JOURNAL OF ENGLISH STUDIES - VOLUME 3, (2001-2), 99-114

LINGUISTICS IN APPLIED LINGUISTICS: A HISTORICAL OVERVIEW

TONY HARRIS
University of Granada

ABSTRACT. This paper looks at some of the underlying reasons which

might explain the uncertainty surrounding applied linguistics as an
academic enquiry. The opening section traces the emergence of the field
through its professional associations and publications and identifies
second and foreign language (L2) teaching as its primary activity. The
succeeding section examines the extent to which L2 pedagogy, as a branch
of applied linguistics, is conceived within a theoretical linguistic
framework and how this might have changed during a historical period
that gave rise to Chomskyan linguistics and the notion of communicative
competence. The concluding remarks offer explanations to account for the
persistence of linguistic parameters to define applied linguistics.

1. INTRODUCTION

Perhaps the most difficult challenge facing the discipline of applied

linguistics at the start of the new millennium is to define the ground on which
it plies its trade. The field is not infrequently criticised and derided by the
parent science, linguistics, which claims authority over academic terrain that
applied linguists consider their own. It should be said, however, that applied
linguists themselves seem to attract such adversity because of the lack of
consensus within their own ranks about what it is they are actually engaged
in. The elusiveness of a definition that might string together an academic
domain of such wide-ranging diversity, which appears to be in a perennial
state of expansion, makes definitions unsafe, not to say time-bound, and in this
sense Widdowsons (2000a: 3) likening of the field to the Holy Roman
Empire: a kind of convenient nominal fiction is uncomfortably close to the

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truth. Indeed, a geographical metaphor which alludes to the merging together

of the numerous scattered principalities of modern-day Germany both freeze-
frames a discipline in the early stages of its development and embraces the
paradox of an enquiry that extends out in all directions without leaving behind
the sort of trace that might serve to delimit its investigative boundaries.
There is a sense of inevitability about this state of affairs in that, like all
applied sciences, applied linguistics begins from local and quite practical
problems (Candlin 1988: vii) so that the point of reference is continually
changing. If one accepts the notion that practice precedes theory in applied
linguistics and thus by extension determines theory then one may also
appreciate how context, as defined by time and locality, is likely to describe
an academic discipline which is characterised by its very dynamism.
Uncertainty, as Widdowson (2000a: 3) suggests, may be one of the reasons
why applied linguistics has flourished but the central issue at stake in
defining the field would seem to be more closely connected with
directionality (Widdowson 1980: 169). The practice-before-theory paradigm
might, for many applied linguists, describe the central plank upon which the
discipline is built although the antithesis of this approach, theory-before-
practice, has just as often been used to solve applied linguistic problems (de
Beaugrande 1997: 310).
This paper attempts to shed some light on why the field of applied
linguistics continues to generate doubt and misgiving as an academic enquiry.
The first part looks at the emergence of the discipline through the formation
of its associations and publications and identifies the practical area of second
and foreign language (L2) teaching as being the principal focus of research
activity in the field. The second part examines how theoretical linguistics has
come to form a point of departure in defining L2 pedagogy1 and the extent to
which this might have changed specifically with the advent of Chomskyan
theory and the subsequent development of the notion of communicative
competence.

2. THE EMERGENCE OF A DISCIPLINE

The development of applied linguistics as an academic enquiry can be

traced back to the middle of the last century with the emergence of a number
of research institutions and university departments. Examples of these include

1. The enormous impact of other academic disciplines on L2 pedagogy, notably second

language acquisition (SLA), is fully acknowledged. Nevertheless, the complexity of the field
of SLA might be dealt with more profitably in a separate article, and will not, therefore, be
considered here. The term L2 pedagogy (and indeed, L2 teaching) is used in its broadest
sense to include learning as well as teaching in a classroom context.

