“Pure” and “Applied” Linguistics
More than a decade has now passed since historians of technology closed the debate concerning pure and applied science. Disambiguating “applied science” from “technology,” disrupting the presumed hierarchy by which “pure” science reigned over its “applied” extension, and downgrading the debate to a tractable one of terminological frequency, they shored up the intellectual legitimacy of their research quarry. Jennifer K. Alexander, for instance, allayed concerns in the pages of a 2012 Isis focus section on the matter. “My contribution,” she wrote,
…is to render the concept of applied science less incendiary by noting that the historical moment for sensitivity on the subject has passed, that historians of technology need not fear the subordination of their discipline even should such subordination be demonstrated, and that the concept can be helpful in addressing issues in the history and contemporary practice of engineering education.
With such thoughtful self-reflexivity and careful contextualization, ideas about the “linear” relationship from pure (theoretical, non-pecuniary) to applied (practical, interested) science were retired in the early 2010s. As a graduate student around this time, I remember talking smugly about this old-fashioned dichotomy as a way of signaling my in-group knowledge.
But as calls for engaged and embedded humanistic scholarship have risen in the midst of the climate crisis, COVID-19, Black Lives Matter, and the rapid development of AI, it might be time to circle back to some of these questions. Doing so may shed light on the commitment many (if not most) historians of science now make to the practice of applied humanities.
The Center for Applied Linguistics office in Washington, D.C.
The history of twentieth-century American linguistics presents a rich and relevant opportunity for thinking about claims that have been made on behalf of the applied humanities (or, the humanistic social sciences). My recent work on the universals project has highlighted the centrality of the Center for Applied Linguistics (CAL) to the growth of the language sciences in the postwar period. Indeed, this relationship is one that has been explored directly by John Hammer, former Associate Secretary of the Linguistic Society of America (LSA), in a forum on the Society’s website. Here we read how Melvin Fox, a senior staffer with the Ford Foundation, held “extensive conversations” with Charles Ferguson at the 1957 summer Linguistic Institute. (Ferguson, readers may recall, went on to co-direct the Stanford Language Universals Project with Joseph Greenberg, as discussed in other entries to this journal.) According to Hammer, the two men
…discussed a range of ways that linguistics could be employed, from language teaching (especially regarding English as a foreign or second language) to government policies affecting language…From the discussions with Ferguson and others, the idea of a new applied linguistics center evolved. Like many foundations, Ford was a bit leery of making a direct grant to establish a new entity. The Linguistic Society was approached about overseeing the new center…The Ford Foundation’s broad interest (I believe) was to bring more academic research into policy-making, education-oriented decisions, and so forth. Learned societies in key areas were seen as candidates for professionalization grants. The Foundation wanted such entities to be freestanding in terms of financing core activities and open to policy interests in areas of their expertise.
This general picture is confirmed by the CAL’s self-presentation and by records of its activities held at the American Philosophical Society and at the Rockefeller Archive Center. I saw one memo at the latter institution, which makes a strikingly direct comment on the stakes of pure and applied linguistics.
Rockefeller Archive Center, Ford Foundation records, Office of Humanities and the Arts, Office of the Vice President, Wilson McNeil Lowry (FA582), Series IV, Box 10, Folder 8.
Note, in particular, item (c), where the CAL is celebrated for
absorb[ing] a large burden of what is sometimes called ‘drudge work’ that would otherwise devolve upon pure linguists and such organizations at the Linguistic Society of America. Drudge work means anything that interferes with your own scholarly endeavors, and it has grown enormously in recent years with the growth of English as a second language, the teaching of neglected languages, and all the activities of the government and other institutions concerned with applied linguistics.
This, of course, is precisely the kind of snobbery historians of technology felt compelled to write against a generation ago. It seems possible, if not likely, that the geopolitical crises that gave rise to the alliance sketched here (between the Ford Foundation, the CAL, the MLA and the LSA) were discussed just as urgently as engaged research is presented today. The CAL was directed by “first-rate linguists” who did not seem to worry (at least, not in the materials I have seen thus far) about being associated with research of an applied nature—my sense is that they were, to the contrary, energized by the association. This has raised questions that I am still trying to answer about the extent to which research on language universals may have substantively overlapped with that of an “applied” nature during this period.
In an effort to better understand the relationship between the CAL and universals research, I have found the Linguistic Reporter to be a very rich source. It was published as a print newsletter from 1959 to 1982, and has been digitized as part of the CAL’s resource archive project. This web archive gives a strong impression of the work that was carried out during that period by the CAL, though it is important to point out for anyone who wants to work extensively with it that some pages are missing from the PDFs online.
The first page of the first issue of the first volume of The Linguistic Reporter, 1959.
The “problems” linguists were trying to solve are laid out here in very explicit—and regionally specific—terms,
…among them the problem of how to meet the tremendous demand for the teaching of English abroad, the problem of training enough Americans in the major languages of Asia to overcome the serious Asia-American language barrier, and the problems of translation and interpretation in various fields and on many levels.
This report also goes on to link linguistic “science” to theory and purity, giving readers a taste of the “linear” model touched on above:
[T]he last decades have seen an extraordinary growth of linguistic science in the United States, hardly equalled in scope and significance of results anywhere in the world. It is generally acknowledged that the linguistic theory and the result of linguistic research can make an important contribution to the solution of language problems, but in attempting to apply linguistics in this way certain critical needs have become apparent. On the purely linguistic side, there is a severe shortage of personnel trained in the application of linguistic science to language problems…On the other side, there is an obvious need for much better communication among linguists, psychologists, and language teachers, all three of whom generally follow their professional interests in isolation from one another, and for integration of recent developments in the fund of practical experience accumulated by language teachers and administrators of language problems.
As I continue to work through these materials, I will be especially keen to find evidence of the pathways by which this '“fund of practical experience” was taken up in the research on language universals and universals of linguistic theory.
