I will be presenting a paper entitled: “A Personal Confessional Tale: Linguistics-Applied or Applied-Linguistics” at the next Inter-Institutional Research Roadshow on December 6th, 2012, at Zayed University, Abu Dhabi.
ABSTRACT
A Personal Confessional Tale: Linguistics-Applied or Applied-Linguistics?
This presentation has two main goals. The first is to discuss the role of planned versus unplanned research, and use the Linguistics-Applied (L-A) versus Applied-Linguistics (A-L) dichotomy (Davies and Elder, 2004) as a descriptive tool in order to reflect on the two distinctive research paths I have followed. In principle, L-A looks ‘inward’ and uses language data to develop our linguistic knowledge about language, and is concerned in developing new theory, thus adopts a theory-then-research approach. A-L, by contrast, looks ‘outward’ and is concerned with real-world problems in which language is a central issue, thus adopts a research-then-theory approach. This presentation attempts to examine the value impact of each tradition in the current language learning and teaching research trends. The second goal is to present an experiential narrative of personal, functional and disciplinary reflexivity (Wilkinson, 1988), which will serve as the main source of evidence in this discussion. Fulfillments of the above two goals will, I hope, initiate a further series of ‘confessional’ tales for the exchange and spread of ideas, within and beyond linguistics.
References
Davies, A., and Elder, C. (2004) (Eds.). The Handbook of Applied Linguistics. Blackwell Publishing.
Wilkinson, S. (1988). The role of reflexivity in feminist psychology. Women’s Studies International Forum, 11(5), 493-502.
Linguistics Notes 