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the English Language Institute at the University of Michigan in 1941, the

Department of Applied Linguistics at the University of Edinburgh in 1956, the
Center for Applied Linguistics in Washington, DC in 1959, the formation of
AILA (Association Internationale de Linguistique Applique) in 1964, TESOL
(Teaching English as a Second and Overseas Language) in 1966, BAAL (the
British Association of Applied Linguistics) in 1968, and AAAL (The American
Association of Applied Linguistics) in 1977.
The publication of journals related to the study, which have developed in
parallel to its institutional bodies, also have a good deal to do with the
promotion of applied linguistics. The first of these was the Modern Language
Journal which came into being in 1916 and, at about the time when the field
was attracting attention at an institutional level, a number of other journals
appeared: English Language Teaching Journal (1946), Language Learning
(1948), International Review of Applied Linguistics (IRAL 1963), Annual Review
of Applied Linguistics (1963), TESOL Quarterly (1966). And by the late 1970s
and early 1980s: System (1973), Studies in Second Language Acquisition (1978),
Applied Linguistics (1980), Applied Psycholinguistics (1980), English for Specific
Purposes (1981).
A cursory examination of the stated aims and objectives of the various
applied linguistic assocations, institutions and publications is a useful point of
departure in search of an answer to the question posed in the title of this
paper, namely what is applied linguistics? Clearly the institutional bodies and
journals referred to above comprise only a small part of two potentially
extensive lists although, given that they are based on Allwright (1998: 10-11),
with the exception of one or two additional items, they may be taken to be
minimally representative of the field at least from an international standpoint.
The Internet-accessible information and documentation pertaining to
AILA, BAAL and AAAL three of the largest applied linguistic associations
worldwide seem to coincide on three issues which are central to a definition
of the field. In the first place, it is evident that linguistics is fundamental. As
Widdowson (2000a: 4) observes, you have to have it first before you can
apply it. BAAL (2002) sees applied linguistics as an approach to
understanding language issues in the real word; whilst AILA and AAAL refer
to language-related topics and language-related concerns (my italics)
respectively which the latter goes on to specify as: language education,
language acquisition and loss, bilingualism, discourse analysis, literacy,
rhetoric and stylistics, language for special purposes, psycholinguistics, second
and foreign language pedagogy, language assessment, and language policy
and planning.
Secondly, it is clear that these language-related topics and concerns are
grounded in real world problems and issues. They are, in this sense, a distant
remove from the theoretical abstractions of pure or scientific linguistics.

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Indeed, the two-item definition of applied linguistics offered by BAAL (1994)

includes an approach to understanding language issues in the real world,
drawing on theory and empirical analysis. AAAL (2002) is more specific about
the nature of its work in listing one of its primary activities as to network with
Teachers of English for Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL). Curiously,
though AILA came into existence with a mandate to encourage the spread
and improvement of language teaching on an international scale (Strevens
1966: 63), its statutes and bylaws appear to reduce the practical application of
its research to a list of twenty areas which includes first and second language
education (AILA 2002). Thus, the field of language teaching, which is clearly
seen as a principal application of applied linguistics in AAAL, is not accorded
the same importance in current AILA and BAAL documents.
Finally, all three associations supply lengthy lists of subdisciplines, topics
and scientific commissions which underline the multidisciplinary and inter-
disciplinary nature of applied linguistics. And although the actual names of
these research areas may vary from list to list and from association to
association, the ground covered by each one describes what is essentially the
same academic terrain.
This threefold pattern of i) linguistics; ii) the practical focus of the field;
and iii) its multidisciplinariness is one which was confirmed in the debate
about the scope of applied linguistics that took place at the 1999 AILA
Congress in Tokyo. The discussions were, according to Grabe and Kaplan
(2000: 4-5), characterised by the disaccord between participants although eight
key points were eventually drawn up representing those which most applied
linguists would agree on. These may be reduced to the three elements
outlined above without any loss of overall meaning since six of the points are
basically refinements pertaining to the fields multifariousness which,
evidently, was the contentious part of the debate.

3. APPLIED LINGUISTICS AND L2 PEDAGOGY

One might imagine that the scope of applied linguistics as defined by

some of its most prestigious international associations would be mirrored in
definitions proffered by its leading publications. Yet this is not entirely the case
nor, as we shall see, is it without significance. The three overarching issues
outlined in this paper as defining the discipline are certainly replicated in the
collective objectives of applied linguistic publications but the wording of the
titles of the journals foregrounds one facet of the field which is not
immediately apparent in the statutes of associations: applied linguistics is very
often concerned with language learning and teaching, and the job of the
applied linguist is, therefore, one of mediating between such theory as may be
connected with language pedagogy and its realisation in the classroom.

