Language components

Phonetics

sound types: vowels, semivowels, nasals, stops

vocal tract: lips, tongue height, points of articulation

spectra: formants, gaps, transitional effects

Phonological Context

indefinite/implausible/illogical/irregular

also: cat/s/, dog/z/, fox/z/, drop/t/, rub/d/, add/d/

s, g and t in sign/design/designate/signature

/s/ /sh/ : racial, spatial, erasure; also: seizure, gradual

short stressed antepenult: natural, definitive, provocative

Orthography (spelling)

doubled consonants : rubbing, hidden, bagged, crystallize

final y --> i / C_V : marriage, reliable, crazier, denied, vilify

final e --> / _V : realization, storage, whiten, privatize, seizure

Morphology

affixes: prefix, suffix, others, possibly multiple (Swahili)

inflectional

derivational: lighten, lightness, demonize, worker, usually

Syntax

specifying all and only the sentences of a language

what is in touch (-tax) with (syn-) what

word-order, grouping and CFGs

case and free word-order

features and agreement: case, gender, number, person

major/open categories and their phrases

complement structures and subcategorization

X-bar: modifiers, complements, specifiers

empty nodes

long-distance dependencies

function words

Semantics

lookup and combine

lexical ambiguity

synonyms, antonyms, hyponyms

type hierarchies for nouns and verbs

modification

predicates and arguments

compositionality and piggybacking on syntax

quantification, negation and scope

lambda notation

Discourse

anaphoric reference across sentences

topic structure

rhetorical structure: relations among sentences

grounding, turn-taking

Pragmatics

maxims: true, relevant, clear, just enough

indirectness: do you know the time? its cold in here.

style/register

speech acts: I order you to, promise to, second it

History
*Definitions
Applied linguistics does not lend itself to an easy definition. For Cook Applied
Linguistics means many things to many people. For that reason, there is no agreement
about its definition.
Rampton states that it is understood as an open field, in which those inhabiting or
passing through simply show how common commitment to the potential value of
dialogue with people who are different. For others, AL is a synthesis of research from a
variety of disciplines, also that is a mediation between theory and practice.
What most sources of information try to do is to illustrate and analyze what applied
linguistics methods and purposes are for.
*Scope
In the 1960s and 1970s the conception of Corder took for granted that applied
linguistics was all about language teaching. At this period of time that conception was
accepted because of the Second World War revealed that language teachers lacked
knowledge about their subject. After that period of time it became more frequent that
language teachers had also studies in applied linguistics.
Applied linguistics has been successful since the dedication of language teachers to
improve teaching the language.
Currently, the new conception of applied linguistics has changed. For Lewis applied
linguistics is trying to resolve language based problems that people encounter in the
real world

Argumentative Essay
*Importance of experience
The skills that applied linguists bring to their work include their own reflection on their
own experience of language problems, especially when teaching applied linguistics.
However, relying on experience brings its own problems. For instance, personal
inspiration

can

be

dangerous

because

of

certain

kind

of

populism

or

misunderstandings. Thus, applied linguistics has found its own need for theorizing. The
theory would fill the gap of objectivity that missed in the field. So, this theory states
that, for example, language learning in Chile is not so different from language learning

in Cuba or in London. Nevertheless, there are more explanations than solutions when
some language problems occur.
This sections tries to demonstrate the range of activities that applied linguists are
involved in. What these examples illustrate is that projects in applied linguistics
typically present as problems for which explanations are desired as well as showing
that they are a collection of connected language problems.
All the details of these seven case studies are not needed to understand the main point
of this chapter, but we consider important their names to get used to the concepts
applied linguistics works with. The seven case studies are:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7

Language-programme evaluation
Literacy acquisition
Pedagogical grammar
Workplace communication
Language and identity
Assessing English as a lingua franca
Critical pedagogy*

*Language and language practices : language and gender

There is a relationship between linguistics and applied linguistics, this relation is
explored through areas of shred interests. However, to highlight the distinction we have
to consider that there are very different approaches made by linguists and applied
linguists to the way people use language. What is referred to study of language in
situation and in detail, language gender and clinical linguistics.
There can be different views of the same thing or phenomenon, it is not that the
phenomenon is thought not to exist or to be socially constructed in different ways, but
that it can be explained variously depending on the vantage point you take up. It is not
that linguists and applied linguists are interested in different phenomenon but that they
can have different ways of addressing and explaining the same phenomena which its
called differing vantage points.
LANGUAGE AND GENDER
There is a permanent tension in al linguistic-driven studies of language between
change and stability, between variation and stasis, between difference and sameness,
the individual and the group. In general its on the change aspect that linguists focuses
while the applied linguist is more concerned with the sameness aspect.
The linguist has always been interested in the diachronic characteristic of language and
deals with grammatical rules, while the applied linguist takes greater account of the
synchronic.
When linguists concern themselves as they do with standardizing, they shift into an
applied mode. For applied linguists these stabilizing projects are the very stuff of their
professional responsibility as that of providing more efficient uses of language by
society now.
This change of stability difference we see clearly in the extensive work on language
and gender in recent years. From gender, it does not refer to the traditional gender of

