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The paper aims to review the history of dialectology at Vilnius University since the establishment of the Department of the Lithuanian Language in 1940. To achieve this, we have set the following objectives: 1) to present the teaching of dialectology, 2) to review the dialect material collection, and 3) to examine existing research. Descriptive, analytical, and evaluative methods are applied in the study. The beginning of dialectological research is associated with the name of Antanas Salys. The works of Aleksas Girdenis and Zigmas Zinkevičius are also discussed in the paper, as well as the teaching of the dialectology subject, methods of collecting dialectological material and directions of dialectological research. The paper distinguishes the paradigms of traditional, structural, and new dialectology dialectology, and examines their methodological similarities and differences. The most important conclusions and summaries of the paper are fundamentally related to dialectological paradigms: in more than eighty years since the first dialectology subject taught at Vilnius University, the understanding of dialectology has changed. The stage of traditional dialectology at the University was extremely important, as it produced the most fundamental works that are still used today. The structural dialectology paradigm and Prof. Girdenis Dialectology School that trained a large group of productively working Lithuanian dialectologists has flourished over the years. Currently, the new paradigm of dialectology is making its way, offering new theoretical and methodological approaches to the study of dialects.

The aim of the article is to review the development of applied linguistics in Lithuania, analyse the general tendencies of the development of this science, and present the more prominent groups of researchers in applied linguistics, the schools that have been formed or are being formed, and the contribution of some researchers to the research of different branches of applied linguistics. The article focuses on the work started after the restoration of independence of the Republic of Lithuania in 1990, because only from that time onwards did the work of Lithuanian applied linguistics enter the international mainstream of this science. It discusses some of the research and practical work related to the research that helps or has helped in certain periods to solve problems related to language in life. First of all, the article introduces the works on teaching Lithuanian as a foreign language, which are connected with the beginning of applied linguistics in Lithuania, and which have laid the appropriate methodological foundations for the formation of communicative competence, for the development of a new type of textbooks, pedagogical grammars of the Lithuanian language, and for the creation of a system of assessment of competences. After discussing the origins of applied linguistics in Lithuania, the paper discusses the further development of this science. Research in the field of language acquisition, sociolinguistics, language attrition, cognitive linguistics, pragmatics, politeness and impoliteness, corpus and forensic linguistics, and other branches of applied linguistics is presented, and the real-life linguistic issues, analysed by Lithuanian researchers, are highlighted. The final section of the article describes the most important works of dissemination of applied linguistics and presents the research journal Taikomoji kalbotyra (“Applied Linguistics”), the international conferences on applied linguistics that have taken place in Lithuania, and the networks of researchers.

After the restoration of Lithuania’s independence in 1990, non-governmental organizations devoted to the linguistic education, the teaching of the Lithuanian language and its popularisation, and the rights of the state language, that had been active during the interwar period, began to be re-established. The most prominent of the organizations restored were the Lithuanian Language Society and the Union of Teachers of Lithuanian Language and Literature. During the years of the restored independence, various new organizations emerged whose aims and activities had more or less in common with those of the Lithuanian Language Society and the Union of Teachers of the Lithuanian Language and Literature. In 1990, the language popularisation periodical “Gimtoji kalba” [Mother Tongue], which had been established in Kaunas in 1933, was restored. The object of the analysis is the information about the activities of non-governmental language organizations published in the restored periodical. The main focus is on the Lithuanian Language Society, a non-governmental organization that was the editor (1935–1937 in Lithuania, 1958–1968 in the USA) and the publisher (1938–1941 and 1990–1996 in Lithuania) of the “Gimtoji kalba”. The aim of the paper is to highlight and summarise the changes in the goals of the Lithuanian Language Society, the development of its activities, and the search for new forms of activities, as reflected in the publications of “Gimtoji kalba”. Descriptive, analytical and summarizing methods were applied. The analysis of the publications in “Gimtoji kalba” shows that the restored Lithuanian Language Society, which at first based its activity on the experience of the interwar period and the language movement of 1968–1988, contributed to the development of the state language surveillance system. The development of the state language surveillance system has led to a change in the direction of the Society’s activities. While at the beginning of the restoration of independence the focus was on language correctness and its maintenance, over time the Lithuanian Language Society became increasingly oriented towards linguistic education of society and promotion of the Lithuanian language.