Looking from the past to the future in ESP through a corpus-based analysis of English for specific purposes journal titles

English for Specific Purposes (ESP) has played an influential role in developing theory and practice in English language teaching and learning for over 50 years. In this study, a corpus-based approach was adopted to analyze all research article titles appearing in the English for Specific Purposes journal to gain new insights on the major trends that have informed ESP research and practice in the past, and suggest directions for the future of the field. Results from the analysis support many of the trends in ESP described in previous research studies, including a growth in corpus-based ESP research and research on business English. However, other trends are also apparent, including a continued interest in traditional areas of ESP such as needs analysis and scientific/engineering English that date back to the earliest days of ESP. The results suggest that traditional areas of ESP will continue to be of interest in the future, but other areas, such as vocabulary, are likely to grow in importance.