The nineteen sixties enjoyed a period of intense theoretical work led by Noam Chomsky, and since then many linguists have returned to the job of description, of providing detailed accounts of the workings of individual languages. As part of the inevitable reaction to a concentration on theory, people began to study areas which had been relatively neglected. For example, connected texts and spoken discourse, rather than individual sentences, became prominent during the nineteen seventies. The study of variety in language contrasted with the uniformity which was a useful simplification in formal theory. The application of linguistics to literature has aroused much discussion and heated debate, and continues to do so. But, as interest in language study and teaching revives across the whole curriculum, questions are raised concerning appropriate ways in which language can be studied, how it can be integrated with the study of literature, continue to foreign-language teaching, and so on. This article has its main objective to explore some ways in which language and literature study can be integrated.