Applied linguistics and language use
PROBLEMS
Language matters so much in our everyday thinking, our learning outside school, our communicating with one another that it inevitably arouses passions and creates problems. Applied linguistics exists to try to explain the passions and suggest solutions to the problems. To some extent, the passions and the problems are connected so that explanation of the passion is itself part solution of the problem.
What are some of these problems? There are problems of language use, the well-known ones of what it means to be correct (and whether it matters), of whether some accents are better than others, of the language disadvantages some children face at school because of their social class or ethnicity, of understanding instructions on domestic appliances and on official documents (such as tax forms). And then there are the lesser known problems of institutionalized misunderstandings such as police transcripts, doctor–patient communication, the language–content relation among subject specialists (e.g. chemical engineers, information scientists), and authenticity in simultaneous interpreting.
In each case what we have is what appears at first sight to be a straightforward language problem. That of course is true, but that is not all there is. In the first place the problems are about language and its users or its context; in the second place, they often concern our feelings about ourselves, our insecurity and our identity, our children and their future, our attitudes to others, including our prejudices, our view of truth and of community.
The role of applied linguistics is to recognize that these problems (often) cause deep passions and need to be viewed as more than language issues. Thus debates about the teaching of reading are often presented as a polarity (for mother-tongue speakers) between the phonic method (sounding out the letters) and the whole word (or whole-language) method and (for second/foreign-language learners) between the use of simplified reading materials and authentic reading materials. Which is right? Why do these debates arouse such passions? Are the opposing views in the event incommensurable?
The well-known problems of language usage may be similarly deconstructed. The notion of correctness, of using correct English/French and so on arouses strong feelings, especially among those who contribute to the letter columns of newspapers. For them (as indeed for all prescriptivists) the problem is one of simple error that language use is always right or wrong. And yet a more engaged analysis, an approach from applied linguistics, will ask questions about the currency of alternative forms and about the role of language change. Such an analysis may suggest that the appeal to correctness may be a vain attempt to restore a form or a meaning which is already lost or disappearing (such as ‘It’s I’ now lost to ‘It’s me’, or ‘uninterested’ now re placed by ‘disinterested’, or ‘different from’ now losing ground to ‘different to’).
Just as errors, both of grammar and of word choice, are condemned as simply wrong by those who wish to uphold standards, so some accents of English (e.g. Birmingham, Broad Australian) are stigmatized as ugly and uneducated. There are, of course, no intrinsic grounds for such stigmatizing, any more than there are for racial prejudice. Those who see accent prejudice as solely a language problem are inclined to wax indignant, to maintain that all accents are equal (forgetting perhaps the continuation of the Animal Farm motto: but some are more equal than others). For them, therefore, there is no problem: society has the duty to behave differently and overcome its prejudices. The applied linguist, however, is likely to recognize that it is indeed a problem and that it extends beyond language, reflecting social and political (and possibly ethnic) values. Accent stigmatizing is par excellence a socially embedded language problem. Maintaining that it is a real problem, that some accents are more valued socially than others, does not mean approval any more than it lays claim to a solution. In attempting to make sense of language problems, by contextualizing them, applied linguistics does not necessarily solve but it does hope to explain.
The accent problem parallels the educational code problem whereby working-class children (we might extend the involvement to ethnic-minority children) are said to be disadvantaged educationally because the code of communication they use at home is different from the school code, which is largely verbal and is close to the code of the middle-class home. As such the middle-class child has little gap between home and school, while the working-class child has a chasm. The model in which Basil Bernstein (1971) put forward this proposal in the 1970s was heavily attacked from two quarters: first, because these ‘codes’ were not describable linguistically and, second, because the proposal appeared to attack the language of the working class. And yet the model appealed greatly to teachers, since it offered an explanation of why working-class children often performed less well at school. In consequence, Bernstein’s model of restricted (working-class) and elaborated (middle-class) codes became common knowledge in educational circles, especially among teachers of English.
In fact, Bernstein had never claimed that his model was primarily about language: for him language was only part of the communication code, which also involves context and social role and sense of self. Indeed, what he was proposing was a kind of applied linguistic model while what he was mistakenly attacked for was for appearing to be talking only about language. Or perhaps there were other reasons for the attacks, since similar proposals in the USA (by, e.g., Brice Heath 1983) have not been so pilloried.
Problems with instructions and information (on machinery and appliances, on official forms) are of two kinds: inadequate translations from the maker’s language into the user’s language and inadequate conceptualization of the nature of instruction and of the need to make the language of instructions accessible to all readers, whose literacy skills will vary hugely. Consider this advice from a telephone directory: ‘HYPHENS: Names which contain a hyphen are treated as two words and are sorted according to the first name. The second name is treated as initials. This does not apply to hyphenated names which begin with a prefix.’
Examples follow:
A-Grade Machines
Afnan G.
Agar L. F.
Agar-Lyons B.
Agar P. M.
AGRA Products
Alfonso M.
