“who are the influential leaders in the variousfields or subfields of
applied linguistics”?Still, most informants mentioned people who they see as leaders. Not
everyone indicated what his or her criteria were for this. Peter Robinson
feels that“apart from being very good at explaining what they write about,
these people are also very productive, and constructive”. The constructive
attitude is also foregrounded by Merrill Swain, for whom it is hard to sepa-
rate the academic from the person. Bluntly carrying out a personal agenda
and offending people deeply are not what characterizes leaders for her, even
when they are effective in getting the research done. Elaine Tarone defines
them as“people who question authority”, Lourdes Ortega defines leaders as
people who are willing to change their views, who can read the Zeitgeist and
are willing to leave certitudes of an established position behind;“people who
have at least two momentums in their career”. Heidi Byrnes agrees:
Leaders are people who are willing and able to change position if
needed. You need legitimacy to change your position, it is not simple
flip-flopping, but there may be changes at different levels that call for a
re-analysis of the present situation.Andrew Cohen uses the term“shakers”to define leaders; people who
move things forward. According to Diane Larsen-Freeman, leaders are
characterized by their academic integrity, sense of social justice and breadth
of perspective. Zoltán Dörnyei says of leaders:“They all pushed thefield
forward by introducing contemporary theories from related disciplines in
the social sciences as well as by setting international standards.”For John
Schumann leaders are“thinkers, researchers and officers”.
While academic standing is an agreed upon characteristic, there is less
agreement on whether such leaders should also be active as organizers of
conferences, officers in professional organizations, be connected to relevant
governmental organizations and the like. For Merrill Swain,“real leaders
bring academic weight but also a contribution to the AL community in
terms of being active in organizing conferences, editorships of books and
journals and other activities”. For Richard Young, officers in large profes-
sional organizations like AAAL (American Association of Applied Linguis-
tics) are leaders, in particular the presidents, but there is a bias: “The
problem with this method is that they are (or were) all North American.”
William Grabe does not agree that the AAAL presidents are by definition
leaders; he comments that some of the presidents are not really part of the
community, since they never come to AAAL’s annual conferences.“Nominating
committees don’t seem to take into account who are regular attendants of
the conference. It is not enough to be an outstanding academic or respected
colleague. Some continued commitment to thefield and the community
should weigh similarly.”With respect to the AAAL leadership, John Schumann
The leaders 37