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Some of the applied linguistic journals cited above leave little doubt
regarding the activites that they are engaged in. For example, English
Language Teaching Journal (ELTJ), Language Learning and TESOL Quarterly
are manifestly concerned with issues in second and foreign language (L2)
pedagogy. However, it is not quite so apparent that a publication which is
almost invariably referenced as simply IRAL is in fact called The International
Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching to give it its full title
even though the acronym makes no reference to language teaching. Similarly,
neither Language Learning nor System are referred to in their subtitled-entirety
which makes it clear that the former is, A Journal of Applied Linguistics, and
the latter, An International Journal of Educational Technology and Applied
Linguistics. Nor would outsiders to the discourse community of applied
linguistics perhaps realise that System specifically focuses on the problems of
foreign language teaching and learning and that the Modern Language
Journal is not so much a publication which is concerned with language as the
title might imply but devoted to research and discussion about the theory and
teaching of foreign and second languages. Moreover, the aims of ELTJ may
amount, for some in the field, to a concise definition of the work of the
applied linguist: ELTJ seeks to bridge the gap between the everyday practical
concerns of ELT professionals and the related disciplines of education,
linguistics, psychology and sociology.
One of the acknowledged flagships in the field, Applied Linguistics, with
its long list of eminent American-British editors and distinguished advisory
boards, is unequivocal in its view of applied linguistics as the study of
language and language-related problems in specific situations in which people
use and learn languages, and it is perhaps not by chance, therefore, that it
goes on to list ten broad areas of study starting with first and second
language learning and teaching and continuing with: critical linguistics;
discourse analysis; language and education; language planning; language
testing; lexicography; multilingualism and multilingual education; stylistics and
rhetoric; and translation. It should be said that this list is by no means
exhaustive AILA, for example, lists twenty-five scientific commisions and in
Spain, AESLA conference proceedings are routinely divided into a similar
number of sections but the repetition of the word education in the
categories that appear in Applied Linguistics and the implication of
educational applications in language planning and testing suggests that
language learning and teaching in all its manifestations is perhaps closer to a
superordinate than a discrete category.
Certainly, with regard to academic output in the field, much the greater
part of applied linguistics is concerned with language teaching and learning.
Indeed, Crystal (1991/1980: 22) notes that sometimes the term is used as if it
were the only field involved. Cook and Seidlhofer (1995: 7) support this claim

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observing that in spite of the potentially wide scope of the field, it is with
language teaching and learning, and particularly English language teaching
and learning, that many works on applied linguistics are primarily concerned.
The elevated importance of English language teaching (ELT) above other
languages is, it seems, a logical consequence of the emergence of English as
a global lingua franca (Graddol and Meinhof 1999: 1). Brown (1987: 147)
observes that the term applied linguistics carries with it a transatlantic nuance:
the common British usage of the term is almost synonymous with
language teaching. Not many applied linguists on either side of the Atlantic
would disagree with this claim since the evolution of British applied
linguistics is, as we shall see, intricately bound up with L2 teaching.
Nevertheless, to a lesser or greater extent, the essence of the field on a global
level is highlighted in Kaplan and Widdowsons (1992: 77) review of the ERIC
system (an international database sponsored by the US government) over two
decades revealing that approximately 45% of entries for applied linguistics are
in some way concerned with language teaching. And whilst Browns assertion
suggests that this figure might be significantly higher in Britain, it appears to
be one which holds true in Spain. In the introduction to XIII AESLA
conference proceedings, for example, Otal et al (1997: 18) draw attention to
the fact that more than half of the 100 papers presented in the congress were
related to las areas de enseanza y aprendizaje de lenguas.2 An examination
of subsequent AESLA conference proceedings up to the most recent edition in
2001 reflects a similar picture.
Thus, one might draw certain interim conclusions about the current state
of the field and its investigative orientations. To start with, despite persistant
doubts surrounding the long-term existence of applied linguistics both from
within and outside the field, the steady growth of the discipline from the 1950s
onwards as expressed in the burgeoning number of associations, courses,
institutions and journals, is testament to the fact that the academic ground that
it occupies is not only a reality but that institutional status has been
comprehensively conferred upon it (Widdowson 2000a: 3). In the second
place, the scope of the enquiry has broadened considerably over the years but
the reality of applied linguistics for the majority a figure approaching 50% of
those engaged in the field in Spain is that of an academic pursuit which is
intimately related to language teaching and learning. In sum, applied
linguistics may be said to be typified as that activity which informs L2

2. More precisely the categories on which this approximation is made are enseanza de
lenguas (31 papers) and adquisicin de lenguas (23 papers). Although one might argue
that the latter is not always directly related to L2 pedagogy, one might also argue that other
panels could have been brought into the approximation. For example, 2 of 4 papers on
both the sociolingstica and estilstica y retrica panels refer directly to L2 pedagogy.

