An Introduction to Applied Linguistics

Introduction to Applied
Linguistics
in the series Edinburgh Textbooks in Applied Linguistics. Since 1999,
when ETAL 1 was published, eight volumes have appeared. These are, in order of
publication:
Teaching Literature in a Second Language
(Brian Parkinson and Helen Reid
Thomas) 2000
Materials Evaluation and Design for Language Teaching
(Ian McGrath) 2002
The Social Turn in Second Language Acquisition
(David Block) 2003
Language Assessment and Programme Evaluation
(Brian Lynch) 2003
Linguistics and the Language of Translation
(Kirsten Malmkjaer) 2005
Pragmatic Stylistics
(Elizabeth Black) 2006
Language Planning and Education
(Gibson Ferguson) 2006
Language and Politics
(John Joseph) 2006
The idea throughout the series has been that an author should explore a problem area
of language use in which applied linguistics can take an informed position, informed
both by understanding of the context, widely interpreted, and of the language
involved. In addition, we attempted to link specialisms as a way of examining
our premise that there is a general field of applied linguistics which is not just an
agglomeration of unconnected interests. Let us look briefly at the eight volumes.
In the Preface to 
Teaching Literature in a Second Language,
the authors write:
Although the book contains practical ideas, the emphasis is on principles rather
than on specific recipes or model lessons, and the aim is to inform teacher choice
rather than promote a particular method.
(Parkinson and Reid Thomas 2000: ix)
In his 
Materials Evaluation and Design for Language Teaching
, McGrath maintains:
Those with a responsibility for the development and administration of language-
learning programmes in either educational or workplace settings will need little
persuading that materials evaluation and design, along with, for example, syllabus
design, learner assessment and the study of classroom processes are centrally
important applied-linguistic activities.
(McGrath 2002: 1)
History and ‘definitions’ 7
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In 
The Social Turn in Second Language Acquisition
, Block sets out to:
explore the extent to which Second Language acquisition researchers … might
adopt a more interdisciplinary and socially informed approach to their research
[taking] a cue from recent debate about the present and future of applied
linguistics.
(Block 2003: 1)
Lynch’s purpose in 
Language Assessment and Programme Evaluation
is to:
present the range of paradigms, perspectives, designs, purposes, methods, analyses
and approaches to validity and ethics that commonly define language assessment
and programme evaluation.
(Lynch 2003: vii)
Malmkjaer in 
Linguistics and the Language of Translation
writes that the:
book is for students of translation, languages and linguistics who would like to
enhance their understanding of the relationships between translation studies and
linguistics – of how linguistics can be applied to the creation, description and
constructive criticism of translation.
(Malmkjaer 2005: ix)
Black attempts to show in 
Pragmatic Stylistics
that:
Applied Linguistics can make a contribution to the study of literature … The
ways in which we interpret ordinary language use are relevant to the ways in which
we interpret literary discourse – which is only the language of the time, written by
people who are more adept at manipulating its nuances than most of us. But I
shall try to show that we follow roughly the same procedures whether we are
listening to a friend, reading a newspaper or reading a literary work.
(Black 2006: 1)
Ferguson maintains in 
Language Planning and Education
that his book:
is approached from an applied linguistics perspective, meaning that educational
concerns and the relationships of language planning to education feature
prominently … [L]anguage planning/language policy is an interdisciplinary
field with a very wide scope, geographically as well as conceptually.
(Ferguson 2006: ix)
In his 
Language and Politics
, Joseph writes that:
in the last decade, applied linguistics has abandoned the structuralist view of
language as a self-contained, neutral system, in favour of a conception of language
as political from top to bottom. This book examines the consequences of that
conceptual shift, as it draws together key topics including language choice,
linguistic correctness, (self-) censorship and hate speech, the performance of
ethnic and national identity in language, gender politics and ‘powerful’ language,
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An Introduction to Applied Linguistics
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rhetoric and propaganda, and changing conceptions of written language, driven
in part by technological advances.
(Joseph 2006: ix)
The socialisation of both the child and the adult is an acculturation process:
for the child, the initiating into the language and culture of the group, and for
the adult, the introducing into the responsibilities of being an adult within his or
her community. Independent actors engage in various domains, one of the most
important being that of work. Much of the professionalising process is made up of
acculturation into the shared knowledge and skills of the profession the initiate is
entering. This is the case of applied linguistics and a clue to the requirements made
of the neophyte can be found in the curricula of institutions offering qualifications
in applied linguistics. What these show (the sample surveyed including institutions
in Europe, the USA, Australia and Asia) is a degree of similarity. In the core
curriculum, all institutions required a course in linguistic analysis, over half in
research methods and again in sociolinguistics, and just under half in SLA and in
psycholinguistics. The options on offer, of which students were expected to take one,
two or three, ranged very widely, from statistics to translation. But in all cases, one
core or one option in each institution had the term ‘teaching’ in its title (TESOL,
Teacher Education and so on).