Some of the examples have hyphens, some don’t; there are no obvious prefixes. Given the mass audience for whom local telephone directories are intended, this advice is somewhat opaque.
Organizations such as the Plain English Movement offer a kind of applied linguistic approach to such problems, proposing ways (both verbal and non-verbal) in which the language may be simplified and the reader’s attention engaged.
Institutionalized misunderstandings may not be so well known but for those affected they can be overwhelming. One such problem concerns the interaction between the police and members of the public who are involved in some way in police investigations, both witnesses and accused. The taking of a statement by the police (analogous to the taking of a clinical history of a patient by a doctor) gives considerable scope for error, ranging from complete fabrication of what was supposedly said to a biased interpretation of what was meant by the interlocutor to a genuine misunderstanding. Such errors need not be deliberate, even though they sometimes are. More likely perhaps is the situation in which the police are convinced of the guilt of an accused and therefore find themselves impelled to an interpretation of what was said which could lead to a conviction. In the days before tape recordings of statements were mandatory, the room for error between what was said and what was actually written down was wide. The written statement was signed by the accused, of course, but even then error was possible: the accused might be only partially literate, the transcript could be altered later.
Once again for the applied linguist the language problem involves a context which needs to be taken full account of: the police and the accused are locked into a communicating system which means that what is said is less important than what is expected. An applied linguistic analysis of the encounter will take account of more than the verbal exchanges. It may suggest that on the basis of the transcript there are different interpretations of what was actually said and also that one side’s interpretation of what was meant is not the only interpretation.
Doctor–patient communication has a similar tendency to error. The extreme case is where the doctor and the patient (or the patient’s relative) interact in different languages (although this gap may be bridged by an interpreter). But in the case where both appear to share the same language we have resonances both of the code disjunction between middle and working classes mentioned earlier and of the specialist register of medicine, which may well be alien to many patients whatever their social class. The problem for the doctor (as with the police investigator) is that one part of examining a patient is done by talking. The room for misunderstanding between a figure of authority and a client is considerable, as is the room for wrong diagnosis, based on a misunderstanding or an inadequacy of what is said and a conviction that the doctor ‘knows’ what is wrong.
What the applied linguist can do here is to underline the importance of paying more attention to what the patient says (recommending interpreter services where necessary) and explaining to those involved in medical training that there is typically a disjunction between what is said by the patient and what is meant. In the case of medical language what this means is that it is possible (and probably necessary) for doctors to put their meanings into simpler language. It also indicates that medical meanings and content can be put over in different ways according to the audience.
In the case of specialist scientists, such as the chemical engineer or information scientist, problems frequently arise in graduate studies where the student has only partial proficiency in the language of instruction (usually English). The solution which concentrates on the language is simple: learn more English. But for the applied linguist there are other considerations, such as whether the demands of the institution in regard to English are valid demands, whether the student needs to be proficient in written English in areas other than those of his/her specialism, whether the apparent problem concerns language use outside the institution rather than having inadequate English for the course itself. Analyses of this kind are likely both to indicate what, if anything, is needed and at the same time explain why, in many cases, students’ English does not appear to improve.
A criticism of simultaneous interpreters is that they range widely from the speaker’s meaning. As a straightforward language problem, the solution is obvious: provide better interpreters. But it is worthwhile asking ourselves what is expected of simultaneous interpreters and then what ‘better interpreters’ would do. Much simultaneous work takes place at international conferences interpreting speeches made by delegates. Such speeches are of two kinds: the first is the set speech where there is normally a written transcript (already translated) which acts as the authentic account of what was said. The second is the impromptu speech: here there is normally no written transcript (although one may be made available later). What matters here is not that the interpreter takes account of all that is said; surely what matters is that the main point is transmitted. All good simultaneous interpreters will provide that. That is what matters: all else in simultaneous interpreting is show and symbol, making public the value to themselves and to the groups they represent of the delegates’ own languages. Once again we need to view the ‘language’ problem in the context of the international meeting, where what is paramount is the amour-propre of all delegates: simultaneous interpreting offers that display, getting it right is less important than getting the gist across. The applied linguist is conscious of this language embedding, and while sympathetic to the need for an accurate rendition, is also alert to what is practical and to what is needful.
Language problems in the institutionalized settings of school, work (including the office, the hospital, the factory), conferences, the media and so on, are very rarely problems only of language. In many cases they involve individuals and groups who have problems in interacting with one another and in making decisions about policy. These problems may manifest themselves in language but their origins are only partly there. Of course, this does not mean that in explaining and attempting solutions we ignore language. It may be that intervening on the language is the quickest way to bring about change. But no intervention will be successful that does not take account of the context in which the language problem is embedded.
We discussed how in practice we can distinguish between Linguistics and Applied Linguistics. Linguistics, we might suggest, looks through a telescope holding the large end to the eye, focusing solely on language to the exclusion of all else: language problems are seen as wholly linguistic problems. Applied Linguistics looks through a telescope with the small end to the eye, and so views language as part of the whole. The linguistic view is the laboratory view, the applied view is the real-world view.
