Doing being applied linguists: the importance of experience
SEVEN CASE STUDIES
I turn now to seven case studies so as to provide an illustration of the range of activities that applied linguists are involved in. They will serve as an indication of the extent to which we think of applied linguistics as a coherent discipline rather than as a collection of unconnected language projects. The examples I have chosen are:
1. language-program evaluation;
2. literacy acquisition;
3. pedagogical grammar;
4. workplace communication;
5. language and identity;
6. assessing English as a lingua franca; and
7. critical pedagogy.
What these examples illustrate is that projects in applied linguistics typically present as ‘problems’ for which explanations are desired, explanations which allow the researcher and teacher to make sense. (This of course takes us very close to our earlier discussion about the eventual need for theory: theory in macrocosm becomes explanation in microcosm.)
The case study, ‘critical pedagogy’, offers a problem of a different kind in that it represents an alternative applied linguistics, known as critical applied linguistics (CAL). It does this in two ways, first by offering a critique of traditional applied linguistics; and second, by exemplifying one way of doing CAL, namely critical pedagogy. I shall suggest that CAL may represent an ethical response to traditional applied linguistics; then I look more closely at the origins of CAL and the claims it makes.
