Taking Risks in Applied Linguistics
September 6-8, 2018
York St John University, England, UK
Language practices, narratives, identities, ideologies and politics of (im)mobility in migratory contexts
September 27-28, 2018
Sestri Levante, Genoa, Italy
AILA national affiliates embody traditions and represent cultures of doing, promoting, and supporting research and teaching, for example by the way they organize conferences, award academic leadership, and interact with their individual members. Experiencing these traditions and cultures across affiliates’ biotopes and boundaries can challenge routines, inspire us to think out of the box and foster mutual learning.
AILA is in contact with several potential new affiliates, for example, to keep the momentum of the AILA 2017 World Congress going and to strengthen Applied Linguistics in Latin America. The procedure of becoming an AILA National Affiliate has been simplified. A new, checklist style application form provides prospective parties with an overview of all the requirements for a successful application.
At the 2018 annual meeting on June 3 and 4, AILA will launch the new website. The joint development process of the website started on February 1. Members of the AILA Board and AILA International Committee are welcome to comment on the website in progress, to make suggestions for additional features, and to evaluate the site’s usability. Please contact: Website@aila.info
Word of the Year initiatives have raised increasing attention around the globe. For Applied Linguists, the phenomenon is of twofold interest: First, empirically grounded selection processes of socially predominant words require sophisticated analytical tools from discourse and corpus analysis. Second, media coverage of every Word of the Year is an opportunity to raise both language awareness and the visibility of Applied Linguistics in society at large. These are two good reasons for a new AILA workgroup to explore ideas of collaborating with Word of the Year initiatives. To join the workgroup please contact: Word of the Year
Hot topics in research, such as literacy, tend to be addressed by fast-growing networks of globally connected researchers. Network participants bring in enthusiasm and commitment to their specific topic, which they address from various angles of traditional and new disciplines. Similar to AILA, these networks address linguistically and socially relevant issues, but often without the institutional stability and constant reach of AILA. Collaborating on global or regional levels with such networks, such as the European Literacy Network, benefits all parties involved. To join the workgroup please contact: Interweaving
Officially endorsing empirically grounded and theoretically sound polices on language use can foster the language awareness of decision-makers. By doing so, it may impact decisions, for example, in education management, courtrooms, and politics, for the sustainable benefit of society at large. In order to strengthen the connection between linguistic knowledge and action, AILA has established a workgroup that scouts policies already (or not yet) endorsed by our national affiliates and makes suggestions for global endorsements to the AILA Executive Board and International Committee.
Globally relevant organizations such as UNESCO could benefit from systematic collaboration with AILA – and vice versa. This is all the more the case since the strategic goals of AILA and such organizations can considerably overlap, as the example of the UNESCO strategic goals shows. An AILA workgroup takes action in addressing such strategic overlap and evaluating ways of inter-institutional collaboration.
In 2010, Multilingual Matters (MM) contributed 90,000 GBP to the AILA solidarity fund. As part of this donation, it was agreed that AILA would set up a Library Award, and special MM solidarity awards at the triennial AILA congresses. In an effort to increase communication and transparency among its members and after discussions with the EB/IC, AILA decided to embark on the development of a database and communication tool through an online platform and a dedicated AILA app which will be made available for free to all members of the AILA Affiliates. First versions of the tool will be evaluated and presented at the AILA EB/IC meeting 2018.
In January 2018, the AILA Research Networks committee unanimously approved 27 applications for acceptance. Research Networks (ReN) convenors have been invited to share information regarding their ReN with the larger Applied Linguistics community via the next AILA Matters section of the International Journal of Applied Linguistics, and via the AILA website, where the list of ReNs is published.
AILA Review is the official scholarly journal of AILA. Its first issue appeared in 1984, and from 1989, all volumes are guest-edited and thematically oriented. They include original unpublished contributions dealing with topics relevant to the scope of Applied Linguistics.
European Journal of Applied Linguistics
Editor-in-Chief: Bührig, Kristin / García Mayo, María del Pilar / ten Thije, Jan D.
The European Journal of Applied Linguistics (EuJAL) focuses on the particular concerns of applied linguistics in European contexts, both by addressing problems that are typically relevant for the linguistic situation in Europe, from those on the level of the EU as a pan-national body down to the level of the individual, and by examining topics broached by or discussed in European applied linguistics in particular. In addition to resulting from an epistemological stance, EuJAL is a logical outcome of the regionalization policy of the Association Internationale de Linguistique Appliquée (AILA), supporting the societies' commitment to regionalization by focusing on the European language space and by giving applied linguists from this regional context an adequate forum. EuJAL is part of the joint activities of the European AILA affiliates.