sheer description of any area of language is not applied linguistics as such but descriptive linguistics. Some areas concerned with the description of language are regarded as applied linguistics, others are not. Make a corpus analysis of an area or carry out a Conversation Analysis and you’re doing applied linguistics; describe children’s language or vocabulary and it’s first language acquisition; make a description of grammar and you’re doing syntax. Overall making a description is not in itself solving a problem, even if it may contribute to the solution.