Charting the Development of Applied Linguistics as a Discipline: A Scientometric Study of Published Literature

چکیده:

This thesis offers a comprehensive bibliometric and scientometric analysis of research in Applied
Linguistics. This work involves discussing trends in publications, use of citations, themes, and prolific
entities (e.g., authors, documents, countries, and references). A primary purpose is to reveal the major
trends in research focus, the intellectual structure, and significant works in the area. The analysis is
based on data from Scopus and Web of Science (JCR). The study encompasses the analysis of 1,279
journals and over 557,000 documents. The results indicate that Applied Linguistics has experienced
rapid growth over the last few decades and has become increasingly interdisciplinary, particularly in
areas such as discourse analysis, multilingualism, and technology-based language education. The study
also reveals emerging and declining topics in focus, and among them, bilingualism, translanguaging,
and AI-driven linguistics are emerging, while traditional linguistic subfields like translation studies are
declining. Moreover, some biases are apparent in the citation patterns. For example, English language
dominance, self-citation, or journal prestige are all factors that contribute to the visibility of scholarship.
As for the future work, this study presents themes to address in the following scholarly endeavors, such
as examining journal turnover and applying machine learning approaches to bibliometric analysis in
order to gain a better understanding of the way that Applied Linguistics is developing in the digital and
global academic environment.
Keywords: Applied Linguistics, Scientometrics, Research Trends, Literature Analysis, Bibliometrics