The Handbook of Applied Linguistics (review)

In the last few decades, the field of applied linguistics has flourished so that it now has national and international associations, university departments that include the term in their titles, a growing collection of academic and professional journals, and a mounting number of books, encyclopedias, and handbooks. Most major universities now offer one or more courses in applied linguistics at undergraduate and graduate levels, and a handbook like the one under review will certainly provide instructors in such a course with a good sketch of the field and of its current concerns. Alan Davies is especially qualified to edit a volume such as this, having taught since 1965 at Edinburgh University, one of the pioneering institutions in the field of applied linguistics.

The editors organize the thirty-two topical chapters into two clusters, the first representing an approach characterized as ‘linguistics applied’ (which assumes that language problems can be solved using concepts from linguistics) and ‘applied linguistics’ (which accepts the centrality of linguistics but assumes the necessity of input from other disciplines). There are, conveniently, sixteen chapters in each part.

After the editors set out their underlying assumptions and summarize the first part, Anthony J. Liddicoat and Timothy J. Curnow in the first chapter provide a theory-neutral account of language descriptions, though space limitations prevent their setting out details of the vast amount of research in linguistics and languages that one would want to apply. This is followed by a brief account of lexicography by Alan Kirkness, emphasizing the range of learners’ dictionaries. Ch. 3, by David Birdsong, provides a useful discussion of the notion of ultimate attainment in second language learning, arguing (against those who take a strong position in favor of the critical period) that second language learners can be as successful as first language learners. There is, it should be noted, a complete handbook devoted to the topic of second language acquisition (Doughty & Long 2003). Michael Stubbs describes how the computer, by furnishing easy access to larger and larger collections of language texts, has engendered increasing studies of language corpora. The following two chapters provide overviews of discourse analysis (Hugh Trappes-Lomax)—there is a Blackwell handbook for this too (Schiffrin et al. 2003)—and of British Sign Language as a minority language (Rachel Sutton-Spence and Bencie Woll). Howard Giles and Andrew C. Billings review forty years of studies of language attitudes, concentrating especially on the multiple-guise technique. Although often considered social psychology, it still fits the editors’ definition of linguistics applied. Monika S. Schmid and Kees de Bot summarize studies of the attrition of the first language. Claire Kramsch draws on a number of disciplines besides linguistics and on crossdisciplinary fields to present her thinking about linguistic relativity. Rod Gardner traces the field of conversational analysis since the pioneering work of Schegloff nearly forty years ago. John Gibbons discusses legal language, problems of courtroom interpretation, the nature of linguistic evidence, and the issue of linguistic identification or profiling: these are areas that have burgeoned rapidly even in the short time since the paper was written. Susan Ehrlich presents a brief review of the extensive research on language and gender (for more details, one might try another Blackwell handbook, Holmes & Meyerhoff 2003). John McRae and Urszula Clark append poems by William Wordsworth and Langston Hughes to a summary of definitions and approaches to stylistics. Tackling an issue that has recently become fashionable among applied linguists, John E. Joseph discusses language and politics, dealing with correctness, Marxism, structuralism, and language choice. Kingsley Bolton presents various approaches to the study of World Englishes, providing a thought-provoking examination of the political aspect of applied linguistics. Concluding this section, Kanavillil R...