main source. Chapter 4 discusses the leaders in ourfield as listed by the
informants. What the main characteristics of a leader are, is not entirely
clear and the question in the questionnaire was formulated fairly broadly.
Chapter 5 is on the most important articles and books from this period. The
informants were asked to list the 5–10 most important articles or chapters
and books. The aim of this chapter was tofind out to what extent there is a
set of publications that the community of applied linguists consider to be
crucial for the development of thefield. Is there a canon of publications
every applied linguist should know? Chapters 6 and 7 are probably the most
historical ones, focusing on the main trends the informants noticed over the
last 30 years and how these had an impact on thefield. Chapter 8 deals with
the dynamic turn. Chapter 9 is different from the other chapters in that it is
not based on the informants’views, but on their publications. It provides data
on citations and impact factors of individuals and journals. Chapter 10 reports
on the question of whether AL research has led to an improvement of lan-
guage learning and teaching. I realize that this issue seems to narrow the defi-
nition of AL down to language teaching, but language teaching continues to
be the mainfield of application. Chapter 11 summarizes this book with some
concluding comments. Although there will be cross-referencing between the
chapters, each chapter can be read separately.
As mentioned, this book is largely based on interview data and responses to
my questionnaire. In order to stick to the original phrasing as closely as
possible, I used direct quotes from the spoken and written data. All quotes
are marked with quotation marks (“...”). All quotes have been verified with
the informant who produced it, but the context in which they are used is of
course mine.
Some chapters, in particular the ones on defining AL, trends and impact
on teaching, are patchworks of literal citations. I have chosen this“con-
ceptual pointillism”in order to let individual informants’views stand out as
much as possible. Their views are the dots or points that from a distance
form the picture, but what the picture is, depends on the reader’sperceptions.
In each chapter there is a concluding paragraph that presents my picture, but
these are not in-depth analyses of the views expressed. It is up to the reader
to do that for herself.
One of the reviewers of this book wrote:
One drawback of this approach is that the data is reported but not ana-
lysed and the reader is required to do almost ALL the thinking...Isn’t
there the slight danger that at best, this reads a little like“extracts from
things my friends said about AL in their letters to me”and at worst
simply read like an unfinished draft?This may be true and the risk is there, but this is a choice I have made con-
sciously because I feel I do not have the authority to drawfinal conclusions that
go beyond what my informants, and indeed many of them are friends, told me.
Introduction 5