Intercultural communicative competence in ESP research: A Scientometric Mapping of global trends, theoretical clusters, and pedagogical gaps (2003–2023)
Jun 2026· Training Language and Culture· 0 citations
Abstract
As professional communication becomes increasingly globalised, systematic understanding of the intersection between intercultural communicative competence (ICC) and English for Specific Purposes (ESP) remains limited. This study maps ICC-ESP research from 2003 to 2023 in order to identify publication trends, theoretical orientations, and pedagogical gaps. Using co-citation analysis, keyword co-occurrence mapping, and burst detection with VOSviewer and Bibliometrix, the study analysed 387 peer-reviewed articles indexed in Scopus and Web of Science. The findings indicate three predominant thematic clusters: ICC in business and medical settings (45%), theoretical adaptations of the Byram framework (28%), and technology-mediated virtual exchange (18%). The results show a highly skewed distribution across domains: Business and Medical ESP account for 76% of the corpus, whereas Engineering, Legal, and Agricultural ESP remain under-represented. The corpus also shows a marked geographical imbalance, with a large majority of publications produced in high-income countries and limited representation from the Global South. The study further identifies a persistent theory-practice gap, reflected in the limited availability of validated assessment instruments and longitudinal pedagogical interventions. The study offers a systematic account of the domain coverage and geographical distribution of ICC-ESP research and examines the shift from deficit-oriented framings towards translanguaging and postcolonial approaches. It also considers implications for pedagogical practice in under-researched professional domains.
This study presents a bibliometric and thematic analysis of intercultural intelligence research in digitally mediated contexts. Using a dataset of 92 journal articles indexed in the Web of Science Core Collection between 2006 and April 2026, the study maps the intellectual structure, collaboration patterns, and thematic evolution of the field. Data were analyzed using the Bibliometrix R package (version 5.3.0) and Biblioshiny through performance analysis, science mapping, co-citation analysis, collaboration networks, and thematic mapping techniques. The findings indicate that research output has expanded considerably since the mid-2010s, reflecting the growing importance of intercultural competencies in digitally connected environments. The intellectual structure of the field remains strongly anchored in cultural intelligence theory while increasingly incorporating themes related to communication, trust, global virtual teams, leadership, and digitally mediated collaboration. Thematic evolution analyses reveal a gradual shift from traditional cultural intelligence constructs toward broader concerns associated with virtual interaction, digitally mediated collaboration, and emerging AI-supported communication environments. The results also demonstrate a highly collaborative and internationally connected research landscape, although notable geographical imbalances remain. By providing a systematic overview of the field, this study contributes to a deeper understanding of how intercultural intelligence scholarship is evolving in response to digital transformation and offers directions for future interdisciplinary research.
Aylin Akinlar· Journal of Intelligence· 0 citations
This article critically examines the integration of digital resources (DR) in university foreign language teaching through a meta-aggregative systematic review of 60 peer-reviewed studies published between 2001 and 2025. Adopting a complex, situated, and posthuman epistemological perspective, the study combines a meta-aggregative synthesis conducted in accordance with the Joanna Briggs Institute guidelines with a complementary bibliometric analysis of 140 references. Seven thematic categories were operationalised, and the analytical procedures included frequency analysis, co-occurrence mapping, evolutionary analysis across 5-year periods, and Pearson’s chi-square test. The findings reveal the predominance of instrumental and technocratic orientations in the adoption of DR, characterised by limited pedagogical grounding and the increasing reduction of teaching agency to performance indicators, data-driven processes, and algorithmic governance. Although frameworks such as Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge and the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology provide operational value, they do not fully account for the contextual, relational, and subjective complexity of teaching practices. Critical and posthuman perspectives have gained visibility but remain secondary within the field. The analysis also identifies a significant geographical bias towards the Global North, restricting the development of situated and context-sensitive knowledge. In response, the article proposes reconceptualising DR as semiotic and techno-cultural environments that actively configure knowledge practices, professional identities, pedagogical decisions, and educational relationships. The complete list of the 60 studies constituting the analytical corpus is provided in Appendix A.
Fabián-David Güiza-Pinzón, Jorge Andrés Sarmiento Rojas, Pablo Alexander Munévar García· Research in Learning Technol...· 0 citations
This study mapped the global landscape of pragmatics and speech act research through a bibliometric approach. A corpus of 1,346 Scopus-indexed articles and reviews published between 2015 and 2025 was analyzed using the bibliometrix package in R and Biblioshiny, examining publication trends, citation patterns, and network structures including co-authorship, co-citation, and keyword co-occurrence. The findings revealed a sustained growth in research output (annual growth rate: 10.1%), sustained by a small set of core journals, most prominently the Journal of Pragmatics, and a group of highly prolific authors distributed across institutions in Europe, East Asia, and the Middle East. Theoretically, the field remained anchored in foundational constructs derived from speech act theory, politeness, and interlanguage pragmatics, while emerging areas such as digital discourse, corpus-based approaches, and computational applications had gained increasing visibility. Co-citation analysis identified Austin (1962), Searle (1979), and Brown and Levinson (1987) as the most consistently cited intellectual anchors. The co-word network revealed a conceptual structure centered on speech acts and pragmatics, with interconnected clusters related to politeness and interactional norms, specific speech-act types such as requests and apologies, and emerging computational or data-driven approaches. Taken together, the results sketched a field that had grown substantially over the decade, consolidated around a recognizable set of theoretical anchors, and opened up toward new methods, media, and cross-linguistic contexts.
