How applied linguistics is the same as any other science

Abstract

This paper comments on Rampton's criticisms of a position characterised by him as “Brumfit/Widdowson”. Applied linguistics is examined as a research project analogous to other “disciplines” and is shown to share a range of characteristics with them. Boundaries and models are ways of imposing metaphorical order on experiental chaos and are provisional, being discarded when their usefulness is exhausted. The need for cross‐disciplinary perspectives in language studies is imposed by the nature of an object of study instantiated in human behaviour or human mental processes. Applied linguistics distinctively models linguistic practices and is the meeting place for scholars concerned with understanding the linguistic elements of social, psychological, pedagogical, economic or any other activity or belief system. It is argued that applied linguistics shares a position intersecting with neighbouring sciences and with all other sciences, each of which demarcates its own space in contested and shared ground.

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