What Is Applied Linguistics [PDF]

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What is Applied Linguistics ? Applied Linguistics By Kamil Wiśniewski Aug 29th, 2007 http://www.tlumaczenia-angielski.info/linguistics/applied-linguistics.htm Applied linguistics is an umbrella term that covers a wide set of numerous areas of study connected by the focus on the language that is actually used. The emphasis in applied linguistics is on language users and the ways in which they use languages, contrary to theoretical linguistics which studies the language in the abstract not referring it to any particular context, or language, like Chomskyan generative grammar for example. Interestingly even among applied linguists there is a difference of opinion as to the scope, the domains and limits of applied linguistics. There are many issues investigated by applied linguists such as discourse analysis, sign language, stylistics and rhetoric as well as language learning by children and adults, both as mother tongue and second or foreign language. Correlation of language and gender, as well as the transfer of information in media and interpersonal communication are analyzed by applied linguists. Also forensic linguistics, interpretation and translation, together with foreign language teaching methodology and language change are developed by applied linguistics. Shortly after the introduction of the term applied linguistics it was associated mainly with first, second and foreign language teaching, however nowadays it is seen as more interdisciplinary branch of science. Although in certain parts of the world language teaching remains the major concern of applied linguists, issues such as speech pathologies and determining the levels of literacy of societies, or language processing along with differences in communication between various cultural groups - all gain interest elsewhere. In European union the focus of applies linguistics is put on the issues connected with the language policy of this multilingual community. The primary aim is to keep the balance in fulfilling the need for lingua franca and maintaining smaller languages in order for them not to get devalued. This is a pressing matter as with the migration of people within the European union and from outside its boarders the mixture of languages is getting more and more complex. Therefore, the focus is also put on analyzing language attitudes, adopting common language policy, creating teaching textbooks and other materials. As it can be seen there are many trends in applied linguistics, some interconnected, others not having too much in common. There are, however, some very general tendencies among applied linguists to put more effort on certain investigations such as languages of wider communication, corpus analysis, or critical applied linguistics. When it comes to languages of wider communication it is clear that with the increasing numbers of international travels and technological advances the need for an international language raises. As English is the contemporary lingua franca applied linguists attempt to include language policy and planning in their interest, but is also concerned with analyzing language and identity, and special educational needs. Corpus analysis takes both quantitative and qualitative approach to the study of language and applied linguists focus of the identification of patterns of language use depending on social context, audiences, genres and settings. Critical applied linguistics is interested in the social problems connected with language such as unemployment, illiteracy and pedagogy.

Brown K. (Editor) 2005. Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics – 2nd Edition. Oxford: Elsevier.

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What is Applied Linguistics? Applied linguistics is notoriously hard to define. What sets it apart from other areas of linguistics? How has it evolved over the years? What do applied linguists do? We asked ten leading and up-and-coming academics to give us their answer to the question: ‘What is applied linguistics?’ Below are their responses. Take a look at them and then add to the debate by sending us your definition. Of course, several commentators have offered definitions of applied linguistics in recent decades, including Crystal (1980: 20), Richards et al, (1985: 29), Brumfit (1995: 27) and Rampton (1997: 11). For me, applied linguistics means taking language and language theories as the basis from which to elucidate how communication is actually carried out in real life, to identify problematic or challenging issues involving language in many different contexts, and to analyse them in order to draw out practical insights and implications that are useful for the people in those contexts. As an applied linguist, I’m primarily interested in offering people practical and illuminating insights into how language and communication contribute fundamentally to interaction between people.

Anne Burns Professor in the Faculty of Human Sciences, Macquarie University, Sydney

© Cambridge University Press 2009 2 www.cambridge.org/elt A wit once described an applied linguist as someone with a degree in linguistics who was unable to get a job in a linguistics department. More seriously, looking back at the term ‘applied linguistics’, it first emerged as an attempt to provide a theoretical basis for the activities of language teaching (witness Pit Corder’s book on the subject from 1973). Later, it became an umbrella term for a variety of disciplines which focus on language issues in such fields as law, speech pathology, language planning, and forensic science. In the meantime, language teaching has evolved its own theoretical foundations, and these include second language acquisition, teacher cognition, pedagogical grammar, and so on, and there is a declining interest in viewing ‘applied linguistics’ as having any relevance to language teaching. Some years ago, many graduate programs in language teaching were labelled as programs in applied linguistics. Today they are generally called programs in TESOL. Many specialists in language teaching, such as myself, don’t call themselves ‘applied linguists’. We are what we are – specialists in language teaching, and we don’t see that adding the label ‘applied linguistics’ to our field adds any further understanding to what we do. Where those in other disciplines find the label ‘applied linguistics’ of use to them, is of course, something they need to decide for themselves.

