Published in this series: Rod Ellis: Second Language Acquisition Claire Kramsch: Language and Culture Tim McNamara: Language Testing Peter Roach: Phonetics Herbert Schendi: Historical Linguistics Thomas Scovel: Psycholinguistics Bernard Spolsky: Sociolinguistics Peter Verdonk: Stylistics H. G. Widdowson: Linguistics George Yule: Pragmatics Applied Linguistics Guy Cook OXFORD ‘UNIVERSITY PRESSOxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. 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Preface SECTION 1 ‘Survey Applied linguistics The need for applied linguistics Examples and procedures ‘The scope of applied linguistics Linguistics and applied linguistics: a difficult relationship Prescribing and describing: popular and academic views of ‘correctness’ Children’s language at home and school Description versus prescription An applied linguistics perspective Languages in the contemporary world Language and languages Axtitudes to languages The languages of nations: boundaries and relationships The growth of English English and Englishes Native speakers English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) English Language Teaching (ELT) Grammar-translation language teaching The direct method ‘Natural’ language learning The communicative approach vii wee 1s 18 ar 22 23 a5 26 28 29 aE 33 34 35Language and communication Knowing a language Linguistic competence Communicative competence The influence of communicative competence Context and culture Systematizing context: discourse analysis Culture Translation, culture, and context Own language: rights and understanding Teaching culture Persuasion and poetics; rhetoric and resistance Literary stylistics Language and persuasion Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) Past, present, and future directions: Early orientation Subsequent changes Second-Language Acquisition (SLA) Corpus linguistics Being applied Critical Applied Linguistics (CALx) ‘Post-modern’ applied linguistics ‘Aharder future: mediation SECTION 2 Readings SECTION 3 References SECTION 4 Glossary 40 4r 42. 50 52 55 S7 57 6 64 69 69 7 B 74 75 7 B 8x 115 125 Purpose What justification might there be for a series of introductions to language study? After all, linguistics is already well served with introductory texts: expositions and explanations which are com- prehensive, authoritative, and excellent in their way. Generally speaking, however, their way is the essentially academic one of providing a detailed initiation into the discipline of linguistics, and they tend to be lengthy and technical: appropriately so, given their purpose. But they can be quite daunting to the novice. There is also a need for a more general and gradual introduction to language: transitional texts which will ease people into an undes- standing of complex ideas. This series of introductions is designed to serve this need. Their purpose, therefore, is not to supplant but to support the more academically oriented introductions to linguistics: to prepare the conceptual ground. They are based on the belief that it is an advantage to have a broad map of the terrain sketched out before one considers its more specific features on a smaller scale, a general context in reference to which the detail makes sense. It is sometimes the case that students are introduced to detail without it being made clear what it is a detail of. Clearly, a general understanding of ideas is not sufficient: there needs to be closer scrutiny, But equally, close scrutiny can be myopic and meaningless unless it is related to the larger view. Indeed, it can be said that the precondition of more particular enquiry is an awareness of what, in general, the particulars are about. This series is designed to provide this laree-scale view of different areas of language study.viti As such it can serve as a preliminary to (and precondition for) the more specific and specialized enquiry which students of linguistics are required to undertake. But the series is not only intended to be helpful to such students. ‘There are many people who take an interest in language without being academically engaged in linguistics per se. Such people may recognize the importance of understanding language for their own lines of enquiry, or for their own practical purposes, or quite simply for making them aware of something which figures so centrally in their everyday lives, If linguistics has revealing and relevant things to say about language, this should presumably not be a privileged revelation, but one accessible to people other than linguists. These books have been so designed as to accommodate these broader interests too: they are meant to be introductions to language more generally as well as to linguistics as a discipline. Design The books in the series are all cut to the same basic pattern. There are four parts: Survey, Readings, References, and Glossary. Survey This is a summary overview of the main features of the area of language study concerned: its scope and principles of enquiry, its basic concerns and key concepts. These are expressed and explained in ways which are intended to make them as accessible as possible to people who have no prior knowledge or expertise in the subject. The Survey is written to be readable and is uncluttered by the customary scholarly references. In this sense, itis simple. But it is not simplistic. Lack of specialist expertise does not imply an inability to understand or evaluate ideas. Ignorance means lack of knowledge, not lack of intelligence. The Survey, therefore, is meant to be challenging. Ir draws a map of the subjectarea in such _ a way as to stimulate thought and to invite a critical participation in the exploration of ideas. This kind of conceptual cartography has its dangers of course: the selection of what is significant, and the manner of its representation, will not be to the liking of