ABSTRACT
One of the key challenges for critical applied linguistics is to find ways of mapping micro and macro relations, ways of understanding a relation between critical views of the world-theories of society, ideology, global capitalism, colonialism, education, and so on-and the world of applied linguistics-classrooms, translations, conversations, interviews, and texts. Whether it is critical applied linguistics as a critique of mainstream applied linguistics, as a form of critical text analysis, as an approach to understanding the politics of translation, or as an attempt to understand implications of the global spread of English, a central issue always concerns how the classroom, text, or conversation is related to broader social, cultural, and political relations. As the discussion in previous chapters also suggested, however, the task is not merely to map micro and macro relations but to understand in much more subtle ways how power circulates at multiple levels. Indeed, we might do well to dis-pense with the micro-macro dichotomy and instead talk of detailed understandings of the contextual workings of power.
