Workshop on Language Analysis in the determination of national origin of refugees

[Barnhart]

----- Original Message -----

Workshop on Language Analysis in the determination of national origin of
refugees

Date: June 21, 2007
Location: UvA, Amsterdam
Contact: Carolien van den Hazelkamp (De Taalstudio)
Contact email: [ mailto:cvdhazelkamp at taalstudio.nl
]cvdhazelkamp at taalstudio.nl

Meeting description:
In June 2007 the Joint Summer Meeting 2007 of the Society of Pidgin and
Creole Linguistics and the Associação de Crioulos de Base Lexical
Portugesa e Espanhola will take place at the University of Amsterdam. On
June 21 the Organizing Committee in cooperation with the Taalstudio is
organizing a post conference workshop on Language Analysis in the
determination of national origin of refugees.

Language analysis is used in several countries as an instrument to
investigate the country of origin of refugees. In a language analysis the
country (or region) of origin is established on the basis of (dialectal)
characteristics of the asylum seeker’s speech. At the 2003 Summer
Conference of the Society for Pidgin and Creole Languages, a special
session was organized about this use of language analysis in assessing
asylum applications by speakers of pidgin and creole languages. This
session provided a basis for the development of professional standards:
Guidelines for the Use of Language Analysis in Relation to Questions of
National Origin in Refugee Cases (Language and National Origin Group, June
2004). The guidelines provide a useful framework for this new field, in
which a lot of research still remains to be done.

The workshop contains presentations on a variety of topics related to this
use of language analysis, and next to that there will be room for
discussion and expertise-sharing.

Programme:

9:00-9:30
Coffee and Opening
9:30-10:00
T. McNamara (University of Melbourne)
Language analysis: A question of validity

10:00-10:30
Y. E-rramdani (University of Tilburg)
Language analysis test and the determination of origin:Commenting validity

10:30-11:00
V.A. de Rooij (University of Amsterdam)
(Im)Possibilities of language analysis as a means of establishing the
nationality of asylum seekers

11:00-11:30
Coffee break
11:30-12:00
T. Cambier-Langeveld & A. Samson (Office for Country Information and
Language Analysis
GCKAO, Immigration and Naturalization Service (the Netherlands))
Language analysis: how to include both linguistic expertise and native
competence, and why

12:00-12:30

I. Sawicka (Institute of the Slavic Philology)
Recognizing language by phonetic information
 I.
12:30-12:50
Discussion
12:50-13:50
Lunch
13:50-14:20

E.M. Bergman (Georgetown University)
Spoken Arabic and the Language Analyst

14:20-14:50

R. Thelwall (University of Calgary)
The Argument from Silence?  Diglossia and the identification of Sudan
Arabic dialects

14:50-15:20
Shishir Bhattacharja (University of Montreal)
Outlines of Forensic linguistic analysis for determining national origin

15:20-15:40
Coffee break
15:40-16:10

J. Ndayiragije (University of Toronto)
Language Analysis and Microvariation: A Case Study in Bantu Relatives

16:10-16:40

M.A. Bah (University of Charleston)
The problems of language determination and citizenship among ethnic groups
spread across national political boundaries: the case of Pular and Fulbe
in the Mano river tri- states of Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea

16:40-17:00
Discussion
17:00
Drinks

For more information and abstracts: [
http://www.taalstudio.nl/taalanalyse/52.html ]
http://www.taalstudio.nl/taalanalyse/52.html





 June 21, Amsterdam, the Netherlands:
Workshop on Language Analysis in the determination of national origin of
refugees
For more information: [ http://www.taalstudio.nl/taalanalyse/52.html ]
http://www.taalstudio.nl/taalanalyse/52.html

P.O. Box 16584
1001 RB  Amsterdam

T +31 (0)20 5285077
F +31 (0)20 3200687

E cvdhazelkamp at taalstudio.nl
[ http://www.taalstudio.nl/ ]www.taalstudio.nl

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