Focus on language usage. Recent approaches and research areas in German as a Foreign and Second Language.

This article discusses the relevance of recent (applied) linguistic approaches and research areas for German as a Foreign (GFL) and German as a Second Language (GSL). We focus on research into language usage, which in recent years has been widely discussed in linguistics, language pedagogy, and language acquisi-tion research. In doing this we reflect on the relevance of the following research areas for GFL and GSL: written, spoken, and computer-mediated discourse analysis; corpus linguistics; language use in educational institutions; social and regional variation. We conclude that these research topics are highly relevant for both subject profiles (GFL and GSL), albeit with partly different priorities. At the same time, there is still an urgent need in the discipline for a broader discussion on the role of research on language use.