Jack C. Richards Professor and part-time lecturer at the Regional Language Centre, Singapore

Applied linguistics is any attempt to work with language in a critical and reflective way, with some ultimate practical goal in mind. This includes (amongst other things): deliberately trying to learn (or teach) a foreign language or to develop your ability in your native language; overcoming a language impairment; translating from one language to another; editing a piece of writing in a linguistically thoughtful way. It also includes doing any research or developing any ideas or tools which aim to help people do these sorts of things.

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Phil Durrant Visiting Assistant Professor, Graduate School of Education, Bilkent University

© Cambridge University Press 2009 3 www.cambridge.org/elt ‘Applied linguistics’ (AL) is one of several academic disciplines focusing on how language is acquired and used in the modern world. It is a somewhat eclectic field that accommodates diverse theoretical approaches, and its interdisciplinary scope includes linguistic, psych ological and educational topics. Although the field’s original focus was the study of foreign/second languages, this has been extended to cover first language issues, and nowadays many scholars would consider sociolinguistics and pragmatics to be part of the AL rubric. Recently, AL conferences and journals have reflected the growing influence of psychologybased approaches, which in turn is a reflection of the increasing prevalence of cognitive (neuro)science in the study of human mental functions.

Zoltán Dörnyei Professor of Psycholinguistics, University of Nottingham

In my discipline (I am a Germanist), applied linguistics is perceived almost exclusively as research into the teaching and learning of the foreign-language, often resulting in the production of teaching materials. However, a broader definition (e.g. Dick Hudson – see references and below) sees applied linguistics as concerned with providing theoretical and empirical foundations for investigating and solving language-related problems in the ‘real world’. This definition would be relevant to some of my research interests; for example, the problems facing speakers of non-standard dialects at schools in Germany. Nevertheless, I tend to regard myself as a sociolinguist rather than an applied linguist, because my main interests are in investigating the use of language as a social practice in a more general way. As is the case for most sociolinguists, I study language in use in a social context although I may not have specific reallife problems in mind when embarking on research

Wini Davies Reader in German, Aberystwyth University

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Applied linguistics (AL) provides the theoretical and descriptive foundations for the investigation and solution of language-related problems, especially those of language education (first-language, second-language and foreign-language teaching and learning), but also problems of translation and interpretation, lexicography, forensic linguistics and (perhaps) clinical linguistics…The main distinguishing characteristic of AL is its concern with professional activities whose aim is to solve ‘real-world’ language-based problems, which means that research touches on a particularly wide range of issues - psychological, pedagogical, social, political and economic as well as linguistic. As a consequence, AL research tends to be interdisciplinary. It is generally agreed that in spite of its name AL is not simply the ‘application’ of research done in linguistics. On the one hand, AL has to look beyond linguistics for relevant research and theory, so AL research often involves the synthesis of

4 research from a variety of disciplines, including linguistics. On the other hand, AL has been responsible for the development of original research in a number of areas of linguistics - e.g. bilingualism, literacy, genre. Beyond this agreement, there is at least as much disagreement within AL as within linguistics about fundamental issues of theory and method, which leads (among other things) to differences of opinion about the relationships between the two disciplines.

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Richard Hudson Emeritus Professor of Linguistics, University College London

One way I can answer this broad question is by considering the Applied Linguistic issues that currently interest me, namely how languages interact and what differences we might expect when the languages concerned are not related to each other. For example, the Hong Kong language policy seeks to develop people who are trilingual in Cantonese, Putonghua and English. What specific linguistic difficulties will such learners face and how can we help them overcome them? What does it mean to be multilingual? Can we describe a multilingual model from which we could derive useful linguistic benchmarks for the language classroom?

Juliane House Professor of Foreign Language Teaching, Universität Hamburg

One answer to this question is that it is the study of language in order to address real-world concerns. Another is that it is the study of language, and languagerelated topics, in specified situations. The real-world concerns include language learning and teaching but also other issues such as professional communication, literacies, translation practices, language and legal or health issues, and many more. Applied linguistics is practically-oriented, but it is also theory-driven and interdisciplinary. Models of how languages are learned and stored, for example, are ‘applied linguistics’, as are descriptions of individual language varieties that prioritise actual and contextualised language use.

