Dick Hudson
Cambridge December 2010
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1. The history of useful linguistics
2. Why education needs linguistics
3. How universities help or hinder schools
4. How to build new bridges
1. Through politicians
2. Through teachers
3. Directly
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• "You're a human being, and your time as a human being should be socially useful. It doesn't mean that your choices about helping other people have to be within the context of your professional training as a linguist. Maybe that training just doesn't help you to be useful to other people. In fact, it doesn't."
– Noam Chomsky, 1991
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• has a long history
– in philosophy and logic
– in psychology
– in anthropology.
•
Historical linguistics was driven by curiosity.
• And so are most of us .
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• linguistics can be useful as well !
•
Applied linguistics applies linguistics
– to "the advancement of education by fostering and promoting … the study of language use, language acquisition and language teaching"
(BAAL constitution)
• 'Linguistics' (the analysis of language structure
) has been useful since work in …
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Akkadian
Sumerian
Babylon
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Verb conjugations
(Sumerian and Akkadian)
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First – second – third person, in that order!!
Sumerian Akkadian English menden-eše ni:nu-mi we menzen-eše emene-eše attunu-mi
šunu-mi you they
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• Education teaches about L2 (Sumerian)
• Education also teaches about
L1 (Akkadian)
• Linguistics provides a systematic and explicit analysis of language structure .
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• Most of the time, at least some linguists worked for education:
– writing pedagogical grammars and dictionaries
• of dead languages (Greek, Latin)
• of living languages (English, Icelandic)
• So linguistics was mostly useful .
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2. What education needs from linguists
• ideas , e.g. prescriptivism
– simple but controversial
– teachers need to believe
• models , e.g. the syntax/semantics distinction
– abstract – teachers need to understand
• descriptions , e.g. English phonemes
– very rich and complex – teachers need to learn
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• Variation
– Language varies with speaker and context
• e.g. we weren't ~ we wasn't ~ we were not
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Descriptivism
– Variation need not be right/wrong
• we wasn't (correct non-standard) BUT we not was (wrong)
• Form/function
– Form and function have a complex relation
• e.g. in dog biscuit , dog is not an adjective!
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• Sounds and letters are different!
– How many sounds in through ?
• Words and meanings are different!
– How many legs does the word DOG have?
• Tokens and types are different.
– How many words in The cat sat on the mat ?
• Oh for some good notations in school!!!!!
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• Any bits of
– inflectional morphology
– syntax
– the phoneme system
– lexical relations
• using standard metalanguage
• using standard notations .
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3. How universities help or hinder schools
• In an ideal world,
– schools and universities are part of an integrated educational system
– linguistics supports language education
• In the real world of the UK,
– linguistics doesn't support language education.
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adult researcher school teacher knowledge university knowledge research
Year 1-13 infant 19

• Modern linguists distinguish determiners from adjectives.
• So universities should teach future L1 and
L2 teachers about determiners.
• Then the next generation will learn about determiners in school …
• … as they do in France.
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On sale in any post office or service station
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Contrast: A UK student with French and Spanish at A-level
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35000
30000
25000
20000
15000
10000
5000
0 ye ar
The death of foreign languages?
A-level entries 1938-2010
89 91 93 95 97 99
1 3 5 7 9
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French
German
Spanish

Language education (excluding linguistics)
• ignores language
– 'English', 'French' etc mean 'E/F literature'
• ignores linguistics
– Most English/'Language' departments have very few teachers who research language
• produces no linguistics researchers
– Research on French etc linguistics hardly exists
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1. Through policy managers
– and official policy statements
2. Through teachers
– and teacher training
3. Directly
– through university activity in schools
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•
Politicians are hard to persuade.
• But educational managers listen to:
– good arguments.
– fair criticisms on technicalities
• especially when combined with solutions.
• But they depend on:
– politicians for approval
– teachers for implementation.
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• 1991: Margaret Thatcher
• How should
English be taught?
– several committees met and reported
– linguistics was well represented and influential
• The NC requires grammar teaching
– but English teachers know very little grammar
– and grammar is never tested
– so the NC has had very little effect on grammar
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• Michael
Halliday 's UCL project 1964-70
– massive Government support
– employed 3 linguists and 9 teachers for 6 years!
– trained
60 English teachers for a year
– reached many more
• Strong on variation
– weak on grammar
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20000
15000
10000
5000
0
1985
• One of Halliday's achievements
– Study of variation in English for 17/18-year olds entries
90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 2000 O1 O2 O3 O4 O5 O6 O7 O8 O9 10
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• The UK
Linguistics Olympiad
– run by university linguists
– selects a team for the International Olympiad
• First year in 2010:
– 600 children
– age 12-18
– very popular
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• Get to know your education system .
• Concentrate on basic linguistics.
• Help to achieve existing goals .
• Work through committees .
• Be prepared to compromise .
• Use evidence , just as in research.
• Be patient
– change takes a generation.
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