Simultaneous multiplicity: new materialist ontologies and the apprehension of language as assemblage and phenomenon

Abstract

This paper explores two prominent strands of inquiry within new materialism – Deleuze and Guattari’s assemblage thinking and Karen Barad’s agential realism – and situates them in relation to language studies. While a singular definition of new materialist scholarship is not feasible, we argue that the selected approaches have potential to come together to reconfigure the trajectory of language studies and critical applied linguistics, as they have begun to do in other fields of inquiry. We draw on new materialism to develop accounts of how language may be ontologically apprehended as assemblage and as phenomenon. However, rather than presenting these accounts as definitive, we invite further consideration of the implications of new materialist ontologies for our capacity to apprehend simultaneous multiplicities, and particularly, for the consequences of these on the conceptions of language that are mobilized through our theoretical and methodological tools.