LANGUAGE IN APPLIED LINGUISTICS: A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE
Keywords:
applied linguistics, language, state, activity, changeAbstract
The article presents an outline of the main tendencies in the formation of applied lingu istics from the historical perspective. Modern applied linguistics as an academic discipline offers effective mechanisms of integrating various branches of theoretical linguistics due to two main postulates all modern schools of linguistics agree on, i.e. non material nature of language and the necessity to implement information technologies into linguistic research. The main achievements of modern theoretical linguistics are viewed through their ability to be used for the problem solving in the real world. Thus, we suggest that modern applied theory of language may consider language from three different points of view. It may be interested in (1) how the language sounds or looks (language as a state), (2) how it works (language as an activity), or (3) how i t develops (language as change). If it is interested in how the language sounds or looks, the theory will include something on language considered as a fixed state either as a state dependent on what people think and do, or as one which is independent of this. Dependently, language may be considered as human thought or as human behaviour. Language may be viewed as an independent state, either as structure, or as a system of communication. The view of language as an activity is concerned with the way langu age operates or is operated by man. From this point of view, language may be considered as an activity of the mind, or an activity of the brain. Language may also be regarded as something which is continually changing in time, or in space. In this respect it’s possible to single out such branches of applied linguistics as speech acquisition, area linguistics, and contrastive linguistics. The suggested conceptual scheme opens new perspectives for developments of modern applied linguistics as well as new mech anisms of the verification of its research results.
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