Applied Linguistics: A Twenty-First-Century Discipline

Oxford Handbooks Online

Applied Linguistics: A Twenty-First-Century Discipline

William Grabe
The Oxford Handbook of Applied Linguistics (2 ed.)
Edited by Robert B. Kaplan

Print Publication Date: Sep Subject: Linguistics, Applied Linguistics

2010
Online Publication Date: Sep DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780195384253.013.0002
2012

Abstract and Keywords

This article focuses on the field of applied linguistics as a twenty-first century discipline. A realistic history of the
field of applied linguistics would place its origins at around the year 1948 with the publication of the first issue of the
journal Language Learning: A Journal of Applied Linguistics. Although there are certainly other possible starting
points, particularly from a British perspective, this dating still accords roughly with most discussions of the
beginning of applied linguistics. Over the years, the term applied linguistics has been defined and interpreted in a
number of different ways, and that exploration is continued in this overview. In the 1950s, the term was commonly
meant to reflect the insights of structural and functional linguists that could be applied directly to second language
teaching and also in some cases to first language literacy and language arts issues as well. Applied linguistics has
many of the markings of an academic discipline.

Keywords: linguistics, realistic history, journal, structural linguists, functional linguists, academic discipline

A realistic history of the field of applied linguistics would place its origins at around the year 1948 with the
publication of the first issue of the journal Language Learning: A Journal of Applied Linguistics (cf. Davies, 1999;
Kaplan, elsewhere in this volume). Although there are certainly other possible starting points, particularly from a
British perspective, this dating still accords roughly with most discussions of the beginning of applied linguistics.

Over the years, the term applied linguistics has been defined and interpreted in a number of different ways, and I
continue that exploration in this overview. In the 1950s, the term was commonly meant to reflect the insights of
structural and functional linguists that could be applied directly to second language teaching and also in some
cases to first language (L1) literacy and language arts issues as well. In the 1960s, the term continued to be
associated with the application of linguistics to language teaching and related practical language issues (Corder,
1973; Halliday, McIntosh, and Strevens, 1964; Rivers, 1968a; 1968b). At the same time, applied linguists became
involved in matters of language assessment, language policies, and the new field of second language acquisition
(SLA), focusing on learning, rather than on teaching (Ortega, 2009). So, by the late 1960s, one saw both a
reinforcement of the centrality of second language teaching as applied linguistics, as well as an expansion into
other realms of language use. In this respect, applied linguistics began to emerge as a genuine language-centered
problem-solving enterprise (see Davies, 1999a).

In the 1970s, the broadening of the field of applied linguistics continued, accompanied by more overt specification
of its role as a discipline that addresses real-world (p. 35) language-based problems. Although the focus on
language teaching remained central to the discipline, it additionally took into its domain the growing subfields of
language assessment, SLA, L2 literacy, multilingualism, language-minority rights, language policy and planning,
and language teacher training (Kaplan, 1980; Widdowson, 1979/1984). The notion that applied linguistics is driven
first by real-world language problems rather than by theoretical explorations of internalized language knowledge
and (L1) language development is largely what set the field apart from both formal linguistics and later from

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 Applied Linguistics: A Twenty-First-Century Discipline

sociolinguistics, with its own emphasis on language description of social variation in language use (typically minus
the application to language problems). This separation has had four major consequences:

• The recognition of social situated contexts for inquiry and exploration and thus an increase in the importance
of needs analysis and variable solutions in differing local contexts
• The need to see language as functional and discourse based, thus the reemergence of systemic and
descriptive linguistics as resources for problem solving, particularly in North American contexts
• The recognition that no single discipline can provide all the tools and resources to address language-based
real-world problems
• The need to recognize and apply a wide range of research tools and methodologies to address locally
situated language problems