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pedagogy and, therefore, derives its theoretical underpinnings from linguistics

as well as a wide spectrum of neighbouring disciplines connected with
language teaching and learning. The three conceptual struts identified in this
studylinguistics, the practical focus of the field and its multidisciplinariness
are clearly visible in this organisational scheme although the relationship
between them is a hierarchical one with the practical activity of L2 teaching
forming the focal point at the apex of the triangle.

4. LINGUISTICS AND LANGUAGE TEACHING

One issue which has generated a good deal of debate in applied

linguistics is connected with the name of the enquiry. As Widdowson (1980:
165) observes: One does not have to embrace extreme Whorfian doctrine to
recognize that how a thing is called can have a critical effect on how it is
conceived. Whilst this is nothing if not a truism, Henry Widdowson, one of
the leading lights in the field, has over the years drawn attention to the fact
that the shaping of the discipline owes as much to who describes it as how it
is described. Linguists as well as applied linguists have attempted to define the
field but Widdowson argues that linguistic descriptions are misconceived.
From the outset, it is important to underscore the fact that much of the
polemic surrounding the issue of language in applied linguistics has been
contextualised within its most common application which, as we have noted
above, is in L2 teaching and especially ELT. Under these terms of engagement,
the central question for Widdowson now as then has revolved around the
issue of how far linguistic descriptions can adequately account for their
reality for learners and so provide a point of reference for the design of
language courses (Widdowson 2000b: 21). Whether linguists have themselves
advanced descriptions of language for pedagogical consumption or whether
foreign language teaching has looked to theoretical linguistics to provide it
with models of language, applied linguists like Widdowson (2000a: 3) would
argue that linguistics as an academic enquiry has in such cases breached its
traditionalist formalist limits. He (2000b: 29) continues: Linguists have
authority in their own domain. They describe language on their own terms and
in their own terms. There is no reason why they should assume the
responsibility of acquiring expertise and authority in the quite different domain
of language pedagogy.
To be sure, the two fields are derived from sharply divided linguistic
traditions. Theoretical linguistic research has concerned itself with language as
an internalized or abstract construct; whilst applied linguistics has examined its
external manifestation in social contexts and very often with reference to how
it might serve the L2 learner. Thus, broadly speaking, the former conceives
language as langue rather than parole (Saussure 1916); competence as

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opposed to performance (Chomsky 1965); and, more recently, I-language

