About AAL
Linguists in action
Applied linguistics takes the study of language as a science and connects it to the real world.
It’s not simply the study of sounds, words, or phrases. It’s closely examining the ways that language and life shape each other.
Community Partnership
The AAL lens recognizes that communities are expert stewards of knowledge and experience.
They’re not passive objects or a resource to be tapped, but welcome collaborators who have equal say at the table.
Positive Social Change
Working together, applied linguists and communities can create a better world for all.
AAL reveals and challenges bias, normalizes and supports diversity, and creates tools to close accessibility gaps.
Social Justice Connections
Unjust systems create unjust results:
Structures and systems exist in societies that create and perpetuate degrees of power for some and oppression for others. It isn’t possible for individuals, or the words they use, to be “neutral” because we all live in and are part of these social systems.
Knowledge is built, not given:
What we know about the world is socially constructed. The questions we ask, what we count as meaningful, what we think is normal, and what we think is aspirational all come from particular perspectives.
In societies, the narratives of those in power are usually “unmarked” (not noticeable; considered to be natural and inevitable, neutral, or normal).
Applied linguistics gives us tools to uncover power structures in these narratives.
Talk about talk
Language, and people’s attitudes and beliefs about language, are a huge part of how we experience the world.
The labels we use and the stories we tell are part of how we create, maintain, and challenge frameworks of understanding. The ways we talk about problems frames what we think the solutions are. By uncovering an unmarked frame as one perspective, we open up possibilities for other perspectives and solutions.
It’s not just talk: our language has an active role in power dynamics and social inequities. Activist Applied Linguists work together with communities to change power dynamics through changing narratives.
Activist Applied Linguistics 