The professionalizing of applied linguists
THE GROWTH OF APPLIED LINGUISTICS
Applied linguistics in Edinburgh
In an unpublished paper (1974) Pit Corder noted that:
The British Council had, ever since the war, together with the Foreign Office, been much concerned with the quality and organization 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 programs and materials and in the preparation of English teachers for which no adequate training programs 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 faithful 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-linguistics programs. 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.