Susan Hunston Head of Department of English, University of Birmingham

© Cambridge University Press 2009 6 www.cambridge.org/elt Applied linguistics is a discipline which explores the relations between theory and practice in language with particular reference to issues of language use. It embraces contexts in which people use and learn languages and is a platform for systematically addressproblems involving the use of language and communication in real-world situations. Applied linguistics draws on a range of disciplines, including linguistics. In consequence, applied linguistics has applications in several areas of language study, including language learning and teaching, the psychology of language processing, discourse analysis, stylistics, corpus analysis, literacy studies and language planning and policies.

Dawn Knight Research Associate, University of Nottingham

How would you define applied linguistics?

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Do you agree with the descriptions given in this article? References

Corder, P. (1973) Introducing Applied Linguistics, Harmondsworth: Penguin. Crystal, D. (1980) A First Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics, London: André Deutsch. Brumfit, C. (1995) ‘Teacher professionalism and research’, in: Cook, G. & Seidlhofer, B. (eds.) (1995) Principles and Practice in Applied Linguistics, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp27-42. Hudson, R. Applied Linguistics, available online at: http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/dick/AL.html Rampton, B. (1997) ‘Retuning in applied linguistics?’, International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 7(1): 3-25. Richards, J.C., Platt, J. & Weber, H. (1985) Longman Dictionary of Applied Linguistics, London: Longman.

What is applied linguistics? Vivian Cook, Newcastle University http://homepage.ntlworld.com/vivian.c/Writings/Shorts/WhatisALl.htm If you tell someone you’re an applied linguist, they look at you with bafflement. If you amplify – it’s to do with linguistics – they still look baffled. You know, linguistics the science of language? Ah so you speak lots of languages? Well no, just English. So what do you actually do? Well I look at how people acquire languages and how we can teach them better. At last light begins to dawn and they tell you a story about how badly they were taught French at school. The problem is that the applied linguists themselves don’t have much clearer ideas about what the subject consists of. They argue over whether it necessarily has anything to do with language teaching or with linguistics and whether it includes the actual description of language. All of these views exist among applied linguists and are reflected in the MA courses available at British universities under the label of applied linguistics. The language teaching view of applied linguistics parallels TESOL or TEFL, by looking at ways of improving language teaching, backed by a more rigorous study of language. The motivation is that better teaching will be based on a better understanding of language. However in British universities language teaching itself is not highly valued, often carried out by ancillary staff, because it does not lend itself easily to the kind of research publications that university careers now depend upon. The closeness of the link to linguistics is also crucial. At one extreme you need the latest ideas hot from MIT on the principle that information about linguistics must be up-to-date – and linguistic theories change so fast that undergraduates discover their first year courses are out of date by their final year. It’s up to the end users how they make practical use of the ideas, not the applied linguists.

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This raises the issue whether other disciplines are as important as linguistics for applied linguistics. Psychology enters into many courses, as does education, particularly ideas about testing and about language learning. To some applied linguists the discipline draws on any subject with anything to say about language teaching or language learning. To others linguistics is the sole source of ideas. Sometime this is referred to as the issue of ‘autonomous applied linguistics’; is it a separate discipline or a poor relative of linguistics? To some, applied linguistics is applying theoretical linguistics to actual data. Hence the construction of dictionaries or the collection of ‘corpora’ of millions of words of English are applied linguistics, as are the descriptions of social networks or of gender differences (but not usually descriptions of grammar). Once applied linguistics seemed boundless, including the study of first language acquisition and computational linguistics. Now many who call themselves applied linguists seldom attend general organisations such as BAAL (British Association of Applied Linguistics) but go to more specialist conferences such as EUROSLA (European Second Language Association) for second language acquisition (SLA) or MATSDA (Materials Development Association) for materials construction. To many, however, applied linguistics has become synonymous with SLA (though never linked to first language acquisition). SLA research has had an enormous growth over the past decades. It enters into all of the above debates. Some people are concerned with classroom language acquisition because of its teaching implications, ; drawing mostly on psychological models of language and language processing and on social models of interaction and identity; others are concerned with SLA in natural settings. On another dimension, SLA can be seen as providing data to test out linguistic theories rather than to increase our knowledge of SLA itself; they are then more like linguists who happen to use SLA data than investigators of SLA in its own right. On a third dimension the linguistic world is more or less divided between those who see language as masses of things people have said and those who see it as knowledge in people’s minds. Some SLA researchers analyse large corpora of learner’s utterances or essays; others test their ideas against the barest minimum of data; neither side really accept that the other has a valid point of view.

