26.2398, Confs: English, Anthropological Linguistics/France

Thu May 7 21:33:12 UTC 2015

LINGUIST List: Vol-26-2398. Thu May 07 2015. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 26.2398, Confs: English, Anthropological Linguistics/France

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Date: Thu, 07 May 2015 17:32:53
From: Françoise Le Lievre [francoise.lelievre at gmail.com]
Subject: Plurilingualism, Pluriculturalism and English in Globalization: Devices, Practices and Issues

Plurilingualism, Pluriculturalism and English in Globalization: Devices, Practices and Issues 

Date: 07-Oct-2015 - 10-Oct-2015 
Location: Angers, France 
Contact: Françoise Le Lievre 
Contact Email: francoise.lelievre at gmail.com 
Meeting URL: http://www.uco.fr/evenements/anglaissup/ 

Linguistic Field(s): Anthropological Linguistics 

Subject Language(s): English (eng)

Meeting Description: 

Despite the initiatives from the European institutions calling on states to recognize and institutionalize the linguistic diversity of their territories, as well as to consider language teaching with an aim toward sensitizing and training people in general language education that is more open to the plurality one finds today in the non-English speaking countries—a situation in which there is constant reinforcement of the consolidated hegemonic position of English (Calvet, 2014, Truchot, 2010a) not only as a foreign language but also as a teaching language. In his recent work, Tullio De Mauro (De Mauro, 2014) wonders if, faced with an excessive multiplicity of languages as a result of its expansion and defense of regional languages, a democratic Europe should not rather follow the Indian bi-lingual model of incorporating English as the lingua franca of institutions and education.

The current state of globalization requires individuals, who are today mostly multilingual, to demonstrate adaptive capacities to meet the increasing diffusion of knowledge (education, research and publication). Within this abundance, and for the sake of international recognition, one notices that training schemes taught in English are increasing exponentially in many higher institutions in Europe (Derivry-Plard et al, 2013). This strong trend is most often justified in terms of its attractiveness to students and international researchers, and in terms of neo-liberally-inspired policies of excellence  (Gaspard, 2013) and these criteria are, in the vast majority of cases, evaluated positively in quality evaluation mechanisms (Charlier, Croché, Leclercq, 2012). However, to this day, no scientific monitoring has been able to measure the effects of these practices which contrast with the mobility schemes, such as Erasmus, conceived of at the very beginning as devices based on learning t
 he language of the host country. In this context, various questions arise:

- Does Internationalization lead to mono-, bi- or multilingual education?
- How to rethink the teaching of English in this context?
- How to rethink the disciplines of foreign languages and cultures (Warner, 2014) in face of anglicisation?
- What about disciplinary content transmission (Causa et al, 2012)?
- What overall economic impact these changes have regarding language policies (Gazzola and Grin, 2013)?
- What economic and scientific « profitability » would mono-bilingualism (English + « local » language) have or not have compared to a diversification of multilingualism?
- To what extent do choices made in language policy and language teaching favor or not favor the democratization of a « knowledge society »? 

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