An Introduction to Applied Linguistics
SOURCE AND TARGET
The urgent question mark against applied linguistics is this: just what is its source, what exactly is being applied? If the interpretation of applied linguistics is very narrow so that what is being applied is only linguistics, then because linguistics, like other theoretical disciplines, deals with idealizations, it appears to have very little to say about the language-related problems in what we call the real world. If applied linguistics is interpreted very broadly, then it must concern itself with everything to do with language. Neither position is tenable. Linguistics, it seems, must play an important role in applied linguistics but by no means the only role. Applied linguistics must also draw on psychology, sociology, education, measurement theory and so on.
It may be that we shall gain a clearer picture of the nature of applied linguistics if we turn our attention away from the source (what applied linguistics draws on) to its target (what applied linguistics equips you to do). The target clearly cannot be anything and everything to do with language. Corder’s solution (Corder 1973) was to focus on language teaching, widely interpreted and therefore including, for example, speech therapy, translation and language planning. Such narrowing of the target still makes sense today, which is why most of the entries in the Glossary of Applied Linguistics (Davies 2005a) have some connection with language teaching. My reasoning is that it remains true that many of those who study applied linguistics have been and will continue to be involved at some level in language teaching, which is, after all, the largest profession involved in language studies. This is not to say, once a language teacher always one: some, perhaps many, of those who engage with applied linguistics move on to research, administration and so on. But in preparing the Glossary I have found it helpful to provide myself with this constraint on what it is we claim as applied linguistics.
What that means is that, while I accept Brumfit’s definition – ‘A working definition of applied linguistics will then be the theoretical and empirical investigation of real-world problems in which language is a central issue’ (Brumfit 1997b: 93) – I avoid the danger of the ‘science of everything’ position by targeting language teaching, at the same time recognizing that the world of language learning and teaching is not an artificial world but one that must engage every day with Brumfit’s real-world problems. These real-world problems involve success and failure, ability and disability, ethical, cultural and gender issues, technology and lack of resources, the difficult and the simple, and the child and the adult.