Applied linguistics then means many things to many people. Discovering what a book or a course in applied linguistics is about involves reading the small print to discover its orientation. Those with an interest in linguistic theory are going to feel frustrated when bombarded with classroom teaching techniques; those who want to handle large amounts of spoken or written data will be disappointed by single example sentences or experiments. Of course many people discover unexpected delights. One of my students who came to an MA course as an EFL course-writer ended up doing a Ph.D. thesis and book on learnability theory. This does not mean that most prospective MA students should not look very carefully, say checking the titles of the modules that actually make up the degree scheme, before they back a particular horse.

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Applied Linguistics G. Richard Tucker http://www.lsadc.org/info/ling-fields-applied.cfm History of Applied Linguistics The term 'applied linguistics' refers to a broad range of activities which involve solving some language-related problem or addressing some language-related concern. It appears as though applied linguistics, at least in North America, was first officially recognized as an independent course at the University of Michigan in 1946. In those early days, the term was used both in the United States and in Great Britain to refer to applying a so-called 'scientific approach' to teaching foreign languages, including English for nonnative speakers. Early work to improve the quality of foreign language teaching by Professors Charles Fries (University of Michigan) and Robert Lado (University of Michigan, then Georgetown University) helped to bring definition to the field as did the 1948 publication of a new journal, Language Learning: A Quarterly Journal of Applied Linguistics. During the late 1950s and the early 1960s, the use of the term was gradually broadened to include what was then referred to as 'automatic translation'. In 1964 following two years of preparatory work financed by the Council of Europe, the Association Internationale de Linguistique Appliquée (the International Association of Applied Linguistics usually referred to by the French acronym AILA) was founded and its first international congress was held in Nancy, France. Papers for the congress were solicited in two distinct strands—foreign language teaching and automatic translation. Applied Linguistics Today Over the intervening years, the foci of attention have continued to broaden. Today the governing board of AILA describes applied linguistics 'as a means to help solve specific problems in society…applied linguistics focuses on the numerous and complex areas in society in which language plays a role.'* There appears to be consensus that the goal is to apply the findings and the techniques from research in linguistics and related disciplines to solve practical problems. To an observer, the most notable change in applied linguistics has been its rapid growth as an interdisciplinary field. In addition to foreign language teaching and machine translation, a partial sampling of issues considered central to the field of applied linguistics today includes topics such as language for special purposes (e.g. language and communication problems related to aviation, language disorders, law, medicine, science), language policy and planning, and language and literacy issues. For example, following the adoption of English as the working language for all international flight communication by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), some applied linguists concerned themselves with understanding the kinds of linguistic problems that occur when pilots or flight engineers from varying backgrounds communicate using a nonnative language and how to better train them to communicate in English more effectively. Some applied linguists are concerned with helping planners and legislators in countries develop and implement a language policy (e.g. planners are working in South Africa to specify and to further develop roles in education and government not only for English and Afrikaans but also for the other nine indigenous languages) or in helping groups develop scripts, materials, and literacy programs for previously unwritten languages (e.g. for many of the 850+ indigenous languages of Papua New Guinea). Other applied linguists have been concerned with developing the most effective programs possible to help adult newcomers to the United States or other countries, many of whom

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have limited if any prior education, develop literacy in the languages which they will need for survival and for occupational purposes. Other topics currently of concern to applied linguists are the broad issue of the optimal role of the mother tongue in the education of culturally and linguistically diverse students, the language of persuasion and politics, developing effective tools and programs for interpretation and translation, and language testing and evaluation. In the United Kingdom, the first school of applied linguistics is thought to have opened in 1957 at the University of Edinburgh with Ian Catford as Head. In the United States, a nonprofit educational organization, the Center for Applied Linguistics (CAL), was founded in 1959 with Charles Ferguson as its first Director. CAL's mission remains to 'promote the study of language and to assist people in achieving their educational, occupational, and social goals through more effective communication'. The organization carries out its mission by collecting and disseminating information through various clearinghouses that it operates, by conducting practical research, by developing practical materials and training individuals such as teachers, administrators, or other human resource specialists to use these to reduce the barriers that limited language proficiency can pose for culturally and linguistically diverse individuals as they seek full and effective participation in educational or occupational opportunities. Organizations In addition to the international organization AILA, there are also major national associations of applied linguists such as the American Association for Applied Linguistics (AAAL) and the British Association for Applied Linguistics (BAAL). The work of applied linguists is frequently presented or described in publications such as the journal Applied Linguistics (Oxford University Press) and the Annual Review of Applied Linguistics (Cambridge University Press). For further information, you should also see the Applied Linguistics Virtual Library.

*AILA Vademecum. Association Internationale de Linguistique Appliquée. Amsterdam, 1992, p. 2.