The current focus of attention on the “tongue-tied American” suggests that the field of foreign language pedagogy is in need of thorough scrutiny. Although pedagogical linguistics is a highly specialized field, all too frequently foreign language teaching is delegated to untrained native speakers of the target language or to specialists in other disciplines—particularly literature and theoretical linguistics—who “also teach language” without any relevant training or experience. In order to develop a meaningful relationship between language and area studies, there is a desperate need for trained pedagogical linguists who will coordinate their efforts with discipline specialists to offer programs of language study that are substantively, linguistically, and pedagogically sound and that simultaneously satisfy the increasing diversity of student interests.