in contrast to E-language (Chomsky 1986). In short, linguistics is about the
theory of language while applied linguistics is about its practice, or more
specifically, applying suitable descriptions of language for use in L2 pedagogy.
However, the practical activity of L2 teaching also comprises an integral
part of the history of theoretical linguistics. It was, as Gleason (1965: 49)
reminds us, structural linguists like Bloomfield and Fries, who were called in
to prepare class materials for the (then) Army Method later to be called the
audiolingual method during the Second World War and since the war
linguists have been increasingly involved in applied linguistics. Thus, after the
war, theoretical linguistics emerged as the new mentor discipline [which]
replaced literature and education as the research base for foreign language
teaching and learning (Kramsch 2000: 313). The influence that linguists had
on L2 teaching at this time is not in question but Kramsch overstates her
argument in suggesting that this was in any way a new philosophical trend.
Leonard Bloomfield, for example, was committed to the idea that his
discipline should find a useful role in the community (Howatt 1984: 265) and
this is wholly evident in his earlier works which were published decades
before the popularization of audiolingualism. Moreover, one only has to turn
back the pages of language teaching history to come across linguistic scientists
of the ilk of Henry Sweet, Otto Jespersen and Harold Palmer to realise that this
relationship between theory and practice is one which is built on years of
tradition. There are echoes of such a notion in Titones (1968: 49), Teaching
Foreign Languages: An Historical Sketch and his citing of Jespersens
indebtedness to a longer series of linguists in the preliminary pages to the
Danish linguists How to Teach a Foreign Language (1947).
The widespread success that audiolingualism was to enjoy for a twenty-
year period after the war was only matched by the severity of the criticism
against it as changes in linguistic theory in the early 1960s and the emergence
of psycholinguistics at about the same time laid bare the shortcomings of an
L2 teaching methodology which lacked what Wilga Rivers (1964: 163) referred
to as a full awareness of the human factors involved in communication.
Rivers attack was fuelled by the publication of Chomskys (1957) Syntactic
Structures and, two years later, his lancing review of B.F. Skinners Verbal
Behavior, collectively fractured the two philosophical pillars on which
audiolingualism rested: the linguistic idea that language is purely a set of
sentence patterns (structural linguistics) and the psychological idea that
language learning was just habit formation (behaviorism) (Brown Mitchell and
Ellingson Vidal 2001: 30).
Chomsky argued that linguistic behaviour was innate rather than learned
and his model of transformational-generative grammar was fundamental to the
decline of audiolingualism and was, with limited success, applied to language

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teaching in transformation drills, which sought to elicit the underlying deep

structures (what is in the mind) of sentences from an examination of surface
structures (what is spoken or written). Chomsky himself was rather sceptical
that his theories had any relevance for the teaching of languages (Howatt 1984:
271), although once again linguistic insight had found its way into L2
pedagogy. Yet the demise of audiolingualism and subsequent attempts by
advocates of Chomskyan linguistics to isolate language from its social and
psychological context, did succeed in revealing the central flaw of applying
linguistics directly to pedagogical contexts that, in Corders (1973: 29) words,
language learning is about people who can talk the language rather than talk
about the language; or as Allen (1974: 59) put it, linguistic knowledge is
concerned with a specification of the formal properties of a language, with the
code rather than with the use of the code.
Applied linguists, it seemed, were suddenly given a more definite role to
act as a buffer between linguistics and language teaching (Stern 1992: 8) and
the misguided directionality perceived by some of putting the solution before
the problem was dually expressed in Widdowsons neologism linguistics
applied (1980: 165) and the wry observation: You do not start with a model
as given and cast about for ways in which it might come in handy. (Ibid 169).
Widdowsons comments in 1980, originally delivered in the form of a paper at
the 1979 BAAL conference, were certainly well-placed in an audience made up
of predominately British as opposed to American applied linguists. By this
time, British (as well as some parts of the Commonwealth) applied linguistics
was distancing itself from the top-down traditions of North American
linguistics applied, which grew out of the search by linguists (e.g. Bloomfield,
Fries) for applications for their theoretical and descriptive interests (Davies
1993: 17), rather than the bottom-up approach that characterised the field in
Britain, which starts with the practical problems and then seeks theoretical
(and/or practical) ways to understand and resolve those problems. In
addition, the final years of the 1970s and the opening of the new decade may
be thought of as bringing to a close a period of intense activity in applied
linguistics which commenced with the advent of Chomskyan linguistics. The
effect of Chomskys ideas on language teaching during these years saw a shift
in North American applied linguistics towards cognitive approaches and the
work of Burt, Dulay and Krashen was evidence of both a distinct line of
enquiry and the emergence of a new academic discipline, namely second
language acquisition (SLA). At the same time, in Britain, the principal task of
applied linguists, it seemed, was one of self-justification borne of their
successive rejection of structuralist and generative linguistic applications to
language teaching. If British applied linguists such as Allen, Brumfit, Corder,
Mackin, Strevens and Widdowson, inter alia, had been making strong claims
that only a mediating discipline with specialist knowledge in linguistics and

