research article in applied linguistics

A Scientometrics Research Perspective in Applied Linguistics pp 45–81 Cite as

Research Trends in Applied Linguistics (2017–2021): A Scientometric Review of 42 Journals

• Yanhua Liu 3 &
• Guangwei Hu   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-2297-4784 4  
• First Online: 08 February 2024

169 Accesses

16 Altmetric

Scientometric methods have increasingly been used to provide historical as well as state-of-the-art accounts of research in various disciplines, including applied linguistics. To provide an updated overview of the research trends in applied linguistics, we analyzed 7602 articles with over 198,000 unique references published between 2017 and 2021 in 42 SSCI-indexed applied linguistics journals. We aimed to track the (un)changing research foci and methodological orientations by examining the most frequently discussed topics, the most highly cited publications, and the most highly cited authors. The most popular research topics included multilingualism, translanguaging, psychological factors, vocabulary learning, teaching methods and teacher factors, linguistic complexity, bilingual advantage, and grammatical processing. New research tools (e.g., R statistics and eye-tracking), qualitative approaches, and research syntheses were on the rise. The heightened methodological awareness indexed applied linguistics’ greater effort to update and refine its toolkits as well as its emergence as a maturing discipline with greater diversity. Our analysis also identified newly emerged most cited publications (e.g., García, Ofelia, and Li Wei. Translanguaging: Language, bilingualism and education . Palgrave Macmillan, 2014) and newly emerged most cited authors (e.g., Suresh Canagarajah, Paul Nation, R Core Team, Ofelia García, Douglas Bates, Luke Plonsky), pointing to new movers, shakers, and innovators in the discipline.

• Scientometric review
• Applied linguistics
• Research trends
• Research synthesis

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Lei and Liu ( 2019 ) selected the 42 journals based on three criteria: (1) focusing on language use and learning or teaching, (2) being on the SSCI list of linguistics journals, and (3) having an impact factor of at least 0.25.

One list included the top 20 publications for each of four historical periods. The other list contained the top 20 publications published since 2005. Consequently, the top 20 lists in Lei and Liu ( 2019 ) actually covered many more than 20 publications.

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Liu, Y., Hu, G. (2024). Research Trends in Applied Linguistics (2017–2021): A Scientometric Review of 42 Journals. In: Meihami, H., Esfandiari, R. (eds) A Scientometrics Research Perspective in Applied Linguistics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-51726-6_3

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3 Research Approaches in Applied Linguistics

Patricia Duff is professor of language and literacy education and Distinguished University Scholar at the University of British Columbia. She is also director of the newly established Centre for Research in Chinese Language and Literacy Education there. Her main areas of interest are language acquisition and language socialization, qualitative research methods, classroom discourse in a variety of educational contexts, including second/foreign language courses, mainstream and L2-immersion content-based courses, and the teaching, learning, and use of English and Chinese as international languages. Her recent work includes three books and many book chapters and articles primarily dealing with language socialization across bilingual and multilingual settings; quantitative research methods (especially employing case study and ethnography) and generalizability in applied linguistics; issues in teaching and learning English, Mandarin and other international languages; the integration of second-language learners in high schools, universities and society; multilingualism at work; and sociocultural sociolinguistics and sociopolitical aspects of language(s) in education. She can be reached at http://[email protected].

• Published: 18 September 2012
• Cite Icon Cite
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In a field as vast as applied linguistics (AL), representing the range of topics featured in this volume and across the many fascinating subdisciplines in the field, an overview of research approaches must be highly selective. This revised and updated article discusses recent quantitative, qualitative, and mixed-method approaches to AL research, especially in the areas of second language learning and education. It also highlights important new ways of conceptualizing, analyzing, and/or representing knowledge about language issues and at the same time embracing new contexts of language learning and use and a wider range of research populations in the twenty-first century. This article further discuses the various research approaches involved in applied linguistics. Contrasting, combining, and expanding paradigms all are taken into consideration and explained in details. Quantitative research is often associated with experiments, surveys, and other research, whereas qualitative research is associated with ethnography, case study, and narrative inquiry in applied linguistics

Introduction

In a field as vast as applied linguistics (AL), representing the range of topics featured in this volume and across the many fascinating subdisciplines in the field, an overview of research approaches must be highly selective. Duff ( 2002a ) described many of the developments in research approaches in AL in the 1990s and early 2000s. In this revised and updated chapter, I discuss recent quantitative, qualitative, and mixed-method approaches to AL research, especially in the areas of second language learning and education. I also highlight important new ways of conceptualizing, analyzing, and/or representing knowledge about language issues and at the same time embracing new contexts of language learning and use and a wider range of research populations in the twenty-first century.

More comprehensive and in-depth recent discussions of research methods in AL can be found in recent volumes by Dörnyei 2007 ), King and Hornberger 2008 ), A. Mackey and Gass 2005 ), and Wei and Moyer 2007 ), with respect to second-language acquisition (SLA), bilingualism, and language education in particular. Many other publications have highlighted specific analytical approaches or methods for conducting research, typically within a particular realm of AL, such as the following:

L2 classroom research and classroom-based discourse analysis (McKay, 2006 ; Zuengler and Mori, 2002 )

Ethnomethodology and conversation analysis (Markee, 2000 , 2004 ; Seedhouse, 2004 )

Case study research (Duff, 2008 )

Corpus linguistics (Barlow, 2005 ; Biber, Conrad, and Reppen, 1998 ; Myles, 2005 ; Gries, 2008 )

Ethnography (Duff, 2002b ; Hammersley and Atkinson, 2007 ; Toohey, 2008 )

Language analysis (R. Ellis and Barkhuizen, 2005 )

Stimulated recall (Gass and Mackey, 2000 )

Data elicitation methods (Gass and Mackey, 2007a )

Discourse analysis and critical discourse analysis (Fairclough, 1989 , 2003 ; Wooffitt, 2005 )

Critical applied linguistics more generally (Pennycook, 2001 )

Multimodal semiotic analysis (Kress and Van Leeuwen, 2002 )

Complex systems approaches (Larsen-Freeman and Cameron, 2008a , 2008b )

Survey methods (C. Baker, 2008 )

Scholars have also given careful consideration to the processes of drawing inferences or making generalizations in applied linguistics research:

Across a variety of types of research (Chalhoub-Deville, Chapelle, and Duff, 2006 )

To meta-analysis and other important approaches to research synthesis regardless of paradigm (Norris and Ortega, 2006a , 2006b , 2007 )

To the benefits of longitudinal research (Ortega and Byrnes, 2008 ; Ortega and Iberri-Shea, 2005 )

J. D. Brown ( 2004 ) produced a recent overview chapter on the theme of research approaches in AL in another handbook in applied linguistics, and Hinkel's ( 2005 ) Handbook also reflects the current range of approaches to second-language/AL research. Finally, a number of journals and handbooks are also dedicated to such particular research methods or approaches as critical discourse analysis or narrative research. In addition, the recently revised 10-volume Springer Encyclopedia of Language and Education contains many chapters on current or emerging approaches to research in language and education.

Research Approaches: Contrasting, Combining, and Expanding Paradigms

Most research methodology textbooks in education and the social sciences (e.g., Cresswell, 2005 ; J. P. Gall, M. D. Gall, and Borg, 2005 ; M. D. Gall, J. P. Gall, & Borg, 2003 ), as well as in some of the AL overview textbooks referred to above, continue to distinguish between quantitative (nomothetic) and qualitative (hermeneutic) research, as two distinct but by no means mutually exclusive approaches to systematic and rigorous inquiry in the social sciences. They also emphasize that the approach or method is crucially linked to the kind of research question or problem under investigation, to the purpose of the study (e.g., exploratory, interpretive, descriptive, explanatory, confirmatory, predictive), and to the type of data and population one is working with. Quantitative research is often associated with experiments, surveys, and other research with large samples of people or observations, whereas qualitative research is associated with ethnography, case study, and narrative inquiry, often with a smaller number of participants but fuller and more holistic accounts from (or of) each one. However, each paradigm actually represents a collection of approaches to research that share some common principles but at the same time reflect major differences.

Any research paradigm or approach reflects a number of components:

A philosophical basis or belief system regarding epistemology, or the nature of truth and of knowing (e.g., that research is ideally objective, unbiased, and value free versus more subjective)

An ideology concerning ontology, or the nature of reality (e.g., that an objective reality exists, or that reality is constructed socially and multiple perspectives on reality exist)

A corresponding methodology (e.g., one that is experimental/manipulative and hypothesis testing, or is not) with various designs, methods, techniques, and devices for eliciting and analyzing phenomena (Denzin and Lincoln, 2005a , 2005b ; Duff, 2008 )

Therefore, there are many levels at which research can be analyzed and categorized. Comparison and categorization in AL has traditionally been based primarily on methods or techniques, with less reflection on epistemological and ontological issues. Quantitative approaches tend to be associated with a positivist or postpositivist orientation, a realist ontology, an objectivist epistemology, and an experimental, manipulative methodology. Qualitative approaches, on the other hand, are more often associated with an interpretive, humanistic orientation, an ontology of multiple realities, a nonobjectivist epistemology and a naturalistic, nonmanipulative methodology (Guba and Lincoln, 1994 ). However, what is ostensibly quantitative research may involve qualitative analysis (e.g., discourse analysis) and vice versa. Case study, for example, normally considered qualitative research, may actually reflect a more positivist approach than an interpretive one, or it may be part of a quantitative one-shot (experimental) case study or a single- or multiple-case time series design (Duff, 2008 ). Similarly, statistical techniques can be used in both quantitative and qualitative research, but inferential statistics are mostly associated with quantitative research (Gall et al., 2003 , 2005 ).

Quantitative research includes a variety of approaches and designs, as well as such tools as correlations, surveys, and multifactorial studies, in addition to experimental or quasi-experimental studies. Qualitative research, on the other hand, encompasses a broad, expanding assortment of approaches, including narrative research, life history, autobiographical or biographical accounts, content analysis, historical and archival studies, conversation analysis, microethnography, and discourse analysis. These types of research draw on a variety of theoretical traditions as well, such as ethnomethodology, symbolic interactionism, structuralism, interpretivism and social constructivism, poststructuralism, phenomenology, hermeneutics, feminism, social/educational anthropology, and cultural studies (Denzin and Lincoln, 2005b ).

