language learning within creative contexts, for example museum or art gallery education, whilst at the other end this might relate to street performance or community crafting groups. Scholars interested in the intersections between language, creativity and learning have deployed the term “creative inquiry” to attempt to categorize and describe applied linguistics research in artistic and creative contexts and practices. Generally, this area of research pushes the contextual interests of applied linguistics in addition to expanding the applied linguistic toolkit toward more ethnographic and expansive approaches to language and communication.