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pedagogy was suitably qualified to define an appropriate model of language

for L2 teaching, then what, the question arose, was their solution?
By the early 1980s, an applied linguistic model of language for L2
pedagogy had evolved within the framework of communicative language
teaching (CLT). The catalyst for what became popularly known as the
communicative movement or revolution is usually attributed to the work of
the American sociolinguist Dell Hymes (1972), and his coining of the term
communicative competence, which involved not only an internalised
knowledge system of linguistic rules (as originally posited by Chomsky in his
conceiving of the term competence) but, crucially, a pragmatic knowledge
which enabled this system to be used appropriately in communicative settings.
As Hymes (1971: 10) observed, These are rules of use without which the rules
of grammar would be useless. A rash of publications followed Hymes initial
studies and contributed to the development of CLT. These included Wilkins
(1976) Council of Europe sponsored Notional Syllabuses, which proposed
three categories of language organisation (semantico-grammatical, modal
meaning and communicative function, subsuming Austin (1962) and Searles
(1969) theory of speech acts); Widdowsons (1978) treatise for CLT, Teaching
Language as Communication, which highlighted use rather than usage;
Munbys (1978) Communicative Syllabus Design, which recognised the
pedagogic possibilities of M. A. K. Hallidays (1972) sociosemantic networks
in a 250-item taxonomy of language skills; and Breen and Candlins 1980
paper, which viewed language as communication in preference to code.
The basic thrust of these works was a movement away from the
structural system of language to a focus on its meaning potential as expressed
in communicative functions (e.g. apologising, describing, inviting, promising).
Moreover, the confluence of British functional linguistics (Firth, Halliday),
American sociolinguistics (Hymes, Gumperz, Labov), as well as pilosophy
(Austin, Searle) represented a move away from linguistics as the main or only
basis for deciding what the units of language teaching would be (Lightbrown
2000: 435). It also prefigured the multifaceted discipline that the field of
applied linguistics is today and, furthermore, reflected the importance of
context in defining its lines of enquiry. Henceforth, American applied
linguistics, in contrast to its British counterpart, was characterised by its
reference to SLA.
Finally, in 1980, Canale and Swain brought order to the somewhat
confused scene of communicative language teaching (Stern 1993: 164) with a
comprehensive analysis of the linguistic influences in CLT which, significantly,
appeared in the opening article of the first edition of Applied Linguistics, and
this, together with a later study by Canale in 1983, defined communicative
competence by dividing it into four separate categories: grammatical
competence, pragmatic competence, discourse competence and strategic

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competence. Bachman (1990) and Bachman and Palmer (1996) developed

further, more complex representations of Canale and Swains (1980; Canale
1983) model but the original framework is, as Brumfit (2001: 51) remarks, the
one which has become the preferred basis for subsequent discussion on
communicative competence as a goal in L2 pedagogy.

5. CURRENT TRENDS IN L2 PEDAGOGY: CONFIRMING THE PATTERN

CLT may not in itself provide the methodological blueprint for L2

pedagogy that it did ten or fifteen years ago but communicative competence
is still the most widely developed metaphor in foreign language teaching
(Brumfit 2001: 47). In terms of language presentation, recent investigation
emerging from studies in SLA has pointed to the need for direct instruction
and corrective feedback (Pica 2000: 11) thereby acting as a palliative for
stronger versions of CLT which have (over)emphasised induction at the input
stage. Current L2 teaching methodology is as a result more eclectic in its
tendency to incorporate traditional approaches, and reconcile them with
communicative practices (Ibid: 15).
Yet, like the field of applied linguistics itself, language teaching is
determined by fashion (Davies 1993: 14), and whilst there are those who
would claim that no one method can account for the infinite variety of learner
needs (Kumaravadivelu 1994), the persistent dependency of pedagogy on
linguistic descriptions has given rise to a new generation of course books
whose language content is determined by data derived from language
corpora. Sinclair (1991), amongst others, has mounted a strong case for the
inclusion corpus-based research in L2 pedagogy. Widdowson (2000a: 7),
predictably perhaps, dismisses the pedagogic application of corpus linguistics
as linguistics applied, the textually attested ... not the encoded possible, nor
the contextually appropriate which ignores the classroom reality for learners.
Whether one chooses to resist the deterministic practices of linguistics
applied (Widdowson 2000a: 23), a perceivable uncertainty hangs over applied
linguistics, an enquiry which, one might argue, has stepped into an academic
breach of its own creation - the gap between the theory and practice of
language teaching - but which cannot yet agree upon some of the
fundamental issues girding up its own existence such as the most
appropriate model of language which should underpin FL pedagogic
grammar (Mitchell 2000: 297).
Language teaching is inextricably linked to the needs of the real world. It
is a social and often institutional activity (Cook and Seidlhofer 1995: 8) that
is moved by government decree and commercial interests and these in turn
are informed by pedagogical theories and insights. Educational policy makers
and international publishing houses look to the linguistic sciences for solutions