These trends took hold and evolved during the 1980s as major points of departure from an earlier, no longer
appropriate, “linguistics applied” perspective (cf. Davies and Elder, 2004b). The central issue remained the need
to address language issues and problems as they occur in the real world. Of course, because language is central
to all communication, and because many language issues in the real world are particularly complex and long-
standing, the emerging field has not simply been reactive, but rather, has been and still is, fluid and dynamic in its
evolution (cf. Brumfit, 2004; Bygate, 2005; Grabe, 2004; Seidlhofer, 2003; Widdowson, 2005, 2006). Thus,
definitions of applied linguistics in the 1980s emphasized both the range of issues addressed and the types of
disciplinary resources used in order to work on language problems (Grabe and Kaplan, 1991; Kaplan, 1980). In the
1980s, applied linguistics truly extended in a systematic way beyond language teaching and language learning
issues to encompass language assessment, language policy and planning, language use issues in professional
settings, translation, lexicography, bilingualism and multilingualism, language and technology, and corpus
linguistics (which continues to hold more interest for applied linguists than for formal linguists). These extensions
are well documented in the first 10 years of the journals AILA Review, Annual Review of Applied Linguistics,
Applied Linguistics, and International Journal of Applied Linguistics, among others. (See Kaplan, elsewhere in this
volume, for a detailed discussion.)

By the beginning of the 1990s, a common trend was emerging to view applied linguistics as incorporating many
subfields and drawing on many supporting (p. 36) disciplines in addition to linguistics (e.g., anthropology;
education; English studies—including composition, rhetoric, and literary studies; modern languages; policy studies;
political sciences; psychology; public administration; and sociology). Combined with these two foundations
(subfields and supporting disciplines) was the view of applied linguistics as problem driven and real-world based
rather than theory driven and disconnected from real language use data (Davies, 1999; Kaplan and Widdowson,
1992; Strevens, 1992). Applied linguistics has evolved still further during the 1990s and 2000s, breaking away from
the common framing mechanisms of the 1980s. A parallel coevolution of linguistics itself needs to be commented
upon to understand how and why linguistics, broadly defined, remains a core resource for applied linguistics.

From the 1960s to the early 1990s, generative linguistics dominated the linguistics landscape. Although other
competing formal theories (tagmemics, systemic-functional linguistics, descriptive grammar, and others) were
always available, and sociolinguistics claimed language variation, spoken discourse analysis, and social uses of
language as descriptive areas of inquiry, Chomskean linguistics, and its offshoots, almost defined linguistics, at
least in North America. This situation was especially true for many practicing applied linguists during that time.
However, the growing abstractness of generative linguistics, the assumption of a language acquisition device
(LAD, an innate language learning mechanism), and the assumption that a theory should be universally applicable
to all languages has, for the most part, taken generative linguistics out of the running as a foundation for language
knowledge that is relevant and applicable to real-world language uses and real-world language problems. In its
place, applied linguists have been turning back to more cognitive and descriptive approaches to language
knowledge (K. de Bot, 2008; Huddleston and Pullum, 2002; Robinson and Ellis, 2008), language explanations that
are explicitly driven by attested language uses rather than intuitions (corpus linguistics, descriptive grammars,
sociolinguistics; Biber et al., 1999; Carter and McCarthy, 2006), and theories of language representation that have
more realistic applicability to the sorts of language issues explored by applied linguists (Doughty and Long, 2003;
Kroll and de Groot, 2005; Robinson and Ellis, 2008).

Linguistics, viewed from this larger perspective, is still central to the overwhelming majority of applied linguistic

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 Applied Linguistics: A Twenty-First-Century Discipline

areas of inquiry that are generally recognized as falling under the umbrella discipline of applied linguistics. After all,
applied linguists, and training programs for applied linguists, universally recognize that language knowledge of
various types is crucial for careful description and analysis of language, language learning, language uses and
abuses, language assessment, and so forth. Applied linguists must draw on knowledge bases of phonetics,
phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics, and written discourse because they are relevant to an
applied linguistics issue, even if a given area of applied linguistics may not draw specifically on this knowledge at
all times (e.g., L2 teacher training, language policy and planning). What has changed is the recognition that
linguistic foundations do not need to be narrowly prescribed by theoretical fashion; instead, they must be relevant
to language description in specific contexts and provide (p. 37) resources that help address language-based
problems and issues in real-world contexts.

