ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute OBJECTIVES You will understand: 1. The terminology and concepts of psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics and applied linguistics You will be able to: 1. Apply your general understanding of linguistics to your teaching

ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute Now that we have looked at the branches of linguistics involved in the study of form and meaning, we need to take a quick look at the branches of linguistics that look at external and mutual influences on language. There are many branches that marry linguistic theory with other areas of study. In this module we will look only at three: psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics and applied linguistics. These are three of the larger areas of study and the three that impact us most as language teachers

ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute PSYCHOLINGUISTICS Psycholinguistics is defined as “the study of the mental processes and representations involved in language comprehension and production” (O’Grady, p. 627). Psycholinguistics draws on psychology, cognitive science and linguistics in order to study how language is actually produced and understood. Although psycholinguistics is a relatively new field in linguistics, researchers have gathered considerable information about the mental processes involved in speech recognition and production. There are four key areas of consideration in psycholinguistics: top-down versus bottom-up processing; serial versus parallel processing; automatic versus controlled processing; and modularity.

ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute Top-down versus bottom-up processing is all about how information flows in the brain. In bottom-up processing, a person starts by processing what is heard in order to figure out the meaning of what is being said. The person listens in great detail to every word that is said and is lost if even one word is missed. In top-down processing, however, the individual accesses higher level thinking in order to understand what is being said. The individual may not ‘listen’ to every word, because he or she has filled in the blanks for those words based upon knowledge of the situation, knowledge of discourse or knowledge of sentence structure.

ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute An example of top-down processing is a brain-teaser in which all of the vowels have been taken out of words, leaving only the consonants. Interestingly, most people can correctly identify the words, by ‘filling in the blanks’ where the vowels should be. Try this to test out one aspect of your own top-down processing: l_ng_ _st_cs _nf_rm_t_ _n br_ _n _x_mpl_ If we only had bottom-up processing working for us, we would NOT be able to figure out the above words, because pieces are missing. However, because we have pre-existing higher level knowledge of the words and of how vowels get placed into words, we can determine what those words are.

ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute Serial versus parallel processing research looks into the order in which linguistic information is processed. In serial processing, the information is processed in sequential order and one step does not start until the previous one finishes. In parallel processing, however, linguistic inputs can be processed at the same time or steps in the processing can overlap. For example, if we are constructing a sentence, do we choose all the words for the sentence first and then start putting them in the right order? Or do we choose our words at the same time as we build our sentences? Evidence points us choosing our words at the same time as we build our sentences. You can test this out yourself. As you are verbally constructing a sentence slow down a bit and you will notice that you are actually choosing the words as you go. This is why we can get halfway through a sentence and not know the next word we are going to use.

ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute Research into automatic versus controlled processing looks at which parts of linguistic processing are done automatically, without conscious thought and which are done with conscious thought in a controlled manner. Research points to both processes being used, with automatic processing being used for lower level processing (interpreting sound) and controlled processing being used for higher level processing (understanding ambiguity for example).

ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute Finally, modularity involves research into how separate or ‘modular’ linguistic processing is. Researchers seek to answer whether the different types of linguistic processing work in isolation or overlap. Similarly, they seek to answer whether linguistic processing as a whole is completely separate from other cognitive functions or whether there is once again some overlap.

ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute SOCIOLINGUISTICS Sociolinguistics is defined as “the study of the relationship between language structures as they are used in discourse and the social roles and/or situations associated with them.” (O’Grady, p. 629) This area of linguistics deals with the relationships between language and society, and therefore has links to anthropology and sociology. The way a person speaks a language is influenced by various social factors, including the region they are from, their level of education, their wealth and their profession, to name a few. This interaction of linguistics and social factors yields some key concepts for sociolinguists to study: speech communities; accent; dialects; variations in language use based upon age, gender and education; and style and register.

ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute A speech community is a group of people with shared norms and rules about language use. One speech community may differ from another in terms of the pronunciation, grammar or vocabulary it considers acceptable. Accent refers to regional phonological differences. For example, most English speakers can identify whether an individual comes from Australia, England or Canada. There are even accent variations within countries, such as the various accents in England. Dialects are mutually intelligible forms of a language that contain systematic differences. However, there are situations where varieties of a language are not mutually intelligible but speakers still consider themselves as speakers of the same language because they live in the same country or belong to the same ethnic group. For instance, spoken Mandarin and Cantonese are mutually unintelligible but speakers all consider themselves as Chinese speakers. (Written Mandarin and Cantonese are the same.) An idiolect is each person’s unique dialect. Researchers study social dialects, the varieties of a language spoken by groups in relation to class, education, age and other factors.

ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute People with more education tend to have spoken language that has more in common with formal, written language. Those with very little education may produce language that is considered ungrammatical by educated speakers. Various studies have shown that people of different social classes use different pronunciation. For example, Yule (p. 241) points out that the pronunciation of /n/ instead of /ŋ/ at the end of words (for instance, saying walkin’ instead of walking) tends to be an indicator of lower class in English.

ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute Age-based language variations occur between generations, both in terms of vocabulary and structure. Male and female speech is very different in some languages, where the genders use different vocabulary or pronunciation. In English, men and women tend to use different conversational styles. Ethnicity can also produce groups with different dialects. An example of this is the dialect spoken by many Blacks in North America. The unique features of this dialect include not using the verb “be” or using the base form in statements like “They crazy” and using double negatives. Sometimes speakers of “standard” English criticize such dialects as ungrammatical. However, Yule (p. 243) explains that other languages employ these supposedly ungrammatical constructions and they are certainly not considered to be inferior languages.

ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute In addition to the variations discussed above, which depend on the speaker, there are variations that depend on the situation. Styles of speaking can be described as “situational dialects” (An Introduction to Language, p. 264). Style is determined by the speaker’s attitude to the intended message or the audience. People tend to use one style in formal situations like job interviews, and an informal style with friends and family. Informal speech is often characterized by more contractions, different vocabulary and slang. It is possible for someone to use a whole range of styles in different environments.

ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute Register refers to variations in language use determined by the subject matter. This may mean using specific vocabulary sets, grammatical patterns or even pronunciation. For instance, a recipe uses specific vocabulary with short imperative sentences, and certain grammar words are omitted. Legal documents use vocabulary and complex constructions that are rarely used elsewhere, like “hereby” and the subjunctive mood (“should the tenant fail to…”). A feature of register is jargon, which refers to technical vocabulary connected with specific occupations or activities, often understood only by ‘insiders’. Linguistics is full of jargon, including words like morpheme, lexis, mood and so on.

ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute APPLIED LINGUISTICS Applied linguistics is the study of language and linguistics in relation to practical problems such as literacy, translation, speech pathology and language education. Applied linguistics takes the theory of all areas of linguistics and looks at how that theory can inform practice. Practical problems that applied linguistics tries to solve include:

ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute APPLIED LINGUISTICS How can we better teach people to read their first language? How can we better teach people to write their first language? How can we train translators to be more accurate and fluent? How can we help people who stutter? How can we help people who have sustained a brain injury that affects their speech? How can we better teach people a second language? Is bilingual education effective from a language learning perspective? You will notice that most of the questions start with ‘how’. This is because applied linguistics is…applied. It looks at how all of the theory about language that is being generated by linguistic researchers can help people in daily life.

ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute Complete Question 1 in your Task Journal. Task Journals can be submitted via to (preferred) or printed and handed in.