An Introduction to Applied Linguistics
LANGUAGE LEARNING
The journal Language Learning: A Journal of Applied Linguistics, published from the University of Michigan, is an important chronicle of the development of applied linguistics over the past sixty years (Catford 1998). In a 1993 editorial the journal gave late recognition to the range of coverage beyond linguistics which applied linguistics embraced. Such recognition is significant. Coming out of the tradition of Charles Fries and Robert Lado at the University of Michigan, Language Learning, founded in 1948, was ‘the first journal in the world to carry the term “applied linguistics” in its title’ (Language Learning 1967:1). But by ‘applied linguistics’ what was meant was the application of linguistics.
In the 1990s, the journal seems to have finally accepted a more catholic view. The 1993 editors remark on ‘the wide range of foundation theories and research methodologies now used to study language issues’ (Cumming 1993) and they state that they intend to:
Encourage the submission of more manuscripts from (a) diverse disciplines, including applications of methods and theories from linguistics, psycho-linguistics, cognitive science, ethnography, ethnomethodology, sociolinguistics, sociology, semiotics, educational inquiry and cultural or historical studies, to address (b) fundamental issues in language learning, such as multilingualism, language acquisition, second and foreign language education, literacy, culture, cognition, pragmatics and intergroup relations.
However, the official recognition of ‘the wide range of foundation theories and research methodologies now used to study language issues’ comes at a price. That price is the abandoning of the term ‘applied linguistics’ as a sub-heading in the journal’s title. The explanation for this removal is that its replacement title, Language Learning: A Journal of Research in Language Studies, is now seen to be wider. What the editor appears to have meant by this change of title is to declare his interpretation of what applied linguistics is, knowing full well that the readers of the journal will understand ‘a journal of research in language studies’ as a functional interpretation of ‘applied linguistics’.
Getting rid of the label ‘applied linguistics’ has been widely canvassed, on the grounds that it was the wrong term in the first place, introduced only to give academic respectability to degrees, courses and departments. Such was the view taken in the 1960s by the authors of the key text (Halliday, McIntosh and Strevens 1964). They recognized the oddity of the label ‘applied linguistics’ but seemed prepared to live with it. The label was, they opined, misleading. It was misleading because (at the time of writing) it excluded many activities of linguistics (for example, machine translation, sociolinguistics) as well as activities which had a bearing on language teaching (for example psychology, educational theory). They wrote: ‘the aim of courses in applied linguistics, such as are now available, for example at Edinburgh, Leeds and London, is not to produce specialists in linguistics and phonetics … but to give a solid grounding in those aspects of these and other subjects which lie behind the language class’ (ibid: 169).
In consequence, the label ‘applied linguistics’ was not used in the title of their book: The Linguistics Sciences and Language Teaching. Shades of the Language Learning unease about the term?
