ABSTRACT
This introduction provides an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book. The book asks how thinking along posthumanist lines can enhance work of studies of animal communication in applied linguistics. It argues that posthumanism offers alternative ways of thinking about the human predicament that present new political and intellectual possibilities. The book shows why a posthumanist applied linguistics suggests important ways of thinking about language, the individual, context, cognition and communication. It discusses the themes new materialism, speculative realism, distributed cognition. Taking on posthumanist thought can also make new connections and lines of thinking possible. Posthumanism may embrace a range of positions, including transhumanism and anti-humanism. In a line of thinking from Darwin to Marx and Freud that has decentred the position of humans as separate from other animals, in control of their history, and in charge of their own minds, posthumanism continues this work of repositioning humans where they belong.
