Explores how to develop children's understanding of mathematical vocabulary. Presents a lesson in which the class works on the concept of dimension, and issues raised by a discussion of applied linguistics and mathematics education. Discussion was stimulated by advice from the National Numeracy Strategy (NNS) vocabulary book. (KHR)

I draw attention to the distinction between reductionist views of "language" and the rich and complex ways in which we might approach language as social practice and suggest the latter view is evident in the set of papers collected here. Socially oriented linguists, including those in New Literacy Studies (NLS), look beyond reductionism, to…