The teaching of the language of business, sometimes also called the “language of commerce” or “administration” (Yates 1977), has the longest history of any specific purpose teaching area; and, in ESP at least, the largest number of textbooks have been produced for business students (Robinson 1980). Yet most seminal research contributions to ESP have been in English for Science and Technology (EST). Due to this phenomenon, Swales (1985) subtitles his ESP retrospective “a source and reference book on the development of English for science and technology.” Earlier well-known collections–e.g., MacKay and Mountford (1978), Trimble, Trimble, and Drobnic (1978), and Selinker, Tarone, and Hanzeli (1981)–provide further evidence for the dominance of EST in teaching and research.

This review discusses only research on the discourse structure of classroom activities—lessons and other activities in which the teacher is a participant— with special attention to assumptions underlying alternative models (in the non-technical sense of that word). Two other reviews (Cazden 1986a; in press) also discuss the register of teachers and students (considered as the paradigmatic complement to syntagmatic structure); discourse among student peers (in contrast to talk with the teacher who has greater ascribed power as well as knowledge), and relationships between discourse and learning.

Language, writing, and the computer, as Wang (1986) states, must rank among the highest of our most important inventions since each has profoundly determined the development of the human species. There have been numerous interactions among these three types of human institutions. Writing, of course, is largely a reflection of language. Since its inception four decades ago, the computer has depended on various forms of language and writing to communicate with its human creators. Some of these forms were specially invented programming languages for a small breed of people.

The application of linguistics to other areas of life has occurred in a somewhat natural, if haphazard, fashion. The first and most obvious applications were to education (first and second language learning, teaching, and testing), lexicography, translation, and speech therapy (Crystal 1981). There has been rather long standing interest in other fields, such as medical interaction (Mishler 1984; cf., van Naerssen and Kaplan elsewhere in this volume) and religious language (Samarin 1976), but it has been only within the past few years that increasing amounts of linguistic knowledge have been applied to the field of law.

There are a number of linguistic issues that arise in connection with mass media, including the relationship between media and language attitudes, the role of language in the news, and the role of language in advertising. In the last three years, there has been active scholarship in each of these areas. In what follows, there is a brief discussion of developments in each of these areas and an annotated bibliography.

There is a variety of ways to explore recent approaches to the language and politics connection, and each problematic suggested vjuld encourage a discussion of different issues and different literatures. The boundary strategies represented by this essay are encouraged by my vocation as a social scientist in general and a political scientist in particular. With respect to the first, I shall be focusing on the implications for social inquiry of different construals of language and meaning. With respect to the second, I shall be “reading” the problem of language within a politically oriented code.

Teaching English [or any language] as a medium for science and technologymust involve us in the teaching of how scientists and technologistsuse the system of language to communicate, and not just what linguistic elements are most commonly used (1979:12–23).

In this comment, he implies the definition of the problem underlying any discussion of “language and science.” Such a discussion must deal with the language(s) used to communicate science, with the varieties scientists use to communicate with each other, and with the ways in which those varieties (as differentiated from the “general variety” of the language) may be taught to someone else. These different issues assume quite different underlying questions. This brief review will try to address some of the complex questions involved.

Interlingual and intercultural communication in the form of oral and written translation is as old as mankind. Only in the past 40 years has it achieved recognition as a profession on an international scale: the Fédéeration Internationale dee Traduoteurs (FIT), which today embraces 49 national associations, was founded in 1953; the Association Internationale des Interprètes de Conférence (AIIC) came into being in the same year. Many countries began to offer both academic training and degrees to future professionals in the field; the Institute for Translator and Interpreter Training at the University of Vienna, for instance, celebrated its 40th anniversary a few years ago (cf., Festschrift 1983).

As the previous chapters in this volume have made amply clear, the last few years have seen a considerable increase in work related to our understanding of the roles, forms, and processes of professional communication and of the complex of forces that give rise to those roles, forms, and processes. The reasons for this upsurge of interest are doubtless manifold. Some are related to administrators' felt needs to keep “channels of communication open” in the face of exponential information growth and the increasing bureaucratlzation of many professions. One consequence of this is that lines of research funding are obtainable relatively easily for communication studies in such areas as scientific research, medicine, business, law, and military affairs.