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.
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.