Page 206 - DENG504_LINGUISTICS

Linguistics

Notes Sociolinguistics: It is the study of effect of any and all aspects of society, including cultural norms,
expectations, and context on the way language is used. The chief contribution of sociolinguistics in
educational settings has been to draw attention to the differences between language use in the
classroom and in students' homes and communities. Because it is important to teaching and learning,
language is heavily regulated in classrooms. Teacher talk is the name given to the special register
that teachers use. It is a means of inducting pupils into specific topics and approaches and imparting
instruction. Like all registers, Teacher Talk has developed certain conventions and properties.
It typically comprises longer and more complex utterances than the teacher expects from the pupils.
Psycholinguistics: It is interdisciplinary in nature and is studied by people in a variety of fields such
as psychology, cognitive science and linguistics. Linguistic-related areas are phonetics and phonology
(focusing on how the brain processes and understands these sounds), morphology (relationships
among words and their formations), syntax (how words are combined together to form sentences),
semantics, and pragmatics.
Anthropological Linguistics: It is the study of the relations between language and culture, and the
relations among human biology, cognition and language. It studies humans through the languages
that they use.
Neurolinguistics: It is the science concerned with the human brain mechanisms underlying the
comprehension, production and abstract knowledge of language, be it spoken, signed or written.
Neurolinguistics has highlighted the special role of that part of the human brain known as Broca's
area in crucial aspects of human language, namely syntax: the component of language that involves
recursion.
Clinical Linguistics: It is a sub-discipline of linguistics and involves the application of linguistic
theory to the field of Speech-Language Pathology. The International Clinical Phonetics and Linguistics
Association is the unofficial organization of the field and was formed in 1991. They conduct researches
with the aims of advancing techniques in assessment and remediation in Speech-Language Pathologists
and offering insights to formal linguistic theories.
Pragmatics: It is the study of the ability of natural language speakers to communicate more than
what is explicitly stated. The ability to understand another speaker's intended meaning is called
pragmatic competence. Another perspective of pragmatics is that it deals with the ways we reach our
goals in communication.
Discourse Analysis: It is a general term for a number of approaches to analyzing written, spoken or
signed language use. Discourse analysis has been taken up in a variety of social science disciplines
such as linguistics, sociology and psychology. As stated earlier, it has close links with educational
linguistics in the sense that language is a discourse system so it should not be treated at the level of
isolated surface features.
Educational Psychology: It is the study of how humans learn in educational settings, the effectiveness
of educational interventions, the psychology of teaching, and the social psychology of schools as
organizations. It informs a wide range of specialities within educational studies, including instructional
design, educational technology, curriculum development, organizational learning, special education
and classroom management. It both draws from and contributes to cognitive science and the learning
sciences. Actually, it is one of the most important fields from which educational linguistics benefit.
It is clear that linguistics and psychology are indispensable parts of educational linguistics. However,
language teaching should not look to educational psychology or linguistics for revelations or
discoveries on how to teach language, but should learn to utilize these disciplines to make the vast
practical experience in the teaching of foreign languages more meaningful, to evolve definite principles
of language teaching and consolidate them in a true science of language learning.
15.10 Basic Principles of Educational Linguistics

The principles of Educational Linguistics got matured around 1970s by Spolsky giving references to
a number of related disciplines. Giving a general framework for the practices of foreign language
education, they can be specified as follows:

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