Applied Linguistics and Communities of Practice Selected papers from the Annual Meeting of the British Association for Applied Linguistics Cardiff University, September 2002 Edited by Srikant Sarangi and Theo van Leeuwen Advisory Board: Srikant Sarangi, Goodith White, Celia Roberts and Gunther Kress BRITISH ASSOCIATION FOR APPLIED LINGUISTICS in association with continuum LONDON • NEW YORK Continuum The Tower Building, 11 York Road, London SE1 7NX 15 East 26th Street, New York, NY 10010 First published 2003 © Srikant Sarangi,Theo van Leeuwen and contributors All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. ISBN 0-8264-7280-X (paperback) Production by Catchline, Milton Keynes
[email protected] Typeset in Bembo 11/13 Printed and bound in Great Britain by MPG Books Ltd, Bodmin, Cornwall Contents 1 Applied linguistics and communities of practice: gaining communality or losing disciplinary autonomy? 1 Srikant Samngi and Theo van Leeuwen Cardiff University 2 Final frontiers in applied linguistics? 9 David Crystal University of Wales, Bangor 3 'Doing engineering' globally: negotiating meaning in a 25 world-wide community of practice Esther Daborn and TJE Miller University of Glasgow 4 Sociolinguistic struggles in outdoor texts in a Creole- 39 speaking community: the significance of 'embedding' Susan Dray Lancaster University 5 Computer-mediated interaction: using discourse maps to represent multi-party, multi-topic asynchronous discussions 60 Sandra Harrison Coventry University 6 'Now I didn't mean to break his teeth': Applying topic management to problems of power asymmetry and voluntary confessions Georgina Heydon Aarhus University, Denmark 81 7 Using CHILDES tools for researching second language acquisition 98 Emma Marsden, Florence Myles, Sarah Rule, Rosamond Mitchell University of Southampton 8 Rationales for foreign language education in the 21st century 114 Rosamond Mitchell University of Southampton 9 Applied linguistics applied 132 Celia Roberts King's College London 10 Categorisation practices across professional boundaries: some analytic insights from genetic counselling 150 Srikant Sarangi, Angus Clarke, Kristina Bennert and Lucy Howell Cardiff University and University of Wales College of Medicine 11 Quantifying non-sexist language: the case of Ms 169 Juliane Schwarz Lancaster University 12 Interaction hi the literacy hour: a case study of learners with English as an additional language 184 Catriona Scott University of Bristol 13 Is the university a community of practice? 203 John Swales University of Michigan Contributors 217 1 Applied linguistics and communities of practice: gaining communality or losing disciplinary autonomy? Srikant Sarangi and Theo van Leeuwen Cardiff University The 'what is' question revisited Questions such as 'what is linguistics?' and 'what is applied linguistics?' continue to be asked with ontological and epistemological overtones (see Brumfit, 2001 for a recent overview). As an early statement, Crystal's (1968)'What is Linguistics?' devoted half the book's length to 'what is not linguistics'. The same would