ABSTRACT
The dynamism of applied linguistics that we’ve described throughout the book makes it difficult to resist casting ahead to the key issues that will shape and populate future maps of the field. So in this final chapter we take stock and identify some of the key features of contemporary applied linguistics as they are affecting research and practice in all its diverse arenas, all around the globe, today. We look at these developments with a critical eye, and try to estimate how they’re likely to pan out in the short and medium terms. Inevitably, our own opinions figure more explicitly in this chapter than in the rest of the book (although of course no textbook provides a neutral, objective account of its field).
