Applied Linguistics as a Discipline of Design

Abstract

The logical and formative modes of experience distinguish linguistic analysis from applied linguistic designs. Analysis helps us to understand the problem, but our technical imagination leads the designed solution. In preparing plans, we already anticipate their execution. Analysis can be the means to inform, enhance or justify the achievement of technical ends, but the ends are non-analytical. Focussing exclusively on the means reveals a modernist bias, while overemphasizing the ends characterizes postmodernist designs. A disclosure of the meaning of design anticipates a differentiation of designer and implementer, and the freeing up of technical fantasy.