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On the applicability of empirical findings An earlier version of this paper was presented at the annual conference of the Spanish association of applied linguistics (AESLA) in Salamanca, May 2011. The conference had the title ‘Empiricism and Analytical Tools for Applied Linguistics in the 21st Century,’ and in addressing this theme, the paper takes up again issues that I have discussed in more general terms elsewhere, particularly in Widdowson 2005.

On the applicability of empirical findings An earlier version of this paper was presented at the... Abstract There are two particularly prominent areas of empirical enquiry that are claimed to fall within the scope of applied linguistics, and in particular to address issues that have to do with foreign language pedagogy. The first is concerned with descriptions of native speaker language usage, which has gathered considerable momentum in recent years with the computer analysis of corpus data. The second is research into language learning that goes under the name of SLA. Both areas claim that their findings provide an empirical basis for how the language should be pedagogically prescribed as a subject. These claims, however, turn out to be contradictory, and a consideration of the contradiction raises critical questions about the nature of applied linguistics, customarily defined as an interdisciplinary field of enquiry directed at engaging with practical language-related problems in the real world. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png European Journal of Applied Linguistics de Gruyter

On the applicability of empirical findings An earlier version of this paper was presented at the annual conference of the Spanish association of applied linguistics (AESLA) in Salamanca, May 2011. The conference had the title ‘Empiricism and Analytical Tools for Applied Linguistics in the 21st Century,’ and in addressing this theme, the paper takes up again issues that I have discussed in more general terms elsewhere, particularly in Widdowson 2005.

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References (37)

Publisher
de Gruyter
Copyright
Copyright © 2013 by the
ISSN
2192-9521
eISSN
2192-953X
DOI
10.1515/eujal-2013-0002
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Abstract There are two particularly prominent areas of empirical enquiry that are claimed to fall within the scope of applied linguistics, and in particular to address issues that have to do with foreign language pedagogy. The first is concerned with descriptions of native speaker language usage, which has gathered considerable momentum in recent years with the computer analysis of corpus data. The second is research into language learning that goes under the name of SLA. Both areas claim that their findings provide an empirical basis for how the language should be pedagogically prescribed as a subject. These claims, however, turn out to be contradictory, and a consideration of the contradiction raises critical questions about the nature of applied linguistics, customarily defined as an interdisciplinary field of enquiry directed at engaging with practical language-related problems in the real world.

Journal

European Journal of Applied Linguisticsde Gruyter

Published: Jun 1, 2013

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