Applied Linguistics

What is applied linguistics?

Vivian Cook, University of Newcastle upon Tyne

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must be up-to-date � and linguistic theories change so fast that undergraduates discover their first year courses are out of date by their final year.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.

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.

History of Applied Linguistics

G. Richard Tucker

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 Appliquee (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 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, theCenter 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.

Major branches of applied linguistics:

• bilingualism
• multilingualism
• computer-mediated communication (CMC)
• conversation analysis
• language assessment
• discourse analysis
• language pedagogy
• sociolinguistics
• second language acquisition
• language planning and policies
• forensic linguistics
• translation

The term multilingualism can refer to an occurrence regarding an individual speaker who uses two (bilingualism)or more languages, a community of speakers where two or more languages are used, or between speakers of different languages.

Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC) can be defined broadly as any form of human interaction across two or more networked computers. While the term has traditionally referred to those communications that occur via computer-mediated formats (i.e., instant messages, e-mails, chat rooms)it has also been applied to other forms of text-based interaction such as text messaging (Thurlow, Lengel, & Tomic,2004). Research on CMC focuses largely on the social effects of different computer-supported communication technologies. Many recent studies involve Internet-based social networking supported by social software.

Conversation analysis (commonly abbreviated as CA) is the study of talk in interaction. CA generally attempts to describe the orderliness, structure and sequential patterns of interaction, whether this is institutional (in the school, doctor’s surgery, courts or elsewhere) or casual conversation. Thus, use of the term �conversation� to label this disciplinary movement is misleading if read in a colloquial sense, as many have. In light of this, one of CA�s principal practitioners, Emanuel Schegloff, has more recently identified �talk-in-interaction� as CA�s topic. Perhaps for this same reason, others (e.g., Jonathan Potter) who use CA methods identify themselves as discourse analysts (DA), though that term was first used to identify researchers using methods different from CA (e.g., Levinson, 1983), and still identifies a group of scholars larger than those who use only CA methods.

Inspired by ethnomethodology, it was developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s principally by the sociologist Harvey Sacks and, among others, his close associates Emanuel Schegloff and Gail Jefferson. Sacks died early in his career, but his work was championed by others in his field, and CA has now become an established force in sociology, anthropology, linguistics, speech-communication and psychology. It is particularly influential in interactional sociolinguistics, discourse analysis and discursive psychology, as well as being a coherent discipline in its own right. Recently CA techniques of sequential analysis have been employed by phoneticians to explore the fine phonetic detail of speech.

Discourse analysis (DA), or discourse studies, is a general term for a number of approaches to analyzing written, spoken or signed language use.

The objects of discourse analysis�discourse, writing, talk, conversation, communicative event, etc.�are variously defined in terms of coherent sequences of sentences, propositions, speech acts or turns-at-talk. Contrary to much of traditional linguistics, discourse analysts not only study language use ‘beyond the sentence boundary’, but also prefer to analyze ‘naturally occurring’ language use, and not invented examples.

Discourse analysis has been taken up in a variety of social science disciplines, including linguistics, anthropology, sociology, cognitive psychology, social psychology, international relations communication studies and translation studies, each of which is subject to its own assumptions, dimensions of analysis, and methodologies.

Sociolinguistics is the study of the effect of any and all aspects of society, including cultural norms, expectations, and context on the way language is used. Sociolinguistics overlaps to a considerable degree with pragmatics.

It also studies how lects differ between groups separated by certain social variables, e.g., ethnicity, religion, status, gender, level of education, etc., and how creation and adherence to these rules is used to categorize individuals in social class or socio-economic classes. As the usage of a language varies from place to place (dialect), language usage varies among social classes, and it is these sociolects that sociolinguistics studies.

The social aspects of language were in the modern sense first studied by Indian and Japanese linguists in the 1930s, and also by Gauchat in Switzerland in the early 1900s, but none received much attention in the West until much later. The study of the social motivation of language change, on the other hand, has its foundation in the wave model of the late 19th century. Sociolinguistics in the west first appeared in the 1960s and was pioneered by linguists such as William Labov in the US and Basil Bernstein in the UK.

Second language acquisition is the process by which people learn a second language in addition to their native language(s). The term second language is used to describe the acquisition of any language after the acquisition of the mother tongue. There is also research into the similarities and differences of Third Language Acquisition. The language to be learned is often referred to as the “target language” or “L2″, compared to the first language, “L1″. Second language acquisition may be abbreviated “SLA”, or L2A, for “L2 acquisition”.

The term “language acquisition” became commonly used after Stephen Krashen contrasted it with formal and non-constructive “learning.” However, “second language acquisition” or “SLA” has become established as the preferred term for this academic discipline.

Though SLA is often viewed as part of applied linguistics, it is typically concerned with the language system and learning processes themselves, whereas applied linguistics may focus more on the experiences of the learner, particularly in the classroom. Additionally, SLA has mostly examined naturalistic acquisition, where learners acquire a language with little formal training or teaching.

Pragmatics is the study of the ability of natural language speakers to communicate more than that which is explicitly stated. The ability to understand another speaker’s intended meaning is called pragmatic competence. An utterance describing pragmatic function is described as metapragmatic. Another perspective is that pragmatics deals with the ways we reach our goal in communication. Suppose, a person wanted to ask someone else to stop smoking. This can be achieved by using several utterances. The person could simply say, ‘Stop smoking, please!’ which is direct and with clear semantic meaning; alternatively, the person could say, ‘Whew, this room could use an air purifier’ which implies a similar meaning but is indirect and therefore requires pragmatic inference to derive the intended meaning.

Pragmatics is regarded as one of the most challenging aspects for language learners to grasp, and can only truly be learned with experience.

Forensic linguistics is the name given to a number of sub-disciplines within applied linguistics, and which relate to the interface between language, the law and crime.

The range of topics within forensic linguistics is diverse but research occurs in the following areas.

Translation is the action of interpretation of the meaning of a text, and subsequent production of an equivalent text, also called a translation, that communicates the same message in another language. The text to be translated is called the “source text,” and the language it is to be translated into is called the “target language”; the final product is sometimes called the “target text.”

Translation must take into account constraints that include context, the rules of grammar of the two languages, their writing conventions, and their idioms. A common misconception is that there exists a simple “word-for-word” correspondence between any two languages, and that translation is a straightforward mechanical process. A word-for-word translation does not take into account context, grammar, conventions, and idioms.

Translation is fraught with the potential for “spilling over” of idioms and usages from one language into the other, since both languages repose within the single brain of the translator. Such spilling-over easily produces linguistic hybrids such as “Franglais” (French-English), “Spanglish” (Spanish-English), “Poglish” (Polish-English) and “Portunol” (Portuguese-Spanish).

The art of translation is as old as written literature. Parts of the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh, among the oldest known literary works, have been found in translations into several Asiatic languages of the second millennium BCE. The Epic of Gilgamesh may have been read, in their own languages, by early authors of the Bible and of the Iliad.

With the advent of computers, attempts have been made to computerize or otherwise automate the translation of natural-language texts (machine translation) or to use computers as an aid to translation (computer-assisted translation).