Blackwell Reference Online

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A contrastive analysis describes the structural differences and similarities of two or more languages. As an area of enquiry, contrastive analysis (CA) is concerned with the principles and uses of such descriptions. It implies a belief in language universals; as in any contrast, if there were no features in common, there would be no basis for comparison. (A cuckoo and a crow can be compared more easily than a cuckoo and a cough.) Broadly defined, CA has been used as a tool in historical linguistics to establish language genealogies, in comparative linguistics to create language taxonomies and in translation theory to investigate problems of equivalence. In language teaching it has been influential through the Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis (CAH) which claims that difficulties in language learning derive from the differences between the new language and the learner's first language, that errors in these areas of difference derive from first language interference and that these errors can be predicted and remedied by the use of CA. The CAH was widely influential in the 1950s and 1960s, but from the 1970s its influence dramatically declined. This was due in part to the supplanting of structuralist linguistics, with which it was closely associated. The CAH was also at odds with the views in SLA and inter-language theory that only a small proportion of errors derived from first language ... log in or subscribe to read full text