Guy Cook’s Applied
Linguistics
Chapter 1: Applied Linguistics
Dina M. Bensureiti
Language, Linguistics and Applied
Linguistics
What is language?
• Language is at the heart of human life.
• Without it, many of our most important activities
are inconceivable.
• Language use is in many ways a natural phenomenon
beyond conscious control.
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Language, Linguistics and
Applied Linguistics
What is linguistics?
Linguistics is the science/ discipline that studies the
nature and use of language.
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Language, linguistics and applied
linguistics
• What is applied linguistics?
Applied linguistics is the application of linguistic theories,
methods, and findings to solving any language problems that
happen when language is used. It is also used when decisions
about language have to made.
The term applied linguistics (AL) is an Anglo-American coinage. It
first appeared at the University of Edinburgh School of
Applied Linguistics in 1956.It was then used at the Center of
Applied Linguistics in Washington D.C. in 1957.
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The Scope of Applied
Linguistics
• Since language is an important part of our daily lives,
there is clearly a large and open-ended number of
very different activities where applied linguistics is
used.
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The Need for Applied Linguistics
• It is impossible to do most of our daily life activities
without using language.
• Throughout history and across the world people have
used language to chat, worship, play games, sing songs, tell
stories, teach children, etc. which seem intrinsic to human
life, as natural to us as flight is to birds.
• People do them without conscious analysis. It does not
seem that we need to know about language to use it
effectively.
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•Language use is in many ways a natural phenomenon beyond
conscious control. Yet there are also aspects of language use in
which we can intervene and about which, consequently, there are
decisions to be made.
•On the basis of this definition, we can say that applied linguistics
sets out to investigate problems in the world which are related to
language.
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Examples of Problems within the
area of AL
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Policy: Choice of language
Authorship
Lexicography decisions
Advertising
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The Three Main Areas of Applied
Linguistics
1- Language and Education
• a) First-language education:
When a child studies their home language or languages
• b) Additional-language education:
Often divided into second language education, when someone studies their society’s majority or
official language which is not their home language, and foreign language education, when
someone studies the language of another country.
• c) Clinical linguistics:
Is the study and treatment of speech and communication impairments, whether hereditary,
developmental, or acquired (through injury, stroke, illness, or age).
• d) Language testing:
Is the assessment and evaluation of language achievement and proficiency, both in first and
additional languages, and for both general and specific purposes.
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2- Language, work, and law
• a) Workplace communication:
Is the study of how language is used in the workplace, and how it contributes to the
nature and power relations of different types of work.
• b) Language planning:
Is the making of decisions, often supported by legislation ( laws), about the official
status of languages and their institutional use, including their use in education.
• c) Forensic linguistics:
Is the use of linguistic evidence in criminal and other legal investigations, for,
example, to establish the authorship of a document, or a profile of a speaker from
a tape-recording.
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A Famous example of forensic
linguistics
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3- Language, information, and effect
• a) Literary stylistics:
Is the study of the relationship between linguistic choices and effects on literature.
• b) Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA):
Is the study of the relationship between linguistic choices and effects in persuasive uses of language.
• c) Translation and interpretation:
Is the formulation of principles underlying the perceived equivalence between a stretch of language and its
translation, and the practices of translating written texts and interpreting spoken language.
• d) Information design:
Is the arrangement and presentation of written language, including issues relating to typography and layout,
choices of medium and effective combinations of language with other means of communication such as
pictures and diagrams.
• e) Lexicography:
Is the planning and compiling of both monolingual and bilingual dictionaries, and other language reference
works such as thesauri.
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The Difficult Relationship between
Linguistics and Applied Linguistics
• Linguistics is aimed towards creating generalities.
• These generalities are an “ abstract idealization”
which might not reflect language use in the real
world.
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Examples of “idealizations” in Linguistics:
• Generative Linguistics
Introduced by Noam Chomsky 1950s. In his view, the
proper subject matter of linguistics should be the
representation of language in the mind (competence),
rather than the way in which people actually use language
in everyday life (performance).
• Sociolinguistics:
The focus is very much upon the relation between language
and society.
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Examples of “idealizations” in
Linguistics (cont.):
• Functional Linguistics:
The concern is with language as a means of
communication, the purpose it fulfils, and how people
actually use their language.
• Corpus Linguistics:
Vast databanks containing millions of words of actual
language in use can be searched within seconds to yield
extensive information about word frequencies and
combinations which is not revealed by intuition.
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.
• These approaches to linguistic study seem much closer to the
reality of experience than Chomsky’s, and therefore more
relevant to the concerns of applied linguistics. However, they are
abstract because they separate language from the experience of
its use.
• This is because their purpose is to describe and explain and not,
as in applied linguistics, to take part in decision making.
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