AILA Q&A – AILA
But why is Applied Linguistics so relevant to society-at-large?
Applied Linguistics investigates, identifies, and helps solve language-related problems. Such problems range from healthcare, where physician-patient communication becomes a significant part of the treatment process, to political scenarios where wars can be triggered or avoided by using the right words in diplomacy.
Read more about AILA’s understanding of Applied Linguistics: https://aila.info/about/
What benefits does AILA offer its members?
In new affiliates, people tend to ask: But why AILA? What are the benefits of being or joining an AILA National Affiliate? – The answer is: emergence and global scale. Together, we are more than the sum of our parts. Together, we grow through intercultural and transdisciplinary practices in research on language and language use. Together, we leverage our impact as researchers, teachers, and enablers. And together, we can make a change to the benefit of society-at-large, Applied Linguistics and ourselves as language researchers and professionals.
Read more about AILA benefits: https://aila.info/members/
What is transdisciplinarity?
Transdisciplinarity (TD) means to start research from a socially relevant question, include all the relevant stakeholders and disciplines and head for mutual learning throughout the research process. This helps find theoretically, empirically, and practically grounded answers to the research question and can foster sustainable solutions to problems that matter.
Read more about AILA and transdisciplinarity: https://benjamins.com/catalog/aila.31
Why is it important that science and practitioners collaborate?
Science brings in tools that enable organizations to identify experts’ tacit knowledge and make it explicit and available to the entire organization. Together, they shape research questions, develop new conceptual frames that help them think out of the box, capture and analyze data, build theories and compose data-based good practice case stories that help them implement the findings in the organization and beyond. In such an approach, stakeholders from academic and practical fields collaborate as researchers to learn from each other and develop theoretically and practically relevant knowledge and skills.
Read more about AILA and transdisciplinarity: https://benjamins.com/catalog/aila.31