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1940
At the Second World War the soldiers needed to speak certain languages depending on where they were send to battle, so some linguists who knew the rules and structure of the Native American languages managed the situation. The term was used, mainly to define the teaching of a foreign language as a "scientific approach", for teaching English to non-native speakers as well. -
1950
The term still was concerned for the structure and functions of teaching a second language, it also started to include alphabetization problems in the first language (L1) for linguists to manage. -
1960
• The term remained associated with the application of linguistics to language teaching and practical language-related issues. applied linguists started to be involved in issues of language assessment, language policy, and second language acquisition (SLA). it started focusing on learning rather than teaching. applied linguistics then began to evolve into a language-centered problem-solving practice.
• The audio-lingual method. -
1970
• The focus on teaching persisted. The sub-fields of language assessment integrated: SLA, L2 literacy, multilingualism, minority language rights, language policy and planning, and language teacher trainings were incorporated into the discipline.
• It started to be taken more into account as a discipline to address real world language based problems.
• The American Association for Applied Linguistics (AAAL) was stablished. -
1980
• The main issue was still the need to address language issues as they occur in the real world.
• The term began to cover:
language assessment.
language policy and planning.
issues of language use in professional environments,
translation.
lexicography.
bilingualism and multilingualism.
corpus linguistics. -
1990
• Applied Linguistics started to incorporate in many subfields and using many supporting disciplines in addition to linguistics, for example, composition, rhetoric, and literacy studies, among others.
• The term went from a focus on only language teaching to a bigger range of issues, including second language acquisition, language testing and language policy and planning. -
2000
Applied Linguistics started to get more involved in medical aspects as well as in school, community, legal issues and in professional matters. -
2009
The term centered more on learning and it implied various fields. -
2020
• Nowadays, Applied linguistics involves solving language and communication problems by identifying, analyzing or applying theories and methods or even developing new theoretical and methodological approaches in linguistics to work on these problems in the future.
• It involves many areas of research and employment, it is in constant change since social aspects and language are continuously evolving. -
Future
We do not know what the future holds for us but we can always wonder and make a hypothesis about what is going to happen later in life. Maybe an L2 and multilingualism will be more common than nowadays.
Because in the future there would also be so much more technology, there is a possibility that Applied Linguistics might change a lot. New methods would be invented and hopefully a lot more solution methods for language problems, but we can never know.
