As a genuine ‘language-centered problem-solving enterprise’ (Grabe, 2010: 34), applied linguistics has been at the busy intersection between various allied fields of general linguistics, such as psychology, education, sociology, public policy, information technology and others. Indeed, many scholars feel that linguistics represents only one among the many disciplines contributing to applied linguistics, rather than its core (see Cook, 2009). The call for papers to the 2011 AILA conference goes even further and lists 28 areas in applied linguistics (Schmitt & Celce-Murcia, 2010). It is therefore not surprising that this is a field that is notoriously difficult to define – almost ‘elusive of definition’ (Widdowson, 2005: 12) – embracing, inter alia, neuro-linguistic, psycholinguistic and sociolinguistic issues in the ‘real world’, language education and policy, and second language acquisition (SLA), foreign language (FL) teaching and learning. Thus, it does not represent one scholarly domain but rather a multi-, interand transdisciplinary science; what goes under the name of applied linguistics is acknowledged to be highly diverse (Hall et al., 2011; Kaplan, 2010; Widdowson, 2005). The diversity of research issues addressed in applied linguistics, the steady growth of the field, the variety of (alternative) methods and procedures, the contextual diversity of acquisition/learning processes, the considerable increase in new statistical analyses, and the rate at which the field has been changing require those involved in this discipline to constantly reinvent themselves, to have a wide and thorough knowledge of new methods of data collection and analysis, and to make the transition from old-school to new-school approaches to language development. Furthermore, the greater attention currently being paid to this field has multiplied the number of points of view from which it can be analyzed.

To the extent that this collection, as its title implies, offers a snapshot of future implications for applied linguistics, our intention is to contribute to the progress and academic development of this broad discipline.