everybody, particularly not, perhaps, to some of those inside the discipline. But these surveys are written in the belief that there must be an alternative to a technical account on the one hand and an idior’s guide on the other if linguistics is to be made relevant to ple ini the wider world, “Readings Some people will be content to read, and perhaps re-read, the summary Survey, Others will want to pursue the subject and so vwilluse the Survey as the preliminary for more detailed study. The Readings provide the necessary transition, For here the reader is presented with texts extracted from the specialist literature. The pwrpose of these Readings is quite different from the Survey. It is * to get readers to focus on the specifics of what is said, and how it is said, in these source texts, Questions are provided to further this purpose: they are designed to direct attention to points in each text, how they compare across texts, and how they deal with the issues discussed in the Survey. The idea is to give readers an initial familiarity with the more specialist idiom of the linguistics literature, where the issues might not be so readily accessible, and to encourage them into close critical reading. References ‘One way of moving into more detailed study is through the Readings. Another is through the annotated References in the third section of each book. Here there is a selection of works (books and articles) for further reading. Accompanying comments indicate how these deal in more detail with the issues discussed in the different chapters of the Survey, Glossary Certain terms in the Survey appear in bold. These are terms used in a'special or technical sense in the discipline. Their meanings are made clear in the discussion, but they are also explained in the Glossary at the end of each book. The Glossary is cross-referenced to the Survey, and therefore serves at the same time as an index. This enables readers to locate the term and what it signifies in the more general discussion, thereby, in effect, using the Survey as a summary work of reference, ix | |Use The series has been designed so as to be flexible in use. Each title is separate and self-contained, with only the basic format in common. The four sections of the format, as described here, can be drawn upon and combined in different ways, as required by the needs, or interests, of different readers. Some may be content with the Survey and the Glossary and may not want to follow up the suggested References. Some may not wish to venture into the Readings. Again, the Survey might be considered as appropriate preliminary reading for a course in applied linguistics or teacher education, and the Readings more appropriate for seminar discussion during the course. In short, the notion of an introduction will mean different things to different people, but in all cases the concert is to provide access to specialist knowledge and stimulate an awareness of its significance. This series as a whole has been designed to provide this access and promote this awareness in respect to different areas of language study. H.G, WIDDOWSON Author's Acknowledgements Though short, this book has been through many drafts. It proved, to my surprise, far more exacting to write than a longer book— and in the middle I nearly gave up. There are a number of people whose help and friendship has kept me going. Thanks are due to Cristina Whitecross at OUP for her efficiency and encouragement, jeran O'Halloran, Alison Sealey, and Tony Smith for enlightening discussion and advice, Elena Poptsova Cook for support and inspiration. I also thank Anne Conybeare for improving the manuscript in its final stages. But most of all, my greatest thanks go to the series editor, Henry Widdowson, for pursuing every point in every draft so critically but so constructively. GUY CooK SECTION I Survey“The need for applied linguistics Language is at the heart of human life. Without it, many of our most important activities are inconceivable. Try to imagine relating to your family, making friends, learning, falling in love, forming a relationship, being a parent, holding—or rejecting —a religious faith, having political ideals, or taking political action, without using words. There are other important activities, of course, which do seem to exist without language. Sexual relations, preparing and eating food, manual labour and crafts, the visual arts, playing and listening to music, wondering at the natural world, or grieving at its destruction. Yet even these are often developed or enhanced through language. We would perceive them quite differently had we never read about them or discussed them. Throughout history and across the world, people have used language to gossip and chat, flirt and seduce, play games, sing songs, tell stories, teach children, worship gods, insult enemies, pass on information, make deals, remember the past, and lament the dead. Such activities seem to be 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. Language use, then, 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. In making these decisions thereare many questions and subsidiary questions to be asked, each one admitting many different and opposed answers, Take, for example, language in education. = What language skills should children attain beyond basic literacy? (And what is basic literacy anyway? Reading and writing, or something more?) ~ Should children speaking a dialect be encouraged to maintain it or steered towards the standard form of a language? (And, if so, how is that standard form decided and by whom?) = In communities with more than one language which ones should be used in schools? (And does every child have a right to be educated in the language they use at home?) — Should deaf children learn a sign language, or a combination of lip reading and speaking? (And are sign languages as complex