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and innovation and when theoretical linguistic insight is adapted to language

teaching, the role of applied linguistics is put in doubt. As Grabe and Kaplan
(2000: 3) remark in the introduction to the Annual Review of Applied
Linguistics 20, aptly subtitled, Applied linguistics as an emerging discipline,
full disciplinary acceptance will only occur to the extent that applied
linguistics responds to wider societal needs and its professional expertise is
valued by people beyond the professional field.
Linguistics, as we have seen in this brief historical overview, has always
formed a part of applied linguistics though it has sometimes assumed an
importance which is out of step with its real value to L2 teaching. But this is
not a revelation. A generation ago, Munby (1978: 6), with reference to
specifying a model of communicative competence for L2 pedagogy, added his
name to a growing list of scholars who had questioned the centrality of
theoretical linguistics in language teaching: It may well be a case that a
theory of linguistics is neither necessary nor sufficient basis for such a study.
This is essentially the point that Brumfit (1980: 160) was making in his
observation that language ... operates simultaneously in several dimensions at
once and that if the framework for enquiry is conceived within purely
linguistic terms in accordance with the name applied linguistics, then we run
the risk of becoming prisoners of our own categorisations. More recently,
Spolsky (2000: 157) has reiterated these sentiments in his allusion to being
trapped by a too literal assumption that applied linguistics needed only
linguistics. His own preferred term, Educational Linguistics, along with the
label which is gaining currency in faculty departments and on degree
programmes, Applied Language Studies, recognises that there is more to be
known about language that is applied than just linguistics (de Bott 2000: 224).

6. TOWARDS A CONCLUSION

The utility of linguistics to L2 pedagogy is a debate which has engaged

two generations of applied linguists. It comprises part of the fields past
traditions, its present trends and future directions forming a continuum which
describes development and change in applied linguistics. It is a debate which
can be located at each end of the continuum and one in which the rhetoric
used, as well as some of its principal purveyors, appears to have evolved
little over time to the extent that one might, with some justification, question
how far applied linguistics as an enquiry has moved forward. It is, perhaps,
the answer to this question which continues to shroud the field in uncertainty.
There are at least two issues that may have protracted the linguistics-in-
applied-linguistics argument and neither is directly connected with the
academic debate. The first is concerned with the institutional status of applied
linguistics specifically within the academic hierarchy. Kramsch (2000: 319)

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notes that there is some confusion about the academic and scholarly
respectability of a field that is often viewed as having to do exclusively with
teaching, not research. Kramsch frames her discussion within a North
American context, but there are certainly resonances of such a stance in British
and Spanish academic institutions. And, as we have seen here, applied
linguistic associations like BAAL and AILA appear to be reticent to openly state
that the most common application of research in the field is in L2 teaching and
learning. These associations cast a wide net to define what it is that they do.
But to describe a field as multidisciplinary is to describe almost all areas of
academic enquiry; to describe an applied science as practical is to define it
using a synonym. Neither is satisfactory. Conversely, a field which is
conceived in terms of discourse analysis, stylistics, psycholinguistics,
sociolinguistics, sign linguistics and deafness studies, language pathology and
therapy, human rights in the language world (items drawn from AILAs list of
research areas; 2002) acquires instant cachet and academic robustness. But the
tenuous relationship that some of these disciplines have to the more central
concerns of applied linguistics, like L2 pedagogy, is misleading to the point
of misrepresentation.
The second issue is engendered in Kramschs (2000: 317) comment: The
field of Applied Linguistics speaks with multiple voices, depending on
whether ones original training was in linguistics, anthropology, psychology,
sociology, education, or literature. The most frequently cited voices in
applied linguistics carry with them an authority which determines present
orientations and future directions in the field. But these voices too speak in
accents which betray their academic origins and if applied linguistics really is
defined, as many scholars have pointed out, by its context, then it may be
pertinent to question the absolute value of those conceptual frameworks
which have persisted in the field.

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