In recent years, government-funded quantitative research in the United States has enjoyed a privileged status within education and the social sciences because it is considered by some authorities to be more robust, rigorous, “scientific,” theoretical, and generalizable and, therefore, it is argued to have more to contribute to knowledge, theory, and policy than qualitative research (Freeman et al., 2007 ). Of course, claims of rigor or generalizability should not be taken for granted in quantitative research—they must, rather, be demonstrated by the researcher. Neither should it be assumed that qualitative research is atheoretical, unscientific, lacking in rigor or generalizability (transferability), or intellectually insignificant. However, again, the onus is on the researcher to demonstrate the credibility and importance of the methods and findings (Duff, 2006 ). Fortunately, qualitative research of different types has gained a major foothold in AL in the past 10 years, creating a better balance between quantitative and qualitative publications in the major AL journals than had been reported earlier (Lazaraton, 2000 ).

Critical (or “ideological”) research is sometimes accorded a category of its own, separate from quantitative and qualitative paradigms. According to Pennycook ( 2008 ), critical applied linguistics is

an emergent approach to language use and education that seeks to connect the local conditions of language to broader social formations, drawing connections between classrooms, conversations, textbooks, tests or translations and issues of gender, class, sexuality, race, ethnicity, culture, identity, politics, ideology or discourse. (p. 169)

Perhaps critical research is considered an independent category because certain approaches to research constitute explicitly ideological lenses or frames (e.g., critical or feminist) through which any data or situation can be analyzed using a variety of methods, quantitative or qualitative. Thus, critical perspectives can be applied to ethnography or to census data, and feminist perspectives can be applied to test score data or case studies. Alternatively, it could be claimed that these overtly ideological perspectives constitute different approaches, purposes, underlying assumptions, methods, subject matter, and reporting styles and that they are therefore not simply new lenses, frames, or values to be applied to otherwise orthodox academic pursuits with reified categories and objectification.

Such other types of research as program evaluation research and action research can take the form of either—or both—quantitative and qualitative research.

Developments in Quantitative Research

The last 3 decades have been very productive for the development, explanation, and application of quantitative research design and statistics and other analytical techniques in AL research using a variety of types of research: experimental, quasi-experimental, correlational, survey, and other carefully controlled, sometimes multivariate designs. As a result, careful attention has been paid to the reliability and validity of research constructs, instruments, scales, rating protocols, and analytical procedures; sampling procedures; measurement; variables and parametric and nonparametric statistics and power effects (Hatch and Lazaraton, 1991 ; Lazaraton, 2000 ). Some additional developments are reported in this section.

N. C. Ellis ( 1999 ) discusses three quantitative approaches to cognitive and psycholinguistic research: observational research (e.g., using language corpora), experimentation (e.g., in studies on form-focused instruction and SLA; Doughty and Williams, 1998 ), and simulations (e.g., connectionist models of SLA; Kempe and MacWhinney, 1998 ). Although there is a greater understanding among applied linguists of the criteria of good quantitative research currently, it is also evident that true experimental research is often difficult to conduct for logistical and ethical reasons, particularly in research with children or adults in educational contexts. In many institutions, for example, pretesting, random assignment to treatment types (e.g., instructional interventions or experimental stimuli), and control or normative/baseline groups may be difficult to arrange. Norgate ( 1997 ) provides an interesting example of this dilemma in research on the L1 development of blind children. Rather, quasi-experimental research examining cause-effect relationships among independent and dependent variables and research looking for other kinds of relationships among variables predominate. Experimental SLA laboratory studies are an exception; that research often involves artificial or semi-artificial L2 structures, control groups, random assignment, and pre- and posttesting (e.g., Hulstijn and DeKeyser, 1997 ). The downside of this carefully controlled research is that it lacks ecological validity because the language(s), contexts, and activities do not represent those ordinarily encountered by language learners and users.

In another area of AL, language testing, which has made great strides in tackling issues of validation, ethics, and psychometric precision in recent years, Kunnan ( 1999 ) describes new quantitative methods, such as structured equation modeling, that permit sophisticated analyses of relationships among groups of learner (test taker) variables such as L2 proficiency, language aptitude, and intelligence. Chalhoub-Deville and Deville ( 2008 ) also note developments in testing based on generalizability theory, multidimensional scaling, multifaceted Rasch analysis, rule-space methodology, and computer-based and computer-adaptive testing, typically found in articles in the journal Language Testing .

In L1/L2 survey research, C. Baker ( 2008 ) describes large-scale and small-scale initiatives in Europe, South America, and elsewhere, dealing with such issues as language vitality among minority language groups and social-psychological variables (e.g., attitudes and motivation) connected with successful L2 learning. He also illustrates how more readily available census data with specific items about language has facilitated certain kinds of analysis for language policy and planning purposes. Finally, Baker notes that a growing trend in European research lies in examining practices related to community (heritage) language schooling and surveying attitudes toward trilingualism and multilingualism (which others might refer to as language ideologies).

Developments in Qualitative Research

Whereas qualitative AL research in the past may have leaned toward (post)positivism and structuralism, relying on researchers' structured elicitations, analyses, and interpretations of a relatively narrow band of observed linguistic (or other) behavior sometimes designed to test specific hypotheses, current strands of research lean toward more unapologetically subjective, dialectical accounts, incorporating different, sometimes contradictory perspectives of the same phenomenon and grappling more intentionally with issues of positioning, voice, and representation (Duff, 2008 ; Edge and Richards, 1998 ). The omission of qualitative research methodologies from many textbooks, key journals, graduate courses, and programs in applied linguistics even a decade ago has been corrected to a significant degree in the interim (K. Richards, 2003 , 2009 ), particularly with the social and narrative turns that applied linguistics has witnessed during this decade in second language learning research as well as in language testing. Baker ( 2008 ), the researcher in bilingualism referred to above, dryly observes, “within language and education, the methodological pendulum has partly swung towards a preference for qualitative, ethnographic and phenomenological types of approach. Although quantitative approaches have been much criticized within the study of language and education, it is unlikely that they will disappear” (p. 65).

A growing enthusiasm for qualitative poststructural, postcolonial, and critical L2 research (e.g., Pennycook, 1999 , 2008 ) is indeed evident in many areas of AL. Critical and poststructural perspectives have been applied to ethnographies (e.g., T. Goldstein, 1997 , 2001 ; Madison, 2005 ; Talmy, 2008 ), to in-depth studies of language and social identity (e.g., Norton, 2000 ), and to research on language and gender (e.g., Cameron, 1992 ; Ehrlich, 1997 ; R. D. Freeman, 1997 ; Mills, 1995 ), some of which is explicitly feminist, emancipatory, reflexive, and postmodern. Yet a comprehensive overview textbook of qualitative research approaches in AL still seems to be lacking, though a plethora of generic qualitative textbooks exist in education and the social sciences.

The “Research Issues” section of the TESOL Quarterly , which I edited for 12 years, featured many qualitative developments: in narrative research, interview and focus group research, corpus research, classroom observation, testing, research guidelines, and software tools for qualitative data analysis. Special issues of the Modern Language Journal in 1997 and 2007, centering on the so-called Firth and Wagner debates, also marked salient turning points in both theory and methodology in AL. The current expansion of qualitative approaches in AL reflects trends across the health sciences, social sciences, humanities, and education in recent years (Denzin and Lincoln, 2005a , 2005b ) and a growing interest in ecological validity and the social, cultural, situational, embodied, and performative nature of language, knowledge, representation, and learning. Journals that have been established in AL this decade, such as the Journal of Language, Identity and Education , as well as many other journals with qualitative or narrative in their titles, are further evidence of the emphasis on more subjective, discursive aspects of learning that are often approached through interpretive, inductive, and sometimes critical methods. I have observed, however, that in many parts of the world (e.g., in East Asia and Central Europe) the status of qualitative research is still considerably lower (and often poorly understood) in comparison with quantitative research, a situation that has fortunately changed in North American AL. Sociocultural research in those same geographical domains also seems to have had less visibility or traction than it has, for example, in the United Kingdom, Canada, United States, and Australia.

However, in such traditionally very quantitative subfields as language testing, more nonpsychometric and qualitative studies have been published in recent years in the English-speaking world, particularly in such journals as Language Assessment Quarterly (Chalhoub-Deville and Deville, 2008 ). Lazaraton ( 2008 ) describes the kinds of (qualitative) discourse or conversation analysis that have been done of transcribed oral-proficiency interview talk (including her research) and especially of interviewers' accommodations of interviewees (test takers), based on such factors as the test takers' proficiency level or the familiarity of test takers and testers. Other studies she reviews deal with test takers' discourse and their negotiation for meaning, the dynamics of interaction and discourse in tests that pair up test-takers, or use group formats (e.g., on Cambridge ESOL proficiency tests). The qualitative analyses prove very useful for test validation and especially to ascertain whether the interaction during testing has an inadvertent effect on test takers' scores. Other research that Lazaraton reviews describes the use of think-aloud protocols (verbal reports) by test raters and of research that looks at the impact or consequences of testing through ethnographic observation or case study.

Ethnography, Case Study, and Interview Research

Ethnographies of language learning and teaching, literacy practices, and workplace encounters, as well as methodological discussions about cultural aspects of knowledge and behavior, have become more prominent and commonplace since Watson-Gegeo's influential (1988) article first appeared in the TESOL Quarterly . Harklau ( 2005 ), Heath and Street 2008 ), and Toohey ( 2008 ) provide recent reviews of ethnographic research in AL. Ethnographic research typically describes the cultural patterns of groups as they evolve and settle over time, such as language learners in a class or workers at job sites. It aims to elicit insiders' ( emic ) perspectives as well as those of the researcher, undertaking participant observation ( etic ) perspectives. Increasingly, too, this research looks at the positioning of research participants not only by the others they interact with in their natural settings but also by how the researcher herself positions the participants and their behaviors—and herself. Harklau noted that relatively little ethnographic research has been conducted outside of the United Kingdom or North America by non-White, non-Anglophone researchers on languages other than English and their cultures. However, L. C. Moore ( 2008 ) subsequently described numerous ethnographic accounts of multilingual socialization in a variety of non-Western, non-English-dominant settings, including her own work in French postcolonial Africa. Indeed, many of the other invited chapters in the Springer 2008 Encyclopedia of Language and Education series likewise involved researchers reviewing describing practices in communities where various languages are spoken.

