The future of ESP studies: building on success, exploring new paths, avoiding pitfalls

In my paper I first give a synopsis of the state of the art in ESP, briefly outlining the ways in which it has developed and the role it plays today in academia and in foreign language teaching. I then suggest some of the ways in which ESP studies might evolve in the future, focusing in particular on the following: 1) the need for deeper engagement with non-linguistic fields of knowledge (medicine, law, engineering, economics etc.) and for more dialogue with practitioners operating in such fields; 2) the importance of studying and teaching popularized forms of specialized discourse; 3) exploring (and exploiting) further the phenomenon of multimodality in relation to ESP studies; 4) the potential of Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL / EMILE) as a tool for research and for language teaching methodology in the field of ESP; 5) the need to ensure that future ESP studies focus on what is genuinely innovative, relevant, and interesting to readers and practitioners. The main purpose of this paper is to give a succinct (and hence non-exhaustive) overview of ESP studies past, present and future. It is aimed in particular at scholars who may be approaching ESP for the first time or whose knowledge of ESP is relatively limited. At the end of the bibliographical references I provide an Appendix with a list of journals devoted to research in ESP and related areas.