Zuraidah Mohd Don

Applied Linguistics is now so fragmented in its range of interests that one can no longer rely on a common basis of shared assumptions between people who are called ‘Applied Linguists’ (Meara, 1989, p. 13)

aims to solve ‘real-world’ problems in which language is a central issue research touches on a particularly wide range of issues

interdisciplinary in nature, synthesising research from a variety of disciplines, including linguistics

encourages enquiry into the relationship between theory and practice

Adult Language Learning Child Language Communication in the Professions Contrastive Linguistics and Error Analysis Discourse Analysis Educational Technology and Learning Foreign language Teaching Methodology and Teacher education Forensic Linguistics Immersion Education Language and Ecology Language and Education in Multilingual Settings Language and Gender Language Contact and Language Change Language for Special Purposes Language Planning Learner Autonomy in Language Learning Lexicography and Lexicology Literacy Mother Tongue Education Psycholinguistics Rhetoric and Stylistics Second Language Acquisition Sign Language

AL provides the theoretical and descriptive foundations for the investigation and solution of language-related problems:language educationlinguisticsLanguage-related concerns in other disciplines

Language teaching has evolved its own theoretical and empirical foundations

A growing influence of psychology-based approaches

The scientific study of such areas as TESOL, TEFL, TESL, language teaching and learning

Theoretical linguistics studies language as a phenomenon in its own right, independent of any social or other real world context

Applied linguistics takes into account the wider context in which the language is used

A recent approach - a discursive/interactional approach to the study of politeness Analysing data at the level of discourse Taking into account the socio-cultural

values of a particular society (see e.g. Eelen, 2001; Mills 2003, 2009;

Haugh, 2007; Bravo 2008; Locher and Watts 2005).

Politeness is seen as a social interaction which does not always equate with face threat mitigating strategies (Locher &Watts, 2005) and is "conditioned by socio-cultural norms of a particular society" (Felix-Brasdefer, 2006); and “community of practice” (Wenger, 1998).

Politeness is taken as only one aspect of facework, which itself is part of ‘relational work’

“There is no faceless communication” (Terkourafi (2007)

Face is taken as a broad notion, overlaying and underlying every kind of interpersonal communication one of whose components is politeness (Locher & Watts, 2005).

Clinical linguistics Forensic linguistics Computational linguistics and speech

engineering Speech perception Language evolution

Critical vs non critical approaches

Mediated vs face-to-face interaction

Small sample of texts vs corpus data

Micro vs Macro levels of analysis

The ‘medium turn’ The ‘discourse turn’ The critical turn

Critical’ is typically used to describe works ‘taking a basically critical or radical stance on contemporary society, with an orientation toward investigating, exploiting, repression, social injustice. asymmetrical power relations (generated from class, gender, or position), distorted communication, and misrecognition of interest’ (Deertz, 2005, p. 86)

Critical researchers examine how significant social issues are constructed in discourse by powerful agencies

Not restricted to one particular analytical approach

Methodologically eclectic, choosing methods as a function of their relevance to the realisation of social political goals (Van Dijk, 1995) Fairclough’s approach (1989) Argumentation strategies (Wodak and

Matouschek, 1993) Narrative analysis (Mumby, 1993) CA (Ehrlich, 1998) Social actor theory (van Leeuwen, in Renkema,

2009) Engaging with Critical social theorists (e.g.

Foucault, Habermas, Bernstein, Derrida, Harvey and Giddens)

The medium turn: Research focuses on the communication medium

The discourse turn: Investigating the relationship between medium, context, culture, identity and powerBroadening the concept of context and

approaching MCB as a discursive space where medium, physical context and users shape and are shaped by the reality of the workplace (Turner, et al , 2006)

The critical turn: revealing more complex realities in relation to question of power and identity

Taking a broader perspective on discourse, focusing on the impact of CMC on business discourse

Akar (2000) adopted a multi-layered analysis (Harris and Bargiela-Chiappini, 2003) to show how the use of the new media mirrors the tension between local and global cultures in Turkey:Macro-levelMeso-levelMicro-level

Researching identity and power and how related aspects are enacted and resisted through discourses in institutional settings

Extensively researched, especially in connection with dominance and inequality

A lack of study on power and domination and inequality in mediated business discourse

Corpus data: written or spoken Transcripts of interviews with

practitioners Questionnaire

Multimodal texts

Communication has become multimodal there is a need to become multimodal

in our analysis A shift from the dominance of the

mode of writing to the mode of image Monomodal or linguistic analysis will

miss much of how text creates meaning

Visual social semiotic method developed by Kress and van Leeuwen (2001)The framework allows us to interpret ‘what

is in’ the image, i.e. its meaning Meaning is encoded in the structures of

imagesAn image is not looked at in isolation, but as

it appears as part of a composition

The problem is we cannot generalise from small amounts of data

We need to use corpus techniques to compile and analyse very large data sets

corpus-based discourse analyses (e.g. Baker, 2006; Upton, 2009)

recent sociolinguistic research (e.g.,Holmes & Schnurr, 2005; Baker, 2010)

studies in critical discourse analysis (Fairclough, 2000; Barker & Galasiński, 2001, p. 26; : Orpin, 2005; Mautner, 2008; Zuraidah Mohd Don et al, 2010)

Applied linguistics is no longer just ELT It continues to expand as new subjects

get involved in the study of languageAnd existing areas are approached from a

new perspective, e.g. a critical perspective New technologies open up new media

and new opportunities for applied researchAnd open up new opportunities for data

analysis

Duff, P. A. (2008). Case Study in research in Applied Linguistics. New York: Routledge.

Seidlhofer, B. (2003). Controversies in Applied Linguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press