School of Applied Linguistics
The School of Applied Linguistics is unique in Switzerland. And we mean this quite literally: no other Swiss university of applied sciences houses a department dedicated to the field of linguistics. What's more, it is also one of the biggest of its kind in Europe. In the areas of teaching and research, we generate and pass on practical, innovative knowledge and skills that can be put to profitable use in language, media and communication professions – using artificial intelligence and creating human added value in the process.
We offer three Bachelor's degree programmes: Language and Integration, Multilingual Communication and Journalism and Organisational Communication. They prepare our students to adopt a reflective approach in their future professional endeavours, help to ensure their professional success in the long term and also provide them with a launchpad to complete our Master’s and doctoral programmes in Applied Linguistics. Those who study with us deepen their knowledge of their chosen professional field, establish a global network and develop their own future-oriented profile that will allow them to embark on a career in a mobile working world.
Our School is made up of three institutes whose focus areas complement one another: the ILC Institute of Language Competence focuses on professional and social communication, the IUED Institute of Translation and Interpreting specialises in language mediation between cultural spaces and the IAM Institute of Applied Media Studies turns its attention to the production of the public sphere. All of our institutes combine training and continuing education with research and services.
Our labs provide research-based advice to organisations. They all work across disciplines within rapidly changing fields of the language and communication industry: the LAIC Lab allows our clients to overcome obstacles to accessible communication, the Swiss Global Competence Lab enables them to acquire the language skills they need to work within global networks, the Digital Discourse Lab helps them gain an understanding of how the world ticks and the IAM MediaLab supports them in developing the communication tools of the future.
As part of our wide-ranging activities, we have also compiled Switzerland’s biggest text database of public discourse, the Swiss-AL corpus. Swiss-AL allows for large-scale analyses of language and discourse evolution across all of the country’s language regions. One of the more playful ways in which Swiss-AL is used sees a research team from the School preside over the choice of Switzerland’s Words of the Year in the country’s four national languages. These words embody key social developments that are reflected in language.
A list of the events at the School of Applied Linguistics can be found on the German-language website.
