Chapter
1
Applied
Linguistics in the Contemporary World
(James
Simpson)
This handbook is a reference work covering key
topics in applied linguistics. Each chapter provides an accessible introductory
overview of an area of applied linguistics.
A. Applied Linguistics
Applied linguistics is the academic
field which connects knowledge about language to decision-making in the real
world. Applied linguistics mediates between theory and practice. The origins of
applied linguistics lie in the mid-twentieth century effort to give an academic
underpinning to the study of language teaching and learning. Until at least the
1980s applied linguistics was most closely associated with the problems and
puzzles surrounding language pedagogy, learning and acquisition.
This handbook show us that applied
linguistics concerns range from the well-established ones of language learning,
teaching, testing, and teacher education, to matters as disparate as language
and the law, the language of institutions, medical communication, media
discourse, translation and interpreting, and language planning. Applied
linguistics engages with contemporary social questions of culture, ethnicity,
gender, identity, ageing, and migration. Applied linguistics adopt perpectives
on language in use spanning critical discourse analysis, linguistics
ethnography, sociocultural theories, literacy, stylistics and sociolinguistics.
And applied linguistics drawn upon descriptions of language from traditions
such as cognitive linguistics, corpus linguitics, generative linguistics and
systemic functional linguistics, among others.
B. The Scope of This Volume
Each chapter in this volume focuses on
specific area of applied linguistics, covering a history of the area, a
critical discussion of its main current issues, and an indication of its
emergent debates and future trajectory.
1. Part I : Applied linguistics in action
This part consists of chapters on a variety of applied linguistics
topics which explain ways in which the study of language involves not only the
description of real-world matters, but suggestions about how they can be
addressed.
a. Language Policy and Planning
It has a long history in terms of interventions into language
practices, as Lionel Wee says. Wee examines the valuable contributions which
applied linguistics can make in this difficult area that is language policy and
planning.
b. Business Communication
It refers specifically to English business communication and
English for Busines Purposes. They trace the development of an applied
linguistics interest in business communication to sociolinguistically-informed
English for Specific Purposes (ESP), genre analysis, and communication studies.
c. Translation and Interpreting
Mona Baker and Luis Perez-Gonzales adopt an ideologically critical
stance towards their topic, that is translation and interpreting. It has social
relevance in gobalized, postcolonial society.
d. Lexicography
Thierry Fontenelle focuses on the pedagogical dictionaries for foreign language learners
and bilingual dictionaries.
e. The Media
Anne O'Keeffe concerned with new technology, her chapter on The
Media. It discusses the applied linguistic interest in print and broadcast
genres.
f. Institutional Discourse
It describes how institutions are held together by language, and
how a study of the language of institutions can afford insights into the way
they function.
g. Medical Communication
It focuses on the language practices surrounding the
doctor-patient relationship, in consultations and other encounters.
h. Clinical Linguistics
It involves the study of how language and communication may be
impaired. It has interdisciplinarity and connections with social and medical
sciences as well as linguistics.
i. Language and Ageing
It is covering the effects of ageing on language use and cognitive
processing.
j. Forensic Linguistics
It permits linguists to make positive contributions to the
operation of law and thus society.
2. Part II : Language learning, language
education
The topics in this part clears the ground for a considered
reflection of the field for those professionals for whom language learning and
teaching are their daily concern.
a. Key Concepts in
Language Learning and Language Education
b. Second Language
Acquisition
c. Language Teaching
Methodology
d. Technology and
Language Learning
It describes the purposes for which digital technology has been
used in language learning.
e. Language Teacher
Education
It stresses the connections between contexts an initial and
continuing teacher education, regardless of the languages at issue or where the
activity takes place.
f. Bilingual Education
g. English for Academic
Purposes
Although EAP relates to the very practical matter of assisting
learner's study of English, research in the are has contributed to applied
linguistics theory more generally.
h. Language Testing
It includes a treatment of validity and test validation, and
critical discussion of emerging debates.
i. Classroom Discourse
It explains how discourse analysis is employed to study a range of
issues relating to language use in language classrooms.
j. Language Socialization
It is concerned with how novices are socialized to be competent
members in the 'target culture' through language use, and how they are socialized
to use language.
3. Part III : Language, culture, and
identity
Chapters in this part give voice to the recognition that matters
of culture and identity are intertwined with language use, and with knowledge
about language.
a. Culture
Claire Kramsch discusses the development of an interest in culture
in apllied linguistics.
b. Identity and The
Individual
For Bonny Norton, the study of identity affords an insight into
'the relationship between the language learner and the larger social world'.
c. Gender
d. Ethnicity
e. Sign Languages
It is defined as the very particular issues relating to the
description and use of the group of languages.
f. Globalization
It discusses the dominance of one language or variety of a
language over others.
g. World Englishes
It is concerned the position and role of word languages, and the
growth of English in particular.
h. Linguistic Imperialism
In this chapter, Suresh Canagarajah and Selim Bin Said examined
world languages from a more critical perspective.
i. Multilingualism
Jasone Cenoz and Durk Gorter note that 'a traditional monolingual
view has seen multilingualism as a problem'.
j. Language and Migration
Migration is increasingly of interest to language professionals.
4. Part IV : Perspectives on language in
use
The varied and intersecting chapters in this part examine
approaches to the study of language use, language development in the brain and
the mind, and language in society.
a. Discourse Analysis
It has been highly influential in pushing the entire field of
applied linguistics towards its current independent status.
b. Critical Discourse
Analysis
It is concerned the investigation of how 'language use may be
affirming and indeed reproducing the perspectives, values and ways of talkung
of the powerful, which may not be in the interests of the less powerful'.
c. Neurolinguistics
It is the study of language and the brain, is a truly
interdiciplinary pursuit, involving neuroscience, psychology, linguistics,
speech pathology and biology.
d. Psycholinguistics
It explores some familiar territory for applied linguistics.
e. Sociocultural and
Cultural-Historical Theories of Language Development
It stresses the relationship between an individual's development
and 'the social and material conditions of everyday life, including those
comprising formal instructional settings'.
f. Sociolinguistics
It concerns language in social context, language change and
variation, and the signalling and interpretation of meaning in interaction, all
matters of central relevance and connection to applied linguistics.
g. Linguistics Ethnography
It is a fast-growing area which combines ethnography with
linguistics and other strategies to investigate social processes.
h. Literacy
Doris Warriner regards language and literacy practices as
contextually situated.
i. Stylistics
It is concerned with the description and interpretation of
distinctive linguistic choices and patterns in general and literacy texts.
5. Part V : Descriptions of language for
applied linguistics
This part opens with three chapters of importance to language
teaching and learning.
a. Grammar
Grammar in its 'narrow sense' that is morphology and syntax.
b. Lexis
Lexis is described as the area of language study where form and
meaning meet.
c. Phonetics and
Phonology
The
following three chapters present competing accounts of language description.
a.
Systemic
Functional Linguistics
It views language as a social
semiotic, a system of meaning-making embedded in social contexts of use.
b.
Generative Grammar
It is concerned with the relevance of
an area of language description frequently misunderstood as not relevant to
applied linguistics.
c. The Emergence of Language as a Complex
Adaptive System
It describes the emergent patternings of language, and how these
are revealed when it is viewed as a complex system.
