About AAAL
About AAAL
Founded in 1977, the American Association for Applied Linguistics (AAAL) is a professional organization of scholars who are interested in and actively contribute to the multi-disciplinary field of applied linguistics. AAAL members promote principled approaches to language-related concerns, including language education, acquisition and loss, bilingualism, discourse analysis, literacy, rhetoric and stylistics, language for special purposes, psycholinguistics, second and foreign language pedagogy, language assessment, and language policy and planning.
Organizationally, AAAL is the United States affiliate of the International Association of Applied Linguistics (Association Internationale de Linguistique Appliquée, AILA).
Strands
Bilingual, immersion, heritage, and language minority education (BIH)
Language cognition and brain research (COG)
Corpus Linguistics (COR)
Analysis of discourse and interaction (DIS)
Educational Linguistics (EDU)
Language, culture, socialization
Language and ideology (LID)
Language maintenance and revitalization (LMR)
Language, planning
Second and foreign language pedagogy (PED)
Phonology/Phonetics and Oral Communication (POC)
Research
Reading, writing, and literacy (RWL)
Second language acquisition, language acquisition, and attrition (SLA)
Sociolinguistics (SOC)
Language and technology (TEC)
Teacher education, beliefs, and identities (TED)
Translation, Interpretation and Language Access (TRI)
Text analysis (written discourse) (TXT)
Vocabulary and Lexical Studies (VOC)
Primary Activities
- Promotes research and organizes annual scholarly conferences
- Recognizes scholarship and service in the field of applied linguistics through its Distinguished Scholarship and Service Award
- Established and maintains the Fund for the Future of Applied Linguistics, an endowment fund to support graduate student participation at the AAAL Annual Conference
- Publishes the AAALetter
- Distributes to members the Annual Review of Applied Linguistics (ARAL). The ARAL is published by Cambridge University Press and is an Official Journal of the American Association for Applied Linguistics
- Distributes to members the annual AILA Review, a monograph focused on a timely topic in the field
- Negotiates discounts for members on a variety of professional journals and books
- Maintains a list of academic job openings in applied linguistics
- Facilitates distribution and exchange of information
- Advocates on policy issues pertaining to language
- Networks with Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL), the Language Testing Research Colloquium (LTRC) of the International Language Testing Association (ILTA), and other related professional organizations
- Participates in the International Association of Applied Linguistics (AILA) as its U.S. affiliate
Committees
A list of AAAL's Standing Committees and Councils can be accessed here.
Involvement and Volunteer Opportunities
Interested in becoming more involved with AAAL? You can find a list of volunteer opportunities here.