Applied linguistics and language learning/teaching
CLAIMS
In spite of the widening range of activities undertaken by applied linguistics and in spite of the general agreement about the reach of its provenance claimed in the Statutes of the International Association of Applied Linguistics:
L’Association a pour but de promouvoir les recherches dans les domaines de la linguistique appliquée, comme par exemple l’acquisition, l’enseignement, l’emploi et le traitement des langues, d’en diffuser les résultats et de promouvoir la coordination et la coopération interdisciplinaires et internationales dans ces domaines.
(Article 2 of the AILA Statutes 1964)
(The Association’s purpose is to promote research in the areas of applied linguistics, for example language learning, language teaching, language use and language planning, to publish the results of this research and to promote international and interdisciplinary cooperation in these areas. (Article 2 of the AILA Statutes 1964)
and proudly asserted in Kaplan and Widdowson (1992):
the application of linguistic knowledge to real-world problems … whenever knowledge about language is used to solve a basic language-related problem, we may say that applied linguistics is being practiced. Applied is a technology which makes abstract ideas and research findings accessible and relevant to the real world; it mediates between theory and practice.
(ibid: 76)
and in Crystal (1992: 24), also opting for the more inclusive approach:
the use of linguistics theories, methods and findings in elucidating and solving problems to do with language which have arisen in other areas of experience. The domain of applied linguistics is extremely wide and includes foreign language learning and teaching, lexicography, style, forensic speech analysis and the theory of reading.
and in Wilkins (1994):
[T]he study of the uses that man makes of the language endowment and of the problems that he encounters in doing so is the subject matter of applied linguistics.
(Wilkins 1994: 162)
and unquestioningly in Cook and Kasper (2005) introducing the Applied Linguistics special issue ‘Applied Linguistics and Real-World Issues’, in which they ‘took for granted the gradual move of applied linguistic enquiry in recent years into a variety of new areas’ and commented that the five contributions in the special issue all:
testify to the widening scope, and exemplify how far both the discipline and the journal have moved beyond an earlier almost exclusive concern with only one real-world problem, how best to teach and learn languages. (Cook and Kasper 2005: 479)
There remain the cautionary voices concerned to restrict its scope so that it does not appear that applied linguistics claims to be a theory of everything! For example:
[T]he majority of work in applied linguistics has been directly concerned with language teaching and learning. (Strevens 1994: 81)
and Wilkins again (1994):
the field which has so far generated the greatest body of research and publication, namely that of language learning and teaching. (ibid: 163)
and again:
[I]n practice applied linguistics has developed so far as an enterprise principally dedicated to creating a better understanding of the processes of language, especially second language, learning.
(ibid:164)
A position he welcomes on the grounds that otherwise: ‘In its widest sense no coherent field of applied linguistics exists’ (ibid: 163).
