Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-ndw9j Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T15:29:46.815Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Applied Linguistics, Linguistics Research and the Empirical Model

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 November 2008

Elisabeth Ingram
Affiliation:
University of Trondheim

Extract

Applied linguistics is very much a problem-oriented discipline and therefore necessarily an integrative discipline. I know that it is difficult to define what a ‘problem’ is; there are nevertheless important differences between problem-oriented disciplines and theory-based disciplines, like psychology and linguistics, to take a couple of relevant examples. Activities, including research, carried out in the name of applied linguistics should throw light on the processes and conditions and phenomena of language acquisition, language learning or language use, with the aim of contributing to the solution of the difficulties and practical problems that arise. And the problems that people face in connection with language learning or language use are messy, that is to say, like all real life situations they are not analysable in term of only one basic discipline. The chief requirement on research within such basic disciplines is that it should throw light on theoretical models and issues, and to do that the researcher abstracts from the experential world only those special aspects which are interesting to him. People who work in applied disciplines have to deal with complex real life situations as they are, as they are seen to be by the participants in those situations, and have to draw on whatever background disciplines that are relevant and available. (That nearly always means that more than one researcher has to be involved.)

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1977

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Carmichael, L. (ed.) 1954. Manual of Child Psychology New York: Wiley.Google Scholar
Elek, T. von and Oskarsson, M. 1972. “An Experiment Assessing the Relative Effectiveness of Two Methods of Teaching English Grammatical Structure to Adults”, in IRAL 10.Google Scholar
Hagan, H. 1977. LAPP: ENGLISH. Interference in a Trilingual Setting, Dept. of English, University of Oslo.Google Scholar
McCarthy, D. 1954. “Language Development in Children”, in Carmichael (ed.).Google Scholar
Scherer, G. and Wertheimer, M. 1964. A Psycholinguistic Experiment in Foreign Language Teaching, New York: McGraw-Hill.Google Scholar
Siegel, S. 1956. Nonparametric Statistics for the Behavioral Sciences, New York: McGraw-Hill.Google Scholar