An Introduction to Applied Linguistics

3.5 Strong and weak professions
‘Strong’ professions (for example medicine, law) establish their own regulatory
bodies which control entry. ‘Weak’ professions (such as applied linguistics) lack such
sanctions. Hence the im portance of the ‘ethical milieu’. But weak professions can
establish a professional association (with regularised membership, an office, officers,
publications and so on); to become ‘strong’ professions they also need to reach agree -
ment on recognised quali fications licensing members to practise as professionals,
control (through licensing) on entry to the profession and therefore on standards and
behaviour. This control is difficult to achieve and probably requires legal support.
Unlike medicine or law (or indeed psychology) there is no restriction on who can
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practise as an applied linguist. However, in the absence of external sanctions informal
control can be exercised through the ‘ethical milieu’. Through formalised training
programmes leading to degrees and certificates, through internal discussion, confer -
ences such as the triennial AILA Congress and annual meetings of the national
associations, through regular publi cations of 
Applied Linguistics
and the other general
and specialised journals in the field, through agreement, as far as possible, on what is
required to become a pro fessional applied linguist.
Weak professions may compensate themselves for their lack of sanctions by
condemning the power exercised by traditional professions. This is the point made
by Marshall, who maintains there is an ideological aspect to professionalism:
Recent sociological work has tended to view professionalisation as the estab -
lishment of effective interest group control over clients, with socially constructed
problems as a means of exercising ‘power’ in society. This approach treats pro -
fessional ethics as an ideology, rather than an orientation necessarily adhered to
or meaningful in practice. Entry and knowledge controls function as a form of
status exclusion from privileged and remunerative employment. In this respect,
professional organisations make an interesting comparison with trade unions, for
although formal professional ethics preclude collective bargaining and industrial
conflict, in practice many associations have found themselves becoming more and
more unionate, whilst many unions practise quasi-professional job-entry control.
(1994: 419)