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.
In my presentation, I define the key concepts of word of the year initiatives (part 1). Based on the largest corpus of Swiss public discourse data, Swiss AL (2), I explain the evaluation process for the Swiss words of the year in German, French, Italian, and Rumantsch 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.
