A Non-anthropocentric Realism?

The early proponents of the philosophical position identified as critical realism (CR) maintained that the natural and social sciences could be better understood through a recognition of both their similarities and their differences (e.g., Bhaskar, 1979). One of the differences asserted in CR concerns the specific properties of human beings – individually and collectively – as distinct from the properties of other kinds of entities. Some attempts have been made to explore the implications of CR for non-anthropocentric philosophy (e.g., Jakobsen, 2017), but these tend to remain on a quite abstract, theoretical plane. This chapter reviews some developments in the ways realist social theory has been discussed within applied linguistics and sociolinguistics, before presenting some contrasting claims about the relationship between language and reality. This leads to a broader discussion about the implications of conceptualising human language as just one among many semiotic modes. The chapter concludes with a brief consideration of the potential contribution of biosemiotics and post-humanism, particularly the concepts associated with assemblage theory, to applied linguistics.