Issues of 'deficit' play a crucial role in the social world in fields as diverse as:

Christopher N. Candlin is Senior Research Professor in Linguistics at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia. He researches in discourse analysis and pragmatics especially in the contexts of public institutions and professions. He has held Professorships in Applied Linguistics at Lancaster, UK, The City University of Hong Kong, The UK Open University, and Honorary Professorships at the Universities of Lancaster, Nottingham and Cardiff, and at Beijing Foreign Studies University. He was also President of the International Association of Applied Linguistics (AILA) for two terms between 1996 and 2002. He publishes widely in Applied Linguistics and sits on the Editorial Boards of several major journals in the field. Jonathan Crichton is Lecturer in Applied Linguistics and Research Fellow in the Research Centre for Languages and Cultures at the University of South Australia. His research focuses on the role of language in professional-lay interactions that shape people's life chances. He has collaborated extensively with practitioners in fields such as aged care, psychiatry, language education and law, presenting and writing interdisciplinary papers in a range of international journals and edited collections. He is the author of The Discourse of Commercialization (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010).