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Understanding applied linguistics
This chapter will do the following
1. Discuss the meaning(s) of applied linguistics.
2. Summarize important elements of the history of applied linguistics.
3. Present ideas regarding the relationship between theoretical and applied linguistics and different branches of linguistics.
4. Present aspects of applied linguistics in the real world.
5. Describe what the book contains in its subsequent chapters.
6. Provide ideas for students and scholars who would like to start work in applied linguistics.
Introduction
There are two quotes that encompass the mood with which I set out to write this book. The first, by Thomas Friedman (2016), is recent and speaks directly of the historical moment we are living:
Anyone who falls back in tried-and-true formulae or dogmatisms in a world changing this fast is asking for trouble. Indeed, as the world becomes more interdependent and complex, it becomes more vital than ever to widen your aperture and to synthesize more perspectives.
What better way to set out to widen the scope of applied linguistics than to âsynthesize more perspectivesâ in a world of increasing velocity?
The other, one of my favorites about language, for it speaks of everything applied linguists and sociolinguists in their effort to be descriptive tend to believe in, is by Emerson (1883, p. 147) and goes, âLanguage is a city to the building of which every human being brought a stone.â
The first decades of the twenty-first century have been marked by very quick changes in social and linguistic dynamics, fueled by our growing reliance on digital modes of communication, arguably at a speed not seen before in modern history. Friedman above has claimed that the year 2007, the time of the release of the iPhone, coinciding with the advent of widespread use of social media such as Facebook, created an exponential change in the role and scope of technology use in our lives, one that our cognition is striving to accompany, sometimes with less than perfect results. In that sense, Friedman argues, we are in a constant state of catching up, trying to cope with a complex reality of lives in flux both within and without our computer and phone screens. I wonder if it becomes hard to bring a stone to build a city, as Emerson proposes in the second quote, if we hardly have the energy to move forward.
Part of our cognitive stress is related to the amount of information we are exposed to every day, the many decisions we have to make about their relevance, and the sheer amount of stimulation that processing such information results in. Bohn and Short (2012, p. 980) estimate that
in 2008, Americans consumed about 1.3 trillion hours of information outside of work, an average of almost 12 hours per person per day. Media consumption totaled 3.6 zettabytes and 1,080 trillion words, corresponding to 100,500 words and 34 gigabytes for the average person on an average day.
Notice that these numbers, already several years behind us, come from a time when, compared to today, the average American was being exposed to a lot less information, and yet the figures are already staggering. It is not hard to hypothesize that more recent numbers would show even greater cognitive stress and impact on behaviors, including linguistic ones.
While taxing and challenging, these changesâone could argueâhave made for a democratization of communication. After all, the advent and multiplication of blogs, personal and professional websites, self-published books and e-books, as well as the possibility of posting for a large number of followers and friends on Twitter and Facebook could potentially allow everyone to have âa voice,â one unregulated by the alleged gatekeepers of other times, a truly democratic building of a linguistic city.
Howeverâone could also argueâthe downside of this widespread exchange of information and opinion is that oftentimes factual knowledge and the very idea of truth can become lost in the noise created by so many conflicting expressions, which reveal very different levels of understanding of the phenomena they seek to explore. Additionally, while the globalization of information at first created access to diverse voices, cultures, and expressions, it now seems to be the case that speech communities have formed among those who share values and beliefs to the point of stark opposition between groups.
A search for endorsement of views sponsored within those groups has created political, cultural, and linguistic divides that go beyond the divides we found before our lives went digital. In many contexts, it has become hard to distinguish between fact and opinion, informed expert testimony and confabulation. It is no wonder that the Oxford English Dictionaryâs Word of the Year 2016 was âpost-truth,â whose definition is ârelating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.â 1 In the tension between appeals to logos, pathos, and ethos, a closer look at Internet media would likely indicate that the two latter appeals are taking over a lot of space that once belonged to the former, and although many of us might have already realized this shift has consequences, its full implications will likely be felt for years to come.