as spoken ones?) — Should everyone learn foreign languages and, if so, which one or ones? (And what is the best way to learn and teach them?) ~ Should every child study literature? (And, if so, should it be established works or more modern ones? And should they study just their own national literature or that of other countries?) Such language issues, however, are by no means confined to the school. On the contrary, these educational dilemmas echo those of society at large. — Languages change. Should this just be accepted as an inevitable fact or should change be controlled in some way? ~ Some languages are dying out. Should that be prevented and, if so, how? = Should the growth of English as the international lingua franca be welcomed or deplored? ~ Is it better for people to learn each other’s languages or use translations? (And what is accurate or ‘good’ translation? Could it ever be done by computer?) ~ Is language being used for political oppression and indoctrination? (And, ifso, should something be done about it?) — Which languages should be used in law courts and official documents? All of these questions, and many more like them, demand ss Inthe contemporary world, with its rapid and radical ingesymany of them take on a new significance and seem more jan'“they have! in the past. To answer them it seems easonable that we should set out to investigate and understand He facts of language use, to organize and formalize what we N and to: subject our knowledge to rational consideration one etitical analysis. Only by doing so will we be able to set out bateithe alternatives openly and independently, in as informed ational a manner as possible. This is the aim—and the iort—-of applied linguistics, the academic discipline concerned the relation of knowledge about language to decision ‘making in the real world, ,sxamples and procedures ‘Onilthebasis of this definition, then, we can say that applied linguistics sets out to investigate problems in the world in which language is implicated—both educational and social problems _ like'those’listed above. Our provisional definition is, of course, very abstract and general, so we might give it some substance by considering a few concrete examples. In what kind of problems is language implicated? How might they be investigated? > Here‘are a number of imaginary but representative situations in which decisions about language need to be taken. = The head teacher of a London school is thinking of offering another foreign language in addition to French. The options are Chinese (the world’s largest first language), Spanish (one of the world’s largest and most widely distributed languages), or the Indian language Gujarati (the largest second language in the school and local community, and one which has approxi- mately forty-three million speakers worldwide). Which of these languages should be taught, and why? ~ A business executive wants to learn Japanese in preparation for taking up a post in Tokyo. There are three courses available, Course One has a strong emphasis on learning to write. Course Two focuses on the spoken language, claiming that learning to write too early is demotivating. It does, however, explain the rules of Japanese grammar in English anduse translation, Course Three's approach is ‘natural’, with no translation or explanation of rules, but only a series of | communicative classroom activities and tasks. Which course is_| the best choice, and why? — A business in the USA exports industrial machinery to South America. There are frequently financial, legal, and safety | documents to translate, and it is important that these are accurate, The firm employs two translators: Juan, a sixty-year- old Cuban émigré who once ran a similar business, and ‘twenty-two-year-old Jemima, who studied Spanish literature at a prestigious university. Juan complains to the management | that Jemima’s translation of some safety regulations is full of | errors, Jemima says this is nonsense, and there is a terrible row. None of the managers speak Spanish themselves. How can | they judge between them? = Zramashra is a small (fictional) island in the Indian Ocean. The Zramzshraran language uses a unique alphabet which developed from the Phoenician alphabet when traders came to the island 3,000 years ago. Zramzshra’s Finance Minister argues for a reform in which this alphabet will be replaced by the Roman alphabet (the one used in English and many other languages). This change, he argues, will make the island’ life easier and more prosperous, with benefits for English teaching, computer-mediated communication, trade, and tourism. Is this the best policy? In responding to such language related problems, we can draw upon common sense and experience to judge what action should be taken, But in recommending a particular course of action we might | benefit both from more information and from a more systematic | approach. For example, we might study what other people have said on similar matters, and we might make investigations of our} own, pechaps by interviewing the parents and children in the school, observing some Japanese lessons, consulting a third Spanish speaker, and so on. And when—as sadly often happens—the advice wwe offer, well-informed though it might be, is ignored for political or commercial reasons, or out of prejudice, we might wish to form a pressure group to put across our case more effectively. It is these processes of study, reflection, investigation, and action which constitute applied linguistics as an academic discipline. [ _ seThe scope of applied linguistics ince language is implicated in so much of our daily lives, there is learly. a large and open-ended number of quite disparate activities to which applied linguistics is relevant. So even with these examples, the scope of applied linguistics remains rather /ague, To.get at a more precise definition