The previous chapters introduced some of the concepts involved in the study of language and language learning. Although the focus was mainly on structural aspects of language, it was assumed at all times that the primary function of language is communication.

Language is always used in a particular context, and individual utterances form part of discourse, involving stretches of language longer than individual sentences. This discourse may take the form of conversations, lessons, official documents, novels, letters or one of a host of other types.

The knowledge about language outlined in the preceding chapters was not provided for its own sake, even though such knowledge is interesting and worthwhile in its own right. Rather, it was offered as a starting point for a greater awareness of language in specific situations, whether personal, educational, social or political, and for a deeper understanding of the role language plays in such situations.

Carter (in Hall and Hewings 2001:96) points out that it is a mistake to ‘make linguistic processes invisible and regard language only in so far as it provides a window onto content, the expression of the individual self, the world of ideas'. He advocates seeing language forms (such as grammatical structures) as ‘a powerful resource for creating significant domains of meaning'. He expresses the following hopeful prediction (in Hall and Hewings 2001:97):

Harris and Morgan (1979:13) also see the value of applying knowledge of language to specific ‘real-world’ situations involving language use, and give the following reasons for undertaking an investigation into such situations:

1. 1. That the study of language becomes more interesting for a student when he is allowed to take as his starting point some usage of language that he derives from his own experience and which he discovers for himself;

2. 2. That because the student in this way is more conscious of the context underlying the text he chooses to study, he has a firmer base from which to relate the formal aspects of his text to the meaning, and better understands the complexity of the relationship between the two.