Word of the year initiatives can increase society-at-large's awareness of Applied Linguistics. By reflecting the public discourse of the past twelve months, words of the year can literally show what moved people most and how a society ticks (Łaziński 2019). Conferences and panel contributions on the topic, e.g., at the 6th International Keywords Conference in Warsaw 2020 and at the AILA 2021 World Congress in Groningen, demonstrate the growing interest of scholars in the area where Applied Linguistics is tangible for society-at-large (Kriele et al. 2018). At a first glance, this seems to be good news for re-popularizing Applied Linguistics in an environment of growing scepticism towards humanities and social sciences.
However, analyzing word of the year selection processes around the globe reveals three main risks. First, processes merely based on public propositions, e.g. with opinion polls, are highly engaged with society-at-large but lack grounding in empirical data and transparent evaluation methods. Second, processes that exclusively draw on corpus data and research methods risk excluding the topical view of society-at-large, let alone the contribution of language professionals. Third, the inherent need for funding and promoting word of the year initiatives bears the risk of getting absorbed by exhaustive engagements with social media and community management.
In my presentation, I focus on the words of the year in Switzerland in the four national languages German, French, Italian, and Rumantsch (1). Based on the largest corpus of Swiss public discourse data, Swiss AL (2), I explain the selection process as a combination of corpus analysis, public opinion poll, and a jury consisting of language professionals (3). I then discuss the advantages and difficulties of transgressing and combining disciplinary boundaries with popular AL-informed initiatives (4) and conclude by showing which measures could, from both theoretical and practical perspectives, raise the value added by twinning word of the year initiatives and AL while minimizing the inherent risks.
Łaziński, M. (2019). Post-truth, postfaktisch und postprawda – als Sieger und Versager der Wort-des-Jahres-Umfragen 2016. Semantische, pragmatische und grammatische Kontexte des neuen Begriffs. In M. Biskup & A. Just (Eds.), Tendenzen in der deutschen Wortbildung – diachron und synchron (Vol. 2). Warsaw: University of Warsaw.
Kriele, C., Liste Lamas, E., Perrin, D., & Whitehouse, M. (2018). Diskursanalyse im Schaufenster. Methodologie der Ermittlung und Vermittlung von Wörtern des Jahres. Paper presented at the GAL Kongress 2018, Essen (Germany).