of the field we need to ‘be lore specific. We need not just to give examples but to classify kinds of problem we are concerned with in a systematic way, ‘aind so;map out the scope of our area. In other words, we need to ‘tefer specific instances to more general conceptual areas of study. hhese.areas can be identified under three headings as follows: - x Language and education This area includes: firstlanguage education, when a child studies their home ‘-slariguage or languages. additionablanguage 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 nother country. ‘clinical linguistics: the study and treatment of speech and com- munication impairments, whether hereditary, developmental, or acquired (through injury, stroke, illness, or age). language testing: the assessment and evaluation of language achievement and proficiency, both in first and additional languages, and for both general and specific purposes. 2 Language, work, and law This area includes: workplace communication: the seudy of how language is used in the workplace, and how it contributes to the nature and power relations of different types of work. language planning: the making of decisions, often supported by legislation, about the official status of languages and their institutional use, including their use in education. forensic linguistics: the deployment of linguistic evidence incriminal and other legal investigations, for example, to establish the authorship of a document, or a profile of a speaker froma | tape-recording. 3, Language, information, and effect ‘This area includes: literary stylistles: the study of the relationship between linguistic choices and effects in literature. Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA): the study of the relationship. between linguistic choices and effects in persuasive uses of language, of how these indoctrinate or manipulate (for example, in marketing and politics), and the counteracting of this through analysis. translation and interpretation: the formulation of principles underlying the perceived equivalence between a stretch of language and its translation, and the practices of translating written text and interpreting spoken language. information design: 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. lexicography: the planning and compiling of both monolingual and bilingual dictionaries, and other language reference works such as thesauri. All of these areas fall within our definition of applied linguistics and are claimed as areas of enquity by organizations and journals concerned with the discipline. Yet i them are more independent than others. Clinical linguistics and translation studies in particular are often regarded as independ- ent disciplines. Among the others some—such as the study of foreign language learning—are more active as areas of academic enquiry than others. It will not be possible in this short book to cover all of these areas in detail. Inevitably, examples will be selective, and many important matters will be omitted. The aim is rather to seek out key themes and to set out the ideas and procedures that underlie and unite their study. practice some of | Way of approaching the practical and professional problems Of these areas is by relating them to what has been said about language in linguisties—the academic discipline concerned with ‘study of language in general. Like any discipline, linguistics for generalities underlying actual appearances, and so in some degree is bound to represent an abstract idealization of inguage rather than the way ic is experienced in the real world. low, closely the resulting models of language correspond with perience will vary considerably, and there are different and ophosed schools of linguistics to draw upon. articularly influential type of idealization is that used in rative linguistics introduced by Noam Chomsky from the iguistics should be the representation of language in the mind (competence), rather than the way in which people actually use Janguage.in everyday life (performance). Chomsky’s claim is that this internal language is essentially biological rather than social ig, separate from, and relatively uninfluenced by, outside experience. It is to be investigated not through the study of actual guage use in context but rather through the consideration of vented sentences intuitively felt to be acceptable instances of the language. The relationship between this highly abstract model and ordinary experience of language is very remote. The qnestion for applied linguistics is whether such a connection can be made and, if so, what can then be made of the connection. | Chomsky’s linguistics, however, is not the only kind, In sogiolinguisties, the focus is—as the name suggests—very much upon the relation between language and society. Sociolinguistics engeavours to find systematic relationships between social groupings and contexts, and the variable ways in which . languages are used. In functional linguistics the concern is with language as a means of communication, the purposes it fulfils, and how people actually use their language. In recent years a particularly | important development in the investigation of language use has been corpus linguistics. In this approach, 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. : 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. Yet they, too, in their different ways and for their different purposes, abstract and_| idealize, detaching language from the experience of its use. Their purpose moreover is to describe and explain and not, as in applied linguistics, to engage with decision making, What is needed in all cases—and perhaps particularly in those approaches ‘where the relevance of linguistics seems self-evident—is constant mediation between two discourses or orders of reality: that of everyday life and language experience, and that represented