Within the categorization of soft-pure and soft-applied disciplines, I never see a clear reference to “foreign language learning”. Perhaps this is due to the distinction between the five (or even more) linguistic skills: Reading, Writing, Listening, Speaking, and Translating. The outdated but still popular Biglan’s and Holland’s classifications did not take into account the typicality of areas such as communication in foreign languages (different from pure linguistics). Classifying multiple language skills according to concepts such as soft-pure or soft-applied could be tricky in some ways. Do you have any thoughts or relevant titles to share?
Depending on the context and approach taken, I believe "Mastering a Foreign Language" can be considered both a soft-pure discipline and a soft-applied one. Language learning as a purely academic pursuit, focusing on linguistic analysis, literature, and cultural studies, can be viewed as a soft-pure field. Mastering a foreign language, on the other hand, can be viewed as a soft-applied discipline when the primary goal is practical communication and the ability to use the language in real-life situations.
I completely agree with you and wonder if this is perhaps the reason why "language learning" has been neglected in this kind of categorization.
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