Charting the path of sustainability discourse research: A systematic review of applied linguistic studies

This paper aims to understand the state-of-the-art of research on sustainability discourse in applied linguistics. The paper adopts a systematic two-stage review approach. In the first stage, 114 articles were classified into environment, social, and governance (ESG) according to the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) categories. The second stage involves annotating the dataset using an open-coding system based on data types explored in the studies, methodologies used, findings, and implications. The findings lead to a comprehensive review of diachronic changes in the investigation of sustainability topics, data types, sampling, frameworks, analytical tools, findings, and implications to ultimately set the grounds for future research on sustainability discourse in applied linguistics and related disciplines—for example, communication studies.