Our aim is to pursue research on the philosophical aspects of language, be it in terms of discourse in action, as well as the various forms of presentation and representation. This includes not only a focus on more traditional topics, such as the cognitive aspects of language, but also contemporary issues in fields such as Politics, Ethics and Aesthetics. We are committed to an interdisciplinary approach, not limited to historical exegesis, but focused on making an original contribution using the tools provided by the most up-to-date philosophical research. Besides furthering the growth of knowledge, this contribution will have an obvious social impact, providing a conceptual framework for dealing with issues of public interest. There is not in the IFL a unique and strict philosophical (not to mention, ideological) orientation such as analytical versus continental philosophy.

IFL continue the strategic lines already carried out with success in the past:
1) developing philosophical research programs, designed and carried out by our research groups, to achieve measurable and objective outputs;
2) developing qualification and training programs for junior researchers, namely receiving not national researchers and also from abroad;
3) intensifying the IFL networking through concrete research and learning programs with international partners;
4) developing the interaction with other national research units;
5) keeping on the publishing activity, namely the journal “Cadernos de Filosofia” that counts with an international adviser board, and the IFL Book Series "Language, Cognition and Communication”;
6) developing the IFL library and our documentation centre.

At this moment and for the next three years 10 research projects were designed by the different groups (see the section of this report referring research group activities) that will enable the achievement of our purposes. Considering our evolution, IFL aims to consolidate and to give a more complex form to all area of philosophy of language and communication: in fact this is the research area, which is from the very beginning of the institute the founding thematic and that gives to it even now a certain identity. Yet in the last two or three years research groups have gradually created new interests in different but related philosophical fields, such as moral and political philosophy and aesthetics. It comes to us quite naturally that programs of different groups do have enough thematic bridges or interacting points. We think that the broad topic of language and forms of communication gives to the whole of the investigation produced by IFL - which integrates its three different groups - identity enough.
Concepts like communication, representation, expression, judgment or form of life, confer to global philosophical investigation of IFL a recognizable identity that comes from the past and projects in the future.