Tracing the development of English for Specific Purposes over four decades (1980–2019): A bibliometric analysis

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.