The Centre for Applied Language Studies (CALS), established in 1997, brings together members of faculty, postgraduate students and researchers from the School of Modern Languages and Applied Linguistics as well as from other disciplines across the University.

CALS provides a forum for the exchange of ideas and the development of research projects in applied language studies within the University as well as serving as a focal point for national and international links in this area.

Researchers in CALS are organized around three core themes: Language Learning and Teaching; Discourse, Society, and Identity; and Language, Culture, and Communication.

Professor Angela Chambers was the founding Director of CALS (1997-2014). Prof Fiona Farr is the current Director, and Dr Elaine Riordan is the current Associate Director.       

Language Learning and Teaching

The Language Learning and Teaching strand focuses on changes in the language-learning environment and the implications of those changes for both research and practice in applied linguistics.

This research explores areas such as language teaching and learning, teacher education, language assessment, learner autonomy and self-directed language learning, and corpora in language learning and teaching.

Discourse, Society, and Identity

The Discourse, Society, and Identity project encompasses a range of interdisciplinary and interrelated projects, which have as their focus the critical analysis of language, spoken and written, public and private varieties of language.

Some examples of current and recent projects include: the sociolinguistics of Irish-English; multilingualism in advertising discourse; linguistic choices in bilingual media; critical media discourse analysis.

Language, Culture, and Communication

The research in the Language, Culture, and Communication strand covers issues around language, intercultural communication, and language planning and policies, as well as the effects of these in a number of domains, in particular, education, media and politics.

Projects focus on aspects of corpus planning and status planning in a number of national contexts, which include Ireland, Spain, and France, and many of them also relate to global issues (for example, the spread of English worldwide; plurilingualism in the Internet practices of higher education students internationally).