The Seventh Annual Conference of the Linguistics Association of Ghana (LAG) on the theme “Harnessing Linguistic Resources For Effective Academic/Professional Practice” opened in Accra on Monday.

The three-day conference, hosted by the University of Professional Studies (UPSA), is being attended by over 60 linguists from the University of Education, Winneba, the University of Ghana (UG), the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), the University of Cape Coast, polytechnics and other private tertiary institutions.

Professor Nana Aba A. Amfo, LAG President, said the aim of the annual meeting was to enable them share ideas regarding their research findings. She said the choice of UPSA as a venue for this year’s conference was in recognition of the growth and spread of linguistics as a discipline and also the acknowledgement of the presence of their growing members.

She said the Association’s membership had grown over the years from 121 in 2012 to 174 in 2013 and presently is 194. Prof Ozo-mekuri Ndimele, University of Port Harcourt, Nigeria, said: “In recent times, linguists have come to realize the need to employ linguistic resources to aid in the training of humans in other professions/disciplines.”

“The new focus of interest in applied linguistics is not to study language for its own sake, but to see how linguistic resources can be applied in problem-solving in a wide range of domains outside the core areas of linguistics.”

Prof Ndimele said linguistic resources were vital tools for enhancing the reportage of all journalists, adding that editors required more exposure in linguistics to make them excellent gatekeepers.

Mr Godwin Adagawine, Dean, Faculty of Communication, UPSA said there was the need for academia to ensure that their research findings and recommendations were put into practice for the good of humanity.