London School

The London School of linguistics is involved with the study of language on the descriptive plane (synchrony), the distinguishing of structural (syntagmatic) and systemic (paradigmics) concepts, and the social aspects of language. Semantics is in the forefront.

The school's primary contribution to linguistics has been the situational theory of meaning in semantics (the dependence of the meaning os a linguistic unit on its use in a standard context by a definite person; functional variations in speech are distinguished on the basis of typical contexts) and the prosodic analysis in phonology (the consideration of the phenomena accruing to a sound: the number and nature syllables, the character of sound sequences, morpheme boundaries, stress, and so on.

The distinctive function is considered to be the primary function of a phoneme. The London School rejects the concepts of the speech of the individual person; it is subject to terminological and methodological inaccuracy and proves in many aspects to be linguistics of speech and not language.

Prague School

The Prague school, or Prague linguistic circle, was an influential group of literary critics and linguists in Prague. Its proponents developed methods of structuralist literary analysis and a theory of the standard language and of language cultivation during the years 1928–1939. The linguistic circle was founded in the Café Derby in Prague, which is also where meetings took place during its first years.

The Prague School has had significant continuing influence on linguistics and semiotics.

Introduction to Applied Linguistics

The evolution of applied linguistics over the last twenty years has given them the role of an interdisciplinary field as it incorporates expertise from: anthropology, psychology, education, sociology, psychometrics and other fields.

The goal of this chapter is to provide a sort of map to help the reader understand where linguistics has been, and how it has influenced applied linguistics and the direction or directions in which applied linguistics may nudge linguistic theory in the future.

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