Journal of Linguistics and Language Teaching
10th Anniversary Issue (2020), pp. 5-7
Foreword to the Issue
The Journal of Linguistics and Language Teaching saw the light of day in January 2010, i.e. ten years ago. Back then, I recognised the necessity to launch a new scientific journal which would feature not ,only’ linguistics and not ,only’ language teaching, but both fields combined, and which would thus put focus on the phenomenon that linguistics on the one hand and language teaching and, as its basis, language methodology, on the other are, more often than not, closely intertwined. The range of contributions JLLT has covered ever since, which reach from theoretical linguistics over applied linguistics to theoretical and empirical language methodology and further on to the description and analysis of practical teaching, has been proven to be fruitful, and time has shown that there is a demand for exactly this type of academic journal. Both linguistics and language teaching are not l’art pour l’art, but they do have a direct impact on how human beings master (foreign) languages and communicate with each other, with communication perhaps never having been as important, and never as complex, as is the case nowadays in view of all the new ways of information exchange via traditional and new media. Thus, making scientific reflections on language and language teaching seems to be even more important for the development of our world and the understanding of people(s) than ever before. It is in this vein that we now celebrate the 10th year of JLLT’s existence.
The first ten years of any journal are definitely the most difficult ones, and fortunately, this first decade has been quite a fortunate one for JLLT, which I have every reason to be grateful for. We pay tribute to this first decade by publishing a special issue to feature the journal’s anniversary. I am very happy to announce that some of the members of the Editorial Advisory Board have been so nice as to contribute an article to this special issue, in which they give readers insight into their respective research fields. Their articles represent the full thematic range of the field and also convey their enthusiasm as scientists. This is one of those moments when journal readers see great minds at work and feel the advancement of science thanks to personal commitment. And this is also the moment for me to thank my dear colleagues very much indeed for having taken the time and made the effort of putting some words together for JLLT. This was very nice of you and will never be forgotten!
The eight articles published in this anniversary issue come in English, German, and Italian. They are grouped by topic, starting from linguistics itself and then going on via language methodology and cross-cultural methodology towards the very teaching of langues.
In the first article, Günter Schmale (Lyon, France) presents a new approach in the field of formulaic language, which he calls polifactoriality and which opens up new horizons in that it permits to define phenomena which could not be described as consistently as is now possible using this novel criterion. Including English, French and German in his analysis, he proves that his approach works for more than one language and also provides resourceful insights for linguists of various provenance. On top of that, readers may feel what has recently come to many researchers’ minds and what we all may feel when pondering our own everyday language usage, i.e. that when communicating, we are far less “inventive“ and a lot more “formulaic“ than we think, i.e. by using syntagmatic, phraseological or even syntactic patterns which have been used millions of times before.
Andreea Calude (Hamilton, New Zealand) and Gerald Delahunty (Fort Collins, CO, USA) remain in the realm of the lexicon, diving deep into one specific item: just because. The authors describe and analyse this highly frequent expression the way it occurs in spoken and written English in New Zealand. In their corpus-based study, they document that this expression is by far more powerful and of a far higher thematic coverage and frequency than had been found in research before. By describing and analysing the impressive quantitative and qualitative range of this construction and by doing so on the basis of an abundant number of examples, the authors show that this expression is so frequent just because it is highly multifunctional.
In a historic approach, Heinz-Helmut Lüger (Koblenz-Landau, Germany) focuses on Michel Bréal, a contemporary of Ferdinand de Saussure’s and an oft-neglected French linguist, who is considered as the founder of semantics by some, and his reflections on subjectivity and language use. Taking his famous essai de sémantique as the basis, the author wonders whether Bréal can also be seen as the founder of pragmatics. In doing so, he comes to an interesting conclusion which compares Bréal and de Saussure and which plausibly explains the weakness of the one and the forte of the other.
In the field of linguistics-based foreign language teaching, Shing-lung Chen (Kaohsiung, Taiwan) makes stresses the importance of games for teaching German as a foreign language. Her approach is not to incite learners to play games so as to learn this language, but to guide them to invent games on their own and to benefit from this conceptual work in such a way that their own mastery of German is increased en passant. The aim of Chen’s approach is not primarily to improve learners’ vocabulary or their sentence-building capacity, but to lead them towards real communication in the foreign language. The article comes with highly practical descriptions, convincing analyses, and with the empirical evidence that this approach leads to a considerable increase in learners’ success, motivation, and problem-solving skills. What is more, it can be taken as an inspiration for language instructors who might implement this approach in their own teaching.
Learning a foreign language by employing unconventional methods is also a topic which Ulrich Schmitz (Duisburg-Essen, Germany) addresses. The author suggests that learners use public places to increase their command of a given foreign language. This is a special kind of scaffolding and, at the same time, an approach which incites learners to consciously keep their eyes wide open, which not only helps them better understand the country whose language they are learning, but also offers them the „side effect“ of efficiently diving into its culture. The author describes and analyses this idea, exemplifying it in a highly accessible way and showing its great potential.
Also taking public places as the starting point of his reflections, Terry Lanb (London, UK) advocates inclusion and social justice in London as a multilingual city. Starting from the marginalisation and exclusion which numerous language communities suffer there and in the whole of Great Britain, he identifies supplementary schools as potential spaces of hope in which these communities’ languages can continue being learnt and spoken. The author’s hope is based on the creative practices and the potential of resistance these schools display, the end point of this development possibly – and hopefully – being a more inclusive world in the future.
The present issue is rounded off with an article by Inez de Florio-Hansen (Kassel, Germany) on learning Italian in Germany in the digital age. This article, written in Italian, focuses on digitisation, artificial intelligence and robotics and plunges into media pedagogy and its important role in the process of guiding students towards media literacy. In view of the more or less unlimited opportunities the Internet offers for teaching, students will need to learn how to use it in an informed way and, at the same time, gain awareness of the problems it entails.
These articles complete the 10th anniversary issue of JLLT, which I am happy and proud to present. I am sure that many readers will be feel the same enthusiasm as I do about this wonderful scientific area which the continuum between linguistics at the one end and language teaching at the other covers and in which we work. And there are days when we all, as representatives of this area, have a feeling that somehow or other, we are doing the right thing.
Thomas Tinnefeld
JLLT
Editor