Topical trends and research frontiers of applied linguistics research articles with different methodological orientations: A bibliometric-synthetic review

The expanding scope of research trends and methodological advancements, along with the dissemination of voluminous publications in different domains and sub-domains of applied linguistics, has necessitated a call for a scientometrics movement in applied linguistics. This review examined research trends in applied linguistics articles as reflected in topical issues (i.e., keyword co-occurrence analysis). We utilized keyword analysis to depict research trends and frontiers in light of methodological orientations (i.e., quantitative, qualitative, mixed methods research, and secondary studies). The dataset includes 3824 applied linguistics articles published in 18 top-tier journals from 2009 to 2018 that were manually identified and selected based on synthetic techniques. We used keyword analysis (co-word analysis) using VOSviewer software to analyze and visualize the various topics covered by articles in each methodological orientation (qualitative, quantitative, mixed methods, review, non-empirical). We identified the most represented research topics and frontiers in quantitative, qualitative, mixed methods, and secondary studies. Concerning the research frontiers, the results revealed that quantitative researchers targeted language testing and assessment, qualitative researchers addressed discourse and interaction analysis, MMR researchers concentrated on SLA, and secondary studies focused on SLA-related issues such as L2 feedback. As for topics, both quantitative and secondary studies targeted SLA-related issues and qualitative and mixed-methods research mainly addressed academic writing. Implications for employing scientometrics techniques in different research paradigms are discussed.