In around the last two decades, applied linguistics has changed dramatically in a way that it encompasses more social aspects and dimensions. Some new topics have been introduced. One of them is linguistic imperialism. Applied linguistics is becoming political. Right now, it is believed that teaching English is an innocent activity. We know that when we are teaching English in a sense you are teaching the language of another culture, by implication, we are, in a sense, giving some kind of advantage to speakers of that culture. So it is not innocent and we believe that any institute involved in language teaching, is by nature a political institute. Another issue is related to the question of native speaker. We no longer believe that native speakers are best teachers. And contrary to the common belief, we believe that they do not make good teachers. Because we believe that non-native teachers are better because they have experience, they know learning strategies. And even sometimes, it is believed that language teaching is too important and too serious to be left to native speakers. Another development in applied linguistics is related to critical approaches. Well, we believe that education is not a neutral activity, education is related to power and it is designed in a way that certain social classes benefit more from education compared to others. Usually educational systems are designed by middle classes so it means that automatically working classes are left out. Now critical pedagogy wants to make the political nature of applied linguistics clear. And to summarize, we can say that applied linguistics has become socially more sophisticated and politically more involved. So nowadays, we have more social development and involvement in applied linguistics.
