An Introduction to Applied Linguistics

An Introduction to

Applied Linguistics

Second Edition

EDINBURGH TEXTBOOKS IN APPLIED LINGUISTICS

S E R I E S E D I TO R S : A L A N DAV I E S & K E I T H M I T C H E L L

This Second Edition of the foundational textbook An Introduction to Applied Linguistics provides

a state-of-the-art account of contemporary applied linguistics. The kinds of language problems

of interest to applied linguists are discussed and a distinction drawn between the different

research approach taken by theoretical linguists and by applied linguists to what seem to be

the same problems. Professor Davies describes a variety of projects which illustrate the

interests of the field and highlight the marriage it offers between practical experience and

theoretical understanding. The increasing emphasis of applied linguistics on ethicality is linked

to the growth of professionalism and to the concern for accountability, manifested in the

widening emphasis on critical stances. This, Davies argues, is at its most acute in the tension

between giving advice as the outcome of research and taking political action in order to

change a situation which, it is claimed, needs ameliorisation. This dilemma is not confined to

applied linguistics and may now be endemic in the applied disciplines.

Key features

• surveys current issues in applied linguistics, including the concept of the Native Speaker and

the development of World Englishes

• examines the influence of linguistics, cognitive science and philosophy on applied linguistics and

makes a contrast with educational linguistics

• proposes that a key issue for the profession will increasingly be the tension between advice and

action

• suggests that applied linguistics is a theorising rather than a theoretical discipline.

Alan Davies is a long-term member of staff of the Department of Applied Linguistics in the

University of Edinburgh. His publications include Principles of Language Testing, The Native

Speaker: Myth and Reality, Dictionary of Language Testing, The Handbook of Applied Linguistics and

A Glossary of Applied Linguistics.

Cover design: River Design, Edinburgh

Edinburgh University Press

22 George Square, Edinburgh

ISBN 978 0 7486 3355 5

www.eup.ed.ac.uk

Edinburgh ALAN DAVIES

ALAN DAVIES

An Introduction to Applied Linguistics

An Introduction to Applied Linguistics

From Practice to Theory

Second Edition

ALAN DAVIES

This new textbook series provides advanced introductions to the main areas of study in

contemporary Applied Linguistics, with a principal focus on the theory and practice of

language teaching and language learning and on the processes and problems of language in use.

EDINBURGH TEXTBOOKS IN APPLIED LINGUISTICS

S E R I E S E D I TO R S : A L A N DAV I E S & K E I T H M I T C H E L L

From Practice to Theory

3301 eup linguistics 24/5/07 13:19 Page 1

From reviews of the first edition

‘Alan Davies’ introductory text forcefully re-echoes the famous Edinburgh series in

applied linguistics, which he contributed to in a major way.’

Applied Linguistics

‘Every discipline coming of age needs to reflect on its origins, its history, its conflicts,

in order to gain a better understanding of its identity and its long term objectives.

Alan Davies, one of the founding fathers of applied linguistics, is the ideal person for

this soul-searching exercise … Introduction to Applied Linguistics is obligatory reading

for students and researchers in applied linguistics, for language professionals and for

anyone interested in the link between linguistics and applied linguistics.’

Modern Language Review

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‘’Tis of great use to the sailor to know the length of his line, though he cannot with it fathom

all the depths of the ocean. ’Tis well he knows that it is long enough to reach the bottom, at

such places as are necessary to direct his voyage, and caution him against running upon shoals

that may ruin him. Our business here is not to know all things, but those which concern our

conduct. If we can find out those measures whereby a rational creature, put in that state which

man is in the world, may and ought to govern his opinions and actions depending thereon,

we need not be troubled that some other things escape our knowledge.’

(John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, 1695)

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An Introduction to Applied

Linguistics

From Practice to Theory

Second Edition

Alan Davies

Edinburgh Textbooks in Applied Linguistics

Series Editors: Alan Davies and Keith Mitchell

Edinburgh University Press

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Grateful acknowledgement is made for permission to reproduce material previously published

elsewhere. Every effort has been made to trace the copyright holders, but if any have been

inadvertently overlooked, the publisher will be pleased to make the necessary arrangements at

the first opportunity.

