Handbook of Communication Competence Edited by Gert Rickheit Hans Strohner Mouton de Gruyter Handbook of Communication Competence HAL 1 ≥ Handbooks of Applied Linguistics Communication Competence Language and Communication Problems Practical Solutions Editors Karlfried Knapp and Gerd Antos Volume 1 Mouton de Gruyter · Berlin · New York Handbook of Communication Competence Edited by Gert Rickheit and Hans Strohner Mouton de Gruyter · Berlin · New York Mouton de Gruyter (formerly Mouton, The Hague) is a Division of Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. 앪 앝 Printed on acid-free paper which falls within the guidelines of the ANSI to ensure permanence and durability. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Handbook of communication competence / edited by Gert Rickheit, Hans Strohner. ⫺ (Handbooks of applied linguistics ; 1) Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-3-11-018829-5 (hardcover : alk. Language and languages 3.H34 2008 418⫺dc22 2008004072 Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http://dnb. ISBN 978-3-11-018829-5 쑔 Copyright 2008 by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. All rights reserved, including those of translation into foreign languages.
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Printing and binding: Hubert & Co. Printed in Germany. v In memoriam Hans Strohner * 7. 2006 vi Introduction to the handbook series vii Introduction to the handbook series Linguistics for problem solving Karlfried Knapp and Gerd Antos 1.
Science and application at the turn of the millennium The distinction between “pure” and “applied” sciences is an old one. Accord- ing to Meinel (2000), it was introduced by the Swedish chemist Wallerius in 1751, as part of the dispute of that time between the scholastic disciplines and the then emerging epistemic sciences. However, although the concept of “Applied Science” gained currency rapidly since that time, it has remained problematic. Until recently, the distinction between “pure” and “applied” mirrored the distinction between “theory and “practice”.
The latter ran all the way through Western history of science since its beginnings in antique times. At first, it was only philosophy that was regarded as a scholarly and, hence, theoretical disci- pline. Later it was followed by other leading disciplines, as e. However, as academic disciplines, all of them remained theoretical.
In fact, the process of achieving independence of theory was essential for the academic dis- ciplines to become independent from political, religious or other contingencies and to establish themselves at universities and academies. This also implied a process of emancipation from practical concerns – an at times painful develop- ment which manifested (and occasionally still manifests) itself in the discredit- ing of and disdain for practice and practitioners. To some, already the very meaning of the notion “applied” carries a negative connotation, as is suggested by the contrast between the widely used synonym for “theoretical”, i. “pure” (as used, e.
in the distinction between “Pure” and “Applied Mathematics”) and its natural antonym “impure”. On a different level, a lower academic status sometimes is attributed to applied disciplines because of their alleged lack of originality – they are perceived as simply and one-directionally applying in- sights gained in basic research and watering them down by neglecting the limit- ing conditions under which these insights were achieved. Today, however, the academic system is confronted with a new understand- ing of science. In politics, in society and, above all, in economy a new concept of science has gained acceptance which questions traditional views.
In recent philosophy of science, this is labelled as “science under the pressure to suc- ceed” – i. as science whose theoretical structure and criteria of evaluation are increasingly conditioned by the pressure of application (Carrier, Stöltzner, and Wette 2004): viii Karlfried Knapp and Gerd Antos Whenever the public is interested in a particular subject, e. when a new disease de- velops that cannot be cured by conventional medication, the public requests science to provide new insights in this area as quickly as possible. In doing so, the public is less interested in whether these new insights fit seamlessly into an existing theoretical framework, but rather whether they make new methods of treatment and curing poss- ible.
With most of the practical problems like these, sciences cannot rely on know- ledge that is already available, simply because such knowledge does not yet exist. Very often, the problems at hand do not fit neatly into the theoretical framework of one particular “pure science”, and there is competition among dis- ciplines with respect to which one provides the best theoretical and methodo- logical resources for potential solutions. And more often than not the problems can be tackled only by adopting an interdisciplinary approach. As a result, the traditional “Cascade Model”, where insights were applied top-down from basic research to practice, no longer works in many cases.
In- stead, a kind of “application oriented basic research” is needed, where disci- plines – conditioned by the pressure of application – take up a certain still dif- fuse practical issue, define it as a problem against the background of their respective theoretical and methodological paradigms, study this problem and finally develop various application oriented suggestions for solutions. In this sense, applied science, on the one hand, has to be conceived of as a scientific strategy for problem solving – a strategy that starts from mundane practical problems and ultimately aims at solving them. On the other hand, despite the dominance of application that applied sciences are subjected to, as sciences they can do nothing but develop such solutions in a theoretically reflected and me- thodologically well founded manner. The latter, of course, may lead to the well- known fact that even applied sciences often tend to concentrate on “application oriented basic research” only and thus appear to lose sight of the original prac- tical problem.
