Curriculum Development Activism (CDA): Moving Forward with Spanish for the Professions and Specific Purposes (SPSP)

Status Review of Non-English Language for the Professions and Specific Purposes (NE-LPSP)

1. Research and Development Context for NE-LPSP and SPSP

The steadily gathering momentum of NE-LPSP (Doyle 2013, 2017), identified alternately as World Languages for Specific Purposes (WLSP, King de Ramírez and Lafford 2018), and of SPSP, within the national foreign language curricula of the US, has been well chronicled for nearly four decades in the work of a substantial number of scholars, among them Grosse (1982, 1985, 1991), Grosse and Voght (1990), Cere (1987), Doyle (1987, 1992), Melton (1994), Branan (1998), Fryer and Guntermann (1998), Schorr (2000), and Voght (2000). This ongoing development of NE-LPSP (or WLSP) and SPSP, preceded by unconnected pioneering work in English for Specific Purposes (e.g., Halliday et al. 1964), as the two curricular areas (English vs. other languages) were busy being developed independently from one another, is also confirmed by the many publications in groundbreaking US journals, such as the nineteen issues of Global Business Languages at Purdue University, which published 233 scholarly editors’ introductions, articles, essays, case studies and reviews from 1996–2014 (goo.gl/PHq6Bb), and sixteen volumes of the Journal of Languages for International Business, which published 180 scholarly contributions from 1984–2006 at Thunderbird, the American Graduate School of International Management (goo.gl/VWf6ss) and (goo.gl/MV57Gi). As Doyle has indicated (2017), more recent research of scholars such as Grosse (2009), Grosse and Voght (2012), Domcekova (2010), Doyle (2010, 2012a and 2012b, 2013b, 2014b, 2018), Doyle, Pujol and Godev (2017), Dulfano (2011, 2014), Fryer (2012), Long (2010, 2014, 2017), Long and Uzcinski (2012), King de Ramírez and Lafford (2013), Lafford (2017), Sánchez-López (2010, 2012, 2013a, 2013b, 2014b, 2017b, 2019), Pérez (2017), José (2014), Long (2013), and Hertel and Dings (2014, 2017), has continued to chronicle and contribute to ongoing developments in NE-LPSP and SPSP. In recent years, we have also seen a steady increase in the number of journal special issues and edited volumes and proceedings dedicated to LPSP and SPSP, such as: Hispania (the 2010 issue “Special Section: Curricular Changes for Spanish and Portuguese in a New Era,” with at least five contributions related to SPSP); the twelve contributions in The Modern Language Journal (2012, ed. Lafford); the four post-2016 contributions (out of a total of 20 contributions included) in the special issue 50 Years of Foreign Language Annals: A Retrospective (section titled “Content-infused Learning: Making Connections to Other Disciplines and the Professions”); the eleven contributions in Cuadernos de ALDEEU (2014, eds. Doyle and Gala); and the 31 contributions in the three refereed volume proceedings of the International Symposium on Languages for Specific Purposes (Scholarship and Teaching on Languages for Specific Purposes 2013, ed. Sánchez-López; Language for Specific Purposes: Trends in Curriculum Development 2017 , editor Long; and Transferable Skills Acquired Through World Languages for Specific Purposes: Preparing Students and Instructors for the 21st Century Workplace 2018, editors King de Ramírez and Lafford). In 1998, Fryer and Guntermann led the way by coediting the groundbreaking volume Spanish and Portuguese for Business and the Professions, sponsored by the AATSP, which contained 26 contributions (two prefaces and 24 chapters). The impressive numbers of scholarly publications, at least 490 by this count, in mainly NE-LPSP and SPSP, build on the more than 200 publications referenced by Grosse and Voght in their pioneering 1991 study, “The Evolution of Languages for Specific Purposes in the United States.” These numbers do not factor in the even larger number of scholarly publications in the LPSP sub-categories of Translation Studies and Interpreting Studies, which have matured worldwide in recent decades into prominent freestanding fields of curriculum development and scholarly inquiry. In its recently published Centenary Issue (2017), Hispania once again features numerous essays on SPSP as the American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese contemplates what the future may hold for the study of Spanish and Portuguese in the United States. As Nuessel writes in his Guest Editor Column to the Centenary...