© Alan Davies, 1999, 2007

Edinburgh University Press Ltd

22 George Square, Edinburgh

First edition published 1999

by Edinburgh University Press

Typeset in Garamond

by Norman Tilley Graphics, Northampton,

and printed and bound in Great Britain

by Cromwell Press, Trowbridge, Wilts

A CIP record for this book is available from

the British Library

ISBN 978 0 7486 3354 8 (hardback)

ISBN 978 0 7486 3355 5 (paperback)

The right of Alan Davies

to be identified as author of this work

has been asserted in accordance with

the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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Contents

Series Editors’ Preface vii

Preface ix

Acknowledgements x

Abbreviations xii

1 History and ‘definitions’ 1

2 Doing being applied linguists: the importance of experience 13

3 Language and language practices 41

4 Applied linguistics and language learning/teaching 63

5 Applied linguistics and language use 92

6 The professionalising of applied linguists 115

7 Applied linguistics: no ‘bookish theoric’ 133

8 The applied linguistics challenge 149

Glossary 160

Exercises 169

References 180

Index 194

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Series Editors’ Preface

This series of single-author volumes published by Edinburgh University Press takes

a contemporary view of applied linguistics. The intention is to make provision for

the wide range of interests in contemporary applied linguistics which are pro vided

for at the Master’s level.

The expansion of Master’s postgraduate courses in recent years has had two effects:

1. What began almost half a century ago as a wholly cross-disciplinary subject has

found a measure of coherence so that now most training courses in Applied

Linguistics have similar core content.

2. At the same time the range of specialisms has grown, as in any developing

discipline. Training courses (and professional needs) vary in the extent to

which these specialisms are included and taught.

Some volumes in the series will address the first development noted above, while

the others will explore the second. It is hoped that the series as a whole will provide

students beginning postgraduate courses in Applied Linguistics, as well as language

teachers and other professionals wishing to become acquainted with the subject,

with a sufficient introduction for them to develop their own thinking in applied

linguistics and to build further into specialist areas of their own choosing.

The view taken of applied linguistics in the Edinburgh Textbooks in Applied

Linguistics Series is that of a theorising approach to practical experience in the

language professions, notably, but not exclusively, those concerned with language

learning and teaching. It is concerned with the problems, the processes, the mech -

anisms and the purposes of language in use.

Like any other applied discipline, applied linguistics draws on theories from

related disciplines with which it explores the professional experience of its

practitioners and which in turn are themselves illuminated by that experience. This

two-way relationship between theory and practice is what we mean by a theorising

discipline.

The volumes in the series are all premised on this view of Applied Linguistics as

a theorising discipline which is developing its own coherence. At the same time, in

order to present as complete a contemporary view of applied linguistics as possible

other approaches will occasionally be expressed.

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Some twelve years from its first planning meeting, the Edinburgh Textbooks in

Applied Linguistics (ETAL) Series reaches double figures with the publication of this

volume by Alan Davies: An Introduction to Applied Linguistics: from practice to theory.

It is hoped that the range of topics dealt with in these ten volumes (all listed on the

inside cover) offers a helpful idea of the variety of contemporary applied linguistics

concerns both in teaching and in research. The fact that Davies’s volume is a second

edition of the book that introduced the series in 1999 does not deny our claim for

range and variety. Davies’s volume has been brought up to date eight years on and

contains two wholly new chapters (1 and 8). Furthermore, the need for a second

edition attests to the continuing interest in the scholarly pursuit of applied linguistics

and in the ETAL Series.

Alan Davies

W. Keith Mitchell

viii Series Editors’ Preface

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Preface

A generous review of the First Edition (Davies: 1999) of this book suggested that

I had taken on ‘an impossible task, that of simultaneously addressing both the

concerns of disciplinary theorists and those of students. It would have been best to

limit the audience to those “interested in reviewing arguments about the relationship

between linguistics and applied linguistics. [That being so, the review continues] It

is those with considerable professional and professionalizing experience … who can

best appreciate and critically evaluate this very theory-driven exposition.”’

I am persuaded by this argument and accept that the audience I had – and now

have – in mind is my professional colleagues and graduate students. Indeed, it is that

group we have continued to target in the eight volumes that followed in the Series

after ETAL 1. I list them later in this chapter but point out here that the construct

of each volume was never how to do applied linguistics but rather what it means to

do it. In other words, I took for granted that, pace Alastair Pennycook (2004), serious

applied linguistics is always critical, and therefore whether the area under discussion

is literature, materials, politics, language planning etc., what applied linguistics must

do is to take a critical approach to it, problematise it and in so doing abjure easy

solutions and packaged remedies.