For applied linguistics research, the shift to discourse analysis, descriptive data analysis, and interpretation of
language data in their social/cultural settings all indicate a shift in valuing observable language data over
theoretical assumptions about what should count as data (van Lier, 1997). One of the most useful perspectives that
has arisen out of this evolution of a more relevant linguistics has been the development of register analysis, genre
analysis, and the resource of corpus linguistics as they apply to a wide range of language learning and language
use situations (A. M. Johns, 2002; McCarthy, 2008). All of these approaches to linguistic analysis, along with more
refined techniques for discourse analysis, are now hallmarks of much applied linguistics research. In fact, many
applied linguists have come to see the real-world, problem-based, socially responsive research carried out in
applied linguistics as the genuine role for linguistics, with formal linguistics taking a supporting role. As van Lier
1997) notes,

I think that it is the applied linguist who works with language in the real world, who is most likely to have a
realistic picture of what language is, and not the theoretical linguist who sifts through several layers of
idealization. Furthermore, it may well be the applied linguist who will most advance humankind'
understanding of language, provided that he or she is aware that no one has a monopoly on the definitions
and conduct of science, theory, language research, and truth. (1997: 103)

Trends and Perspectives in the 1990s and the 2000s

In this section, I only note various developments that have emerged over the last 20 years and that will probably
continue to define applied linguistics in the coming decade. The present volume provides the details to expand
much of the brief sign posting that this section provides. For much the same reason, I refrain from a long catalog of
appropriate references on the assumptions that these ideas will be well-referenced elsewhere (Davies and Elder,
2004b; Grabe, 2004; Hinkel, 2005).

First, under the umbrella of applied linguistics, research in language teaching, language learning, and teacher
education is now placing considerable emphasis on notions of language awareness, attention and learning, “focus
on forms” for language learning, learning from dialogic interactions, patterns of teacher-student interaction, task-
based learning, content-based learning, and teacher as researcher through action research. Research in
language learning has shifted in recent years toward a focus on information processing, the importance of more
general cognitive learning principles, the emergence of language ability from extended meaningful exposures and
relevant practice, and the awareness of how language is used and the (p. 38) functions that it serves (Doughty
and Long, 2003; N. Ellis, 2007; Robinson and Ellis, 2008; Tomasello, 2003; VanPatten and Williams, 2007).
Instructional research and curricular issues have centered on task-based learning, content-based learning,
strategies-based instruction, and a return to learning centered on specific language skills (Cohen and Macaro,
2007; elsewhere in this volume; Long and Doughty, 2009; McGroarty et al., 2004; Samuda and Bygate, 2008).

Language teacher development has also moved in new directions. Widdowson 1998) has argued forcefully that
certain communicative orientations, with a pervasive emphasis on natural language input and authenticity, may be
misinterpreting the real purpose of the language classroom context and ignoring effective frameworks for language
teaching. He has also persuasively argued that applied linguists must support teachers throughout their mediation
with all aspects of Hymes's notion of communicative competence, balancing language understanding so that it
combines grammaticality, appropriateness, feasibility, and examples from the attested (Widdowson, 2000). A
further emphasis for language teacher education has been the move to engaging teachers in the practice of action

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 Applied Linguistics: A Twenty-First-Century Discipline

research. The trend to train teachers as reflective practitioners inquiring into the effectiveness of teaching and
learning in local classroom settings will increase in the coming decade.

