An Introduction to Applied Linguistics

2 CL AIMS
In spite of the widening range of activities undertaken by applied linguistics and
in spite of the general agreement about the reach of its provenance claimed in the
Statutes of the International Association of Applied Linguistics:
L’Association a pour but de promouvoir les recherches dans les domaines de la
linguistique appliquée, comme par exemple l’acquisition, l’enseignement,
l’emploi et le traitement des langues, d’en diffuser les résultats et de promouvoir
la coordination et la coopération interdisciplinaires et internationales dans ces
domaines.
(Article 2 of the AILA Statutes 1964)
(The Association’s purpose is to promote research in the areas of applied linguis -
tics, for example language learning, language teaching, language use and language
planning, to publish the results of this research and to promote international and
interdisciplinary cooperation in these areas.
(Article 2 of the AILA Statutes 1964)
and proudly asserted in Kaplan and Widdowson (1992):
the application of linguistic knowledge to real-world problems … whenever
knowledge about language is used to solve a basic language-related problem, we
may say that applied linguistics is being practiced. Applied is a technology which
makes abstract ideas and research findings accessible and relevant to the real
world; it mediates between theory and practice.
(ibid: 76)
and in Crystal (1992: 24), also opting for the more inclusive approach:
the use of linguistics theories, methods and findings in elucidating and solving
problems to do with language which have arisen in other areas of experience. The
domain of applied linguistics is extremely wide and includes foreign language
learning and teaching, lexicography, style, forensic speech analysis and the theory
of reading.
and in Wilkins (1994):
[T]he study of the uses that man makes of the language endowment and of
the problems that he encounters in doing so is the subject matter of applied
linguistics.
(Wilkins 1994: 162)
and unquestioningly in Cook and Kasper (2005) introducing the 
Applied Linguistics
special issue ‘Applied Linguistics and Real-World Issues’, in which they ‘took for
granted the gradual move of applied linguistic enquiry in recent years into a variety
of new areas’ and commented that the five contributions in the special issue all:
testify to the widening scope, and exemplify how far both the discipline and the
journal have moved beyond an earlier almost exclusive concern with only one
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real-world problem, how best to teach and learn languages.
(Cook and Kasper 2005: 479)
There remain the cautionary voices concerned to restrict its scope so that it does
not appear that applied linguistics claims to be a theory of everything! For
example:
[T]he majority of work in applied linguistics has been directly concerned with
language teaching and learning.
(Strevens 1994: 81)
and Wilkins again (1994):
the field which has so far generated the greatest body of research and publication,
namely that of language learning and teaching.
(ibid: 163)
and again:
[I]n practice applied linguistics has developed so far as an enterprise principally
dedicated to creating a better understanding of the processes of language,
especially second language, learning.
(ibid:164)
A position he welcomes on the grounds that otherwise: ‘In its widest sense no
coherent field of applied linguistics exists’ (ibid: 163).