Zulfikri Zulfikri· Datokarama English Education...· 0 citations
This study addresses the challenge of cultivating globally competent vocational talent by proposing and validating a Collaborative Cultivation Model (CCM) that integrates Ideological and Political Education in the Curriculum (IPEC) with Intercultural Communication Competence (ICC). Using the “Practical Foreign Trade English” course as a representative case study, this research employs a mixed-methods approach combining bibliometric analysis of 636 publications (2010-2024) from CNKI and Web of Science databases with a quasi-experimental pedagogical study involving 120 vocational students. The bibliometric analysis, conducted using CiteSpace, maps the intellectual structure and evolutionary trends of the field, identifying task-driven learning, situational simulations, and case analysis as the most effective instructional methods. The pedagogical experiment demonstrates the CCM's significant efficacy: the experimental group showed a 35% improvement in ICC scores, substantially and statistically significantly higher than the control group's 8% improvement (p < 0.001). Furthermore, 81.25% of experimental group students reported increased confidence in cross-cultural interactions. These findings confirm that a synergistic approach, which leverages IPEC to foster cultural confidence and applies ICC to practical, value-driven scenarios, provides a robust and replicable framework for reforming vocational education and cultivating talent equipped for the demands of a globalized economy.
Yuying Hou, Yanxia Ma, Kong Guo et al.· 2026 International Conferenc...· 0 citations
Abstract This paper reports the findings of a bibliometric study examining how scholarly literature has approached the relationship between the informal economy and competencies – two themes that, while individually well-researched, have rarely been studied together in a systematic way. Working with 1,586 unique publications retrieved from Web of Science (WoS) and Scopus, we analysed publication trends, collaboration networks, and thematic structures spanning the period from 1975 to early 2025. The data reveal that research output in this area grew slowly for decades before accelerating sharply after 2001, with a particularly pronounced increase following 2020, a shift we attribute, at least partly, to the disruptions of the COVID-19 pandemic, the expansion of digital tools, and the growing emphasis on sustainability in international policy. European and Asian institutions account for the largest share of publications, though African and South Asian contributors are becoming increasingly visible. Thematic mapping identifies core research clusters centred on labour markets, education and training, gender issues, governance, and digital transitions. Despite the increasing visibility of skills-related topics, the explicit connection between competencies and informal economic activities remains underexplored. This gap matters, as without more integrated analytical frameworks, it is difficult to understand how skills shape participation in informal work or facilitate transitions to formal employment, particularly in economies undergoing rapid and uneven socioeconomic change.
Maria-Bianca Bolboașă, Marina-Diana Agafiței, Zouhair Ennaoumi· Proceedings of the Internati...· 0 citations
Since the end of the Cold War, Joseph S. Nye’s concept of soft power has become a central analytical framework for understanding national attraction and non-coercive influence in international relations. Despite the rapid expansion of both theoretical and empirical research, the field still lacks systematic bibliometric evidence concerning its knowledge structure, thematic evolution, and patterns of scholarly collaboration. To address this gap, this study constructs a comprehensive bibliometric map of global soft power research based on 2,772 English-language social science articles indexed in the Scopus database from 1991 to 2025. Using VOSviewer and RStudio (Biblioshiny), the analysis examines publication trends, citation structures, country collaboration networks, author co-citation relationships, keyword co-occurrence patterns, and thematic evolution pathways. The findings indicate that soft power research experienced steady growth after 2005, followed by a pronounced acceleration after 2015. While the United States, China, and the United Kingdom remain the principal research hubs, Australia emerges as an important cross-regional bridge, suggesting a shift toward a more multi-center structure of knowledge production. Keyword co-occurrence and thematic evolution further reveal a transition from early concept-oriented debates to a more diversified and policy-focused research agenda. In addition, soft power is increasingly conceptualized as an observable and comparable form of international influence, with growing attention to practical domains such as higher education cooperation, sports diplomacy, digital diplomacy, vaccine diplomacy, and the Belt and Road Initiative. Overall, this study systematically maps the intellectual structure and emerging frontiers of global soft power research, highlighting the rise of multipolar soft power and a shift toward policy-oriented and interdisciplinary inquiry, while providing a bibliometric foundation for developing measurable soft power assessment frameworks.
Na Wang, M. Ahmad· Multidisciplinary Reviews· 0 citations