Decolonising sociolinguistics research: methodological turn-around next?

Abstract

This short article argues that notwithstanding theoretical advances that have sought to unsettle the hegemony of mainstream theoretical frameworks, language in society researchers and other social science scholarly communities from the Southern orbit of the globe, continue to be wedded to conventional Euro-modernist methodologies. I suggest that the need to delink from imperial logics of doing research is a must and not an option. We need a language to explore spaces and modes of being that do not exist in the spaces of current Euro-modernist frameworks but that do exist in the majority of other communities around the world. In advancing this line of argument, I join ongoing conversations among indigenous and decolonial scholars speaking from the margins of the mainstream on the need for epistemic reconstitution of the discourse and praxis of research.