Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 November 2008
One of the stated objectives of this series, the Annual Review of Applied Linguistics (ARAL), from its earliest apperance, has been to strive toward a gradual approximation of a functional definition for applied linguistics. Despite the fact that applied linguistics has existed as a field for more than thirty years, despite the fact that there are a few publications available which attempt to define the field (Kaplan 1980, Grabe and Kaplana in press, Bright, et al. in press), and despite the fact that there are in the world a number of universities offering graduate study in applied linguistics and rewarding such study with credentials and degrees carrying the specific desgination applied linguistics, the field remains constrained by the absence of a clear definition of its parameters and by the absence of a clear theoretical framework.