Applied Linguistics as Social Science
Some key issues in social theory
Structurationist accounts of structure-and-agency
One possible resolution of the debate is to suggest that the two terms cannot be considered separately, since they are effectively only referring to two sides of the same coin. This line of argument has been persuasively developed in the structuration theory of Giddens (1976, 1979, 1984). Giddens rejects the idea of structural forces which constrain and determine human behaviour 'from the outside' as it were, and objects to the notion that 'social systems' have properties of their own that can be analyzed independently of human needs and purposes. On the other hand, for Giddens the problem with the agency end of the continuum is that the subjective experiences of individuals, and the meanings that they attach to them, become the central point of analysis. There is a tendency to regard social reality as the outcome of the actions of free agents; the influence of the persistent, institutional features of the social world on these agents is difficult to incorporate analytically.
Giddens suggests, therefore, that rather than think in terms of a dualism of agency and structure, in which the two terms are taken to refer to separate and opposed phenomena, we should think in terms of a duality of structure, in which structure is seen as having twin aspects. According to this perspective, structure and agency are intrinsically united through social practices. When people interact with each other, they draw upon a vast range of skills and resources: cognitive, linguistic, perceptual, physical. Many of these will have been acquired through experience, through their routine practical application in the living of a life (how to ride a bike, how to make yourself understood in a common language). Other skills and resources will, however, be part of a stock of socially shared knowledge and skills (how to chair a department meeting, how to get an article published). Nevertheless, how we as unique individuals deploy these skills and resources will depend on how we interpret the rules governing the contexts in which they are relevant: there are many ways of riding a bike or chairing a meeting.
Thus for structuration theory, social practices reflect the ability of human beings to modify the circumstances in which they find themselves (by creatively interpreting rules and deploying resources), whilst simultaneously recreating the social conditions (rules, knowledges, resources) which they inherit from the past. Thus, each doctor-patient consultation- or employer-employee job interview, or classroom lesson- both draws on existing routines for carrying out these interactions and interprets them afresh through the specific medium of the individuals 'instantiating' these routines on this occasion. Structure and agency are thus two sides of the same coin: in order to develop purposes and do things we draw upon rules and resources, and in doing so we endorse and enact them, thereby contributing to their continuance.
The persuasiveness of the structuration approach, as both Archer and Layder have pointed out, depends heavily on Giddens' novel definition of structure (Archer 1995; Layder 1994). By recasting structure as 'rules and resources', he separates it from the idea of system, of an 'objective' social reality independent of the activities of people. So, for Giddens, social structures possess only a virtual existence until they are instantiated by people, that is insofar as people knowingly take them into account in social action and thereby either reproduce or modify them. Social relations are thus dependent on the activities of extant human beings and cannot be separated from them. Since structure and agency are held to be mutually constitutive, their properties are not real except in conjunction with each other, and it is impossible to examine the interplay between them.
In our view this constitutes a major limitation to the structurationist model. While we would accept that, at the level of the consultation, interview or lesson, people's understandings of these interactions do influence how they are conducted, we would also argue that social relations shape such interactions in ways that the people involved in them may not be fully aware of. For example, asylum-seekers who cannot access health-care in the country they find themselves in, or unemployed workers in a period of economic recession, find themselves in situations that are significantly structured by social relations of political power and economic influence. These structures are not confined to those aspects of the role of patient or interviewee which are instantiated in the interaction itself- most obviously if participation in that interaction is precluded by one's social location.