Case studies remain one of the most common forms of qualitative research in AL, on their own or in combination with quantitative research (Duff, 2008 ; Gomm, Hammersley, and Foster, 2000 ; Merriam 1998 ; Yin, 2009 ). Like ethnographic research, case studies typically place great importance on contextualization and holistic accounts of individuals, groups, or events. In some instances researchers are also able to track participants longitudinally, as Kanno 2003 ) did with several Japanese students who had previously studied English and other curriculum content abroad and then returned to Japan. Morita 2004 ), in her multiple-case study of Japanese women studying at a Canadian university, documented their academic and linguistic socialization as well as the meanings and factors behind, and social construction of, their apparent silence in some of their classes. The study revealed that far from representing a monolithic group based on ethnicity, gender, first-language, and academic status, each woman's experience in her new English-speaking academic environment was highly situated, contingent, and unique and also changed over time.

Another common approach to research at present concerns involved interviews as an important mediating tool and site for linguistic processes and for social semiotic action. Although interviews are used in many kinds of research for different purposes, the actual interactional structures, positioning, footings, framing, and so on are commanding renewed attention by AL researchers and others in the social sciences, in medicine, and in other fields (Campbell and Roberts, 2007 ; Kvale, 2006 ; Talmy and Richards, forthcoming; Gubrium and Holstein, 2002 ; Silverman, 2001 ). Some of the work compares a content analysis of interview discourse with other kinds of analyses of the interview itself as a speech event.

Narrative Inquiry and Art-Based Research

Personal accounts and narratives of the experiences of language teachers, learners, and others—often across a broad span of time, space, experience, and languages—have increasingly become a major focus in some qualitative research. Evidence includes first-person narratives, diary studies, autobiographies, and life histories of learning, teaching, or losing aspects of one's language and identity (e.g., Belcher and Connor, 2001 ; Kouritzen, 1999 ; Pavlenko and Lantolf, 2000 ; Schumann, 1997 ). At present, studies also examine individuals using language in and across social contexts that had been investigated to a lesser degree in the past (e.g., in professional or academic settings, in the home/family, in the community, in the workplace, and in other social institutions). New meta-methodological discussions about the range of directions, data collection approaches, forms of analysis, and criteria for good narrative research are presently abundant both in AL (Coffey and Street, 2008 ; Pavlenko, 2007a , 2007b ) and in the social sciences and education (Atkinson and Delamont, 2006 ; Clandinin, 2007 ; Clandinin and Connelly, 2000 ; Polkinghorne, 2007 ; Riessman, 2008 ). In addition to these narrative approaches to exploring linguistic experience, other important but less emic accounts of language and behavior have attracted renewed attention from scholars across disciplines, particularly in studies of the discursive structure and social-interactional accomplishment of narrative texts (e.g., Bamberg, 1998 ). Arts-based research involving dramatic enactments, representations through nonprint visual modes of representation, multimodal analysis, poetics, and fictionalized accounts are gradually gaining visibility in AL as well (e.g., T. Goldstein, 2001 ; M. C. Taylor, 2008 ).

Although often compelling and highly engaging as both a process and as research output, these emerging approaches do not supplant existing ones (whether quantitative or qualitative) but rather complement them and provide new topics, genres, analyses, and conclusions, as well as different notions of authenticity and legitimacy (Edge and Richards, 1998 ). There is a growing emphasis on social, cultural, political, and historical aspects of language and language research, in addition to narrative aspects (Creese, Martin, and Hornberger, 2008 ; Hinkel, 1999 ; McKay and Hornberger, 1996 ; Norton and Toohey, 2004 ; Duff and Hornberger, 2008 ). Categorical labels and unacknowledged bias have therefore been the subject of analysis and critique (in connection with race, class, culture, language, gender, heterosexism, native versus nonnative speakers, inner and outer circle in World Englishes [or Chineses], and indigenous versus nonindigenous voices and knowledge[s]). Drawing on different (psychological) traditions but also concerned with social aspects of language and literacy are neo-Vygotskyan, sociocultural, and constructivist accounts, which have been adopted by growing numbers of applied linguists over the past decade (Lantolf, 2000 ; Lantolf and Thorne, 2006 , 2007 ), particularly in research in classrooms, in therapeutic, counseling, or dynamic assessment encounters, and in community settings. Like other primarily qualitative approaches, sociocultural research often involves conversation analysis, discourse analysis, narrative analysis, and microethnography, and examines language and content in an integrated manner.

Reflecting another change in AL research approaches and objects of study, at the present time text and discourse analyses investigate not only the structure of, say, scientific research articles, but also the linguistic messages, symbols, and genres associated with ostensibly nonscientific media and interactions—for example, in popular culture, mass media, and everyday social encounters (e.g., dinnertime discussions). Some of this research is framed in terms of critical or poststructural theory and the constructs of literacy and discourse like that of identity have been theorized and analyzed as plural—not singular—entities, and as social, multifaceted, and fluid (Gee, 1996 ; Norton, 2000 ). Finally, the concern for understanding contextual features of linguistic phenomena—the hallmark of much qualitative (or at least nonquantitative) AL research—has also been applied to analyses of the historical, political, social, cultural, rhetorical, and intellectual contexts and consequences of AL theories, research, and practice/praxis (Rampton, 1995 ; Thomas, 1998 ).

Developments in Mixed-Method Research

Quantitative and qualitative approaches are currently viewed as complementary rather than fundamentally incompatible, and more mixed-paradigm research is recommended (Bergman, 2008 ; Dörnyei, 2007 ; Tashakkori and Teddlie, 1998 , 2003 ; Teddlie and Tashakkori, 2009 ). However, a balanced combination of the two is not yet commonplace in AL research. According to Denzin 2008 ) and Lincoln and Guba ( 2000 ), the paradigm “wars” of the last two decades have transformed into paradigm “dialogs.”

An example of mixed-method research in foreign language learning is the full-length research monograph by Kinginger 2008 ), a multiple-case study of American students in French-language study abroad programs in France. Another example is an evaluation of a Japanese foreign-language elementary school program by Antonek, Donato, and Tucker ( 2000 ) in the United States. Both studies provided measurement (test) data for students at different points in their programs but also included case studies of focal participants as well as the students' experiences and perspectives together with an analysis of their narrative or interview data to help shed light on the quantitative findings.

The Impact of Technological Advances on Research Approaches in Al

At the present time, technological and computational advances play a crucial role in most AL research, whether for collecting, inputting, managing, coding, storing, and retrieving data or for analyzing it. The availability of high-quality, affordable tape recorders, digital video cameras, personal and handheld computers, scanners, smart pens/boards, wikis, and means of incorporating data of different types from multiple sources in computer files and in publications (e.g., with accompanying compact disks or linked websites) has major practical and theoretical implications for education, testing, and research. Developments in digital technologies have been particularly useful in applied psycholinguistics, corpus linguistics, discourse analysis, and testing (N. C. Ellis, 1999 ; Markee, 2007 ). Videotaped data or other audiovisual representations of data can presently be posted online, can be linked to more traditional print-based reports, or can appear in stand-alone online publications. In research involving graphic imaging or analyses of the intersection of sound and image or multimodal analysis, this development is very important and enriches what would otherwise be limited to static, black-and-white, print- and transcript-based written accounts of linguistic phenomena that are often primarily oral but are represented through writing. New technologies have also enhanced research with minority populations in AL, such as the blind and deaf (Hornberger and Corson, 1997 ) and have enabled diaspora communities to remain connected and able to communicate freely using the languages and sometimes hybrid symbol systems at their disposal (Lam, 2008 ). Technology has also facilitated the documentation of endangered languages. Increasingly AL research involving computer-mediated communication conceives of language and literacy as social practice in which linguistic, social, and other identities can be constructed, displayed, and transformed (or resisted) and in which rich intertextuality, multimodality, and creativity are the norm and are the object of analysis (Snyder, 2008 ).

In addition, the use of data management and analysis software designed specifically for qualitative research has become more accessible and more widely used in AL than it had been earlier (e.g., Dörnyei, 2007 ; Séror, 2005 ). Furthermore, the development and accessibility of such L1 and L2 databases as TalkBank by MacWhinney ( 2001 ) at Carnegie Mellon University ( http://www.talkbank.org ) represent a significant language database of vocal interactions of humans and animals that is continually being updated and currently incorporates child language data (CHILDES) and data related to aphasia, conversation analysis, bilingualism, and second language acquisition, with linked digital audio and video data. This electronic database provides a tremendous resource for researchers as well as tools for analyzing their own and others' data. In addition, corpora and concordances for collecting and analyzing oral and written texts (Biber, Conrad and Reppen, 1998 ; Thomas and Short, 1996 ) and new databases resulting from the use of computers in language testing, as well as online language interactions in CALL or other electronic networks, have also engendered new possibilities for AL research. Thus, such diverse subfields as language acquisition, text analysis, syntax and semantics, assessment, sociolinguistics, and language policy are affected. Research involving functional neuroimaging tools (e.g., functional magnetic resonance imaging, fMRI) and positron emission tomography (PET) provide valuable real-time information about the inner workings of the brain, especially in relation to different languages and tasks among monolinguals, bilinguals, and multilinguals (Wattendorf and Festman, 2008 ). The relationships between age of additional-language acquisition, proficiency level, and differential cortical functioning and localization of functions have long been of interest to neurolinguists and neurobiologists, and these new technologies literally provide a window into the brain's inner workings.

In addition to the Journal of Language Learning and Technology , which has become one of the most respected journals for digital technologies in applied linguistics, the recent survey of research across applied linguistics mediated by technology in Markee's ( 2007 ) special issue of the Annual Review of Applied Linguistics is particularly helpful. Possibilities are changing almost daily with what is presently known as Web 2.0 and the many other applications and tools for linguistic research in laboratories and in natural everyday settings and texts. Digital tools are ubiquitous for conversation analysis, teleconferencing, self-access podcasting, detecting plagiarism, modeling pronunciation and other aspects of speech or writing, tracking one's own or others' activities and progress online, text messaging, and test taking, and scoring tests.

Future AL research will no doubt continue to be greatly influenced by ongoing technical developments in natural language processing, machine and other translation systems, artificial intelligence, brain imaging techniques, CALL, gaming, aural/visual recognition, (eye gaze and other) tracking, and transcription devices. AL-tailored statistical packages and procedures will also become more sophisticated. Also, as more research focuses on languages other than English—including signed languages and those with different orthographies or with no orthographies at all—and seeks to accommodate a greater range of information about messages (e.g., phonetic, temporal, visual, contextual, material, embodied), new electronic tools and theoretical insights are bound to result.

