This paper presents a story of applied linguistics from my personal vantage point as a multilingual scholar whose career began outside the centers of research and scholarship. The article explains the assumptions and practices characterizing the foundation of the discipline in modernist discourses, and delineates the changes resulting from…

This paper proposes a discourse-based approach to the language documentation of local ecological knowledge (LEK). The knowledge, skills, beliefs, cultural worldviews, and ideologies that shape the way a community interacts with its environment can be examined through the discourse in which LEK emerges. 'Discourse-based' refers to two components:…

This paper surveys the research methods and approaches used in the multidisciplinary field of applied language studies or language education over the last fourty years. Drawing on insights gained in psycho- and sociolinguistics, educational linguistics and linguistic anthropology with regard to language and culture, it is organized around five…

There is growing interest in language barriers in health care (LBHC)--interest, that is, in how the quality of health care service delivery might be compromised when patients and health care providers do not share the same first language. This article discusses LBHC as an emerging research area that provides valuable opportunities for researchers…

Describes a Utopian vision of a new multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary field called "Dialogue," that would unite researchers with a common focus on dialogue. (Author/VWL)

Suggests that there are various methods that can be, and are used to study language and social interaction in its different guises; asserts that this is a good thing. Discusses some of the different meanings that "language" and "social interaction" have in research and concludes that the language-social interaction intersection is not unitary.…

John Swales's 1986 article "Citation analysis and discourse analysis" was written by a discourse analyst to introduce citation research from other fields, mainly sociology of science, to his own discipline. Here, I introduce applied linguists and discourse analysts to citation studies from information science, a complementary tradition not…

Proposes that language and social interaction (LSI) scholars can contribute to interdisciplinary efforts aimed at understanding and responding to child physical abuse. Discusses reasons why LSI scholars might shy away from such study and considers links between face-to-face family interaction and child physical abuse, demonstrating the relevance…

Presents a survey of opinions on the nature and usefulness of discourse analysis. The following topics are addressed: (1) discourse analysis and ideologies of power, (2) epistemological considerations, and (3) discourse analysis and interdisciplinary endeavors. (AMH)

Reviews the research on ageing, focusing on issues of multi-disciplinarity versus inter-disciplinarity; research orientations to "subject" populations; ethical imperatives in language research; interactivity; and linguistic versus ideological perspectives. Makes a case for considering research on language and ageing as falling within an…

The book is an introduction to the field of contrastive rhetoric, an area of research in second language learning that identifies learners' problems in composition and attempts to explain them by referring to the rhetorical strategies of the first language. It traces the history of contrastive approaches to the study of second language writing and…

Discourse is basically interactive. This is clear in conversation, but the concept can be extended to written language. Written text can be analyzed as spoken discourse. The methodology of English text studies has adhered too much to a textual approach and even extended it to spoken data. Another approach would be to begin with the spoken form of…

Papers given at an international conference applying the social sciences to the study of the relationships of languages include the following: "Reseaux sociaux et comportements langagiers en milieu de contact des langues" ("Social Networks and Language Behaviors in a Language Contact Setting") by M. Blanc and J. Hamers, with…

Examines the usefulness of the interdisciplinary research approach in the study of Arabic linguistics, using native Arabic speakers' written translations of English text into Arabic. The analysis method adapted models of discourse analysis to reflect micro-level and macro-level mistranslations in students' papers. (25 references) (Author/OD)

Under a contract with the Ministry of Education the working party prepared a general system for describing language teaching objectives to be used in higher education. The system is based on the specification of language use situations. By means of it the course objectives may be described in the form of communicative tasks, which the students are…