grammatical analyses where it stood for a distinction many languages make among
word classes. To some extent grammatical gender does coincide with biological sex, but
only partially. A useful distinction contrasts male/ female for sex with masculine/
feminine for grammatical gender.
The distinction is made between the influence of society on language and the influence
of language on society. Both on the way in which social forces cause language to
change.
The applied linguists concern for stable states means that he or she is more likely to
focus on the influence of language on society and on the extent to which that influence
can be controlled so as to facilitate human interaction through language.
Gender in language therefore is more the concernof the linguist, while language in
gender more that of the applied linguist.

*Investigating the problems : the methodology of applied linguistics

Faced with many problems concerning language learning and teaching, applied
linguistics have developed a series of methodological approaches to the collection of
language data.
Now, let us consider four areas of applied linguistics that connect with what is
supposed to be learned.
1. Second-language acquisition research: what are the stages of second-language
learning?
2. Language proficiency testing: what are the markers of successful language learning?
3. Teaching of LSP: what does the learner need to know?
4. Curriculum design: what does the teacher need to know?
The focus of these four areas is to understand what is the learner learning. Actually, the
focus of these areas is not only around linguistics, but also context and the learning.
Applied linguistics is interested in these two variables because two reasons: first,
uncontextualised varieties are essentially uninteresting for a study of language in use;
second, because second-language learn ing takes place in context and therefore it is
crucial that for teaching purposes the context of their use should be highlighted.
The curriculum serving applied linguistics should be contextualised.
Applied linguistics attempts to bring together language, learner and situation.

7.1 Second-language acquisition research

Research into second-language acquisition began in a very traditional applied
linguistics way by investigating the problem of learners errors. An error is a gap in a
learners' knowledge of the target language.
Applied linguistics' contribution to second language acquisition research have been not
to seek causes of errors and try to define it.

7.2 Language proficiency testing

Testing is more a normal part of language teaching than of other curriculum subjects
because the language teacher is concerned with skill as well as with knowledge. This
means that there is more need for testing.

7.3 The teaching of language for specific purposes

In language teaching decisions must be made as the learner require a language for
special purposes or general purposes.
7.4 Curriculum design
Language teaching implies at all cost the presence of a teacher that is educated in the
subject, although it hasn't only occurs in a classroom.

8 Educational linguistics
If educational linguistics was modelled on educational psychology and
educational sociology, applied linguistics, again according to Spolsky, was modelled
on applied mathematics.

*Language correctness as and applied linguistics problem

The learners of English have many challenges at the moment to put their level of
English in practice. The learners of English must follow rules and guides in order to
know how to be correct or how not be incorrect. In some cases the mistakes in
some cases make a little difference, for instance, the difference between do we write
try to or try and?.
Applied linguistics created different areas with the intention of explains these
problems.
A

Old shibboleths.
As the definition of the text say, this category is about complainants about slippage
in Standard English. You can see this problem in the differentiation between two
words, for example, try to/try and.

Effective Writing.
The role of applied linguistics here is the intention of improve or changes the firs
errors in a written, in order to make the project clearer.

Social class markers.

This kind of error is about the differences of the speech between different social
classes. You can see it when parent say that their children dont understand their
language, because in many cases the words are changed and diminished. For
example, the word bicycle was changed for cycle.

Non-discriminatory language.
Here, applied linguistics try to to expose how language can be used in dis criminatory ways (ibid: 4); as the book said. In other words, the study of the use of
informal language in some cases.

