The Department of Applied Linguistics and Phonetics is the newest department within the Institute of Hungarian Linguistics and Finno-Ugric Studies. It was established in the summer of 2019 with the merger of the Department of Applied Linguistics and the Department of Phonetics, both of which had a long history.

Applied linguistics aims to address social issues with the help of language tools. Accordingly, we teach the different fields of applied linguistics based on the social embeddedness of language use to prepare students for intellectual and critical thinking, and independent problem-solving in fields related to language and language use: sociolinguistics, discourse analysis, specialist communication, etc. Graduates from the department’s predecessors in general and applied linguistics have gone on to forge successful careers in academia, higher education or in a corporate environment. 
Speech sciences (phonetics and psycholinguistics) examine the use and production of spoken language with experimental tools, often drawing on methods from natural sciences. This is why there is generally a strong emphasis on scientific methodology, research methodology and research-related ethical questions in the courses taught by the department’s lecturers. 
The members of the department are active in both national and international academia, and have received numerous awards for their work in the field of teaching and research, and for their public engagements.

The department runs two student workshops: the Applied Linguistics student workshop and the Phonetics and Psycholinguistics student workshop. Both workshops have a lively academic life, and our students regularly achieve success in student competitions and at scientific conferences. The Applied Linguistics workshop continues the tradition of organising the conference series of the National Meeting of Applied Linguistics departments and publishes the written versions of the spoken lectures in edited collections.

Department staff regularly organise national and international conferences. One of these was the Resling – Responsible Linguistics conference, organised in the autumn of 2021 and attended by members of other faculties.
The department organises the biennial children’s language conference, which was held under the title New pathways in children's language research in 2016, and The process of native language acquisition in 2018. In 2020, it was held under the title Language development from infancy to adolescence.
In addition, the department is committed to the promotion of science – its staff and students are therefore involved in the faculty events of the Researcher’s Night programme series, and the Lingual Articulation Research Group also organised programmes on the World Voice Day.
One of the department’s inherited responsibilities is to organise and coordinate the university-level competition Szép magyar beszéd (Beautiful Hungarian speech) named after Ferenc Kazinczy and to help organise the national finals and the annual pronunciation competition of University Mother Tongue Days. Since 2019, as part of the University Mother Tongue Days event series, the department has organised science communication competitions and panel discussions.
In 2024, connected to our Speech trainer, voice coach postgraduate specialist training course, we also started the tradition of organizing the Professional Day for Speech Trainers and Voice Coaches where our talented alumni introduce themselves as speech trainers to their peers and further interested persons.

Our department has academic relationships with the Institute of Phonetics at the University of Cologne (Germany), the University of Zagreb (Croatia), the Laboratory of Phonetics and Phonology at Sorbonne Nouvelle-Paris 3 (France), the University of Washington (USA), the University of Heidelberg (Germany), the University of Ghent (Belgium) and the University of Geneva (Switzerland).

The members of our department actively participate in the international academic life. They were awarded by numerous awards for their achievements in teaching, research, and scientific outreach activities.

Our department can also be found on the site of MNyFI, and ELTE.