Revisiting Applied Linguistics and Language Education in the Digital Era: Scope and Future Directions

Abstract

In response to linguistic development, applied linguistics has become a specialized field capturing linguists' attention. It addresses real-world language problems, especially in education. With its applied concept, it has broadened its mission, targets, and scope, positioning itself as an interdisciplinary field between linguistics and education, exploring critical issues in language use. Simultaneously, technological advances have significantly influenced the landscape of applied linguistics. An extensive survey of the current literature in the field shows some topics of interest, such as technology-enhanced language learning, computational linguistics, and technology-assisted language assessment, having expanded the paradigms of applied linguistics. This chapter situates applied linguistics as influenced by linguistics, education, psychology, and sociology, presenting the recent expansion of the scope of applied linguistics, and discussing its future direction