The identity of applied linguistics is found at the nexus of language‐related, real‐world problems and the analytic approaches taken to investigate them. Whatever the contributions of other fields to language‐related issues, their blind spot is typically the nature of language as it is used in specific contexts for accomplishing particular goals. For applied linguists, the linguistic choices made to accomplish social goals is central, but how do they study such choices?
Can applied linguists simply apply the analytic approaches from linguistics to the various problems they investigate, as the name of the field applied linguistics would suggest? The earliest applied linguists acknowledged that the field drew upon analytic perspectives and knowledge from linguistics. However, unlike linguists, pioneer applied linguist Corder recognized that applied linguists see linguistics “through the eyes of the applied linguist” (1973, p. 7) because applied linguists need theory that is useful for their real‐world practice rather than analytic perspectives with the purely scientific goal of better understanding language. Corder's view of the relationship between linguistics and applied linguistics has been repeatedly affirmed by applied linguists' work over the past decades. For example, it was expanded on by Cook thirty years later:
Linguistic theory and description cannot . . . be deployed directly to solve the problems with which applied linguistics is concerned. One important reason is the nature of the problems themselves. They, too, like models of linguistics, represent certain perspectives on reality. Applied linguistics is not simply a matter of matching up findings about language with pre‐existing problems but of using findings to explore how the perception of problems might be changed. It may be that when problems are reformulated from a different point of view they become more amenable to solution. This changed perception may then, in turn, have implications for linguistics. (Cook, 2003, p. 10)
Attempts to define applied linguistics inevitably maintain a high level of abstraction in order to encompass the varied issues and methods of the field. Simpson defines it as “the academic field which connects knowledge about language to decision making in the real world” (Simpson, 2011, p. 1). Hall, Smith, and Wicaksono (2011) see applied linguistics as a mode of inquiry engaged with real people and issues arising in a political environment where academic perspectives and research alone may or may not be important in conceptualizing problems and finding solutions. They emphasize that problem solvers must genuinely engage with local knowledge and practice in seeking solutions.
More precision in the definition is best achieved by examining the types of language‐related problems that applied linguists have worked on over the past decades and how they do it, as editors of past collections on applied linguistics have noted (Davies & Elder, 2004; Kaplan, 2010). The Concise Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics invites readers to undertake such an examination by providing a collection of entries that describe the types of problems applied linguists work on and their analytic approaches. The majority of entries are focused on the problems which are presented and explained along with the relevant constellation of theory, research, and practice. Work across these areas of inquiry draws upon certain analytic approaches that applied linguists have developed, or borrowed and refined, and adapted to meet the needs posed by the problem at hand. Some of the entries emphasize the problems applied linguists investigate and others target research methods used in applied linguistics, but readers will undoubtedly note a confluence of theory, research, and practice within each of the entries. Such boundary crossing is a defining characteristic of applied linguistics.
Problems in Applied Linguistics
Language‐related problems typically take shape in response to language contact among individuals and societies as well as in adopting and adapting to technologies that function linguistically in society. Nine clusters of such issues are included in The Concise Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics. One of these clusters presents issues of multilingualism as it is studied in applied linguistics, from personal and cognitive issues associated with speaking more than one language to issues arising in education and the physical spaces in society where language is visible. Applied linguists have put forward new concepts such as multicompetence and translanguaging to study the capabilities and performance of people who speak more than one language. They study emersion education designed to increase academic language competence in more than one language and to afford status to and maintenance of more than one language in society. They study linguistic landscapes that reveal the roles and status of certain languages as well as the degree of multilingualism in a geographical area.
Multilingualism within a region often intersects with language policy and planning whereby particular actors attempt to manage the use of certain languages for the good of society or the benefit of a particular group. Illustrations of language policy and planning through the lens of applied linguistics appear in the entries on Russification in the Soviet and Post‐Soviet era as well as on the English‐only movement in the United States. The study of policy and planning also spans national borders with issues such as the role of linguistic human rights in language policy and planning and the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie. Both implicit and explicit language policies can be factors in the demand for teaching certain languages.
Additional language learning, also called foreign language learning or second language learning, is the topic of another cluster of entries. Over the past decades issues of language learning and teaching have grown in significance and complexity as they intersect with both globalization and technology. In these entries readers will see the unique case that language teaching presents in education, where specialist methodologies such as form‐focused instruction, genre‐based language teaching, and corpus linguistics in language teaching have been developed by applied linguists to address educational needs that take into account the nature of language and language learning.
Such language teaching methodological contributions from applied linguistics come in part from applied linguists' study of second language development. Developing a second language is a multifaceted and complex process encompassing a combination of cognitive, psychological, and social factors. Accordingly, researchers investigate a variety of questions from perspectives of cognitive second language acquisition as well as social, dynamic, and complexity theory approaches to second language development. Entries in the former area, such as attention, noticing, and awareness in second language acquisition, explain researchers' investigations of how the human mind processes language during learning in order to organize and learn the new language. The latter includes research that situates human language development within a social interactive process which affects broader aspects of human cognition and personality, as described in chaos/complexity theory for second language acquisition.
In all of the areas outlined above, professionals rely on language assessment and testing to assess learners' success in learning and their ability to perform in the contexts of interest. Specifically, language tests, or assessments, are used to systematically gather language‐related behaviors to make inferences about test takers' language ability and capacity for language use on other occasions. Theory, research, and practice in this area combine relevant concepts in educational measurement with construct theories about what it means to know a language, a question of central importance in applied linguistics. The entries on this topic include assessment of writing, rating oral language, and validation of language assessments.
The profession of translation and interpreting predates applied linguistics, but,