ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces the concept of impact and considers (i) how it has been perceived across government and the higher education sector, and (ii) what it means to stakeholders with an interest in the impact agenda. The chapter summarises how impact is characterised from a Research Excellence Framework perspective, before going on to discuss issues arising from attempts to measure impact. We argue that linguistics is well-placed to address the requirements of the impact agenda, because of its inherent focus on application as well as theory. We also argue that while we are in favour of applied research, this should not be at the expense of purely theoretically focused research.