In bringing up these factors, I am not preparing myself to defend some idea of absolute, irrefutable truth and to place it in opposition to the notion of relative knowledge embedded in cultural, affective, and contextual understandings. Quite the opposite. Never before were diverse, sensible voices more needed in a global debate often marked, seemingly paradoxically, by superficiality and extreme views. Nevertheless, the democratization of knowledge should not be an excuse for an âeverything goesâ approach to sharing information and to learning (be that learning informal or formal), where opinions replace expertise and where five-minute Internet searches are considered enough background research for a particular view to be then advanced.
Indeed, we are in more need of experts than ever. As opinions get polarized, it is not uncommon for people to seek out only those media containing views that reinforce what they already believe in, and this in turn helps the proliferation of misinformation and antagonism. In the end, it is not unusual for discussions to not resonate with reality anymore. In a post-truth world, it is much harder to tell fact from fiction.
In this climate, education itself is at a crossroads: when so many are the sources of (mis)information that compete for a viewerâs or readerâs attention, it is often hard to convince learners, and other stakeholders, to reexamine beliefs, points of views, and standpointsâhowever necessary such examination is for learning. Education runs the risk of serving only to support particular views, and newer findings, especially those which might contradict long-held or now-cherished beliefs, are in greater danger of being ignored or chastised.
What has this social reality got to do with applied linguistics? It turns out, quite a lot. First of all, half-truths, post-truths, and lies are conveyed through language. Rhetorical devices are often replaced with logical fallacies, and content analysis oftentimes reveals inconsistencies that can go unnoticed by laypersons. Flame wars erupt, trolling becomes common, and long-standing principles of politeness and courtesy can fall by the wayside. These dynamics are facilitated (or hampered) by use and misuse of language. Note that when I write of misuse of language I do not mean prescriptive ideas about split infinitives or sentences that end in prepositions. These are common and linguistically justifiable usage matters. What I am referring to is the misuse of language to exclude, disrespect, or silence others. Those are the ones applied linguistics should really be concerned about.
Furthermore, our digital selves have come to rely on many different kinds of text and forms of linguistic expression to try and stay relevant and participate in our speech communities, communities of practice, and increasingly complex linguistic networks. Because we, as digital selves, interact locally, regionally, and globally, often across varieties and linguistic borders (however porous those are), new ways of communication as well as new genres have had to be forged. Living language has always been in flux and susceptible to changes, but the speed and the reach of these changes have increased, arguably like never before, and at present they show no signs of slowing down. A 2017 study by global tech company Asurion revealed that on average Americans check their phones 80 times a day, with millennials checking on average 150 times a day. 2 These are for the most part linguistic or partially-linguistic interactions in social media which have come to require our attention every 12 minutes.
Digital communications have direct impact on our language use but also many indirect ramifications. For example, forensic linguistics as a science has accelerated greatly with the study of digital texts, Internet searches, and the incorporation of large data sets that make corpus studies possible. In fact, corpus studies facilitated by our sharp technological tools can now cut across pretty much every area of applied linguistics, from studies in English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) to content and discourse analysis of literary and journalistic texts.
In that context, language experts, capable of transferring knowledge to influence the key elements of social development of our time have a central role to play in making connections between theoretical knowledge, practical application, and linguistic problems in the real world. That is where the title and the premise of this book come from. As the reader will see in this introduction, my aspiration is to place this work at the intersection of linguistic theory, what became known as applied linguistics (practice), and a further realm where that application goes beyond areas such as Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL), writing instruction, and language acquisition to eventually populate, influence, and solve pressing problems in areas as diverse as forensics and engineering. In this intersection, mixed methodologies and partnerships with experts from other fields are not only desirable but sine qua non elements of success. While heavily linguistic, those realms are not exclusively linguistic, and whereas social problems can have a linguistic component to them, more often than not, they will not be exclusively linguistic.
Although some intellec...
