Mapping Iran’s Linguistic Landscape: A Deep Dive into “Applied Linguistics” Research

Abstract

This study addresses the Iranian articles that have used the term “applied linguistics” in their titles, abstracts, or keywords and are available in major databases for this discipline (Scopus and Web of Science). The time frame for this search was since the first article published in this field which is 2005. The data was gathered on 17th of July 2024 and after removing the duplicates in both databases the records were 339 in total (131 for WoS and 208 for Scopus), which 328 of them were written in English, 8 of them in Persian, and 3 of them in Spanish. Jalilifar A. had the highest number of published articles with 20 articles followed by Shirvan M.E. (6) and Atai M.R. (6). Most published organizations in the datasets were Islamic Azad University (80) followed by Shahid Chamran University (35), and University of Tehran (32). The scientific production for applied linguistics research in Iran has had a steady rise since 2005. The peak year for the published documents is 2020 with 43 articles totally. Analyzing the author-indexed keywords, “Applied Linguistics” had the highest frequency among the documents of the datasets with 70 followed by “Academic Writing” with 15 and “Research Article” with 14 times occurring in the articles of the datasets. This analysis further indicated the patterns, trends, and changes in research emphases over time to construct an integrated portrait of the progression of investigation in Applied Linguistics in Iran.