Participants and Populations in Applied Linguistic Research

Although the populations that are the focus of applied linguistics are distinct from research approaches , the characteristics of groups under investigation certainly have implications for both methodology and theory. For example, work about/with indigenous language learners, their communities and cultures, and their languages, literacies, and other symbol systems, long underrepresented in applied linguistics, is currently beginning to flourish. Important developments have also occurred in the past decade in indigenous and postcolonial/decolonizing epistemologies and knowledges (e.g., Denzin, Lincoln, and Smith, 2008 ; L. T. Smith, 1999 ). Expanding the research participant pool and the languages they represent has implications for the way the research is theorized, conducted, interpreted, and disseminated with these populations as well as the form it ultimately takes. Given the endangered status of many such indigenous languages and related cultures and ideologies, this work is urgently needed.

However, just as great care is being taken to expand the collective research agenda to include a wider range of language users and geolinguistic contexts and to reflect on their experiences, poststructural and critical scholars remind us not to essentialize or reify these same populations. Applied linguistic and sociolinguistic research on gender and language, for example, has been carried out for more than a generation. But many scholars are at present very cautious about making grand claims based on gender (or sexuality, race, ability/disability, nativeness, etc.) as a set of predetermined, stable, always relevant, mutually exclusive categories (e.g., male/female) to which certain behaviors and perspectives can be uniquely ascribed (e.g., Bucholtz, 2003 ; Kyratzis and Cook-Gumperz, 2008 ). Rather, scholars are at present increasingly seeking evidence of how membership in such categories is socially coconstructed and performed through discourse not as a “preformed” category (Pennycook, 2008 ) but as a situated identity and by the various ways in which interlocutors position one another and themselves through their interactions and other behaviors and discourse and how they may also negotiate and transgress the expectations placed on them in relation to these social categories (Cameron and Kulick, 2003 ; Pavlenko, 2008b ; Pavlenko and Piller, 2007 ).

Elderly learners and users of language are also being included in more AL research as are people with degenerative cognitive or physical conditions affecting their language and communication capacities. Groups that in the past were not given special attention, such as generation 1.5 learners, heritage-language learners, transnationals, asylum seekers or refugees, very young or very old language learners/users, multilingual/multiliterate people, and the so-called generation of digital natives (youth and young adults immersed in new digital information and communication technologies) have, when included as research participants in AL (e.g., in SLA, language testing, language policy, sociolinguistics, and language/literacy education), yielded important new theoretical understandings that have often required new methodological approaches not previously used because these populations were excluded from earlier research.

In this chapter, I have provided a brief overview of both dominant and emerging approaches to AL research, particularly those typically described as quantitative, qualitative, or mixed-method, and as how these have been discussed and utilized in the field. The research topics and approaches discussed, much like the field of AL, involve various philosophical and theoretical commitments as well as methodological preferences and practices. AL research this past decade has demonstrated greater pluralism and rigor, an increased sensitivity to the contexts of research, the characteristics and diversity of research participants, the need to draw meaningful theoretical insights from findings and to consider carefully constraints on generalizability (or transferability) of results. Explicit discussion and reflection on researchers' own histories, investments, and roles in the research process are also expected to a greater degree than before not only in AL but across the humanities and social sciences more generally (Duff, 2008 ). Explicit discussion of criteriology in the assessment of research has underscored the responsibility that scholars have to know not only how to conduct and assess work in their own immediate areas of scholarship but also the different criteria, norms, genres, and expectations in other areas in AL (Edge and Richards, 1998 ; Lazaraton, 2003 ; cf. M. Freeman et al., 2007 ). There is a growing recognition of and respect for fundamental issues of ethics, fairness, and validity in AL research and practice (e.g., Cameron et al., 1992 ; Davies, 1997 ; Davis, 1995 ; Ortega, 2005 ), attention to the consequences of research for educational policy and practice, and an awareness that some issues, populations, languages, and geographic areas have received considerable research attention (and funding) whereas others have remained invisible or on the margins. This last point not only suggests imbalances in the global research enterprise, but also has implications regarding the limitations of the theoretical conclusions drawn from work confined to particular areas, languages, and participants at the expense of others.

The development of criteria for exemplary quantitative, qualitative, and mixed-method research and reporting has resulted in many carefully conceived studies and programs of research. In addition, a greater collective awareness and understanding of different research methods and areas of study is occurring. Collaboration among researchers looking at similar phenomena in different (socio)linguistic, cultural, and geographical contexts (as in earlier work by Blum-Kulka, House, and Kasper, 1989 , with respect to interlanguage pragmatics) would certainly benefit theory development and practical applications. Combining the expertise of applied linguists espousing different research paradigms in complementary types of analysis of the same phenomenon would also yield richer analyses of complex issues (Koshmann, 1999). One recent project reflecting multiperspectival research was undertaken by Barnard and Torres-Guzman 2009 ), who had chapter authors present their own analyses of classroom discourse and language socialization in schools in various parts of the world and then asked other researchers to do a “second take” (an independent analysis) of the same data to see how their analyses and interpretations differed. More multiperspectival research and theoretical triangulation involving researchers either from the same or from different traditions and disciplines (e.g., anthropology, psychology, education, and linguistics) examining the same data from their own frames of reference would enrich applied linguistics.

Although much AL research is chiefly concerned with abilities, behaviors, or sociolinguistic conditions and phenomena at one point in time (typically the present and/or immediate past), research sustained over larger periods of time, space, and activities is also needed, especially in developmental studies, studies trying to establish the long-term effectiveness of particular interventions, or those related to (academic) language socialization or language loss (Heath, 2000 ). Ortega and Byrnes's ( 2008 ) study represents a real contribution to AL precisely because it deals with both longitudinal research and research on advanced language learners. Replication studies, meta-analyses, cross-linguistic, cross-generational, and cross-medium (e.g., oral/written) studies have been used in limited ways in AL, with particular combinations of languages, media, and age groups. Recent work by Tarone, Bigelow, and Hansen ( 2009 ) highlights the theoretical benefits for SLA of examining alphabetic literacy levels of learners in studies of oral language development and processing. Thus, looking beyond one modality of language ability and use to see connections across modalities is very important.

More multimethod AL research would provide a greater triangulation of findings and help identify and interpret “rich points” in research (Hornberger, 2006a ). Research has started to take into account in more significant ways not only individual (e.g., cognitive, linguistic, affective) and (social) group aspects of language behavior and knowledge, but also sociocultural, historical, political, and ideological aspects. Consequently, more emphasis is being placed on the multiple, sometimes shifting identities, perspectives, and competencies of research participants and researchers, as well as the multiple contexts in which language is learned, produced, interpreted, translated, forgotten, and even eliminated (Norton, 2000 ; Duff, 2008 ).

Finally, all basic or pure research is meant to contribute to the knowledge base and theoretical growth of a field; thus, with more conceptually sound research, new discoveries, insights, and applications are certainly in store for the field of AL. In applied research that aims to yield a greater understanding of phenomena in the mind/world and also help to improve some aspect of the human condition, increased social and political intervention and advocacy is required. These, then, are just some of the issues and challenges that applied linguists must address in the future from different perspectives and using a variety of approaches. Indeed, as new perspectives, genres, and media for reporting and disseminating research are transformed, new areas for AL research and new challenges, too, will surface for the evaluation of innovative, nontraditional forms of research.

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EDITORIAL article

Editorial: language, corpora, and technology in applied linguistics.

• 1 International Business & Marketing Department, National University of Sciences and Technology (NUST), Islamabad, Pakistan
• 2 Institute of Corpus Studies and Applications, Shanghai International Studies University, Shanghai, China

Editorial on the Research Topic Language, corpora, and technology in applied linguistics

The aim of this Research Topic was to stimulate thinking and research on emergent and important topics across the intersecting domains of applied linguistics, corpus-linguistics, translation and technology and to serve as a showcase for inventive cross-disciplinary deployment of tools and frameworks. This editorial indexes the rich diversity of the contributions made to Language, corpora, and technology in applied linguistics which not only extend knowledge in the target disciplines but also offer applications for the practice contexts of researchers, translators and teachers.

In extension of the focus on applied linguistics, a number of featured studies furnish pedagogical insights with the potential to improve instruction and the learning outcomes of learners across academic levels as well as of translation trainees. From the perspective of instruction, researchers offered useful insights from linguistic investigations with applications for the classroom. For instance, in a study based on meta-analysis of Chinese and global studies on the effect of metaphorical instruction on learners' outcomes, Zhou et al. identified that when teaching features prolonged instruction in metaphors which is integrated with practice, L2 learners are likely to make gains in achieving metaphorical competence. Similarly, an intervention-based study by Alawerdy and Alalwi used analysis of empirical data from first year Saudi EFL learners at university to showcase the impact of explicit instruction in the use of cohesive devices within essays, offering insights into how the writers' ability to write cohesively can be enhanced. Using comprehension and performance tasks with Arabic speaking children at a Riyadh international school, Alothman and Alsager investigated their acquisition of L2 spatial deixes. Observing the absence of proximity bias as an anticipated obstacle, the researchers found that the children's comprehension of spatial deixis in English was better than their production of the latter, suggesting the need for teachers take this into account when designing communicative activities. With implications for self-directed learning, an insightful study by Lyu and Han shows how a data driven approach (making use of a corpus) to bring about improvements helped a Chinese medical in her self-translations of a medical abstract. This approach indicates how other learners can adopt similar strategies (e.g., use of English equivalents for Chinse terms, keywords to identify collocations and utilization of accompanying words to discover contexts) to improve their L2 writing. With classroom interactions serving as a lever to facilitate better learning, a study by Wei et al. explored how interpersonal meanings between teachers and students are realized through the use of tag questions in British university seminars in BASE corpus. Wei et al. found that most tag questions are initiated by the teachers and serve to capture the attention of the listeners rather to seek information and that they can also serve as a means for teacher to retain control of the activities in the session, although the limited ways in which the tag questions are used within the context of class interactions suggest the need to pay greater attention to realizing the full potential of tag questions. In language learning contexts, paying attention to the influence of linguistic background of the learners can help to provide better instruction. In this vein, Song's corpus-based investigation of the mood functions of summing up adverbs found that the pragmatic mechanism of “violation” helped to realize similar functions of the “Hezhe” (合着), “ganqing” (敢情), and “nao le bantian” (闹了半天). These findings suggest the need to pay attention to words with provenance in Chinese dialects, particularly at midway and advanced levels.