*Language and identity

In his Language and Identity: National, Ethnic, Religious John Joseph (2004a)
attempts to show that language and identity: are ultimately inseparable Thinking
about language and identity ought to improve our understanding of who we are in
our own eyes and in other peoples, and consequently it should deepen our
comprehension of social interaction. Each of us, after all, is engaged with language in a
lifelong project of constructing who we are, and who everyone is that we meet, or
whose utterances we simply hear or read To illustrate his argument. Joseph offers two
case studies, one of Hong Kong, the other of Lebanon. There he shows how the position
of French has changed: In the Ottoman period anyone who knew French was
an educated Christian, and more specifically a Maronite or Roman Catholic. Anyone
who knew English was likely to be an educated Muslim (probably Druze) or Orthodox
Christian (probably Greek) Under the French mandate knowledge of French
spread [I]n the case of Muslim girls, it quadrupled.
Since the start of the civil war in the 1970s, the status of French has declined. Arabic
asserted itself as the marker of Lebanese identity and this continued until about 2000
when the Israelis withdrew from southern Lebanon. The Syrians were also supposed to
withdraw from the rest of Lebanon but did not do so. Maronites, who before 2000 had
asserted that Arabic was the real language of Lebanon, now responded to the question:
what language is spoken in Lebanon? with the answer: French. Maronite identity was
no longer attached to Arabic solidarity across the Middle East. Beleaguered Christians
now saw their identity as European not as Arab. Language, concludes Joseph, in the
sense of what a particular person says or writes is central to individual identity. It
inscribes the person within national and other corporate identities, including
establishing the persons rank within the identity . Joseph qualifies Benedict Arnolds
thesis of the imagined community. Yes, Joseph maintains, national languages do
shape individual identities but also national identities shape national languages.
*Change in applied linguistics practice
Changes have inevitable taken place since the Corders book (Introducing Applied
Linguistics, 1973) appeared and therefore the question Davies addresses is whether
those changes can in any sense be regarded as post-structuralism or postmodernist.
The book is divided into three parts, part 1 provides a linguistic view of language, part
2 offers a linguistic approach to language teaching. Part 3 examines the practice of
applied linguistics and considers 6 topics:
Taking into account these subdivisions Davies compares the practice of applied
linguistics in the 60s and the 2000s, finally finding 2 major differences, the first one is
the expected one that each of these areas have developed over time in several
branches. The second difference is that there is no single chapter in Corders book

related to sociolinguistics, considering that the social aspect dominates in Applied

Linguistics for two reasons: the social part is essential to all understanding of language
in use (context), the second reason is there is a noticeable now a loss of confidence in
the techniques offered by Corder , and widely used in the 60s and 70s.
The comment The context determines and affects the learning (Bolton 2004:367)
helps to explain the phenomenon of World English(es), specifically to the global use of
English, more narrowly the use of English In locations such as the Caribbean, West
Africa, Asian and Indian Englishes etc.
The language now belongs to those who use it as their first language and to those
who use it as an additional language, whether in its standardized form or in its
localized form (Kachru and Smith Editorial, 1985:2010).
For the applied linguist such a claim raises the issue of what it meant to be a native
speaker and how far localized form, which are presumably not standardized, can be
owned by those who use them. The final interrogative for applied linguistics is what
norms Word Englishes speakers observe, and by implication, how far language spread
requires mandatorily native speakers.

*Native speakers and the standard language

There is a central issue related to the native speaker. Preston remarks it as nativeness
is almost the entire question of SLA. Definitions of the native speaker are difficult to
agree on.
Being and Doing definitions seem to be incommensurate. Being definition insists on
first language childhood acquisition. On the other hand, doing definitions argue that
being definitions are uncertain and that language identity are not fixed.
Cognitive research investigates the native speaker, paying no attention to variation
among native speakers. This means that cognitive view is still of the chomskian
idealized native speaker.
Sociolinguistics place variation at the heart of its investigations, but when it needs to
describe the native speaker, it too must idealized. Therefore, the cognitive and the
social meet in an idealization which works itself as the standard language. Standard
language is the model for language learners.
2 Two native speakers
The novel Native Speaker by Chang-Rae Lee, exemplified a Korean American man who
is equally proficient in both languages. The novel shows us the features of foreign
people who speak English. They are always listening at themselves while they are
talking, they are very careful. They tried to pronounce every syllable.
7. The standard language.
We all have our own identifying idiolect, which distinguished from everyone else. It is in
applied linguistics that real interest in the NS resides because is where the standard

language finds its home. Standard language is the goal of education for both L1 and L2,
taken for granted by SLA researchers, the prototype for sociolinguistics.

*The applied linguistics dilemma

What is the professional or scholarly duty of applied linguists? Surely it is to investigate,
analyse, offer recommendations for amelioration and then report on the language
problems they engage with. That seems undisputed. The argument to which I referred
earlier in this chapter (the fault-line) is whether their responsibility continues into
taking remedial/political action themselves as applied linguists rather than as
individuals.
The question for applied linguistics is whether the role of adviser is commensurate
with the role of activist.