Research

The Department conducts research in the fields of language acquisition and language teaching, multilingual competences, social and institutional issues regarding linguistic diversity as well as languages in contact and the description of minority languages.

These research projects are anchored in various disciplines: psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, linguistic anthropology, language didactics and dialectology.

Numerous projects are funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) as well as the Research Center on Multilingualism (RCM) which is supported by the University of Fribourg and the Fribourg University of Teaching Education.

The Department's research comprises five thematic groups:

• Multilingual language learning and cognitive linguistics 
  Research group of Prof. Raphael Berthele 
• Language and social inequalities, political economy and sociology of language 
  Research group of Prof. Alexandre Duchêne
• Minority languages in multilingual Switzerland, languages in contact, diachronic and synchronic description of Rhaeto-romance
  Research group of Prof. Matthias Grünert
• Second and foreign language teaching and learning, multilingual didactics, and language testing
  Research group of Prof. Thomas Studer
• Language learning and language teaching: Input and L2 development
  Research group of Prof. Anita Thomas