Factors such as familiarity, meaning, transparency or decomposability in the context of figurative phrases tend to be considered autonomous. In this context, Alkhammash(a) analyzed data from participants belonging to a variety of language groups to show that the ability of the speakers to guess the meaning of a phrase correctly increases scores in transparency and decomposability, thus flagging the need for closer attention to these factors when designing instruction. Within the context of translation research, Man et al. propose the development of a longitudinal learner translation corpus that can facilitate assessment feedback on translation proficiency with the help of an ecological approach that takes into account spatial and temporal contexts for the texts.

Other contributions demonstrated a more specific linguistic focus, albeit demonstrating variation in the topics, themes and methodologies used to develop the insights. With implications for research on syntactic complexity (a gauge for L2 writer proficiency), a corpus analysis of syntactic complexity evident in the essays of Japanese university EFL writers (NICE corpus), Lyu et al. showed substantial statistical difference in the writings of the L2 writers and those of native writers at the same academic level, thus suggesting the need for researchers to pay closer attention to this factor when taking into account the evolution of L2 writer competence. Cui and Kim explored structural and functional bundle lengths in a self-compiled corpus of student dissertations to show considerable variation in bundle categories (research-oriented, text-oriented and participant-oriented) across 3-, 4-, and 5-word bundles. Stance expression is another area of challenge for L2 writers. Using a corpus-based approach to compare Chinese and American students' rhetorical moves and stance features in 112 dissertation abstracts, Liu et al. found that abstracts by Chinese academic writers tended to focus on presenting their research rather than situating or discussing it. Additionally, stance expressions across the abstracts written by both groups of students demonstrated variation, with Chinese students demonstrating a preference for modal verbs in addition to stance verbs + that clauses to express their position. Serving as an innovative contribution, a study by Wang Q. adopted a cognitive semantic approach integrated with interview data collected from disciplinary researchers to provide insights into how the geo-academic location of academic writers can predict their use of interest markers (e.g., interesting, intriguing, fascinating) to indicate their authorial stance. Based on this finding, enabling academic writers to notice these choices may help them to adapt to the writing conventions of the target and dominant scholarly community. From a semiotic perspective, Alharbi and Mahzari investigated the pragmatic functions of emojis within a dataset of Arabic tweets, revealing that emojis reflecting sorrow, love, tiredness among others were used prevalently, whereas the functions ranged from reaction, action, modification of tone to softening. These insights can allow for cross-cultural comparison of variations in how semiotic resources are appropriated and used. Exploring corpora comprising US, Chinese and UK media programs, Fu and Ho found that discourse markers such as so, and, but tend to be used the most in American programming which finding has implications for the realization of more effective bilateral communication between media program hosts and guests. Al-Mutairi and Mahzari examined a dataset of messages from computer-mediated communication related to advice-seeking by patients and advice-giving by doctors in the Arab medical context. The study found while the patients tended to ask yes/no questions and elaborate on their medical problems, the doctors made use of discoursal strategy dependent on offering clarification/information and direct advice.

A number of research contributions showcased the use of technology-integrated linguistic tools to investigate political, diplomatic and academic discourses. For example, undertaking a corpus-based analysis of political speeches of US presidents, Xu shows how different categories of pragmatic evidentiality in diplomatic discourse helps the orators to demonstrate distance or proximity to their propositions as well as to express their stances toward the topics of their speeches. Investigating the shifts in Chinese diplomatic discourse over the period of 1949–2018 by applying corpus-based discourse analysis, Tian and Li find that the evolution of China's engagement with countries in the world, its cooperation efforts and stride toward international sustainable development are represented in tandem within its discourses. These findings index the expansive potential of corpora in helping to probe and unpack linguistic data across spoken and textual data. Exploring academic discourses, Hu used a discourse-based approach to examine evolutions in American academia's cognitive construction of Confucius institutes (aimed at achieving Sino educational and cultural cooperation across the globe). Hu shows how positive reception in the early years (2004–2013) was succeeded by a cognitive transformation of the institutes as a political agency and swift increase in the closure of the institutes (2014–2017). Zhang, Zhao et al. analyzed the multiple sections mediating the presentation of language policies within a dataset of constitutional texts, revealing that these tended to be discussed the most in the section dilating upon the fundamental rights of the citizen and that the geographical location wherein these texts originated also influenced the distribution of the policies. Using Biber's multi-dimensional (MD) analysis as an analytical lens, Zhang, Afzaal et al. investigated Sino and American diplomatic discourses, revealing that while Chinese discourses are packed with information and independent of context, American discourses are not only context-dependent but also emotive as well as interactional.

The breadth of translation research is evidenced in the diversity of the contributions related to this thematic strand within the Research Topic. Some of the studies focused on the implications of translators' linguistic choices for their translated texts while others focused on the influence of culture, history and background on. For instance, the incidence of modal verbs which are used to express the speaker's attitudes was investigated within a corpus of Chinese-English government press conference interpretation data by Zhang and Cheung. Their study showed a greater instantiation of modal verbs in English translations when compared with the original Chinese texts, suggesting that the deployment of modal verbs expressive of attitudes in translated texts was due to the desire to achieve specific pragmatic functions. In another example, Meng and Pan apply corpus-analysis to English translation of Wang Anyi's novel The Song of Everlasting Sorrow . They find that translators make conscious stylistic choices when rendering source cultures texts into target culture translations to make these texts comprehensible to audiences accustomed to very different styles. Examining English translations of Mao Zedong's speeches with the help of corpus-based analysis, Huang and Shi reveal not only idiosyncratic language use but also the evident influence of source language transfer into the target language, expressed in the underuse of the person pronoun and preference for the modal verb must rather than should . Other studies focused on the translation context, taking into account the impact of historical background and cultural identity. For instance, investigating a self-constructed corpus of six English translations of the Chinese classic Daxue by Chinese and international translators, Wang H. shows that the translational choices made by them are influenced by their cultural identity as well as historical background and motivations to carry out the translations. Yang et al. show how the use of modal verbs in representative English translations of Shih chi is influenced not only by the professional identities of text translators but also by the historical as well as cultural contexts in which they lived and worked. In an innovative study making use of narrative inquiry, Geng chose to adopt a human-centered approach to explore the experience of five seasoned and senior translators as evident in their self-narratives. The study shows that translators are strongly influenced by their social, political and cultural settings while carrying out their work and that their narratives are structured chronologically with focus on critical incidents in their journey through life and work as translators.

Other studies adopted distinctive theoretical and methodological lens to explore language data, ranging from how poetic texts were adapted into the visual medium to how digital public platforms can reflect the asymmetries of a gender imbalanced society and world. For instance, systemic functional semiotics was used as a heuristic by Chen and Zhong to compare distribution of process types of language in comic adaptations of Chinese poetry. Their research reveals how poems are rendered into perceptions as well as actions and verbal processes within the comics to facilitate dramatization, development of the storyline as well as visualization of metaphors amongst other functions. Analyzing a self-constructed corpus of 7,000 tweets on @FacesofCovid with the help of social actor representation and corpus linguistics, Almaghlouth shows how gender asymmetry (reflected in the underrepresentation of female victims) persists even on a public mourning platform established to commemorate the COVID dead from around the world.

The editorial progresses toward its conclusion by focusing on three key studies based on a bibliometric and meta-analytic review of literature. Tackling a sensitive topic, Peng and Hu performed a bibliometric analysis of COVID-related research with the help of CiteSpace software. They found that pandemic research reflected a narrow topical focus as well as inadequate attention to discourse-based analyses. In another bibliometric study with implications for trends in metaphor studies within crisis communication, Alkhammash(b) shows how investigations in COVID metaphors tend to be underpinned by Critical Discourse Analysis and span conventional and emerging genres (e.g., social media and multi-modal data). From a more theoretical perspective, Han et al. undertake a novel review of research publications on Conceptual Metaphor Theory with the help of CiteSpace. They identified keywords indexing predominant themes in the publications, dominant research domains for present research as well as the need for more interdisciplinary research on CMT. Such studies serve an important function, identifying as they do dominant themes and topics as well as under-researched areas so that future researchers can turn their attention to urgent topics, avoid research in already saturated areas as well as pursue epistemic and methodological trajectories which can truly push the frontiers of knowledge in their domains.

Given that technology serves as a key thematic strand in the Research Topic, it is worth noting that many of the contributions make strategic use of technology. Featured studies integrating extended use of technology include the utilization of CiteSpace to enable keyword visualization and cluster analysis in bibliometric and metanalytic studies ( Peng and Hu ; Han et al. ), #LancsBox corpus processing software to analyze tweets on @FacesofCOVID ( Almaghlouth ), Multidimensional Analysis Tagger (MAT) supported analysis of Sino and American political discourse ( Zhang, Afzaal et al. ) as well as meta-analysis statistical tool for determining whether metaphorical competence can be taught ( Zhou et al. ).

Summing up, this Research Topic evidences the exciting breadth and diversity of linguistic research across the disciplinary spectrum and global contexts. It also speaks to the potential of technology to be integrated into linguistic, corpus and translational research so as to allow for the leveraging of its power to tackle big data, thus enabling the production of meaningful results and findings applicable to wider populations as well as exploration of emergent topics, issues, and challenges.

Author contributions

SN: Conceptualization, Writing—original draft, Writing—review & editing. MA: Writing—review & editing, Writing—original draft. GQ: Writing—review & editing.

The author(s) declare that no financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Publisher's note

All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

Keywords: language, translation, applied linguistics, corpora, technology

Citation: Naqvi SB, Afzaal M and Qiang G (2023) Editorial: Language, corpora, and technology in applied linguistics. Front. Psychol. 14:1325925. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1325925

Received: 22 October 2023; Accepted: 26 October 2023; Published: 06 November 2023.

Edited and reviewed by: Xiaolin Zhou , Peking University, China

Copyright © 2023 Naqvi, Afzaal and Qiang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: Swaleha Bano Naqvi, swaleha.naqvi@nbs.nust.edu.pk ; Muhammad Afzaal, Afzaal@shisu.edu.cn

† These authors have contributed equally to this work and share first authorship

Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

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Trends and hot topics in linguistics studies from 2011 to 2021: A bibliometric analysis of highly cited papers

Associated data.

The datasets presented in this study can be found in online repositories. The names of the repository/repositories and accession number(s) can be found in the article/ supplementary material .

