An Introduction to Applied Linguistics

2 THE GROW TH OF APPLIED LINGUISTICS
2.1 The flight to the professions
Applied linguistics has not escaped the so-called flight to the professions that has
been on the increase since the 1960s. In academia it has been seized on by those
disciplines for which there are direct vocational opportunities outside the academy.
Like other applied disciplines such as social work and business studies, applied
linguistics has been largely taken up by those who are already working in the field.
For that reason the entry has been at the postgraduate level and also for that reason
those seeking qualifications in applied linguistics are not typically seeking a career
change so much as career enhancement, perhaps by moving into a more develop -
mental or research or management area but still broadly within applied linguistics.
The beginnings of applied linguistics in the UK can be traced back to the 1950s.
2.2 Applied linguistics in Edinburgh
In an unpublished paper (1974) Pit Corder noted that:
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The British Council had, ever since the war, together with the Foreign Office,
been much concerned with the quality and organisation of the teaching of English
as a second language in overseas countries. It had become gradually apparent to
them that there was a level of knowledge and expertise in the development of
teaching programmes and materials and in the preparation of English teachers for
which no adequate training programmes existed in British universities. Clearly,
a component in this knowledge and expertise was linguistic. Linguistics was known
to be well-established in Edinburgh at the post-graduate level. Consequently,
approaches were made by the British Council and the Foreign Office to the
Principal of the University to explore the possibility of the University providing
facilities for advanced training and research into the teaching of English as a
second language.
After discussion of possible names for the new unit, such as:
1. Centre for the Advanced Theory and Practice of Teaching English as a Second
Language, and
2. Centre for Advanced Research and Instruction on the Teaching of English as
a Foreign Language
it was decided to use the name: ‘School of Applied Linguistics’ with the subtitle
‘Research and Training in the Teaching of English as a Second Language’.
The first Director of the new School, Ian Catford (1959), later commented:
For some years now, the term ‘Applied Linguistics’ has been gaining currency.
The Michigan periodical 
Language Learning
has carried the sub-title ‘A Journal of
Applied Linguistics’ since its inception in 1948. In 1954 one of the Georgetown
Monographs on Languages and Linguistics appeared with the title ‘Applied
Linguistics in Language Teaching’, and the term has appeared in a number of
other publications. More significantly, perhaps, ‘Applied Linguistics’ was the title
of a Section of the 8th International Congress of Linguists at Oslo in 1957. In this
context of the growing acceptance of the term ‘Applied Linguistics’ it is not
surprising that it should have received academic recognition with the opening,
in October 1957, of the School of Applied Linguistics in the University of
Edinburgh.
Three other universities in the UK (Bangor, Leeds and London, University
College) joined Edinburgh in the early 1960s in developing applied linguistics (not
always with the same title), as did Reading and Essex later. For the most part, the
primary object was to provide experienced overseas teachers, particularly those who
were actively concerned with the control of English-teaching policy and the training
of teachers, with an intensive training in the disciplines which were thought to be
relevant to language teaching, and in methods of research in this field. Delivering
that training meant regularly renewing the input (the source) while remaining faith -
ful to the needs of language teaching, the output or target in this field.
With the passage of time since 1957 there have been changes in applied-
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linguistics programmes. First, there has been a re-evaluation of what is meant by
‘training’ and a growing understanding that training is meaningless unless it is
broader, more conceptual, an education rather than a training. Second, there have
been important changes in the disciplines which are thought to be relevant to
language teaching, for example more linguistics and less phonetics; psychology has
become psycholinguistics and sociolinguistics has become a major component.
During the same period more recent cross-disciplines have emerged, subjects such as
second-language acquisition, discourse analysis and language proficiency testing.