But despite such shifts in focus: Both the boundaries between disciplines and between pure and applied research are getting more and more blurred. Today, after the turn of the millennium, it is obvious that sciences are re- quested to provide more and something different than just theory, basic research or pure knowledge. Rather, sciences are increasingly being regarded as partners in a more comprehensive social and economic context of problem solving and are evaluated against expectations to be practically relevant. This also implies that sciences are expected to be critical, reflecting their impact on society.
This new “applied” type of science is confronted with the question: Which role can the sciences play in solving individual, interpersonal, social, intercultural, political or technical problems? This question is typical of a conception of science that was especially developed and propagated by the influential philos- opher Sir Karl Popper – a conception that also this handbook series is based on. Introduction to the handbook series ix 2. “Applied Linguistics”: Concepts and controversies The concept of “Applied Linguistics” is not as old as the notion of “Applied Science”, but it has also been problematical in its relation to theoretical lin- guistics since its beginning. There seems to be a widespread consensus that the notion “Applied Linguistics” emerged in 1948 with the first issue of the journal Language Learning which used this compound in its subtitle A Quarterly Jour- nal of Applied Linguistics.
This history of its origin certainly explains why even today “Applied Linguistics” still tends to be predominantly associated with foreign language teaching and learning in the Anglophone literature in particu- lar, as can bee seen e. from Johnson and Johnson (1998), whose Encyclopedic Dictionary of Applied Linguistics is explicitly subtitled A Handbook for Lan- guage Teaching. However, this theory of origin is historically wrong. As is pointed out by Back (1970), the concept of applying linguistics can be traced back to the early 19th century in Europe, and the very notion “Applied Lin- guistics” was used in the early 20th already.
Theoretically Applied vs. Practically Applied Linguistics As with the relation between “Pure” and “Applied” sciences pointed out above, also with “Applied Linguistics” the first question to be asked is what makes it different from “Pure” or “Theoretical Linguistics”. It is not surprising, then, that the terminologist Back takes this difference as the point of departure for his dis- cussion of what constitutes “Applied Linguistics”. In the light of recent contro- versies about this concept it is no doubt useful to remind us of his terminological distinctions.
Back (1970) distinguishes between “Theoretical Linguistics” – which aims at achieving knowledge for its own sake, without considering any other value –, “Practice” – i. any kind of activity that serves to achieve any purpose in life in the widest sense, apart from the striving for knowledge for its own sake – and “Applied Linguistics”, as a being based on “Theoretical Linguistics” on the one hand and as aiming at usability in “Practice” on the other. In addition, he makes a difference between “Theoretical Applied Linguistics” and “Practical Applied Linguistics”, which is of particular interest here. The former is defined as the use of insights and methods of “Theoretical Linguistics” for gaining knowledge in another, non-linguistic discipline, such as ethnology, sociology, law or literary studies, the latter as the application of insights from linguistics in a practical field related to language, such as language teaching, translation, and the like.
For Back, the contribution of applied linguistics is to be seen in the planning of practical action. Language teaching, for example, is practical action done by practitioners, and what applied linguistics can contribute to this is, e., to provide contrastive descriptions of the languages involved as a foundation for x Karlfried Knapp and Gerd Antos teaching methods. These contrastive descriptions in turn have to be based on the descriptive methods developed in theoretical linguistics. However, in the light of the recent epistemological developments outlined above, it may be useful to reinterpret Back’s notion of “Theoretically Applied Linguistics”.
As he himself points out, dealing with practical problems can have repercussions on the development of the theoretical field. Often new ap- proaches, new theoretical concepts and new methods are a prerequisite for deal- ing with a particular type of practical problems, which may lead to an – at least in the beginning – “application oriented basic research” in applied linguistics itself, which with some justification could also be labelled “theoretically ap- plied”, as many such problems require the transgression of disciplinary bound- aries. It is not rare that a domain of “Theoretically Applied Linguistics” or “ap- plication oriented basic research” takes on a life of its own, and that also something which is labelled as “Applied Linguistics” might in fact be rather re- mote from the mundane practical problems that originally initiated the respect- ive subject area. But as long as a relation to the original practical problem can be established, it may be justified to count a particular field or discussion as be- longing to applied linguistics, even if only “theoretically applied”.
Applied linguistics as a response to structuralism and generativism As mentioned before, in the Anglophone world in particular the view still appears to be widespread that the primary concerns of the subject area of ap- plied linguistics should be restricted to second language acquisition and lan- guage instruction in the first place (see, e., Davies 1999 or Schmitt and Celce- Murcia 2002). However, in other parts of the world, and above all in Europe, there has been a development away from aspects of language learning to a wider focus on more general issues of language and communication. This broadening of scope was in part a reaction to the narrowing down the focus in linguistics that resulted from self-imposed methodological constraints which, as Ehlich (1999) points out, began with Saussurean structuralism and culminated in generative linguistics.