An Introduction to Applied Linguistics

3 CHANGE IN APPLIED LINGUISTICS PRACTICE
Applied linguistics as practised in the 1960s is recorded in the widely praised volume
by S. P. Corder (
Introducing Applied Linguistics
, 1973). We can consider the view of
applied linguistics set out in that volume as essentially modernist (or structuralist).
Changes have inevitably taken place since the Corder book appeared and therefore
the question we address is whether those changes can in any sense be regarded as
post-structuralist or postmodernist. We might speculate that it would be surprising
if that were not the case, since the involvement of applied linguistics in both the
humanities and the social sciences has exposed it to the zeitgeist.
Corder divides his book into three parts:
1. Language and Language Learning
2. Linguistics and Language Teaching
3. The Techniques of Applied Linguistics
As we have seen, he writes: ‘I am enough of a purist to believe that “applied
linguistics” presupposes “linguistics”; that one cannot apply what one does not
possess’ (Corder 1973: 7).
Corder’s orientation in applied linguistics is, as we saw in Chapter 1, that of a
linguist interested in application. It is not surprising therefore that half the book
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(Parts 1 and 2) deals with language from a linguistic point of view. The subsections
here are:
Part 1
Views of language
Functions of language
The variability of language
Language as a symbolic system
Part 2
Linguistics and language teaching
Psycholinguistics and language teaching
Applied linguistics and language teaching
The description of languages: a primary application of linguistic theory
While Part 1 provides a linguistic view of language, Part 2 offers a linguistic approach
to language teaching. Part 3 then examines the practice of applied linguistics, now
that the linguistic scene has been set, making it possible to apply what one knows
rather than what one does not.
In comparing Corder’s view of applied linguistics with what has happened since
his book appeared, it is on his Part 3, where he is concerned with the practice of
applied linguistics, that our comparison should focus. While leaving a discussion
of the theorising (in particular the approach of so-called critical applied linguistics)
to the last part of this chapter, we recognise that such a distinction between theory
and practice is difficult to support. For those who profess a critical applied linguistics
approach to the subject, what they do is as much practice as it is theory. Nevertheless,
to facilitate discussion, we will maintain the fiction that practice and theory are
separate.
Corder’s Part 3: ‘The Techniques of Applied Linguistics’ contains the following
subsections:
Comparison of varieties
Contrastive linguistic studies
The study of learners’ language: error analysis
The structure of the syllabus
Pedagogic grammars
Evaluation, validation and tests
The first three of these he tells us concern selection; it would appear that the next two
deal with grading or sequencing and the last one is a free-standing discussion of
monitoring the outcomes of the other five chapters. To an extent, therefore, this
division by Corder represents an older model, that of language-teaching method -
ology (Mackey 1965) or methodics, the division of language-teaching studies into
three parts: selection, gradation and presentation. Here we miss out on the last part
which Corder presumably regards as not properly part of applied linguistics, more
the concern of language-teacher education.
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Varieties, contrastive analysis, error analysis, syllabus development, pedagogical
grammars and testing: that was the practice of applied linguistics in the 1960s. When
we compare the 1960s and the 2000s there are two differences. The first is the
expected one that these areas have developed over time: the comparison of varieties
has branched into world Englishes, stylistics, discourse analysis, gendered language
and so on. Contrastive linguistic studies and the study of learners’ language (error
analysis) have moved on apace, at first contrastive studies being revitalised by
the study of learners’ language to become the current study of second-language
acquisition, itself also heavily influenced by developments in linguistic grammars.
Syllabus studies have become curriculum studies, widening their brief and thereby
taking far more of the context in which language teaching takes place into account.
Pedagogical grammars might well now be called a pedagogical approach to grammar,
while evaluation, validation and tests may well be termed assessment or even perhaps
classroom-based assessment.
The second difference concerns what was glaringly missing in the list of chapters
in the Corder book. It contained no single chapter with sociolinguistics in its title.
This omission seems grave in view of the take-over of applied linguistics by the social
turn since 1975. The same is not true of linguistics in its Chomskyan canon, where
the quest is still very much in the realist tradition for the truth of language in itself
or in the head, with no appeal to context. There are many linguists who do not share
this view of linguistics and who consider that a linguistics without the social
dimension is a contradiction. But in applied linguistics the social aspect dominates,
and it does do for two reasons. The first reason is that it has been accepted that the
social is essential to all understanding of language in use, that in the specific case of
language teaching all formal language learning must take account of the context in
which that learning takes place and furthermore that the context determines and
affects that learning, hence the imposing on to linguistic competence of the super -
seding com municative competence.
The second reason (and this is not wholly unrelated to the influence of the social)
is that there is noticeable now a loss of confidence in the techniques offered by Corder
and widely used in the 1960s and 1970s (and indeed 1980s) as general statements
of how to proceed. Discourse studies is a good example of that loss of confidence
since what it does with exemplary success is to discuss how to analyse and read