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In an era dominated by big data and technological advancements that enable researchers to mine, organize, quantify, track, share, analyze, and visually display millions of data points with great efficiency and speed, case study or small-N research might seem rather quaint--a throwback to simpler, less complicated times perhaps, when researchers could focus on the here and now: readily observable, accessible, multidimensional individuals, events, and sites,1often in researchers' immediate environments. Yet case study continues to be widely used in research in the health sciences, social sciences, and humanities despite the obvious advances being made with other methods and tools of inquiry and on a much larger scale.2The study of individual cases is also a powerful and pervasive educational and clinical tool in many disciplines and professions.
Case studies in applied linguistics have contributed substantially to theories and models in such areas as language development, learner motivation and identity, teacher cognition and development, language attrition and shift, acculturation and socialization, and familial or workplace multilingualism and pragmatics (see, e.g., Casanave, 2010; Duff, 2008a, 2012a, 2012b; Harklau, 2008; K. Richards, 2011; other topics are reviewed in the following sections). In addition to contributing to theory, findings from such studies have often influenced educational policies and practices. They have helped practitioners and stakeholders better understand the experiences and issues affecting people in various socioeducational and linguistic settings. This attention to individual cases has thus raised awareness of the complexities associated with multilingualism and language teaching, learning, and use internationally, particularly in increasingly mobile, transnational, and multilingual societies impacted by globalization (e.g., cases in Benson & Cooker, 2013).
In this review article, I briefly describe the history, significance, contributions, and recent advances being made in case study research in applied linguistics. After providing a methodological overview in the first part of the article, I present examples of interpretive qualitative case studies of additional-language learners and users in four thematic areas.
FOUNDATIONS OF CASE STUDIES OF LANGUAGE LEARNING AND USE
Case study, as a research approach or strategy, has its origins in sociology, psychology, linguistics, and other subject areas that have informed theory, methodology, and practice in our field since its earliest days (see Duff, 2008a). Whereas case studies in psychology...