Since 1999 when the first edition of this book was published as the Introduction

to the Series: Edinburgh Textbooks in Applied Linguistics Series, eight further

volumes have appeared. Their publication means that we now have a broader

definition of applied linguistics than was available ten years ago and their influence

can be observed in the revisions to this volume. In particular I have accepted that the

strong distinction I argued for in the first edition, between linguistics-applied and

applied-linguistics, is not as necessary as it may once have been, and in this second

edition I return to the more traditional distinction between (theoretical or general)

linguistics and applied linguistics.

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Acknowledgements

AUTHOR’S ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

In addition to those colleagues and students mentioned in the Acknowledgments

to the first edition, I wish to thank friends in the international language testing

community for their collegiality, colleagues at the Hong Kong Polytechnic

University where I was employed part-time over several years and those in the wider

applied linguistics community who helped shape the Handbook of Applied Linguistics

that Cathie Elder and I developed. I am particularly grateful to John Joseph for

sharing his vision of applied linguistics with me and to the ETAL Series authors

for expanding my understanding of applied linguistics. My thanks also to Keith

Mitchell, co-editor of the ETAL Series, and to Sarah Edwards at Edinburgh

University Press, for their constant support.

AUTHOR’S ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS (FIRST EDITION)

I am grateful to those colleagues and students with whom I have worked in the

Department of Applied Linguistics at the University of Edinburgh since the early

1960s. For much of that period Applied Linguistics and Linguistics were together

in one department, allowing me to reflect on the relationship between the two

disciplines, an issue central to the argument of this volume. Towards the end of my

career in Edinburgh I worked for some years in the University of Melbourne, as

Director of the National Language and Literacy Institute of Australia Language

Testing Research Centre. In Melbourne I found again the excitement of the early

years in Edinburgh and I want to thank all those with whom I shared that experience.

At a recent Film Academy awards ceremony, the actor Kim Bassinger accepted her

Oscar award with a very short speech of thanks. All she said was that she wanted to

thank everyone she had ever met in her whole life. After nearly 40 years in applied

linguistics, I think I know what she meant. But I do want to express my particular

gratitude to several colleagues whose views on applied linguistics have influenced

me: Pit Corder, Ron Asher, Henry Widdowson, Chris Brumfit, John Maher, Terry

Quinn and Cathie Elder. But the views expressed in this volume are of course my

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own and for them I take full responsibility. I am grateful to my co-editor of this

Series, Keith Mitchell, for a critical read of my manuscript and I want to thank Jackie

Jones of Edinburgh University Press for her encouragement and support.

Acknowledgements xi

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Abbreviations

AAAL American Association of Applied Linguistics

AILA Association de Linguistique Appliquée (International Association

of Applied Linguistics)

ALAA Applied Linguistics Association of Australia

BAAL British Association of Applied Linguistics

CIEFL Central Institute for English and Foreign Languages

CLA Child Language Acquisition

EFL English as a Foreign Language

ELF (or ELiF) English as a Lingua Franca

ELTS English Language Testing System

ESL English as a Second Language

ESP English for Specific Purposes

IATEFL International Association for the Teaching of English as a Foreign

Language

IELTS International English Language Testing Service

LOTE Language Other Than English

LSP Languages for Specific Purposes

SLA(R) Second Language Acquisition (Research)

TESOL Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages

TOEFL Test of English as a Foreign Language

UCH Unitary Competence Hypothesis

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For Cathie as before

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Edinburgh Textbooks in Applied Linguistics

Titles in the series include:

Teaching Literature in a Second Language

by Brian Parkinson and Helen Reid Thomas

Materials Evaluation and Design for Language Teaching

by Ian McGrath

The Social Turn in Second Language Acquisition

by David Block

Language Assessment and Programme Evaluation

by Brian Lynch

Linguistics and the Language of Translation

by Kirsten Malmkjaer

Pragmatic Stylistics

by Elizabeth Black

Language Planning in Education

by Gibson Ferguson

Language and Politics

by John E. Joseph

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