Founded in 2010, the Institute of Linguistics and Applied Linguistics at SFL is a teaching and research body for linguistics. Its faculty includes two tenured associated professors and three assistant professors. In addition, three professors and one associate professor from the Department of English Language and Literature supervise students of linguistics in this institute. From the fall of 2011, the institute began to recruit postgraduates in linguistics and applied linguistics at both MA and PhD levels.

The Institute has four major directions of research—theoretical linguistics, sociolinguistics and modern foreign language education and computational linguistics.

The Institute is committed to equipping students with a solid theoretical foundation in linguistics and its related fields, systematic research skills and a clear vision of the research front, so as to become proficient specialists in linguistics.