An Introduction to Applied Linguistics

7 APPLIED LINGUISTICS THE UNMARKED FORM
The influence of English on the development of applied linguistics cannot be
exaggerated (Phillipson 1992). In the medieval university Latin played the same role.
In order to develop an educated work-force for whom Latin then (as English now)
was the lingua franca, training in Latin structure and in logic, discourse and trans -
lation was necessary. Hence the emphasis on grammar in the 
trivium
(an analogue of
which remains today in the Honours Moderations at Oxford University as the first
part of the degree of 
Literae Humaniores
or classics). Should we regard that type of
interest as a form of applied linguistics? Would it perhaps be more accurate to see it
as a precursor of linguistics?
If that is accepted, then we could extend the argument, first by suggesting that
investigations (and teaching) are always prompted by socio-political and economic
imperatives, which in the middle ages demanded the provision of an educated
professional class of clerics and lawyers. That imperative, we might suggest, is
what drives speculation (‘pure research’) rather than the other way round. Applied
disciplines, it follows, develop in order to provide the necessary training in newly
emerging technical and professional occupations. 
This again suggests that the relation between theoretical linguistics and applied
linguistics should place applied linguistics in the pole position. Applied linguistics
can then be seen to be the driver, with linguistics following behind to respond to the
practical questions applied linguistic raises, attempting to answer them and by doing
so widening its range of coverage. Take second language acquisition, now firmly
within theoretical linguistics but itself in origin a very practical study of error analysis
in TEFL; or critical discourse analysis and other areas of stylistics or LSPs, now
drawn into the wider study within sociolinguistics of language variation; or
translation a seriously practical pursuit and now slowly becoming absorbed into
comparative linguistics.
Of course, there are important and continuing distinctions between general or
theoretical linguistics and applied linguistics. They may be summarised by:
• the immediate and the distant, with applied linguistics concerned with the
former; and
• the need to expand to other disciplines because of the involvement of factors
outside the scope of language. Applied linguistics is clearly multi-factorial
in that in addition to linguistics, it draws on other disciplines, psychology,
sociology, education, politics and so on. Ironically, as has become clear in the
last period, linguistics also needs to do the same and cannot isolate itself from
the daily uses of language.