Australian Review of Applied Linguistics - Volume 33, Issue 2, 2010

Australia’s current attempt to develop a process to evaluate the quality of research (Excellence in Research for Australia – ERA) places a central emphasis on the disciplinary organisation of academic work. This disciplinary focus poses particular problems for Applied Linguistics in Australia. This paper will examine Applied Linguistics in relation to this issue of discipline in two ways. First, it will examine ways in which Applied Linguistics has articulated for itself its disciplinary nature. In most formulations of the focus of Applied Linguistics, the emphasis has not been on identifying a discipline, but rather on identifying an area of focus. Such formulations necessarily cover a very diverse range of research methods, theories, etc. This approach can be seen as one of emphasising diversity and breadth within the field. Other attempts have been made to characterise Applied Linguistics in more discipline-like terms. Such broad characterisations however conceal a high degree of internal diversity. Applied Linguistics does not appear to be a ‘discipline’ but rather an interdisciplinary field of enquiry. Second, the paper will examine some possible implications of the diversity of Applied Linguistics for how it is positioned through the ERA process.

In this paper we explore the provision of applied linguistics within Australian universities. We focus on how the ‘what’ of applied linguistics, as captured in scholarly definitions of the discipline, accords with the ‘where’, as captured in potential contexts of application as these are manifested in provision. In doing so, we examine the extent of any congruence or divergence between how applied linguistics is understood in the abstract and how it is realised in degree programs. Our findings, based an analysis of data collected via a survey of university websites, suggest that while the rhetoric around course offerings may suggest a wider view of the discipline, the content of applied linguistics programs generally reflects a narrower interpretation which aligns closely with observations often made as caveats to scholarly definitions and sees English language teaching as predominant

Critical directions in applied linguistics can be understood in various ways. The term critical as it has been used in critical applied linguistics, critical discourse analysis, critical literacy and so forth, is now embedded as part of applied linguistic work, adding an overt focus on questions of power and inequality to discourse analysis, literacy or applied linguistics more generally. In this paper I will argue, however, that although critical discourse analysis and critical literacy still make claims to a territory different from their ‘non-critical’ counterparts, much of this work has become conventional and moribund. The use of the term ‘critical’ (with its problematic claims and divisions) has perhaps reached saturation level. This is not to say, however, that the basic need to bring questions of power, disparity and difference to applied linguistics is any way diminished, but rather that we may need to look in alternative directions for renewal.

Here I want to pursue two main possibilities: On the one hand, the effects of critical work have been widely felt, so that the issues and concerns raised by work in this tradition have filtered through to many parts of the field. Work today that might be deemed critical may no longer need to wear this label. On the other hand, a range of different social theories (captured in part by a series of ‘turns’) has started to shift the thinking in many domains of applied linguistics in important ways. Just as work in sociolinguistics, for example, has shifted from a central focus on variationist accounts of language to include style, identity, practices and politics more broadly, and work in bi- and multilingualism has started to question the ways in which these are framed (hence, for example, multilanguaging, polylingualism and metrolingualism), so applied linguistics has shifted from a central focus on language teaching, testing and second language acquisition to a broader and more critical conceptualization of language in social life. It has started to take on board the implications of new ‘turns’ in the social sciences (practices, sensory, somatic, postmodern, ecological, decolonial) and new influences from previously overlooked sources (queer theory, critical geography, postcolonial studies, philosophy). Critical and alternative directions in applied linguistics, therefore, may be found across a variety of domains that are engaging with notions such as language as a local practice.

This paper gives a critical overview of Australian research in the area of immigrant languages, arguing that this field of study is a significant component of the wider applied linguistics scene in Australia and has also contributed to enhancing the broad appreciation of the cultural and linguistic diversity of the country. It shows that research into immigrant languages has drawn upon a range of paradigms and evaluates those that have been most productively used. The paper argues that new research developments are needed to take into account the changing linguistic landscape of Australia and the increased fluidity and mobility of current migration.

This study examines the effect of contextual clues on the use of strategies (inferencing and ignoring) and knowledge sources (semantics, morphology, world knowledge, and others) for processing unfamiliar words in listening comprehension. Three types of words were investigated: words with local co-text clues, global co-text clues and extra-textual clues. Data were collected from 20 participants using the procedures of immediate retrospection without recall support and of stimulated recall. The results indicate that contextual clues are an important factor in learners’ treatment of unfamiliar words in listening comprehension. Contrary to what some theories of inference generation predict, this study reveals that learners use the inferencing strategy more frequently for words with global co-text clues and words with extratextual clues than for words with local co-text clues. In terms of the use of knowledge sources for inferring word meaning, the learners in this study use the knowledge sources in accordance with the different types of contextual clues.