A Glossary of Applied Linguistics

Alan Davies

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781135468378
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education Theory & Practice

Applied Linguistics is still a growing field. Key texts and handbooks have appeared in recent years and international applied linguistics conferences and professional associations occur regularly. While Applied Linguistics continues to attract new entrants and to generate new strands of research, there is a need for a clear and concise map of the field. This is the purpose of the Glossary.The author, Alan Davies, is a well-established, well-published authority on applied linguistics. Not a typically dry dictionary, Dr. Davies infuses the alphabetical entries with a touch of humor and thought-provoking context creating an up-to-date, useful, and coherent view of applied linguistics.The Glossary compiles the most ubiquitously used terms in applied linguistics and teacher-training literature. It takes a wide-ranging view of the field, drawing not only on linguistics but including psychology, sociology, education, measurement theory, speech therapy, translation, and language planning. Other features include: *numerous cross-references to key terms;*an introduction, which discusses the difficulty of defining applied linguistics; and*a brief reading list of key text.The primary market is master's student in Applied Linguistics, Second Language Acquisition, and TESL/TEFL. Undergraduate students, particularly in language fields and in education will also find it helpful, as well as language teachers who have not themselves followed Applied Linguistics courses and who are interested in finding out about the field.

Glossary of Applied Linguistics

A

• AAAL American Association of Applied Linguistics, the professional organisation of American applied linguists. Membership is open: there are no restrictions on entry based on qualifications, experience or nationality. AAAL is now the largest applied linguistics association and attracts large number of applied linguists world-wide to its annual conferences. Its view of applied linguistics is both eclectic and comprehensive.
• AAVE African American Vernacular English, also termed, at various times, Black English and Ebonics. AAVE represents (or is said to represent) the dialect (or, as more militant commentators would say, the language) of Black Americans. Undoubtedly, AAVE represents a dialect of English that is widely used among Black Americans in informal spoken interactions. The issue that is unresolved is whether this dialect should be officially recognised as the medium of education for young Black Americans (see world Englishes), the argument being that young Black Americans are more likely to develop cognitively if taught in their own dialect and if that dialect is accorded official status (see BICS). Such an argument remains contentious and is not accepted by all (or perhaps by most) Black Americans, although some linguists do support it.
• ability Current capacity to perform an act. Language teaching is concerned with a subset of cognitive or mental abilities and therefore with skills underlying behaviour (for example, reading ability, speaking ability) as well as with potential ability to learn a language (aptitude). Ability has a more general meaning than terms such as achievement, attainment, aptitude, proficiency, while capacity and knowledge are sometimes used as loose synonyms. Ability is difficult to define and to investigate, perhaps because it cannot be observed directly. See also language testing.
• academic discourse The use of language at an advanced level of education to discuss cognitively difficult concepts for analysis and for argument. One of the more robust language uses which are grouped under the heading of LSP, it readily lends itself to proficiency teaching and testing. It seems likely that what distinguishes academic discourse from general discourse is difficulty, itself attributable to precision of concept formation and development.
• accent Features of the speech signal that identify individuals as belonging to certain groups which may be geographical or social class-based. While a particular dialect may be spoken in a variety of accents, the reverse is not the case. Education and status are more closely associated with a standard dialect and more leeway is permitted to accent variation. However, in spoken interaction accent is very salient and undoubtedly influences interlocutors' judgements of one another. Perhaps because accent is more resistant to change than dialect (hence foreign accents) and more easily identified with origin and identity, there is little emphasis today on using education to change accent. Even so, it does seem that one of the effects of education (however indirect) is to bring about some accommodation towards a norm with prestige.
• accommodation The tendency for all interlocutors to move their own language use closer to one another's for ease of understanding and for greater solidarity, both linguistically and attitudinally. Power imbalance seems to affect the degree of accommodation, whereby the less powerful make greater accommodation when interacting with the more powerful. However, neither relationship nor power is straightforward and it is important to recognise different dimensions of power, which can include strength of personality.
• accuracy We may distinguish traditional and critical approaches to accuracy. The traditional view is that there is a correct way to use the rules and especially the grammar of Language X. The purpose of education, therefore, both LI and L2, is seen to be the inculcation of those rules, especially at the higher levels of education, in writing. The approach of critical applied linguistics seems to be to reject the assumption of norms, which would imply that accuracy is not relevant. However, it is unclear whether critical applied linguistics would go that far since, without norms, language would be difficult to learn and to teach. The critical applied linguistic concern with the need to recognise where power in language resides and therefore who decides what is accurate seems at odds with its assumption that norms are not important.
• achievement Tests that measure progress on a known syllabus are called achievement (or attainment) tests. They are not concerned with predicting future success or with assessing whether the level reached by a candidate is sufficient to carry out various non-language tasks (such as being a tour operator, studying medicine in the medium of the language): that is the role of the language proficiency test. The purpose of the achievement test is to determine whether the language material that has been taught has been learned.
• acquisition Naturalistic learning of a language, whether LI or L2. Language acquisition is therefore to be distinguished from language learning, which refers to the formal method(s) of language acquisition. The terms are, however, often used interchangeably.
• acrolect The variety that has the most prestige in a dialect continuum, followed by the mesolect and at the bottom the basilect.
• act of identity All speech acts are said by Le Page to represent a speaker's identity in a particular context. The assumption is that individuals have a verbal repertoire which allows them to choose how to indicate the identity they wish to claim.
