Chapter 2 uses a variety of investigative activities to guide readers through an exploration of the sounds and articulations of the world’s languages and the linguistic rules that govern their appearances. It begins with an overview of the acoustic characteristics of speech sounds, which are then employed in a discussion of the articulation apparatus. Throughout, students are directed to engage in their own investigations with the material via the Discover Activities. Various data from a variety of languages are provided to illustrate different phonological rules, and the techniques linguists use to discover them through analysis. These insights are then transferred to a discussion of transformations and processes that complicate phonological systems.

This chapter begins with an overview of several terms important to a discussion of meaning in language, and introduces the reader to the theory of linguistic relativism and the relationship between language and thought. This section transitions into a review of the extension, reference, and the features that begin to form a comprehensive theory of semantics. With this foundation, students turn to a deeper investigation of formal semantics, including definitions for logical expressions and relationships, and then to a presentation of word sense, and the interactions between various parts of speech in the lexicon. The principle of compositionality is introduced, and it is used to explore several examples of non-compositional language. The end of the chapter ties these concepts to an investigation of pragmatics, including politeness, Gricean Maxims, and implicature.

In Chapter 3, students explore the principles behind morphology and syntax. Students are led through a variety of examples that illustrate a range of morphological phenomena. Discover Activities prompt individual analysis to reinforce salient points. After discussing a few of the ways languages’ morphology blends into their syntax, a full discussion of grammatical functions in the syntactic sense is undertaken. Progressing through question formation, movement, and word order, students then explore natural language examples that illustrate a variety of syntactic and morphological concepts.

Chapter 1 is an introduction to language analysis in the linguistic sense. It establishes the specifications of the scientific approach to language, describes uses and characteristics across different areas, and provides an overview of the domains of linguistics. This includes a review of sounds, including phonetics and phonology; structure, including morphology and syntax; and meaning, including semantics and pragmatics. Through the provision of Discover Activities that provide a scaffold for the investigation of these concepts, readers then become familiar with the analytic techniques that will be emphasized throughout the book. These techniques are finally specified and detailed as part of a broader method of investigation and hypothesis testing.

The final chapter takes a closer look at the intersections between each of the previously covered topics, starting with sounds and structure. Readers make connections between phenomena from different linguistic domains coming together to create interesting consequences in the surface-level representations of a variety of languages. More connections are drawn between other domains, and the chapter transitions into a discussion of the scientific rigor approprate for linguistic investigation. Included in this discussion is a review of various devices used for linguistic research. The chapter concludes with an emphasis on the importance of ethical conduct in all investigations, and the ways a rigorous scientific approach can expose injustice.

Introduction

In this chapter, I discuss a linguistics course that I taught for about three years in a multi-age primary school classroom and how what started as a simple “guest spot” in a school evolved into a bigger project with broader applications. I demonstrate ways in which I, along with the primary teachers, integrated linguistics into the curriculum (into language arts, social studies, science, and even a bit into math).

It has long been recognized that K-12 teachers can benefit from linguistic knowledge. Linguists in the US began to recognize the importance of some of the findings of their field to K-12 education in the 1960s and 1970s, which led to several projects designed to determine which aspects of linguistics might be best incorporated into K-12 curriculum and how to undertake that incorporation. O'Neil (Chapter 2 in this volume) describes a 1962 US Office of Education project, strongly supported by the National Council of Teachers, called Project English. Keyser (1970) offers lesson plans that were part of a Massachusetts Department of Education project to integrate linguistics into K-12 curricula. Though these projects came to an end for various reasons, discussed elsewhere in this volume, a handful of linguists have continued to work at incorporating linguistics into K-12 classrooms.

More recently, Chomsky et al. (1985), Fabb (1985), Goodluck (1991), Honda (1994), Wolfram (1997), and Reaser and Wolfram (2005) have all demonstrated that linguistics activities are successful and beneficial in K-12 education.

The contributions in Part II concern successful “bottom-up” projects involving linguists working in primary and secondary schools in partnership with K-12 teachers. As in Part I, the projects discussed here are diverse, but several themes emerge. One is the necessity for linguists doing such work to transition from “expert” to “learner,” in order to truly understand not only which language issues are of concern to teachers, but also why teachers teach what they do and how they do so. Of primary concern to K-12 teachers are lessons that help meet existing educational goals in effective ways. Linguists must therefore often leave their own agendas at the door, and realize that the linguistic knowledge we hope to integrate into the curriculum can emerge in other, sometimes unexpected ways, building a strong bridge between theory and practice. A companion theme in this section is that linguist–teacher partnerships not only change K-12 education in positive ways, but also have a positive impact on linguistics. Linguists learning how teachers teach, how students learn, and how linguistics fits into K-12 education are “doing linguistics” in ways that have not always been respected within the academy. The authors demonstrate the importance and effectiveness of bringing linguistics out of the academy and into the public eye and mind.

Rebecca Wheeler's chapter traces her personal journey from rejection to acceptance in the schools, and some of the difficult lessons she learned in her attempts to help teachers teach their students, speakers of African American Vernacular English, to write in Standard English.

The chapters in Part I provide historical background on linguistics in education, in the form of discussion of successful (and not so successful) projects that have resulted by working mainly from the “top down.” The contributors discuss diverse ways to integrate linguistic knowledge at the institutional level, through national or regional curricula, standards and assessment, and teacher training and collaboration, and by working to change ideologies about language and its place in education. Authors also address challenges they've encountered in their work, which may help others avoid such stumbling blocks in the future. Below we outline each chapter, and highlight recurring themes among them.

Edwin Battistella's chapter addresses the public misperceptions about linguistics and the role those misperceptions play in shaping language education; linguistics is irrelevant and academic, descriptivism promotes the elevation of non-standard dialects, and so on. He draws parallels with public perceptions of biology and visual art, both of which have faced resistance for similar reasons. Battistella highlights what we can learn from the challenges faced by other fields and how we can use those lessons to change perceptions of linguistics and encourage institutional change.

Wayne O'Neil's chapter discusses the failure of a “top-down” approach to institutional change in the 1960s (Project English in Oregon State). The rise and fall of this project provides us with important insights into what it takes for large-scale, top-down curricular change to succeed, and what stumbling blocks can arise along the way to derail such projects.