A second emphasis that has taken hold in discussions among applied linguists themselves is the role for critical
studies; this term covers critical awareness, critical discourse analysis, critical pedagogy, student rights, critical
assessment practices, and ethics in language assessment (and language teaching; Davies, 1999; Fairclough,
1995a; McNamara, 1998; McNamara and Roever, 2006; Pennycook, 2001; van Lier, 1997). At the same time, there
are a number of criticisms of this general approach and its impact on more mainstream applied linguistics that
highlights weaknesses in much of the critical studies theorizing (Seidlhofer, 2003; Widdowson, 2004). At present,
the notion of critical studies also constitutes an emphasis that has not demonstrated strong applications in support
of those who are experiencing “language problems” of various types. The coming decade will undoubtedly
continue this debate.

A third emphasis is on language uses in academic, disciplinary, and professional settings (Biber, 2006b; elsewhere
in this volume; Connor and Upton, 2004a; Swales, 2004). This research examines ways in which language is used
by participants and in texts in various academic, professional, and occupational settings. It also emphasizes how
language can act as a gatekeeping mechanism or can create unfair obstacles for those who are not aware of
appropriate discourse rules and expectations. In academic settings, the key issue lies in understanding how genre
and register expectations form the basis for successfully negotiating academic work (Hyland, 2004a, 2008; A. M.
Johns, 2002; Swales, 2004). Analyses of language use in various professional settings are described in Gibbons
2004), Grabe 2004), Master (2005), and McGroarty et al. 2003). More specific to English for specific purposes
(ESP), Swales 2000) and Widdowson (2004) provide relevant overviews.

A fourth emphasis centers on descriptive (usually discourse) analyses of language in real settings and the
possible application of analyses in corpus linguistics, (p. 39) register variation, and genre variation. A
breakthrough application of corpus linguistics remains the Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English
(Biber et al., 1999). It is based entirely on attested occurrences of language use in a very large corpus of English.
The key, though, lies not in the corpus data themselves but in the innovative analyses and displays that define the
uniqueness of the grammar (see also Carter and McCarthy, 2006). Other important applications of corpus
linguistics include more teacher- and learner-directed resources (see McCarthy, 2008).

A fifth emphasis in applied linguistics research addresses multilingualism and bilingual interaction in school,
community, and work and in professional settings or policy issues at regional and national levels. Because the
majority of people in the world are to some extent bilingual, and because this bilingualism is associated with the
need to negotiate life situations with other cultural and language groups, this area of research is fundamental to
applied linguistics concerns. Multilingualism covers issues in bilingual education, migrations of groups of people to
new language settings, equity and fairness in social services, and language policies related to multiple language
use (or the restriction thereof). Key issues are addressed in Baker 2006), Brisk (2005), McGroarty et al. (2003,
2006), and van Els 2005).

A sixth emphasis focuses on the changing discussion in language testing and assessment. During the past
decade, the field of language assessment has taken on a number of important issues and topics that have
ramifications for applied linguists more generally. Validity remains a major theme for language testers, and it has
been powerfully reinterpreted over the last 10 years (Chapelle, Enright, and Jamieson, 2008; Kane, 2006). In its
newer interpretation, validity has strong implications for all areas of applied linguistic research and data collection
and is not merely an issue for assessment practices (Chapelle, 1999). An additional major shift in language
assessment with significant implications for applied linguistics more generally is the greater emphasis being given
to assessment for learning (sometimes discussed as formative assessment).

The goals for assessment have shifted from assessing what students can do at a given moment to using
assessment as a way to improve learning effectiveness on an ongoing basis. The goal is to see continuous learner
assessment for learning purposes. This trend is likely to grow considerably in the coming decade (Black et al.,
2004; Davison, 2007; Grabe, 2009; Rea-Dickins, 2006; Wiliam and Thompson, 2007). More generally, emphases
on technology applications, ethics in assessment, innovative research methodologies, the roles of standardized
assessment, standards for professionalism, and critical language testing are all reshaping language assessment
and, by extension, applied linguistics.

