Introduction to applied linguistics

3.  Language is at the heart of human life,
we can’t conceive many of our most
important activities without using words.
But there are some important activities
which language is not necessary, like
eating, listening music, the visual arts.

5.  Language use, then, is in many ways a
natural phenomenon beyond conscious
control. Yet there are also aspects of
language use in which we can intervene
and about which, consequently, there
are decisions to be made, in making this
decisions there are many questions and
subsidiary questions to be asked each
one admitting many different and
opposed answers.

6.  To answer some questions in applied
linguistics it seems reasonable that we
should set out and investigate and
understand the facts of language use,
to organize and formalize what we
know.

7.  Should children speaking a dialect be
encouraged to maintain it or steered
towards the standard form of a
language?

8.  Lenguage and education
This area includes:
 First language education
 Aditional language education
 Foreign language education
 Clincal liguistics
 Language testing

9.  Language work and law
This area includes:
 World place communication
 Language planning
 Forensic linguistics

10.  Language, information, and effect
This area includes:
 Literary stylistics
 Critical discourse analysis
 Translation and interpretation
 Information design
 Lexicography

12.  Prescribing and describing;
Popular and academic views of
“correctness”
 Theory  Practice
 Viewed by “the  Viewed by
expert” “Everyone’s lived
experience”

13.  As every parent knows every children
speak idiosyncratically. A child growing
up in an English-Speaking family, for
exapmle might say “ I brang it” even
though everyone around them says “I
brought it” to mean the same thing.

14.  Even when the child does say “ I brought
it” they might still not pronounce the
words as adults do. They might for
example say, “I bwort it”. Parents -even
the most anxious ones- are usually
indulgent of such deviations
 They are the stuff of anecdotes and
affectionate memories rather than
serious concern.

15.  At school, however the situation is very
different, here the child is expected, and
taught, to use language “correctly”.
 Not only are English-Speaking children
expected to say the words “I brought it”
clearly and properly pronounced, but
also to write them correctly spelt and
punctuated (“I brought it”)

16.  The voices of school and home are not
always the same and to make matters
more complex still, a third voice the
voice of the peer group, speaks ever
louder and more persuasively children
grow older, they put “RU” instead of “are
you” in text messages, they give words
different fashionable senses, invent new
ones, and include slang

17.  A child who has recently moved to
Britain from the USA and says as their
parents do, “I’ve gotten it” instead of
“I’ve got it”, and writes color, instead of
colour, should the teacher eliminate this
dialectal and national variations, thus
seeming to correct the parents as well.

18.  The voices of school and home are not
always the same.

19.  The relationship of the standard form of
the language dialects.
 The standard is generally used in written
communication, thought in schools and
codified in dictionaries and in grammar
books.
 Dialects are regional and social class
varieties of the language which differ
from the standard in pronunciation
grammar and vocabulary.

20.  The teaching of the standard can be
viewed in two quite contradictory ways:
 On the one hand it can be seen as
conferring an unfair advantage upon
those children who already speak a variety
close to it, while simultaneously denying the
worth of other dialects and damaging the
heritage of those children to speak them.
 On the other hand given that the standard
exists, has prestige and power, and
provides gateway to written knowladge.

21.  Description (Saying what does happen)
 Prescription(Saying what ought happen)

22.  If there was never any deviation from the
norm then languages would never
change. We would all still be saying
Wherefore art thou? Instead of saying
Why are you?

23.  To make any headway, applied
linguistics has the very difficult task of
trying to find points of contact in the
contrary views so that necessary
decisions can be made.
 Perhaps the first step is to recognize that,
as points of view they can be taken as
different perceptions which need not to
be seen as competing alternatives.

24.  In my opinion about children’s language
at home and at school, I think parents
should correct them when they are not
using “correct” use of language so they
won’t have a hard time when they go to
school.