An Introduction to Applied Linguistics
History and ‘definitions’
Applied linguistics does not lend itself to an easy definition, perhaps because, as Vivian Cook remarks: ‘Applied Linguistics means many things to many people’ (Cook 2006). This absence of certainty is much bemoaned by those who practice applied linguistics but the lack of consensus can be found in other academic enterprises, especially those in the humanities and social sciences, where fragmentation is rife, sometimes acting as an escape from disagreement and entrenched epistemological disputes as to the nature of the enterprise. Applied linguistics has a further definitional problem because, if the nature of the enterprise is disputed, what agreement can there be as to what it is that is being applied? A mediation between theory and practice (Kaplan and Widdowson 1992: 76); a synthesis of research from a variety of disciplines, including linguistics (Hudson 1999); ‘it presupposes linguistics … one cannot apply what one does not know’ (Corder 1973: 7); it is ‘understood as an open field, in which those inhabiting or passing through simply show a common commitment to the potential value of dialogue with people who are different’ (Rampton 1997: 14). And taking up what some will regard as an extreme position: ‘critical applied linguistics … opens up a whole new array of questions and concerns, issues such as identity, access, ethics, disparity, difference, desire, or the reproduction of Otherness that have hitherto not been considered as concerns related to applied linguistics’ (Pennycook 2004: 803–4).
What most introductions and collections try to do is to use applied linguistics concerns and activities in order to illustrate and then analyze what applied linguistics methods and purposes are. This is the approach by ostensive definition: if you want to know about applied linguistics, ‘look around you’ (as the inscription on Wren’s memorial in St Paul’s Cathedral exhorts). Extreme versions of this approach can be found in Rampton (1997), postgraduate courses which operate as à la carte and even the anti-arguments of Pennycook (2004). The trouble with such views is that they offer no help in constructing introductory syllabuses in applied linguistics for initiates and they lack clarity as to how a determination can be made on those initiates’ success in demonstrating that they should be admitted to the profession. The ostensive view is defended by Spolsky:
the definition of a field can reasonably be explored by looking at the professionals involved in its study … Applied Linguistics [is now] a cover term for a sizeable group of semi-autonomous disciplines, each dividing its parentage and allegiances between the formal study of language and other relevant fields, and each working to develop its own methodologies and principles.
(Spolsky 2005: 36)
Robert Kaplan, founding editor of the Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, whose career has been spent championing applied linguistics and whose Handbook (Kaplan 2005) has been followed by a Festschrift (Bruthiaux et al. 2005), has long been concerned about the status of applied linguistics, convinced that what it had to offer was not always understood or valued. This was a way of speculating about the nature of applied linguistics.
Ostensive definitions are rejected by those who argue for a dictionary definition, who maintain that there is, indeed, an applied linguistics core which should be required of all those attempting the rite du passage. Widdowson, for example, argues strongly for the coherence of applied linguistics, dismissing as illogical the commonly held view that applied linguistics is a gallimaufry, a coming-together in an ad hoc way of different disciplines (Widdowson 2005). Cook agrees with Widdowson: ‘the task of applied linguistics is to mediate’ between linguistics and language use (Cook 2003: 20).
Guy Cook defines applied linguistics as ‘the academic discipline concerned with the relation of knowledge about language to decision making in the real world’ (ibid: 5). He recognizes that ‘the scope of applied linguistics remains rather vague’ but attempts to delimit its main areas of concern as consisting of language and education; language, work and law; and language information and effect (ibid 7/8). Delimitations of this kind are helpful, even if they remain contestable. What is important is that applied linguistics is protected from the sneer that because language is everywhere, applied linguistics is the science of everything. In the thirty-two contributions to the Handbook of Applied Linguistics (Davies and Elder 2004) we attempted to provide a wide coverage, ranging from an interest largely in language itself (for example language descriptions, lexicography) to a concern for interventions in institutional language use (for example language maintenance, language teacher education). In presenting the edited volume we offered an overall schema, accepting that while there probably is a cline from the most theoretical to the most practical, our initial plan to oppose linguistics applied with applied linguistics (Davies and Elder 2004) was not tenable.
Lexicography typically makes use of the ostensive approach in the sense that inclusion in a dictionary provides an incremental defining of the area. This is particularly the case with the glossary or encyclopedic type of dictionary which describes the key terminology in an area of interest (for example politics, biology, applied linguistics) and by doing so defines it. This is what I attempted in my Glossary of Applied Linguistics (Davies 2005a), which offers an account of the field but of course has all the weakness of being only one person’s view.
