Applied Linguistics

Applied Linguistics in North America

does have identifiable roots in linguistics.

While North American applied linguistics has evolved over time,

in its orientation and scope, so has North American linguistics.

A significant amount of work directed to real-world issues involving language

can be attributed to leading North American linguists,

although notcharacterized as applied linguistics

Much of what can now be seen as groundbreaking applied linguistics type activity

was carried out prior to the formal appearance of applied linguistics

or of linguistics as recognized fields of endeavor

the theoretical and empirical investigation of real-world problems

in which language is a central issue” (Brumfit, 1997, p. 93)

Applied
Linguistics’ is using what we know about

(a) language

(b) how it is learned

(c) how it is used, in order to achieve some purpose or solve some problem

solving

social problems

use of
language

Phonetics

The study of the sounds that human beings make in their languages

Transcribing sounds

the sounds of a language are not the same as the letters of a language

even in languages with much less irregularity than English

Phonology

Speech Sounds as a System

each language contains a selection of the possible human speech sounds

the speech sounds are known as phonemes

Morphology

deals with the way in which words are made up of morphemes

the smallest meaningful units of language

Syntax

deals with how to put

words together to form sentences which mean what we want

Semantics

that part of linguistic description which deals with meaning,

is often divided into lexical semantics

dealing with the meaning of words, and Language grammatical semantics

how morpheme meanings are combined by grammar to

form the meaning of utterances

Language
teaching

therefore including

speech therapy

translation and interpreting
studies

language planning