Possible pasts and futures of Australian applied linguistics

Abstract Surveying the papers in this special issue on Australian applied linguistics, this afterword suggests various ways in which this overview might be expanded. Not only are there inevitable gaps in the coverage of these papers, but the institutional focus — the journal and conference — constructs applied linguistics as an academic, institutional endeavour rather than as everyday activities of educators and activists, misses the wider implications of Australian outreach, and avoids further discussion of the relations between linguistics, sociolinguistics, and applied linguistics. This overview afterword concludes by pointing to the directions in which a new generation of scholars are taking the field, focusing on critical approaches to applied linguistics and the often-prejudicial contexts of multilingual interaction.