Linguistics in Applied Linguistics: a Historical Overview
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JOURNAL OF ENGLISH STUDIES - VOLUME 3, (2001-2), 99-114 LINGUISTICS IN APPLIED LINGUISTICS: A HISTORICAL OVERVIEW TONY HARRIS University of Granada ABSTRACT. This paper looks at some of the underlying reasons which might explain the uncertainty surrounding applied linguistics as an academic enquiry. The opening section traces the emergence of the field through its professional associations and publications and identifies second and foreign language (L2) teaching as its primary activity. The succeeding section examines the extent to which L2 pedagogy, as a branch of applied linguistics, is conceived within a theoretical linguistic framework and how this might have changed during a historical period that gave rise to Chomskyan linguistics and the notion of communicative competence. The concluding remarks offer explanations to account for the persistence of linguistic parameters to define applied linguistics. 1. INTRODUCTION Perhaps the most difficult challenge facing the discipline of applied linguistics at the start of the new millennium is to define the ground on which it plies its trade. The field is not infrequently criticised and derided by the parent science, linguistics, which claims authority over academic terrain that applied linguists consider their own. It should be said, however, that applied linguists themselves seem to attract such adversity because of the lack of consensus within their own ranks about what it is they are actually engaged in. The elusiveness of a definition that might string together an academic domain of such wide-ranging diversity, which appears to be in a perennial state of expansion, makes definitions unsafe, not to say time-bound, and in this sense Widdowson’s (2000a: 3) likening of the field to “the Holy Roman Empire: a kind of convenient nominal fiction” is uncomfortably close to the 99 TONY HARRIS truth. Indeed, a geographical metaphor which alludes to the merging together of the numerous scattered principalities of modern-day Germany both freeze- frames a discipline in the early stages of its development and embraces the paradox of an enquiry that extends out in all directions without leaving behind the sort of trace that might serve to delimit its investigative boundaries. There is a sense of inevitability about this state of affairs in that, like all applied sciences, applied linguistics “begins from local and quite practical problems” (Candlin 1988: vii) so that the point of reference is continually changing. If one accepts the notion that practice precedes theory in applied linguistics –and thus by extension determines theory– then one may also appreciate how context, as defined by time and locality, is likely to describe an academic discipline which is characterised by its very dynamism. “Uncertainty”, as Widdowson (2000a: 3) suggests, may be one of the reasons why “applied linguistics has flourished” but the central issue at stake in defining the field would seem to be more closely connected with “directionality” (Widdowson 1980: 169). The practice-before-theory paradigm might, for many applied linguists, describe the central plank upon which the discipline is built although the antithesis of this approach, theory-before- practice, has just as often been used to solve applied linguistic problems (de Beaugrande 1997: 310). This paper attempts to shed some light on why the field of applied linguistics continues to generate doubt and misgiving as an academic enquiry. The first part looks at the emergence of the discipline through the formation of its associations and publications and identifies the practical area of second and foreign language (L2) teaching as being the principal focus of research activity in the field. The second part examines how theoretical linguistics has come to form a point of departure in defining L2 pedagogy1 and the extent to which this might have changed specifically with the advent of Chomskyan theory and the subsequent development of the notion of communicative competence. 2. THE EMERGENCE OF A DISCIPLINE The development of applied linguistics as an academic enquiry can be traced back to the middle of the last century with the emergence of a number of research institutions and university departments. Examples of these include 1. The enormous impact of other academic disciplines on L2 pedagogy, notably second language acquisition (SLA), is fully acknowledged. Nevertheless, the complexity of the field of SLA might be dealt with more profitably in a separate article, and will not, therefore, be considered here. The term L2 pedagogy (and indeed, L2 teaching) is used in its broadest sense to include learning as well as teaching in a classroom context. 100 LINGUISTICS IN APPLIED LINGUISTICS: A HISTORICAL OVERVIEW the English Language Institute at the University of Michigan in 1941, the Department of Applied Linguistics at the University of Edinburgh in 1956, the Center for Applied Linguistics in Washington, DC in 1959, the formation of AILA (Association Internationale de Linguistique Appliquée) in 1964, TESOL (Teaching English as a Second and Overseas Language) in 1966, BAAL (the British Association of Applied Linguistics) in 1968, and AAAL (The American Association of Applied Linguistics) in 1977. The publication of journals related to the study, which have developed in parallel to its institutional bodies, also have a good deal to do with the promotion of applied linguistics. The first of these was the Modern Language Journal which came into being in 1916 and, at about the time when the field was attracting attention at an institutional level, a number of other journals appeared: English Language Teaching Journal (1946), Language Learning (1948), International Review of Applied Linguistics (IRAL 1963), Annual Review of Applied Linguistics (1963), TESOL Quarterly (1966). And by the late 1970s and early 1980s: System (1973), Studies in Second Language Acquisition (1978), Applied Linguistics (1980), Applied Psycholinguistics (1980), English for Specific Purposes (1981). A cursory examination of the stated aims and objectives of the various applied linguistic assocations, institutions and publications is a useful point of departure in search of an answer to the question posed in the title of this paper, namely what is applied linguistics? Clearly the institutional bodies and journals referred to above comprise only a small part of two potentially extensive lists although, given that they are based on Allwright (1998: 10-11), with the exception of one or two additional items, they may be taken to be minimally representative of the field at least from an international standpoint. The Internet-accessible information and documentation pertaining to AILA, BAAL and AAAL –three of the largest applied linguistic associations worldwide– seem to coincide on three issues which are central to a definition of the field. In the first place, it is evident that linguistics is fundamental. As Widdowson (2000a: 4) observes, “you have to have it first before you can apply it.” BAAL (2002) sees applied linguistics as “an approach to understanding language issues in the real word”; whilst AILA and AAAL refer to “language-related topics” and “language-related concerns” (my italics) respectively which the latter goes on to specify as: “language education, language acquisition and loss, bilingualism, discourse analysis, literacy, rhetoric and stylistics, language for special purposes, psycholinguistics, second and foreign language pedagogy, language assessment, and language policy and planning.” Secondly, it is clear that these language-related topics and concerns are grounded in real world problems and issues. They are, in this sense, a distant remove from the theoretical abstractions of ‘pure’ or ‘scientific’ linguistics. 101 TONY HARRIS Indeed, the two-item definition of applied linguistics offered by BAAL (1994) includes “an approach to understanding language issues in the real world, drawing on theory and empirical analysis.” AAAL (2002) is more specific about the nature of its work in listing one of its primary activities as “to network with Teachers of English for Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL).” Curiously, though AILA came into existence with a mandate “to encourage the spread and improvement of language teaching on an international scale” (Strevens 1966: 63), its statutes and bylaws appear to reduce the practical application of its research to a list of twenty areas which includes “first and second language education” (AILA 2002). Thus, the field of language teaching, which is clearly seen as a principal application of applied linguistics in AAAL, is not accorded the same importance in current AILA and BAAL documents. Finally, all three associations supply lengthy lists of subdisciplines, topics and scientific commissions which underline the “multidisciplinary” and “inter- disciplinary” nature of applied linguistics. And although the actual names of these research areas may vary from list to list and from association to association, the ground covered by each one describes what is essentially the same academic terrain. This threefold pattern of i) linguistics; ii) the practical focus of the field; and iii) its multidisciplinariness is one which was confirmed in the debate about the scope of applied linguistics that took place at the 1999 AILA Congress in Tokyo. The discussions were, according to Grabe and Kaplan (2000: 4-5), characterised by the disaccord between participants although eight key points were eventually drawn up representing those which “most applied linguists