An Inter-Disciplinary View of Applied Linguistics
A more sophisticated conceptualization of applied linguistics soon began to emerge: that it is a multi-disciplinary undertaking. Applied linguistics came to be seen as pedagogical engineering, and as having an inter-disciplinary, mediating role in languag
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An Inter-Disciplinary View of Applied Linguistics
3.1
The Arguments for Characterizing Applied Linguistics as an Inter-Disciplinary Field
Having reviewed the linguistic explanation for applied linguistics, and the way that applied linguistics is given intra-disciplinary recognition through this, we now proceed to consider another viewpoint on the nature of applied linguistic activity. As applied linguistic work gained in sophistication, and as its supposed intra-linguistic starting points became more contested and less credible, it was apparent to many working in the field that the complexities of applied linguistic work cannot be fully explained with reference only to its linguistic bases. The intra-disciplinary recognition of applied linguistics as part of the discipline of linguistics therefore was seen by many as presenting us with less than a complete picture. Thus, the ever more frequent – and persuasive – claim began to be heard that it is also an interdisciplinary and multi-disciplinary field (cf., e.g., Brown 1977: 5f.; Wardhaugh and Brown 1977; the input into what Spolsky 1978 calls “educational linguistics”; also Strevens 1980a: 18, 1980b: 34; Spolsky 2008; Hult 2008; Hornberger 2010; Hult 2010a, b). As Vorster (1980: 11), Fielding (1980) observed: “Applied linguistics” is at best a term of convenience for any activity anywhere along a continuum between linguistics on the one hand and any related discipline or inter-discipline on the other.
Historically, one can therefore say that applied linguistics itself has gone through several stages of development: a linguistic-psychological phase, followed by a (socio) linguistic-psychological-pedagogical one, though the latter, in spite of increasing attention especially to pedagogical concerns (cf., e.g., the attention that Van Els et al. 1984, give to didactic matters), had by the mid-1980s not yet run its course. Looking back at the history of applied linguistics, Prator could declare in 1965 that, apart from relying heavily on linguistics, second language teachers of English must find it equally evident that “our discipline should rest on other foundations as well, particularly on that branch of psychology that deals with the nature of © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2017 A. Weideman, Responsible Design in Applied Linguistics: Theory and Practice, Educational Linguistics 28, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-41731-8_3
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3 An Inter-Disciplinary View of Applied Linguistics
the learner and the language-learning process” (1965: 249), thus acknowledging the debt that the discipline has towards another ‘input’, besides linguistics, into the investigation of second language teaching and learning. This amounts to the same as the re-evaluation and reinterpretation of the contribution that linguistics can make to language teaching called for by Roulet (1975: Introduction), as well as the call by Johnson (1969: 236) to consider “the dangers of relying on the findings of linguistic research as an exclusive base”. By the late 1960s, the call was already out t
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