Teaching linguistics in an interdisciplinary curriculum
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Abstract
Three quarters of a century ago, in 1906, a British Board of Education report commented on the confusion of aims in English Language teaching, citing "the quality of the teaching, the unsuitable textbooks, and the lack of any coherent sense of purpose." Where are WE today? Modern linguistics is still predominantly a graduate discipline for very good reasons: it is highly technical and abstract in its theoretical component; it is highly specialized in its various branches; its claims are under continuous dispute and subject to continuous change; and its applicability to a generalised curriculum is not at all self-evident. But given an educational system that is characterised by the value it places on quantitative returns and practical applicability, the discipline of linguistics must diversify in order to survive as an integral, funded unit of a university. Hence undergraduate teaching. But uneasy is the compromise. Is there a justifiable reason for the teaching of linguistics at the undergraduate level beyond the spurious need for self-survival? How can the admittedly technical and highly abstruse nature of the discipline be adapted to the needs of an undergraduate curriculum.
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