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 Applied Linguistics: A Twenty-First-Century Discipline

A seventh emphasis focuses on the resources and perspectives provided by neurolinguistics and brain studies
associated with language learning and language use (Schumann et al., 2004; see also Schumann elsewhere in this
volume). The potential and the benefits of research in neurolinguistics and the impact of language learning on brain
processing is perhaps not an immediate concern of applied linguistics. However, significant advances in the
relations between brain functioning (p. 40) and language learning (including literacy development) suggest that
research insights from neurolinguistics may soon become too important to ignore. The impact of literacy training,
literacy learning in different languages, and training with language disability learners on brain processing has
accelerated in recent years (J. R. Anderson, 2007; Berninger and Richards, 2002; Schumann et al., 2004;
elsewhere in this volume; Ward, 2006; Wolf, 2007). A sure sign of this change is the extraordinarily accessible
explanations relating neuroscience to reading ability in Wolf 2007) and the recent inclusion of four chapters on
neuroscience and reading comprehension in a recent volume on comprehension instruction (Block and Parris,
2008). This emphasis will probably become an important sub-area of applied linguistics within the decade.

The Problem-Based Nature of Applied Linguistics: It's the Problems, Not the Disciplines

In the many discussions of trends and disciplines, and subfields, and theorizing, the idea is sometimes lost that the
focus of applied linguistics is on trying to resolve language-based problems that people encounter in the real world,
whether they be academics, dictionary makers, employers, lawyers, learners, policy developers, service
providers, supervisors, teachers, test takers, those who need social services, translators, or a whole range of
business clients. A list of major language-based problems that applied linguists typically address (across a wide
range of settings) follow. The list is necessarily partial, but it should indicate what it is that applied linguists try to
do, if not how they go about their work.

Applied linguists address subsets of the following problems:

• Language assessment problems (validity, reliability, usability, responsibility, fairness)

• Language contact problems (bilingualism, shift, spread, loss, maintenance, social and cultural interactions)
• Language inequality problems (ethnicity, class, region, gender, and age)
• Language learning problems (emergence of skills, awareness, rules, use, context, automaticity, attitudes,
expertise)
• Language pathology problems (aphasias, dyslexias, physical disabilities)
• Language policy and planning problems (status planning, corpus planning, acquisition planning, ecology of
language, multilingualism, political factors)
• Language teaching problems (resources, training, practice, interaction, understanding, use, contexts,
inequalities, motivations, outcomes)
• Language and technology problems (learning, assessment, access, use)
• Language translation problems (access, effectiveness, technologies)
(p. 41) • Language use problems (dialects, registers, discourse communities, gatekeeping situations, limited
access to services and resources)
• Literacy problems (orthography development, new scripts, resource development, learning issues)

These categories could be expanded further, and themes in each category could be elaborated into full articles
and books in and of themselves. The key point, however, is to recognize that it is the language-based problems in
the world that drive applied linguistics. These problems also lead applied linguists to use knowledge from other
fields apart from linguistics, and thereby impose the interdisciplinarity that is a defining aspect of the discipline.

Defining Applied Linguistics

Over the past decade, Widdowson (1998, 2000, 2004, 2005) has argued consistently that applied linguistics is not
an interdisciplinary discipline as much as a mediating field or domain between the theoretical plane of linguistics
and language knowledge on the one hand and its applications to problems that arise in a number of real-world
settings. As such, applied linguistics is problematic as a discipline or as an interdisciplinary field. Rather than

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 Applied Linguistics: A Twenty-First-Century Discipline

create unique knowledge or work within unique disciplinary principles and resources, it is identified by its role
mediating between theoretical knowledge from disciplines and practitioners who encounter real-world language
problems. However, other applied linguists do not see applied linguistics through such a problematized lens. Brumfit
2004, Bygate 2005, Davies (1999a), and Kaplan (2002a) all see the complexity, fuzziness, and dynamism of
applied linguistics as not so distinct from other disciplines. This debate on the definition of applied linguistics will
surely continue for at least another decade.

