Mission statement*

At the Chair of Applied English Linguistics, we understand language as an evolving and dynamic system, rooted in and shaped by cognition, bodily experience and social interaction, which is used in context-specific, situated ways for meaning-making across sociocultural settings. Our approach to studying the English language is strictly empirical: By exploring naturally occurring language use, we investigate how people engage in linguistic practices for problem-solving in everyday, institutional, face-to-face, and mediated communication.

• Our research focuses on how speakers of English use vocal, verbal, and bodily resources for meaning-making in social interaction. We are interested in what recurrent context-specific patterns of form, meaning, and function can be observed across spoken and written English discourse types and how English varies and changes across time, space, and communicative settings.
• In teaching, we integrate current linguistic research into our courses, providing students with both theoretical insight and methodological competence. We aim to empower future teachers and linguists to engage with authentic language data and to apply their knowledge of English linguistics to real-world communicative and educational contexts.?

^{* The banner image has been inspired by our understanding of language and linguistic study. The blurred lines remind us of the fuzzy boundaries between linguistic categories. We see the dots as members of different communities of practice engaging in social interaction, and the waves remind us of sound waves, variation, and language change. The dots can also hint at corpus data points, possibly from different English varieties and communicative settings, which connect qualitative insights with quantitative patterning.}