An Introduction to Applied Linguistics

Edinburgh Course in Applied Linguistics
, volumes 1–4.
Educational linguistics: applied linguistics focusing on educational problems.
EFL: English as a Foreign Language.
elaborated code: the term used by Basil Bernstein to refer to the variety of language
used in schools and, by implication, by the middle classes.
elaboration: that stage in language standardisation when the aspiring dialect is in the
process of (deliberate) development, largely in terminology.
English as a Lingua Franca: the use of English for business and professional purposes
among non-native speakers of English.
English comparative: a term used for the adjective or adverb used in comparison, for
example ‘nicer than’, ‘more lively than’.
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Enlightenment: the wide-ranging European intellectual development in the
eighteenth century, scientific, technical, philosophical etc.
epicene: a noun or pronoun which can relate to either sex without changing its form.
epistemic relativism: the assumption that propositions are not interpreted in the
same way by different groups.
epistemology: the theory or science of the methods or grounds of knowledge.
error: a term used in second-language teaching to refer to a non-trivial deviation
from the target language.
error analysis: a procedure typically used in conjunction with contrastive analysis to
determine the extent of transfer from the first to the target language.
ESP: English for Specific Purposes.
Esperanto: the most successful artificial auxiliary language, invented by Ludwig
Zamenhoff in the late nineteenth century.
ethical milieu: the sense of right conduct shared by members of a profession.
ethics: the science of human duty, often synonymous with morality.
ethnography: study of the forms and functions of communicative behaviour, both
verbal and non-verbal, in particular social settings.
ethnomethodology: the use of transcripts of conversations to develop descriptions
of the interlocutors’ knowledge, especially of the social situation in which they
interact. The sociological partner to discourse analysis.
experimentally: by experience, by means of experiment.
factorial: referring to a method of analysis used to reduce a large number of variables
to a smaller number known as ‘factors’.
false negative: a person classified as failing a test who would have gone on to succeed
in the area for which the test is a predictor.
false positive: a person classified as passing a test who would have gone on to fail in
the area for which the test is a predictor.
field professional: a specialist in the professional area which has its own specialist
language usages, for example a vet.
first-language acquisition: the normal development in a child of his or her first
language.
Firth: J. R. Firth (1890–1960), first Professor of Linguistics in the United Kingdom
(at the University of London), an important influence on the development of
systemic linguistics.
Fish: Stanley Fish (1938– ), American stylistician.
forensic linguistics: the use of linguistic techniques to investigate crimes in which
language forms part of the evidence.
Foucault: Michel Foucault (1926–1984), French philosopher.
function: the use of a language form either in other parts of the system (a noun used
as subject) or more generally in situations.
functional linguistics: a linguistic theory taking account of verbal interaction and
therefore less abstract than generative linguistics.
genre: type of spoken or written discourse or text recognised as distinct by members
of a speech community (for example lecture, shopping list, advertisement).
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grading: the staging or arranging of teaching material according to some predeter -
mined order, for example of difficulty.
grammatical model: a method of explaining a linguistic theory.
Halliday: Michael A. K. Halliday (1925– ), foremost contemporary theoretician of
Firthian systemic linguistics.
hegemony: a term used by Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937) for the rule of a social or
economic system which is exerted by persuading the disempowered to accept the
system of beliefs, values etc. of the ruling class.
hoax: a form of benign fabrication, the object being to ridicule a prevailing
orthodoxy and frequently to make a moral point.
HRT: high-rise tone, associated with a shift in English intonation patterns, observed
recently among young people in New Zealand and Australia.
IALS: Institute for Applied Language Studies, University of Edinburgh.
idealisation: the degree to which linguists ignore the variability of their raw data.
immersion programmes: a form of bilingual education in which children who speak
only one language enter school where a second language is the medium of
instruction for all pupils. Originating in Canada (French immersion for English-
speaking children) there are now several versions of immersion programmes,
depending on the age at which learners begin and the extent of the immersion.
inclusive language: the attempt to revise public documents so as to make them refer
to members of both sexes.
informants: those whose knowledge (often as native speakers) is being accessed.
instrumental policy: the political and administrative policy associated with ends
rather than means.
interlanguage: the various stages of the learner’s second-language development.
Interlingua: like Esperanto, an