A further debate has centered around the connection between applied linguistics as an academic discipline and
the domain of real-world language problems (e.g., Widdowson, 2005). It is certainly true that much research under
the umbrella of applied linguistics retains a somewhat detached, descriptive quality to it, contributing to knowledge
about a language problem in a real-world context, but not suggesting ways to ameliorate that problem or
demonstrating success in addressing the problem. This criticism is a legitimate one, but not one that undermines
the definition of applied linguistics itself. There are certainly cases in which applied linguists have drawn on
combined disciplinary resources, including language and language learning knowledge, and taken the key steps
from basic resource knowledge, to specific research applications, to learning outcome comparisons, to curriculum
development, and to instructional use and evaluation of outcomes (and then leading to a new cycle in this
problem-solving process). Consequently, it remains reasonable to see applied linguistics as a discipline that
engages interdisciplinary resources (including linguistic resources) to address real-world language problems.

(p. 42) As a result (and much like Brumfit, Bygate, Davies, and Kaplan), I have defined applied linguistics as a
practice-driven discipline that addresses language-based problems in real-world contexts. This general definition
certainly does not come to terms with all of the claims that applied linguistics is not a discipline. Aside from the
major issues noted above, critics have also noted that applied linguistics is too broad and too fragmented, that it
demands expert knowledge in too many fields, that it does not have a set of unifying research paradigms.
However, it is possible to interpret applied linguistic as a discipline much in the way that many other disciplines are
defined. Applied linguistics, like many disciplines, has a core and a periphery, and the periphery blurs into other
disciplines that may—or may not—want to be allied. This picture may not be very different from that of several
other disciplines, particularly those that are relatively new, give or take a hundred years.

A quick look at a number of well-recognized disciplines will reveal that they too are open to charges that their fields
are too fragmented and too broad, that they demand expertise in too many related subfields, and that they do not
have a set of unifying research paradigms. Obvious, recognizable disciplines that can be included under these
criticisms include chemistry, biology, education, English, history, and psychology, just to note some of the larger
fields. We tend to note the messiness that is close at hand and see distant disciplines as tidier and better-defined
entities. Disciplinary histories, current controversies, blurred borders, and new technologies and taxonomies of
subfields within each discipline would suggest some of the same issues that confront applied linguists as they seek
to describe disciplinary status. In the case of other disciplines, time and recognition have provided a much greater
sense of inevitability, a sense that is likely to accrue to applied linguistics over the next 50 years.

Accepting the messiness of a newer discipline and the controversies that are inevitable in describing an intellectual
territory, applied linguistics, nonetheless, exhibits many defining disciplinary characteristics. These points reflect
commonalities that most applied linguists would agree on:

1. Applied linguistics has many of the markings of an academic discipline: many professional journals, many
professional associations, international recognition for the field, funding resources for research projects. The
field contains a large number of individuals who see themselves as applied linguists, as trained professionals
who are hired in academic institutions as applied linguists, as students who want to become applied linguists,
there is a need for a recognized means for training these students to become applied linguists.
2. Applied linguistics has conferences with well-articulated subareas for conference-abstract submissions.
These subareas generally define applied linguistics in ways quite similar to the problem-based list previously
provided; categories for submission for the American Association for Applied Linguistics (AAAL) have, for
example, remained remarkably stable over the past 10 years.
(p. 43) 3. Applied linguistics recognizes that linguistics must be included as a core knowledge base in the
training and work of applied linguistics, although the purpose of most applied linguists' work is not simply to
apply linguistics to achieve a solution. Moreover, direct applications of language knowledge is not necessarily
a criterion that defines applied linguistics work. How one trains effective language teachers may involve