• action research Research (in, for example, the classroom or the hospital ward) which offers engagement, commitment and observation in place of the rigid controls expected of, for example, positivist research. Whether action research deserves to be regarded as research is a moot point. But tell that to the anthropologists.
• adjacency pair A basic organisational sequence in conversation. Adjacency pairs are formulaic type utterances in conversation in which the first part of the pair by A triggers the second part by B (for example: How are you today/I'm very well, thank you). Failure to complete the adjacency pair is infelicitous and indicative of either a lack of proficiency or deliberate deviousness. See also CA, ritualised routines.
• advertising A paid-for form of non-personal communication about an organisation, product, service or idea by an identified sponsor. Both advertising and propaganda are said to be one-to-many forms of communication.
• African American Vernacular English see AAVE
• age factors Age is a determinant in language acquisition, in that for native speaker control in Language X to be achieved, language acquisition must normally take place before the critical or sensitive age. Age also seems to affect language learning (as it does other aspects of learning) in that with the gradual effluxion of time, language learning becomes more difficult. Furthermore, age also has a negative effect on already acquired and learnt languages. Individuals tend in later life to lose second languages, although this may be (as with community languages) a function more of lack of use than of age. Age also has a negative effect on LI, whereby immediate recall, especially for names, is less automatic with increasing age. See also critical period, SLAR.
• AILA Association Internationale de Linguistique Appliquée, known in English as the International Association of Applied Linguistics. AILA has been in existence since 1960 and brings together representatives from its thirty-plus national associations in an international committee to promote research and development in applied linguistics. AILA organises a peripatetic triennial congress and is associated with several journals, including the AILA Review. See also AAAL, BAAL.
• ALAA Applied Linguistics Association of Australia.
• alphabetic A system of written script in which there is a direct correspondence between graphemes and phonemes. As such, it is the most economical of all systems of writing. Languages vary in the degree of their grapheme-phoneme correspondence. Spanish is very regular while English is very irregular. Hence the many arbitrary spelling rules of written English children and non-native speakers must learn.
• alphabetisation A necessary stage towards the acquisition in Language X of literacy. Much practised by missionary organisations such as SIL, alphabetisation provides a written formulation for the spoken language. Such formulation is indicative of the conventional nature of language, in that different alphabetisations are perfectly possible for the same language and may indeed be in conflict with one another. For example, in Fiji different missionaries advocated their own preferred formulation, to some extent influenced by a contrastive linguistics, based on their own mother tongue. See also contrastive analysis.
• American Association of Applied Linguistics see AAAL
• American English A distinction needs to be made between American Englishes, those varieties of English as an LI spoken in different parts of the USA; and American English, the standard version of the dialect. While American English and British English (and Australian English, etc.) are mutually intelligible, each of them has certain distinct standard features which are attested to and described in dictionaries and style guides and appear in publishers' usage. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, American English is by far the most influential of these national standards and seems likely for some time to come to exercise a globalising influence on the other standards. See also language standards.
• American Sign Language see deaf education
• analysis of variance A statistical technique which examines the interrelationship among a group of variables (for example, social class, gender, age, L1, second language proficiency) and in so doing estimates the influence on the criterion of each variable and of their joint influence.
• anthropological linguistics In the USA, linguistics and anthropology grew up together. Linguistics was to some extent (perhaps because of the interest in American Indian languages) viewed as a branch of anthropology, a development also found in Australia. This influence has been instrumental in the interactions between anthropology (and sociology) and linguistics, leading to the growth of sociolinguistics, ethnolinguistics and conversation analysis, and to the continuing interest among many American applied linguists in culture: hence the development of ideas about communicative competence.
• aphasias While age has a normal developmental influence on an individual's language control, traumas of various kinds, including head injuries and strokes, can damage the brain and cause an aphasia. Depending on the location and extent of the injury, this may cause loss of capacity to speak, wholly or in part, to write and to remember. See also clinical linguistics, speech pathology.
• applied linguistics Definitions such as 'the exploration of real-world problems in which language is important' are common, but it is necessary to point out that among those professing applied linguistics the focus of attention differs. Some, more interested perhaps in theoretical linguistic issues, focus on the language; others, perhaps more interested in social issues and their possible amelioration, focus on the problems themselves.
• applied linguistics research Research in applied linguistics is no different from research in other disciplines, both theoretical and applied. There is, however, one difference, a difference that pertains to all applied areas. This is that many of its research areas are motivated by institutional needs and practical requirements. What this means is that the research paradigm which, in the theoretical disciplines, may be prompted by the paradigm currently in favour, in the applied disciplines is prompted by a social demand which itself may draw on the current paradigm.
• aptitude see language aptitude
• artificial languages The canonical cases of artificial languages can be found in those nineteenth-century inventions such as Esperanto and Idaho which had as their aim greater understanding among people and nations. But a case can be made for a more widespread definition whereby all language interventions result in non-natural language outcomes. Thus simplified languages (for example, Basic English), but also, to an extent, standard languages which are brought about by deliberate interventions and non-natural choices of lexis and grammar. See also simplification, standards.
• ASL American Sign Language. See deaf education.
• assessment Often used interchangeably with testing and/or examining, but also used as a superordinate encompassing testing, examining and evaluation. Assessment concerns the measurement of proficiency and of potential (or aptitude) in terms of the progress of language learning. Assessment, both formal and informal, has always been important in language teaching, but...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Preface
• Introduction
• Glossary of Applied Linguistics
• Short Reading List