NEW SPEAKERS IN A MULTILINGUAL EUROPE: OPPORTUNITIES AND CHALLENGES

CALL FOR PAPERS

 

2nd International Symposium

NEW SPEAKERS IN A MULTILINGUAL EUROPE: OPPORTUNITIES AND CHALLENGES

 

ISCH EU COST Action IS1306
Bernadette O’Rourke, Network Chair, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh
Joan Pujolar, Network Vice-Chair, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya
20‒22 November 2014 Barcelona

 

Global social changes are transforming the linguistic ecologies of contemporary societies. They change our linguistic landscapes, our linguistic repertoires and the ways we use languages in everyday life. In fact, what we used to understand by “languages” is also changing, along with the concepts and theories traditionally employed to analyse language use. The “New Speakers in a Multilingual Europe” network invites linguists, social scientists, language activists and language planners to take part in the analysis and debate of these sociolinguistic transformations.

 

The concept of “new speakers” provides one angle from which to investigate the new multilingual realities of contemporary Europe; we propose to explore multilingualism from the perspective of the social actors and their experience of using different languages in their daily lives. We focus especially on the experience of people as they socialize in languages that are not their “native” or “first” language, both synchronically and diachronically (e.g. in different periods of their lives). The concept shifts our focus away from the “native speaker”, a notion which has traditionally dominated linguistic analysis and institutional language policies. In this first phase of this EU COST project, we examine three new speaker profiles:

 

New speakers of regional minority languages
New speakers in the context of immigration
New speakers who adopt new languages for specific work purposes
Deadline for submission of abstracts 30 June 2014
More information at
http://www.nspk.org.uk