As it always has, the world keeps on changing. Present-day changes in language use and communication follow from a new wave of globalization. For instance, whereas a hundred years ago, the two languages that most people spoke in the Netherlands were the local dialect and the standard language, new migration streams into this country have again created a culturally and linguistically more diverse population, and the demands of international business, trade and education have created a new need for multilingualism, with English as a new lingua franca with a ubiquity that Latin or French never received. Modern social media tend to be faster than letters sent by coach, so the types of personal communication have changed. Language users and communicators ask us questions about how to proceed in this changing environment, and the ACLC helps answering them by applying outcomes of research to solving concrete societal demands.
Institutions, too, require support in this changing society. This holds for schools, institutions that treat children with language and communication disorders, hospitals that treat patients with throat cancer, and so on. The ACLC collaborates with many such institutions.
Read more about some of the ACLC impact activities, by subject:
Also have a look at the NEMO Kennislink website.
The member institutes of LOT, inlcuding the ACLC, jointly finance popular science articles on Linguistics that are published on this website. The website is dedicated to making results of scientific research accessible to the lay audience, and is especially popular with students from secondary schools.