An Introduction to Applied Linguistics

6 CONCLUSION
In this chapter I have considered the kinds of language problems that applied
linguistics addresses. I have also discussed the marriage in applied linguistics of
practical experience and theoretical understanding, of developmental and of research
directions. In Chapter 3 we explore further the relation between the work of linguists
and applied linguists in relation to three areas of shared interest: language in
situation, language and gender and clinical linguistics. We discuss the distinct
triggers for their research questions as well as their investigative procedures and the
skills and knowledge they each draw on.
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An Introduction to Applied Linguistics
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Chapter 3
Language and language practices
‘Two Voices are there, one is of the sea,
One of the mountains; each a mighty Voice.’
(W. Wordsworth, ‘Thought of a Briton on the
subjugation of Switzerland’, 1807)
1 INTRODUCTION
The relation between linguistics and applied linguistics is explored in relation to areas
of shared interest. To highlight the distinction, I first consider the very different
approaches made by linguists and applied linguists to the way people use language,
what is often referred to as the study of language in situation. I then explore in some
detail two further areas, language and gender and clinical linguistics. An activity such
as clinical linguistics or language and gender may be practised by both linguists doing
their application and by applied linguists, and it is therefore important to consider
the distinct triggers for their research questions (which, in the case of the applied
linguist, are more likely to be institutional ‘problems’) as well as their investigative
procedures, the skills and knowledge they each draw on.
It is a commonplace that there are different ways of looking at the same ‘thing’. I
am not here referring to the issue of epistemic relativism (the idea that all referents
are socially constructed, that there is no thing-in-itself ), which we have raised in
Chapter 2 and return to in Chapter 7. What I have in mind is that there can be
different views of the same phenomenon; it is not that the phenomenon is thought
not to exist or to be socially constructed in different ways but that it can be explained
variously, depending on the vantage point you take up. For example suicide, the
famous Durkheim phenomenon, has been of interest to both psychologists and
sociologists (as well as of course to those working in other disciplines, penologists,
medical researchers, theologians and so on): to the psychologist, suicide is of interest
because it is, as Durkheim himself said, the most individual of all actions. And it is
of interest to the sociologist because suicide is a social act, an act that denies all value
to the society where it occurs. The fact that rates of suicide and trends in suicide are,
as Durkheim showed, different across societies but stable within any one society
emphasises its societal significance.
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We might say, therefore, that what distinguishes psychology and sociology (at
least in part) is not that they are interested in different phenomena but that they have
different ways of addressing and explaining the same phenomena. Much the same is
true of history and political science or of physics and branches of engineering. And
the different ways of addressing and explaining, what we have also called differing
vantage points, have two faces, that is that both the looking towards the topic differs
and the looking away differ. This is particularly the case when one of the viewers
is practice oriented, as in engineering. Far more than in the psychology–sociology
oppo sition, here the whole purpose of the activity, of looking towards the phen -
omenon, is dedicated to looking away, back to the engineering ‘problem’ that the
engineer needs to solve.
Such multiple perspectives are common experience. The mother looks at her
successful grown-up son and feels maternal pride; the girlfriend looking at the same
person feels attraction; his employer is delighted that his confidence in the young
man’s abilities is being fulfilled; the sports coach sees unfulfilled athletic promise …
and so on. These are all ‘true’ versions of the one person: what makes them different
is the purpose and the stance of the person who is observing.
We find the same variation in attending to language. The literary critic and the
grammarian may both look at the same historical text, the one seeing an early
example of a poetic genre, the other the key to an unsolved problem in the grammar
he or she is writing of that language. In the distinction we have drawn between
linguistics and applied linguistics there is the same difference of viewpoint.
The linguist will experience a discussion among elders in an Australian aboriginal
community, where only very few still speak the first language (L1), and will think of
vocabulary lists and informants to help to write a grammar. The applied linguist,
listening to the same discussion, will consider policy issues (should/can the language
be maintained?) and whether to advocate a bilingual programme in the schools
(English plus the local language) or an English-only programme. And if English
whether to recommend some use of aboriginal English (Baugh 2002), the equivalent
in Australia of North American ebonics (Green 2002).