25 September 2025. Languages and the government’s Areas of Research Interest (ARIs)

Languages and the government’s Areas of Research Interest (ARIs)

Government departments regularly publish identified research priorities - but linguists struggle to break through to this process. Here's what can be done about it.

By Prof Wendy Ayres-Bennett, University of Cambridge

If you are a university researcher in languages, how do you get your research-informed evidence to the right people in government?

For scientists, there are a number of well-established channels available, including the network of Chief Scientific Advisers and the numerous scientific advisory committees and councils. None of this currently exists for linguists, which is one of the reasons why the Cross-Government Group for Languages (XGLG) has set up a sub-group for academic engagement to help promote and facilitate intelligent use of research by government in the very broad field of language(s) research.

Over the past year or so, I and other members of this group have been thinking about one of the prime resources used by scientists to identify government research priorities, the Areas of Research Interest (ARIs), published periodically by the different government departments. Anecdotal evidence suggests that many linguists are unaware of the existence of ARIs, although happily this is beginning to change.

Disappointing search results

One of the difficulties is that a search on the GO-Science/ESRC’s database of ARIs using the term ‘language’ or ‘languages’ yields relatively few results that will resonate with most researchers in Modern Languages units. A search on ‘language(s)’ throws up a promising 35 results, but 25 of these can be immediately more or less discounted, because they pick up the same repeated phrase ‘natural language processing’ in the background information given by DSIT about their technology strategy. Two of the remaining ten results also use the phrase ‘natural language processing’ and two others the expression ‘(large) language models’; whilst this work is of key importance, it speaks more to computer scientists and computational linguists than the main body of researchers in Modern Languages.

That leaves just six results. Two of these concern trade, for instance:

How can we codify and measure the impact of non-regulatory barriers to trade, such as exchange rates, language, cultural, and geographical barriers? (Department for International Trade 2020)

Two relate to early years support, for example:

What are the characteristics of additional needs for children in the early years, with specific consideration of neurodiversity, speech and language, and mental health interventions?

One asks about interventions to combat teacher shortage in a range of subjects, including Modern Languages, and the final one relates to language usage in pre-sentence reports.

I have elaborated all this at some length, because very few of these results will speak to the majority of researchers in Modern Languages, who may work in literature, culture and film, medical humanities, environmental humanities, or linguistics, to mention just a very few of the relevant subdisciplines.

Is this because they are not doing relevant research? Far from it.

A recent piece of work demonstrated the relevance of languages research to the government’s missions. For example, if we think about ‘Take back our streets’: in 2023 UK Police Forces made over 400,000 bookings for interpreters in around 160 different languages to capture statements relating to communication between police and limited-/non-English speakers. Linguists can offer invaluable advice about how best to do this. To cite another example relating to this mission: messaging, including online, to communities in their own language, for instance during riots or protests, in culturally sensitive terms is crucial. This underlines an important point about languages research: it is not just the linguistic skills that linguists bring to the table. More importantly, because of these linguistic skills they have deep cultural insights which are vital when communicating with, or understanding, speakers of other languages.

Regarding kickstarting economic growth, languages obviously have a key role to play in international trade enhancement, supporting growth of UK business, and driving forward tourism and hospitality. And there are many more areas where language research could usefully inform policy-making. Some of this research relates to the lived experience of individuals. To cite two examples: from a close reading of a range of texts in German, one researcher gained new insights into anorexia in boys which were then translated into guidance for healthcare professionals, whilst another researcher explored the trauma experienced by Ukrainian refugees when, newly arrived in the UK, they are offered a Russian-speaking interpreter.

Whether we think of social and community cohesion, health and well-being, diplomacy, defence and security, or international development, to name just a few key areas, researchers in language(s) have important things to say. While some of this will be presented as quantitative data – the bedrock of research-informed evidence –, as my example above has shown, other evidence provided by linguists will be qualitative, relating to individuals’ lived experience. The two types of data nicely complement each other: while quantitative data offers information about what is happening, qualitative data, relating to lived experiences, tells you why and for whom.

What can be done?

More specific and clearer wordings in the ARIs as to how they might relate to languages would be invaluable to researchers when they design – or better co-create – research projects in light of government priorities. Very often only a minor tweak is required – such as the insertion of ‘language’ when elaborating a range of factors which might be relevant to a particular issue, as in my first example from the DIT (now merged with BEIS to form the Department of Business and Trade). And the benefits for civil servants are obvious: more targeted and relevant research from an academic community which is keen to engage!