ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses forms of difference along lines of class, race, gender, and sexuality, and why they matter for any critical applied linguistic project. I argue for the importance of a politics of difference for critical applied linguistics, a view that difference is constructed and amid questions of power. Second language learning, identity, and subjectivity are discussed in an attempt to understand why it is so important to understand the ways in which language learner identifications matter. This chapter considers the ways in which differences (particularly in terms of gender and race) are constructed but are no less real as a result. A focus on gender and power in terms of domination, difference, and performativity brings us to different ways of thinking about language and difference. The ways that forms of difference operate in conjunction – commonly called intersectionality – is also important. The chapter then turns to a discussion of recognition (the struggle to recognize forms of difference) in relation to redistribution (the reallocation of wealth within a more just political economy), arguing that the issue is one of thinking through how the recognition of difference can be thought of in social terms (issues of social participation) rather than as an isolated question of cultural respect.