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 Applied Linguistics: A Twenty-First-Century Discipline

research that does not refer directly to aspects of language knowledge, but rather to aspects of learning
psychology (cognitive processes), educational practice (task development and sequencing), and social
interactions (autonomy, status, turn taking).
4. Applied linguistics is grounded in real-world language-driven problems and issues (primarily linked by
practical matters involving language use, language evaluation, language contact and multilingualism,
language policies, and language learning and teaching). There is also, however, the recognition that these
practically driven problems have extraordinary range, and this range tends to dilute any sense of common
purpose or common professional identification among practitioners.
5. Applied linguistics typically incorporates other disciplinary knowledge beyond linguistics in its efforts to
address language-based problems. Applied linguists commonly draw upon and are often well trained in areas
of anthropology, computer programming, education, economics, English, literature, measurement, political
science, psychology, sociology, or rhetoric.
6. Applied linguistics is, of necessity, an interdisciplinary field, because few practical language issues can be
addressed through the knowledge resources of any single discipline, including linguistics. For example,
genuinely to influence language learning, one must be able to call upon, at the very least, resources from
educational theory, ethnomethodology (sociology), and learning theory as well as linguistics.
7. Applied linguistics commonly includes a core set of issues and practices that are readily identifiable as
work carried out by many applied linguists (e.g., second language assessment, second language curriculum
development, second language learning, second language teaching, and second language teacher
preparation).
8. Applied linguistics generally incorporates or includes several identifiable subfields: for example, corpus
linguistics, forensic linguistics, language testing, language policy and planning, lexicography, second
language acquisition, second language writing, and translation and interpretation.
9. Applied linguistics often defines itself broadly in order to include issues in other language-related fields
(e.g., first language composition studies, first language literacy research, language pathology, and natural
language processing). The great majority of members in these other fields do not see themselves as applied
linguists; however, the broad definition for applied (p. 44) linguistics licenses applied linguists to draw upon
and borrow from these disciplines to meet their own objectives.

These nine points indicate the developing disciplinary nature of applied linguistics. There are certainly difficulties
for the field, and there are problems in attempting to define and differentiate the core versus the periphery. There
are also problems in deciding how one becomes an applied linguist and what training (and what duration of
training) might be most appropriate. But these problems are no more intractable than those faced by many
disciplines, even relatively established ones.

Conclusion

The coming decade of research and inquiry in applied linguistics will continue the lines of investigation noted in the
second and third sections of this chapter. Applied linguists will need to know more about computer technologies,
statistical applications, sociocultural influences on research, and new ways to analyze language data. Testing and
assessment issues will not be limited to testing applications but will also have a much greater influence on other
areas of applied linguistics research. Issues such as validity, fairness, and ethics will extend into other area of
applied linguistics. These issues will also lead to continued discussions on the most appropriate research methods
in different settings. Additionally, applied linguistics will direct more attention to issues of motivation, attitudes, and
affect because those factors potentially influence many language-based problems. Similarly, learning theories (as
discussed and debated in educational and cognitive psychology) will become a more central concern in language
learning and teaching. Finally, neurolinguistic research will undoubtedly open up new ways to think about language
learning, language teaching, and the ways in which language is used.

All of these issues also ensure that applied linguistics will remain essentially interdisciplinary. The resolution of
language-based problems in the real world is complex, dynamic, and difficult. It seems only appropriate that
applied linguists seek partnerships and collaborative research if these problems are to be addressed in effective
ways.

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Applied Linguistics: A Twenty-First-Century Discipline

William Grabe
William Grabe is professor of English at Northern Arizona University. He is interested in all aspects of reading and
writing abilities: L1 and L2, child and adult, and theory and practice. He is also interested in issues pertaining to
literacy, language policy, and applied linguistics more generally. He has co-authored Theory and Practice of Writing
(1996, with Robert B. Kaplan). He is currently working on a book, Applied Linguistics in Action: Researching Reading
(with Fredricka Stoller). He has just concluded his ten-year tenure as editor of the Annual Review of Applied
Linguistics. He can be reached at [Link]@[Link].

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date: 01 January 2016