2.11 Conclusion
In this project 106 applied linguists have provided information on a number
of issues. The sample is probably not representative for the current AL
population. In the sample there are many North Americans, a few British,
and one or two representatives from various countries. Whole parts of the
world are not represented. This may or may not be a problem. The fact is
that, like in most other disciplines, the most important publications are
written in English and for many of the informants, it is the only language
they know.
There is a gender bias in that more men were invited as informants. In
addition, men tend to list more men as leaders or authors of important
publications than women, but that also holds for the female informants,
though to a somewhat lower degree.
AL is largely a white discipline, and there is a remarkable absence of Afro-
Americans in thefield. There is a growing number of researchers with an Asian
background who may become the leaders of the future.
The group of informants is also not representative in terms of age,
because informants have been selected who have been active in thefield
during most of the period covered.
The informants show a wide range of educational backgrounds and the
field is clearly not dominated by representatives from one or two programs
or universities. A majority of the informants came to AL through teaching
English as a Second Language (ESL) in the United States or Britain or English
as a Foreign Language (EFL) in many countries in the world. Often the
teaching experience led to an awareness of the need for a theoretical foun-
dation of that teaching. This earlier experience with teaching ESL continues
to have an impact on the populations studied in a considerable part of the
research, where the focus on English is dominant.
The informants were also asked about who had influenced them and
whom they had influenced. The names mentioned for the former question
appeared to coincide largely with the leaders in thefield they were asked to
name.“Influence on”appeared to be a difficult question. Informants men-
tion their graduate students or mutual influences with colleagues. No clear
connection between“influenced by”and“influence on”could be estab-
lished. Not all“influences on”were confirmed by those mentioned. This
latter point makes it clear that the interviews and questionnaires did not
produce all the information I was looking for. What I had in mind were
lines of research over time traced through the links between generations of
researchers.
The data gathered were to a certain extent saturated in the sense that
additional interviews and questionnaire replies added less and less new
information, but rather confirmed what other people had said before. So in
that sense, for the questions asked this sample was sufficient, but of course
the representativeness problem remains.
The informants 23