'A propósito de linguística aplicada' 30 anos depois: Quatro truísmos correntes e quatro desafios

Abstract

Applied Linguistics has reached its adult age in Brazil. Taking the second half of the 1980s as the period in which the discipline begins to acquire its institutional credentials in Brazil, this paper revisits the field's pragmatic and trans disciplinary status as delineated in Cavalcanti (1986). In this scenario, the paper points to four truisms that have established themselves as the discipline grew older: (1) monolithic empirical evidence, (2) artefactual language ideologies, (3) insufficient dialogue with users' reflexive models and (4) narrow focus on areas instead of problems. These truisms are all ways of enacting applied linguistics scholarship which, their limited reach in the discipline not with standing, hinder transdisciplinary work with problems of society and human life entangled with languageuse. The article ends by proposing four challenges to the field.