The applied linguistics challenge
THE APPLIED LINGUISTICS DILEMMA
What is the professional or scholarly duty of applied linguists? Surely it is to investigate, analyze, offer recommendations for amelioration and then report on the language problems they engage with. That seems undisputed. The argument to which I referred earlier (the fault-line) is whether their responsibility continues into taking remedial/political action themselves as applied linguists rather than as individuals. Again there is little dispute that in their reporting they should, where appropriate, indicate remedies and interventions. But should they go further? As individuals, surely yes if they so wish. But as professionals, as scholars? To do so is to agree with one interpretation of the Marx quote with which I began: ‘Philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways, but now it is a matter of changing it.’
The weak interpretation of this doctrine is that applied linguists should suggest ways of changing so as to overcome the language problem they have investigated; the strong interpretation is that applied linguists should themselves be directly involved in the changes they recommend. The weak view is that of advice, the strong view’s that of action. The question for applied linguistics is whether the role of adviser is commensurate with the role of activist. Should we agree with the poet W. H. Auden, who wrote in ‘Spain, 1937’:
Yesterday the classic lecture
On the origin of Mankind. But to-day the struggle.
(Auden 1940: 103)
And if we agree, then does that mean we stop being applied linguists?
