Preface
The idea for this book emerged in 1994. I attended the AAAL annual conference
in Baltimore and after that I drove to Barnegat Light (NJ) to visit Richard D.
(Dick) Lambert and his wife Sarah Moore. Dick is an emeritus professor of
sociology at the University of Pennsylvania and the former director of the
National Foreign Language Centre (NFLC) in Washington. There was a strong
link both academically and socially between the NFLC and the Department of
Applied Linguistics in Nijmegen I was part of at the time. Dick cooperated
closely on language policy issues with the head of our department, Theo van Els.
I visited the NFLC regularly and had inspiring discussions on the state of
foreign language education with sharp minds like Dick’s, but also Dick
Brecht and the late Ron Walton. After their retirement from the center I
continued to visit Dick and Sarah when possible and I enjoyed Dick’s clear
views on thefield from his perspective as a sociologist. It was during the visit
in 1994 that he suggested I write a book on the sociology of AL that would
contribute to the establishment of AL as a discipline. Dick always stressed
the importance of the socio-political embedding of a discipline in the larger
context. I am indebted to him and Theo van Els for all those years of
inspiration and support. Therefore I dedicate this book to them.
Most of this book was written in the early hours of the day in Apartment
1 3775, 21st Street in San Francisco in February and March 2014. We had a
sabbatical for the semester and decided to spend a few months with my wife
Marjolijn’s daughter Audrey, her husband Scott and their little son Benji. I
am grateful for their support and for keeping me connected with the real
world of a baby-dominated family, for the wine and food tours, and for the
NBA games. Writing this book was a fascinating experience, but watching a
12-week-old child grow made me aware that there are more important things
in life than the history of Applied Linguistics.
I am grateful for the support I got from the university library in Groningen.
Peter van Laarhoven helped me discover the world of advanced biblio-
metrics and Michiel Thomas provided me with the data on journal impact.
Anne-Wil Harzing helped me with the analyses using her Publish or Perish
program and commented on the chapter on the citation game. Hanneke Loerts
helped me with some of the statistical analyses and with not informing me