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Applied Linguistics Week 1 Handout 1

Applied linguistics is concerned with practical applications of linguistics to address real-world issues involving language use. These include language education, language policy, and communication issues. It draws from multiple disciplines like anthropology, psychology, and education. Applied linguistics studies how languages are learned and used for communication. It focuses on topics like second language acquisition, language teaching, and language difficulties. Cohesion helps ensure coherence in texts by using devices like pronouns, conjunctions, and repetition to link different parts of a discourse together and guide comprehension.

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249 views3 pages

Applied Linguistics Week 1 Handout 1

Applied linguistics is concerned with practical applications of linguistics to address real-world issues involving language use. These include language education, language policy, and communication issues. It draws from multiple disciplines like anthropology, psychology, and education. Applied linguistics studies how languages are learned and used for communication. It focuses on topics like second language acquisition, language teaching, and language difficulties. Cohesion helps ensure coherence in texts by using devices like pronouns, conjunctions, and repetition to link different parts of a discourse together and guide comprehension.

Uploaded by

zaid ahmed
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Applied Linguistics (ENG 360 and ENG 364) Week 1

Handout 1

I. Introduction

□ Applied Linguistics vs. Theoretical Linguistics

What are Linguistics and Applied Linguistics about?

Linguistics is the study of human language in all its aspects. It provides a


methodology for exploring the structure of particular languages; it investigates what is
universal to all human languages: how languages are different, how language varies
over time and between different societies, how language is learnt, and how language
is used for human communication.

Applied Linguistics is concerned with practical issues involving language in the life
of the community. The most important of these is the learning of second or foreign
languages. Others include language policy, multilingualism, language education, the
preservation and revival of endangered languages, and the assessment and treatment
of language difficulties. Other areas of interest include professional communication,
for example, between doctors and their patients, between lawyers and their clients and
in courtrooms, as well as other areas of institutional and cross-cultural communication
ranging from the boardroom to the routines on an answer-phone.

Linguistics and Applied Linguistics is inherently a multi-disciplinary study, drawing


on methodologies and theories from many fields, including archaeology, psychology,
anthropology, history, literature, philosophy, sociology, social theory, education, the
mathematical sciences and computer science. Thus it has contributions to make to a
range of study and professional practice areas.

□ What is applied linguistics?

Applied Linguistics is a scholarly discipline dealing with the application of insights


from both linguistics and other fields (such as anthropology, philosophy, psychology,
sociology, or education) to an understanding of how we learn, store, and use a second

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language or our native language. Linguistics deals, inter alia, with aspects of language
itself (sounds, grammar, syntax), its variants, and with the processes used by human
beings to process/store/retrieve information (psycholinguistics, in particular cognitive
linguistics). It is impossible to separate the various strands of "pure" linguistics from
other (sub)disciplines.

- Communication: Language in Use (speak, hear, understand and use)


- Background Knowledge: ex., physical characteristics of objects and sociocultural
convention

Study the following conversation and see if you can work out what it is about.

J. Oh, this is beautiful!


R. Oh, yes, that’s right.
J. Is that how you … you wanted it hard boiled, didn’t you?
R. Yes, that’s what I call hard.
J. Well, do you want to have this one?
R. No, you have that one, ‘cause this one must be harder, mustn’t it?
J. Doesn’t it necessarily follow.
F. Yes, surely it … oh, you’re right … it doesn’t.
J. Depends which one went in first.
R. Yes, you’re right, well look, in a minute we’ll know.

□ coherence and cohesion

Cohesion (by Ceri Millward)

Whereas coherence is a necessary element for comprehension, it may not be


sufficient, especially when confronted with a larger text or listening exercise. At this
point we must refer to another element - cohesion. Nunan (1993:59) believes that,
'coherent texts are distinguished from random sentences by the existence of certain
text-forming, cohesive devises.'

Cohesion as such can be considered as a guide to coherence, a means to ensure, or


simplify, coherence and comprehension. Certain words, or phrases, and their location
within the discourse will activate a set of assumptions as to the meaning of what has
gone beforehand or will generate a set of expectations as to what may follow. These

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words can be described as 'cohesive devices', as they create links across the
boundaries of mere fragments, or can chain related items together.

A cohesive device can be defined as a word, phrase or clause, which organises and
manages a stretch of discourse. Halliday and Hasan (1976) give a very comprehensive
description and analysis of these devices by categorising them into five distinct types
of cohesion: reference, substitution, ellipsis, conjunction and lexical cohesion.

• Reference items are those, which refer to something or someone, within the
framework of the discourse. They can be pronouns ('he', 'she', 'it', 'they', 'him'),
demonstratives ('that', 'those'), the article 'the', or other items ('such as').

• Ellipsis involves the deliberate omittance of elements, despite being generally


required by grammar, if they are considered to be obvious within the specific context.

• Substitution relates to the substitution of words or clauses with a generic word or


phrase.

• Lexical cohesion is created by repetition of a word or by using two words in a text


that are semantically related .

♦ structure and function


♦ utterances: sequences of words written or spoken in specific contexts
♦ participants: the writer and reader(s), the speaker(s) and listener(s)
♦ intention, implication and interpretation

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