{"title":"Tracing the development of English for Specific Purposes over four decades (1980–2019): A bibliometric analysis","authors":"Ruiying Yang , Liang Xu , John M. Swales","doi":"10.1016/j.esp.2023.04.004","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>As the most important journal for ESP research, <em>The ESP Journal/English for Specific Purposes</em> (<em>ESPJ</em>) is now more than 40 years old, having been launched in 1980. With source data from 705 articles published between 1980 and 2019 in <em>ESPJ</em>, we set out to trace the development of the journal in terms of the most frequently explored topics, the most highly cited <em>ESPJ</em> articles and the references of <em>ESPJ</em> articles, plus the changes in contributors with regard to countries/regions. The topic analyses highlight two broad trends in <em>ESPJ</em> over four decades. The first trend is the significantly increased focus on the analyses of target language varieties, which has grown in both research scope and depth. The second trend appears to be a shift from the coverage of a wide range of teaching issues in the 1980s to the primacy of writing and literacy since the 2000s. Given that the ability to use the target language variety to communicate effectively in writing is a main objective for the majority of ESP learners, <em>ESPJ</em> has been playing a leading role in the field by focusing more on issues central to this aspect of ESP teaching.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":47809,"journal":{"name":"English for Specific Purposes","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.2000,"publicationDate":"2023-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"1","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"English for Specific Purposes","FirstCategoryId":"98","ListUrlMain":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0889490623000339","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"LINGUISTICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 1
Abstract
As the most important journal for ESP research, The ESP Journal/English for Specific Purposes (ESPJ) is now more than 40 years old, having been launched in 1980. With source data from 705 articles published between 1980 and 2019 in ESPJ, we set out to trace the development of the journal in terms of the most frequently explored topics, the most highly cited ESPJ articles and the references of ESPJ articles, plus the changes in contributors with regard to countries/regions. The topic analyses highlight two broad trends in ESPJ over four decades. The first trend is the significantly increased focus on the analyses of target language varieties, which has grown in both research scope and depth. The second trend appears to be a shift from the coverage of a wide range of teaching issues in the 1980s to the primacy of writing and literacy since the 2000s. Given that the ability to use the target language variety to communicate effectively in writing is a main objective for the majority of ESP learners, ESPJ has been playing a leading role in the field by focusing more on issues central to this aspect of ESP teaching.
期刊介绍:
English For Specific Purposes is an international peer-reviewed journal that welcomes submissions from across the world. Authors are encouraged to submit articles and research/discussion notes on topics relevant to the teaching and learning of discourse for specific communities: academic, occupational, or otherwise specialized. Topics such as the following may be treated from the perspective of English for specific purposes: second language acquisition in specialized contexts, needs assessment, curriculum development and evaluation, materials preparation, discourse analysis, descriptions of specialized varieties of English.