High citations most often characterize quality research that reflects the foci of the discipline. This study aims to spotlight the most recent hot topics and the trends looming from the highly cited papers (HCPs) in Web of Science category of linguistics and language & linguistics with bibliometric analysis. The bibliometric information of the 143 HCPs based on Essential Citation Indicators was retrieved and used to identify and analyze influential contributors at the levels of journals, authors, and countries. The most frequently explored topics were identified by corpus analysis and manual checking. The retrieved topics can be grouped into five general categories: multilingual-related , language teaching , and learning related , psycho/pathological/cognitive linguistics-related , methods and tools-related , and others . Topics such as bi/multilingual(ism) , translanguaging , language/writing development , models , emotions , foreign language enjoyment (FLE) , cognition , anxiety are among the most frequently explored. Multilingual and positive trends are discerned from the investigated HCPs. The findings inform linguistic researchers of the publication characteristics of the HCPs in the linguistics field and help them pinpoint the research trends and directions to exert their efforts in future studies.

1. Introduction

Citations, as a rule, exhibit a skewed distributional pattern over the academic publications: a few papers accumulate an overwhelming large citations while the majority are rarely, if ever, cited. Correspondingly, the highly cited papers (HCPs) receive the greatest amount of attention in the academia as citations are commonly regarded as a strong indicator of research excellence. For academic professionals, following HCPs is an efficient way to stay current with the developments in a field and to make better informed decisions regarding potential research topics and directions to exert their efforts. For academic institutions, government and private agencies, and generally the science policy makers, they keep a close eye on and take advantage of this visible indicator, citations, to make more informed decisions on research funding allocation and science policy formulation. Under the backdrop of ever-growing academic outputs, there is noticeable attention shift from publication quantity to publication quality. Many countries are developing research policies to identify “excellent” universities, research groups, and researchers ( Danell, 2011 ). In a word, HCPs showcase high-quality research, encompass significant themes, and constitute a critical reference point in a research field as they are “gold bullion of science” ( Smith, 2007 ).

2. Literature review

Bibliometrics, a term coined by Pritchard (1969) , refers to the application of mathematical methods to the analysis of academic publications. Essentially this is a quantitative method to depict publication patterns within a given field based on a body of literature. There are many bibliometric studies on natural and social sciences in general ( Hsu and Ho, 2014 ; Zhu and Lei, 2022 ) and on various specific disciplines such as management sciences ( Liao et al., 2018 ), biomass research ( Chen and Ho, 2015 ), computer sciences ( Xie and Willett, 2013 ), and sport sciences ( Mancebo et al., 2013 ; Ríos et al., 2013 ), etc. In these studies, researchers tracked developments, weighed research impacts, and highlighted emerging scientific fronts with bibliometric methods. In the field of linguistics, bibliometric studies all occurred in the past few years ( van Doorslaer and Gambier, 2015 ; Lei and Liao, 2017 ; Gong et al., 2018 ; Lei and Liu, 2018 , 2019 ). These bibliometric studies mostly examined a sub-area of linguistics, such as corpus linguistics ( Liao and Lei, 2017 ), translation studies ( van Doorslaer and Gambier, 2015 ), the teaching of Chinese as a second/foreign language ( Gong et al., 2018 ), academic journals like System ( Lei and Liu, 2018 ) or Porta Linguarum ( Sabiote and Rodríguez, 2015 ), etc. Although Lei and Liu (2019) took the entire discipline of linguistics under investigation, their research is exclusively focused on applied linguistics and restricted in a limited number of journals (42 journals in total), leaving publications in other linguistics disciplines and qualified journals unexamined.

Over the recent years, a number of studies have been concerned with “excellent” papers or HCPs. For example, Small (2004) surveyed the HCPs authors’ opinions on why their papers are highly cited. The strong interest, the novelty, the utility, and the high importance of the work were among the most frequently mentioned. Most authors also considered that their selected HCPs are indeed based on their most important work in their academic career. Aksnes (2003) investigated the characteristics of HCPs and found that they were generally authored by a large number of scientists, often involving international collaboration. Some researchers even attempted to predict the HCPs by building mathematical models, implying “the first mover advantage in scientific publication” ( Newman, 2008 , 2014 ). In other words, papers published earlier in a field generally are more likely to accumulate more citations than those published later. Although many papers addressed HCPs from different perspectives, they held a common belief that HCPs are very different from less or zero cited papers and thus deserve utmost attention in academic research ( Aksnes, 2003 ; Blessinger and Hrycaj, 2010 ; Yan et al., 2022 ).

Although an increased focus on research quality can be observed in different fields, opinions diverge on the range and the inclusion criterion of excellent papers. Are they ‘highly cited’, ‘top cited’, or ‘most frequently cited’ papers? Aksnes (2003) noted two different approaches to define a highly cited article, involving absolute or relative thresholds, respectively. An absolute threshold stipulates a minimum number of citations for identifying excellent papers while a relative threshold employs the percentile rank classes, for example, the top 10% most highly cited papers in a discipline or in a publication year or in a publication set. It is important to note that citations differ significantly in different fields and disciplines. A HCP in natural sciences generally accumulates more citations than its counterpart in social sciences. Thus, it is necessary to investigate HCPs from different fields separately or adopt different inclusion criterion to ensure a valid comparison.

The present study has been motivated by two considerations. First, the sizable number of publications of varied qualities in a scientific field makes it difficult or even impossible to conduct any reliable and effective literature research. Focusing on the quality publications, the HCPs in particular, might lend more credibility to the findings on trends. Second, HCPs can serve as a great platform to discover potentially important information for the development of a discipline and understand the past, present, and future of the scientific structure. Therefore, the present study aims to investigate the hot topics and publication trends in the Web of Science category of linguistics or language & linguistics (shortened as linguistics in later references) with bibliometric methods. The study aims to answer the following three questions:

• Who are the most productive and impactful contributors of the HCPs in WoS category of linguistics or language & linguistics in terms of publication venues, authors, and countries?
• What are the most frequently explored topics in HCPs?
• What are the general research trends revealed from the HCPs?

3. Materials and methods

Different from previous studies which used an arbitrary inclusion threshold (e.g., Blessinger and Hrycaj, 2010 ; Hsu and Ho, 2014 ), we rely on Essential Science Indicator (ESI) to identify the HCPs. Developed by Clarivate, a leading company in the areas of bibliometrics and scientometrics, ESI reveals emerging science trends as well as influential individuals, institutions, papers, journals, and countries in any scientific fields of inquiry by drawing on the complete WoS databases. ESI has been chosen for the following three reasons. First, ESI adopts a stricter inclusion criterion for HCPs identification. That is, a paper is selected as a HCP only when its citations exceed the top 1% citation threshold in each of the 22 ESI subject categories. Second, ESI is widely used and recognized for its reliability and authority in identifying the top-charting work, generating “excellent” metrics including hot and highly cited papers. Third, ESI automatically updates its database to generate the most recent HCPs, especially suitable for trend studies for a specified timeframe.

3.1. Data source

The data retrieval was completed at the portal of our university library on June 20, 2022. The methods to retrieve the data are described in Table 1 . The bibliometric indicators regarding the important contributors at journal/author/country levels were obtained. Specifically, after the research was completed, we clicked the “Analyze Results” bar on the result page for the detailed descriptive analysis of the retrieved bibliometric data.

Retrieval strategies.

Several points should be noted about the search strategies. First, we searched the bibliometric data from two sub-databases of WoS core collection: Social Science Citation Index (SSCI) and Arts & Humanities Citation Index (A&HCI). There is no need to include the sub-database of Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-EXPANDED) because publications in the linguistics field are almost exclusively indexed in SSCI and A&HCI journals. WoS core collection was chosen as the data source because it boasts one of the most comprehensive and authoritative databases of bibliometric information in the world. Many previous studies utilized WoS to retrieve bibliometric data. van Oorschot et al. (2018) and Ruggeri et al. (2019) even indicated that WoS meets the highest standards in terms of impact factor and citation counts and hence guarantees the validity of any bibliometric analysis. Second, we do not restrict the document types as HCPs selection informed by ESI only considers articles and reviews. Third, we do not set the date range as the dataset of ESI-HCPs is automatically updated regularly to include the most recent 10 years of publications.

The aforementioned query obtained a total of 143 HCPs published in 48 journals contributed by 352 authors of 226 institutions. We then downloaded the raw bibliometric parameters of the 143 HCPs for follow-up analysis including publication years, authors, publication titles, countries, affiliations, abstracts, citation reports, etc. A complete list of the 143 HCPs can be found in the Supplementary Material . We collected the most recent impact factor (IF) of each journal from the 2022 Journal Citation Reports (JCR).

3.2. Data analysis

3.2.1. citation analysis.

A citation threshold is the minimum number of citations obtained by ranking papers in a research field in descending order by citation counts and then selecting the top fraction or percentage of papers. In ESI, the highly cited threshold reveals the minimum number of citations received by the top 1% of papers from each of the 10 database years. In other words, a paper has to meet the minimum citation threshold that varies by research fields and by years to enter the HCP list. Of the 22 research fields in ESI, Social Science, General is a broad field covering a number of WoS categories including linguistics and language & linguistics . We checked the ESI official website to obtain the yearly highly cited thresholds in the research field of Social Science , General as shown in Figure 1 ( https://esi.clarivate.com/ThresholdsAction.action ). As we can see, the longer a paper has been published, the more citations it has to receive to meet the threshold. We then divided the raw citation numbers of HCPs with the Highly Cited Thresholds in the corresponding year to obtain the normalized citations for each HCP.

Highly cited thresholds in the research field of Social Sciences, General.

3.2.2. Corpus analysis and manual checking

To determine the most frequently explored topics in these HCPs, we used both corpus-based analysis of word frequency and manual checking. Specifically, the more frequently a word or phrase occurs in a specifically designed corpus, the more likely it constitutes a research topic. In this study, we built an Abstract corpus with all the abstracts of the 143 HCPs, totaling 24,800 tokens. The procedures to retrieve the research topics in the Abstract corpus were as follows. First, the 143 pieces of abstracts were saved as separate .txt files in one folder. Second, AntConc ( Anthony, 2022 ), a corpus analysis tool for concordancing and text analysis, was employed to extract lists of n-grams (2–4) in decreasing order of frequency. We also generated a list of individual nouns because sometimes individual nouns can also constitute research topics. Considering our small corpus data, we adopted both frequency (3) and range criteria (3) for topic candidacy. That is, a candidate n-gram must occur at least 3 times and in at least 3 different abstract files. The frequency threshold guarantees the importance of the candidate topics while the range threshold guarantees that the topics are not overly crowded in a few number of publications. In this process, we actually tested the frequency and range thresholds several rounds for the inclusion of all the potential topics. In total, we obtained 531 nouns, 1,330 2-grams, 331 3-grams, and 81 4-grams. Third, because most of the retrieved n-grams cannot function as meaningful research topics, we manually checked all the candidate items and discussed extensively to decide their roles as potential research topics until full agreements were reached. Finally, we read all the abstracts of the 143 HCPs to further validate their roles as research topics. In the end, we got 118 topic items in total.

