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Applied linguistics and language use LANGUAGE CORRECTNESS AS AN APPLIED LINGUISTICS PROBLEM

المؤلف:  Alan Davies

المصدر:  An Introduction to Applied Linguistics

الجزء والصفحة:  P97-C5

2026-07-27

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Applied linguistics and language use

LANGUAGE CORRECTNESS AS AN APPLIED LINGUISTICS PROBLEM

Being correct for the user of English means conforming to the rules and conventions of Standard English. The learner of English as a second or foreign language must first master the rules; thereafter he/she too must cope with the conventions (or norms) which are the basis of English instruction at school for the first-language user. Guides on how to be correct or, more usually, how not to be incorrect, abound, as do morality-type injunctions on the need to maintain correctness. They range in target from the prescriptivist alarms of letter writers to newspapers about stereotyped points of grammar (is ‘none’ singular or plural? is ‘whom’ a dying inflected form? do we write ‘try to’ or ‘try and’? is it wrong to split an infinitive?) to the pedagogic approaches of textbook writers, whose interest is very much in the canons of the grammar and vocabulary of the contemporary standard language. They range also from the manuals on clear thinking and rhetoric (and their equivalent modern textbooks on communication studies) to the sociolinguistic interest in linguistic class markers and feminist observations on the need for an inclusive language which encourages its users to be non-discriminatory.

Let us look at some examples of concerns in these various areas and then consider the ways in which these are of interest to the applied linguist.