Linguistics in Education

The relationship between linguistics and education has many faces, with diverse interpretations of how the two areas intersect and inform one another. For the purposes of this chapter, we set aside topics that already occupy a more prominent place in the disciplinary landscape to focus on an area of this intersection that tends to be less explored: the presence and pedagogical potential of linguistics in the classroom. Accordingly, we will use “linguistics in education” (LiE) as an umbrella term encompassing contemporary scholarship and educational initiatives that aim to extend the reach of linguistics across diverse educational settings.

Our discussion is situated broadly within the domain of pedagogical linguistics (PL), a field which, on its widest definition, serves as a meeting ground for linguistics research with a pedagogical orientation (Trotzke and Rankin 2020:2). Within this sphere, we give prominence to a specific area of scholarly activity that goes by various labels but will be referred to here as “linguistics in schools” (LiS), a long-standing educational initiative advocating for the greater inclusion of linguistics in pre-university (or K-12) educational contexts. LiS forms part of the broader disciplinary ecosystem of language, linguistics and education alongside more prominent fields such as educational linguistics, applied linguistics, second language acquisition, language pedagogy and language awareness research. However, as these areas are amply covered elsewhere, we limit consideration of them in this chapter to their intersections with LiS and PL.