4.1. Main publication venues of HCPs

Of the 48 journals which published the 143 HCPs, 17 journals have contributed at least 3 HCPs ( Table 2 ), around 71.33% of the total examined HCPs (102/143), indicating that HCPs tend to be highly concentrated in a limited number of journals. The three largest publication outlets of HCPs are Bilingualism Language and Cognition (16), International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism (11), and Modern Language Journal (10). Because each journal varies greatly in the number of papers published per year and the number of HCPs is associated with journal circulations, we divided the total number of papers (TP) in the examined years (2011–2021) with the number of the HCPs to acquire the HCP percentage for each journal (HCPs/TP). The three journals with the highest HCPs/TP percentage are Annual Review of Applied Linguistics (2.26), Modern Language Journal (2.08), and Bilingualism Language and Cognition (1.74), indicating that papers published in these journals have a higher probability to enter the HCPs list.

Top 17 publication venues of HCPs.

N: the number of HCPs in each journal; N%: the percentage of HCPs in each journal in the total of 143 HCPs; TP: the total number of papers in the examined timespan (2011–2021); N/TP %: the percentage of HCPs in the total journal publications in the examined time span; TC/HCP: average citations of each HCP; R: journal ranking for the designated indicator; IF: Impact Factor in the year of 2022.

In terms of the general impact of the HCPs from each journal, we divided the number of HCPs with their total citations (TC) to obtain the average citations for each HCP (TC/HCP). The three journals with the highest TC/HCP are Journal of Memory and Language (837.86), Computational Linguistics (533.75), and Journal of Pragmatics (303.75). It indicates that even in the same WoS category, HCPs in different journals have strikingly different capability to accumulate citations. For example, the TC/HCP in System is as low as 31.73, which is even less than 4% of the highest TC/HCP in Journal of Memory and Language .

In regards to the latest journal impact factor (IF) in 2022, the top four journals with the highest IF are Computational Linguistics (7.778) , Modern Language Journal (7.5), Computer Assisted Language Learning (5.964), and Language Learning (5.24). According to the Journal Citation Reports (JCR) quantile rankings in WoS category of linguistics , all the journals on the list belong to the Q 1 (the top 25%), indicating that contributors are more likely to be attracted to contribute and cite papers in these prestigious high impact journals.

4.2. Authors of HCPs

A total of 352 authors had their names listed in the 143 HCPs, of whom 33 authors appeared in at least 2 HCPs as shown in Table 3 . We also provided in Table 3 other indicators to evaluate the authors’ productivity and impact including the total number of citations (TC), the number of citations per HCP, and the number of First author or Corresponding author HCPs (FA/CA). The reason we include the FA/CA indicator is that first authors and corresponding authors are usually considered to contribute the most and should receive greater proportion of credit in academic publications ( Marui et al., 2004 ; Dance, 2012 ).

Authors with at least 2 HCPs.

N: number of HCPs from each author; FA/CA: first author or corresponding author HCPs; TC: total citations of the HCPs from each author; C/HCP: average citations per HCP for each author.

In terms of the number of HCPs, Dewaele JM from Birkbeck Univ London tops the list with 7 HCPs with total citations of 492 (TC = 492), followed by Li C from Huazhong Univ Sci & Technol (#HCPs = 5; TC = 215) and Saito K from UCL (#HCPs = 5; TC = 576). It is to be noted that both Li C and Saito K have close academic collaborations with Dewaele JM . For example, 3 of the 5 HCPs by Li C are co-authored with Dewaele JM . The topics in their co-authored HCPs are mostly about foreign language learning emotions such as boredom , anxiety , enjoyment , the measurement , and positive psychology .

In regards to TC, Li, W . from UCL stands out as the most influential scholar among all the listed authors with total citations of 956 from 2 HCPs, followed by Norton B from Univ British Columbia (TC = 915) and Vasishth S from Univ Potsdam (TC = 694). The average citations per HCP from them are also the highest among the listed authors (478, 305, 347, respectively). It is important to note that Li, W.’ s 2 HCPs are his groundbreaking works on translanguaging which almost become must-reads for anyone who engages in translanguaging research ( Li, 2011 , 2018 ). Besides, Li, W. single authors his 2 HCPs, which is extremely rare as HCPs are often the results from multiple researchers. Norton B ’s HCPs are exploring some core issues in applied linguistics such as identity and investment , language learning , and social change that are considered the foundational work in its field ( Norton and Toohey, 2011 ; Darvin and Norton, 2015 ).

From the perspective of FA/CA papers, Li C from Huazhong Univ Sci and Technol is prominent because she is the first author of all her 5 HCPs. Her research on language learning emotions in the Chinese context is gaining widespread recognition ( Li et al., 2018 , 2019 , 2021 ; Li, 2019 , 2021 ). However, as a newly emerging researcher, most of her HCPs are published in the very recent years and hence accumulate relatively fewer citations (TC = 215). Mondada L from Univ Basel follows closely and single authors her 3 HCPs. Her work is mostly devoted to conversation analysis , multimodality , and social interaction ( Mondada, 2016 , 2018 , 2019 ).

We need to mention the following points regarding the productive authors of HCPs. First, when we calculated the number of HCPs from each author, only the papers published in the journals indexed in the investigated WoS categories were taken in account ( linguistics; language & linguistics ), which came as a compromise to protect the linguistics oriented nature of the HCPs. For example, Brysbaert M from Ghent University claimed a total of 8 HCPs at the time of the data retrieval, of which 6 HCPs were published in WoS category of psychology and more psychologically oriented, hence not included in our study. Besides, all the authors on the author list were treated equally when we calculated the number of HCPs, disregarding the author ordering. That implies that some influential authors may not be able to enter the list as their publications are comparatively fewer. Second, as some authors reported different affiliations at their different career stages, we only provide their most recent affiliation for convenience. Third, it is highly competitive to have one’s work selected as HCPs. The fact that a majority of the HCPs authors do not appear in our productive author list does not diminish their great contributions to this field. The rankings in Table 3 does not necessarily reflect the recognition authors have earned in academia at large.

4.3. Productive countries of HCPs

In total, the 143 HCPs originated from 33 countries. The most productive countries that contributed at least three HCPs are listed in Table 4 . The USA took an overwhelming lead with 59 HCPs, followed distantly by England with 31 HCPs. They also boasted the highest total citations (TC = 15,770; TC = 9,840), manifesting their high productivity and strong influence as traditional powerhouses in linguistics research. In regards to the average citations per HCP, Germany , England and the USA were the top three countries (TC/HCP = 281.67, 281.14, and 267.29, respectively). Although China held the third position with 19 HCPs published, its TC/HCP is the third from the bottom (TC/HCP = 66.84). One of the important reasons is that 13 out of the 19 HCPs contributed by scholars in China are published in the year of 2020 or 2021. The newly published HCPs may need more time to accumulate citations. Besides, 18 out of the 19 HCPs in China are first author and/or corresponding authors, indicating that scholars in China are becoming more independent and gaining more voice in English linguistics research.

Top 18 countries with at least 3 HCPs.

Two points should be noted here as to the productive countries. First, we calculated the HCP contributions from the country level instead of the region level. In other words, HCP contributions from different regions of the same country will be combined in the calculation. For example, HCPs from Scotland were added to the HCPs from England . HCPs from Hong Kong , Macau , and Taiwan are put together with the HCPs from Mainland China . In this way, a clear picture of the HCPs on the country level can be painted. Second, we manually checked the address information of the first author and corresponding author for each HCP. There are some cases where the first author or the corresponding author may report affiliations from more than one country. In this case, every country in their address list will be treated equally in the FA/CA calculation. In other word, a HCP may be classified into more than one country because of the different country backgrounds of the first and/or the corresponding author.

4.4. Top 20 HCPs

The top 20 HCPs with the highest normed citations are listed in decreasing order in Table 5 . The top cited publications can guide us to better understand the development and research topics in recent years.

Top 20 HCPs.

To save space, not full information about the HCPs is given. Some article titles have been abbreviated if they are too lengthy; for the authors, we report the first two authors and use “et al” if there are three authors or more; RC: raw citations; NC: normalized citations

By reading the titles and the abstracts of these top HCPs, we categorized the topics of the 20 HCPs into the following five groups: (i) statistical and analytical methods in (psycho)linguistics such as sentimental analysis, sentence simplification techniques, effect sizes, linear mixed models (#1, 3, 4, 6, 9, 14), (ii) language learning/teaching emotions such enjoyment, anxiety, boredom, stress (#11, 15, 16, 18, 19), (iii) translanguaging or multilinguilism (#5, 13, 20, 17), (iv) language perception (#2, 7, 10), (v) medium of instruction (#8, 12). It is no surprise that 6 out of the top 20 HCPs are about statistical methods in linguistics because language researchers aspire to employ statistics to make their research more scientific. Besides, we noticed that the papers on language teaching/learning emotions on the list are all published in the year of 2020 and 2021, indicating that these emerging topics may deserve more attention in future research. We also noticed two Covid-19 related articles (#16, 19) explored the emotions teachers and students experience during the pandemic, a timely response to the urgent need of the language learning and teaching community.

It is of special interest to note that papers from the journals indexed in multiple JCR categories seem to accumulate more citations. For example, Journal of Memory and Language , American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology , and Computational Linguistics are indexed both in SSCI and SCIE and contribute the top 4 HCPs, manifesting the advantage of these hybrid journals in amassing citations compared to the conventional language journals. Besides, different to findings from Yan et al. (2022) that most of the top HCPs in the field of radiology are reviews in document types, 19 out of the top 20 HCPs are research articles instead of reviews except Macaro et al. (2018) .

