David Block

Universitat de Lleida

Humanities

I am ICREA Research Professor in Sociolinguistics in the Departament d'Anglès i Lingüística, Universitat de Lleida. There I am a member of the Cercle de Lingüística Aplicada. I am also Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences (UK); Visiting Professor at University College London, Institute of Education; and editor of the Routledge book series Political Economy and Applied Linguistics. I joined ICREA in September 2012 after 16 years at the University College London Institute of Education, where I was Professor of Languages in Education. Prior to that, I worked in Barcelona for 18 years as an English teacher in centres such as ESADE, and as a Lecturer in Applied Linguistics at the Universitat de Barcelona and the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. I completed my PhD in Applied Linguistics at the University Lancaster (UK) in 1995.  


Research interests

I have published articles, chapters and books on a variety of topics in applied and socio linguistics.. At present, I am drawing on political economy to develop frameworks for understanding globalization, internationalisation, multiculturalism, bi/multilingualism, identity and social movements. In my most recent work I have focussed on neoliberalism as the dominant ideology/rationality in contemporary societies, inequality in 21st century societies, and class as a key dimension of being in the world. This orientation is reflected in three books, Neoliberalism and Applied Linguistics (Routledge, 2012; co-authored, with John Gray and Marnie Holborow), Social Class in Applied Linguistics (Routledge, 2014) and Political Economy in Sociolinguistics (Bloomsbury, 2018), as well as  numerous articles and book chapters. My latest book, Post-truth and Political Discourse (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019) came out in October 2018.  

Selected publications

- Block D 2018, Political Economy in Sociolinguistics: Neoliberalism, Inequality and Social Class, Bloomsbury, London

- Block D 2018, 'Some thoughts on CDS and its Marxist political economy bases', Critical Discourse Studies, vol.15, no. 4, pp 390 - 401.

- Block D 2018, 'The political economy of language education research (or the lack thereof): Nancy Fraser and the case of translanguaging', Critical Inquiry in Language Studies, vol. 15, no. 4, pp 237-257.

- Block D 2018, 'What would Karl say? The entrepreneur as ideal (and cool) citizen in 21stcentury societies', Language Sciences. vol 70, pp 16-25.

- Block D 2018, 'Some thoughts on education and the discourse of global neoliberalism', Language and Intercultural Communication, vol. 18, no. 5, pp 576-584.

- Block D 2018, 'Class and class warfare', In J Flowerdew & J Richardson (eds) Routledge handbook of critical discourse analysis (pp. 345-358). London: Routledge.

- Block D 2018, 'The materiality and semiosis of inequality, class struggle and warfare: the case of home evictions in Spain', In R Wodak & B Forchtner (eds) Routledge handbook of language and politics (pp. 646-659). London: Routledge.

- Block D 2018 'Inequality and class in language policy and planning', In J Tollefson & M Pérez-Milans (eds) The Oxford handbook of language policy and planning (pp. 568-588). Oxford: Oxford University Press. 


Selected research activities

*Co-PI, MINECO Project FFI2016-76383-P: Towards an empirical assessment of the impact of English-medium instruction at university: language learning, disciplinary knowledge and academic identities(ASSEMID), 2016-2019.

*Post-doc tutor, Juan de la Cierva. IJCI-2015-25191: Victor Corona. Exploring the class and race-based subjectivities of the chilfren of immigrants in Catalonia 

*19 conference papers given in 2018

*Editor, Routledge book series Language, Society and Political Economy

*Associate Editor, Applied Linguistics Review

*Reviewing academic journal articles, grant proposals and book proposals