Abstract
It is hardly surprising that five of the book’s 14 chapters – more than one third
of them – are concerned with engaging with the strategic uncertainties of
researching language and literacies. This proportion reflects the centrality of
language in meaning-making in all societies, as well as the multiple ways –
implicit as well as explicit, covert as much as overt – in which literacies
empower some individuals and groups and disenfranchise others. As the
authors represented in this section of the book ably demonstrate, researching
language and literacies is a strategically uncertain enterprise – or a ‘risky
business’, as several of the authors in this book term it – imbued with ethical
and political responsibilities and imbricated with risks connected directly with
people’s life chances and lifeworlds.