4.5. Most frequently explored topics of HCPs

After obtaining the corpus based topic items, we read all the titles and abstracts of the 143 HCPs to further validate their roles as research topics. Table 6 presents the top research topics with the observed frequency of 5 or above. We grouped these topics into five broad categories: bilingual-related, language learning/teaching-related, psycho/pathological/cognitive linguistics-related, methods and tools-related, and others . The observed frequency count for each topic in the abstract corpus were included in the brackets. We found that about 34 of the 143 HCPs are exploring bilingual related issues, the largest share among all the categorized topics, testifying its academic popularity in the examined timespan. Besides, 30 of the 143 HCPs are investigating language learning/teaching-related issues, with topics ranging from learners (e.g., EFL learners, individual difference) to multiple learning variables (e.g., learning strategy, motivation, agency). The findings here will be validated by the analysis of the keywords.

Categorization of the most explored research topics.

N: the number of the HCPs in each topic category; ELF: English as a lingua franca; CLIL: content and language integrated learning; FLE: foreign language enjoyment; FLCA: foreign language classroom anxiety

Several points should be mentioned regarding the topic candidacy. First, for similar topic expressions, we used a cover term and added the frequency counts. For example, multilingualism is a cover term for bilinguals, bilingualism, plurilingualism, and multilingualism . Second, for nouns of singular and plural forms (e.g., emotion and emotions ) or for items with different spellings (e.g., meta analysis and meta analyses ), we combined the frequency counts. Third, we found that some longer items (3 grams and 4 grams) could be subsumed to short ones (2 grams or monogram) without loss of essential meaning (e.g., working memory from working memory capacity ). In this case, the shorter ones were kept for their higher frequency. Fourth, some highly frequent terms were discarded because they were too general to be valuable topics in language research, for example, applied linguistics , language use , second language .

5. Discussion and implications

Based on 143 highly cited papers collected from the WoS categories of linguistics , the present study attempts to present a bird’s eye view of the publication landscape and the most updated research themes reflected from the HCPs in the linguistics field. Specifically, we investigated the important contributors of HCPs in terms of journals, authors and countries. Besides, we spotlighted the research topics by corpus-based analysis of the abstracts and a detailed analysis of the top HCPs. The study has produced several findings that bear important implications.

The first finding is that the HCPs are highly concentrated in a limited journals and countries. In regards to journals, those in the spheres of bilingualism and applied linguistics (e.g., language teaching and learning) are likely to accumulate more citations and hence to produce more HCPs. Journals that focus on bilingualism from a linguistic, psycholinguistic, and neuroscientific perspective are the most frequent outlets of HCPs as evidenced by the top two productive journals of HCPs, Bilingualism Language and Cognition and International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism . This can be explained by the multidisciplinary nature of bilingual-related research and the development of cognitive measurement techniques. The merits of analyzing publication venues of HCPs are two folds. One the one hand, it can point out which sources of high-quality publications in this field can be inquired for readers as most of the significant and cutting-edge achievements are concentrated in these prestigious journals. On the other hand, it also provides essential guidance or channels for authors or contributors to submit their works for higher visibility.

In terms of country distributions, the traditional powerhouses in linguistics research such as the USA and England are undoubtedly leading the HCP publications in both the number and the citations of the HCPs. However, developing countries are also becoming increasing prominent such as China and Iran , which could be traceable in the funding and support of national language policies and development policies as reported in recent studies ( Ping et al., 2009 ; Lei and Liu, 2019 ). Take China as an example. Along with economic development, China has given more impetus to academic outputs with increased investment in scientific research ( Lei and Liao, 2017 ). Therefore, researchers in China are highly motivated to publish papers in high-quality journals to win recognition in international academia and to deal with the publish or perish pressure ( Lee, 2014 ). These factors may explain the rise of China as a new emerging research powerhouse in both natural and social sciences, including English linguistics research.

The second finding is the multilingual trend in linguistics research. The dominant clustering of topics regarding multilingualism can be understood as a timely response to the multilingual research fever ( May, 2014 ). 34 out of the 143 HCPs have such words as bilingualism, bilingual, multilingualism , translanguaging , etc., in their titles, reflecting a strong multilingual tendency of the HCPs. Multilingual-related HCPs mainly involve three aspects: multilingualism from the perspectives of psycholinguistics and cognition (e.g., Luk et al., 2011 ; Leivada et al., 2020 ); multilingual teaching (e.g., Schissel et al., 2018 ; Ortega, 2019 ; Archila et al., 2021 ); language policies related to multilingualism (e.g., Shen and Gao, 2018 ). As a pedagogical process initially used to describe the bilingual classroom practice and also a frequently explored topic in HCPs, translanguaging is developed into an applied linguistics theory since Li’s Translanguaging as a Practical Theory of Language ( Li, 2018 ). The most common collocates of translanguaging in the Abstract corpus are pedagogy/pedagogies, practices, space/spaces . There are two main reasons for this multilingual turn. First, the rapid development of globalization, immigration, and overseas study programs greatly stimulate the use and research of multiple languages in different linguistic contexts. Second, in many non-English countries, courses are delivered through languages (mostly English) besides their mother tongue ( Clark, 2017 ). Students are required to use multiple languages as resources to learn and understand subjects and ideas. The burgeoning body of English Medium Instruction literature in higher education is in line with the rising interest in multilingualism. Due to the innate multidisciplinary nature, it is to be expected that, multilingualism, the topic du jour, is bound to attract more attention in the future.

The third finding is the application of Positive Psychology (PP) in second language acquisition (SLA), that is, the positive trend in linguistic research. In our analysis, 20 out of 143 HCPs have words or phrases such as emotions, enjoyment, boredom, anxiety , and positive psychology in their titles, which might signal a shift of interest in the psychology of language learners and teachers in different linguistic environments. Our study shows Foreign language enjoyment (FLE) is the most frequently explored emotion, followed by foreign language classroom anxiety (FLCA), the learners’ metaphorical left and right feet on their journey to acquiring the foreign language ( Dewaele and MacIntyre, 2016 ). In fact, the topics of PP are not entirely new to SLA. For example, studies of language motivations, affections, and good language learners all provide roots for the emergence of PP in SLA ( Naiman, 1978 ; Gardner, 2010 ). In recent years, both research and teaching applications of PP in SLA are building rapidly, with a diversity of topics already being explored such as positive education and PP interventions. It is to be noted that SLA also feeds back on PP theories and concepts besides drawing inspirations from it, which makes it “an area rich for interdisciplinary cross-fertilization of ideas” ( Macintyre et al., 2019 ).

It should be noted that subjectivity is involved when we decide and categorize the candidate topic items based on the Abstract corpus. However, the frequency and range criteria guarantee that these items are actually more explored in multiple HCPs, thus indicating topic values for further investigation. Some high frequent n-grams are abandoned because they are too general or not meaningful topics. For example, applied linguistics is too broad to be included as most of the HCPs concern issues in this research line instead of theoretical linguistics. By meaningful topics, we mean that the topics can help journal editors and readers quickly locate their interested fields ( Lei and Liu, 2019 ), as the author keywords such as bilingualism , emotions , and individual differences . The examination of the few 3/4-grams and monograms (mostly nouns) revealed that most of them were either not meaningful topics or they could be subsumed in the 2-grams. Besides, there is inevitably some overlapping in the topic categorizations. For example, some topics in the language teaching and learning category are situated and discussed within the context of multilingualism. The merits of topic categorizations are two folds: to better monitor the overlapping between the Abstract corpus-based topic items and the keywords; to roughly delineate the research strands in the HCPs for future research.

It should also be noted that all the results were based on the retrieved HCPs only. The study did not aim to paint a comprehensive and full picture of the whole landscape of linguistic research. Rather, it specifically focused on the most popular literature in a specified timeframe, thus generating the snapshots or trends in linguistic research. One of the important merits of this methodology is that some newly emerging but highly cited researchers can be spotlighted and gain more academic attention because only the metrics of HCPs are considered in calculation. On the contrary, the exclusion of some other highly cited researchers in general such as Rod Ellis and Ken Hyland just indicates that their highly cited publications are not within our investigated timeframe and cannot be interpreted as their diminishing academic influence in the field. Besides, the study does not consider the issue of collaborators or collaborations in calculating the number of HCPs for two reasons. First, although some researchers are regular collaborators such as Li CC and Dewaele JM, their individual contribution can never be undermined. Second, the study also provides additional information about the number of the FA/CA HCPs from each listed author, which may aid readers in locating their interested research.

We acknowledge that our study has some limitations that should be addressed in future research. First, our study focuses on the HCPs extracted from WoS SSCI and A&HCI journals, the alleged most celebrated papers in this field. Future studies may consider including data from other databases such as Scopus to verify the findings of the present study. Second, our Abstract corpus-based method for topic extraction involved human judgement. Although the final list was the result of several rounds of discussions among the authors, it is difficult or even impossible to avoid subjectivity and some worthy topics may be unconsciously missed. Therefore, future research may consider employing automatic algorithms to extract topics. For example, a dependency-based machine learning approach can be used to identify research topics ( Zhu and Lei, 2021 ).

Data availability statement

Author contributions.

SY: conceptualization and methodology. SY and LZ: writing-review and editing and writing-original draft. All authors contributed to the article and approved the submitted version.

This work was supported by Humanities and Social Sciences Youth Fund of China MOE under the grant 20YJC740076 and 18YJC740141.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Publisher’s note

All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

Supplementary material

The Supplementary material for this article can be found online at: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.1052586/full#supplementary-material

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• Sarah E. Henry

Lessons from 69 articles published in top management and applied psychology journals.

Researchers recently reviewed 69 articles focused on the management implications of the Covid-19 pandemic that were published between March 2020 and July 2023 in top journals in management and applied psychology. The review highlights the numerous ways in which employees, teams, leaders, organizations, and societies were impacted and offers lessons for managing through future pandemics or other events of mass disruption.

The recent pandemic disrupted life as we know it, including for employees and organizations around the world. To understand such changes, we recently reviewed 69 articles focused on the management implications of the Covid-19 pandemic. These papers were published between March 2020 and July 2023 in top journals in management and applied psychology.

• Mark C. Bolino is the David L. Boren Professor and the Michael F. Price Chair in International Business at the University of Oklahoma’s Price College of Business. His research focuses on understanding how an organization can inspire its employees to go the extra mile without compromising their personal well-being.
• JW Jacob M. Whitney is a doctoral candidate in management at the University of Oklahoma’s Price College of Business and an incoming assistant professor at Kennesaw State University. His research interests include leadership, teams, and organizational citizenship behavior.
• SH Sarah E. Henry is a doctoral candidate in management at the University of Oklahoma’s Price College of Business and an incoming assistant professor at the University of South Florida. Her research interests include organizational citizenship behaviors, workplace interpersonal dynamics, and international management.

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