Introduction

This book explores some relationships which exist between linguistics and education. The starting point for the authors of the articles is that linguistics should be a central element in the pre- and in-service education of teachers. It is therefore a programmatic book. It is also a fairly polemical book. But being programmatic and polemical should not be taken as a sign that all linguists are impossibly uncompromising about the relation of their subject to education, and that they do not consider debate or dialogue useful. For example, we do not claim a one-for-one correspondence between the analysis of linguistic facts and the solution of educational and learning problems; we do consistently claim, however, that not to undertake such an analysis can have dangerous consequences and that teachers should therefore be properly equipped in techniques for analysing language. In such debate and discussion a clear, unequivocal and programmatic statement by interested linguists can clarify positions so that further dialogue can ensue without fuzziness or misconstrual of principle.