by abstract analyses of linguistic expertise. The two are very different and difficult to reconcile, but the attempt to make each relevant to the other is the main challenge for applied linguistics and the justification for its existence. Linguistic theory and description cannot, then, be deployed directly to solve the problems with which applied linguistics is concerned, One important reason is the nature of the problems themselves, They, t0o, like models of linguistics, represent certain perspectives on reality, Applied linguistics is not simply a matter of matching up findings about language with pre-existing problems but of using findings to explore how the perception of problems might be changed. It may be that when problems are reformulated from a different point of view they become more amenable to solution. This changed perception may then, in turn, have implications for linguistics. The methodology of applied linguistics must therefore be complex. It must refer to the findings and theories of linguistics, choosing among the different schools and approaches, and ' making these theories relevant to the problem in hand. At the i same time, it must investigate and take into account the \ experience and needs of the people involved in the problem itself. i It must then seek to relate these two perspectives to each other, attempting perhaps, in the process, to reformulate each, And it | must undertake investigation and theorizing of its own, f | Conceived of in this way, applied linguistics is a quest for | common ground. It establishes a reciprocal relationship between nguage problems and linguistics, Inthe chapters that follow we 44 alllexplore these relationships further as they unfold in specific 49 ad ise oecorrectly spelt (or should that be spelled?) and punctuated. notgnly:isT brang it? wrong, but also, in writing, are ‘I brort and ‘I,brought, it. Indeed, teaching children their own mationaldanguage is, in many people’s view, synonymous with iininiaging such deviations. A good deal of school time is spent this-task, and a good deal of the child’s educational success rlldepend upon the results. “ pathe case of pre-school ‘brang’ or ‘bwort’ there is little to be ‘oaceined about, In school, however, the issue of what counts as ‘oirect is much more complex. What of the child who, through ‘soine:speech impediment, never does make the transition from to ‘brought’? What of the child who pronounces ‘I brolightie’ in a regional accent with an ab sound as ‘I brart it’, or says Tbeen it’ (instead of ‘I saw it’), not for some short-lived levelopmental reason, but because this is what their family and iends say too, as part of their dialect? What of the child who ‘has:recently moved to Britain from the USA and says, as their Parents do, ‘I've gotten it” instead of ‘Ive got it’, and writes ‘olor?sinstead of ‘colour’? Should the teacher eliminate these alectal-and national variations, thus seeming to correct the ‘parents as well? The voices of school and home are not always ‘thesame, To make matters more complex still, a third voice—the ide: of the peer group—speaks ever louder and more " persuasively as children grow older, They put ‘RU’ instead of ‘are you’ in text messages; they give words different fashionable senses, invent new ones, and include slang or swear words of which the adults disapprove, even if they use them themselves. © Within the school context by far the most controversial aspect of this situation involves the relationship of the standard form of the language to dialects. The standard is generally used in written communication, taught in schools, and codified in dictionaries and grammar books. Dialects are regional and social-class varieties of the language which differ from the standard in pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary, and are seldom written down at all, The teaching of the standard can be viewed in two quite contradictory ways. On the one hand it can be seen as ‘conferring an unfair advantage upon those children who already speak a variety close to it, while simultaneously denying the worth of other dialects and damaging the heritage of those Prescribing and describing: popular and academic views of ‘correctness’ | At the heart of the aspiration to relate theory to practice is a | constant tension between language as viewed by ‘the expert and language as everyone's lived experience—including the applied linguist’s own. The two are by no means easily reconciled and, as in other areas of academic enquiry affecting everyday life, are likely to be aggravated by any attempt to impose insensitively an ‘expert’ view which runs contrary to deeply held belief, Nowhere is this more apparent than in our attitudes to the language education of children, and the beliefs which they reflect about the | “Dest” language use. These provide a good illustration of the kind of | problematic issues with which applied linguistic enquiry engages. Children’s language at home and school As every parent knows, young children speak idiosyncratically. A child growing up in an English-speaking family, for example, might say ‘I brang it’, even thongh everyone around them says ‘I brought it’ to mean the same thing. Even when the child does say ‘T brought it’, they may still not pronounce the words as adults do, They might, for example, say ‘I bwort it’. Parents—even the | most anxious ones—are usually indulgent of such deviations. They are the stuff of anecdotes and affectionate memories rather than serious concern. It is clear, after all, what the child is saying, and most idiosyncrasies disappear of their own accord. At school, however, the situation is very different. Here the | child is expected, and taught, to use language ‘correctly’. Not | only are English-speaking children expected to say the words ‘I brought it’ clearly and properly pronounced, but also to write 43 |