This open access book analyzes language education through a socio-material framework. The
authors revisit their position as researchers by decentering themselves and humans in general
from the main focus of research activities and giving way to the materialities that are
agentive but often overlooked parts of our research contexts and processes. Through this
critical posthumanist realism they are able to engage in research that sees society as an
ethical interrelationship between humans and the material world and explore the
socio-materialities of language education from the perspectives of material agency spatial and
embodied materiality and human and non-human assemblages. Each chapter explores language
educational contexts through a unique lens of (socio)materiality. Based on how the authors
conceptualize (socio)materiality the book is organized in three sections that seek answers to
the following overarching questions: In what ways do material agencies emerge in language
educational contexts? How are educational choices and experiences intertwined with
materialities of spaces and bodies? What assemblages of human and non-human may occur in
language education contexts? Each chapter questions in its own way the notion of the human
subject as rational enlightened being and sole possessor of agency and offers examples of
allowing for other-than-human agency to enter the picture. Together the contributors exemplify
how researchers who have been committed to social constructionist thinking for most of their
careers learn to make space for new theories thus inspiring and encouraging readers to remain
open for new intellectual and embodied endeavors.
