Still Time to Register: Course in Language Policy 23-25 October

Sat Sep 22 09:34:54 UTC 2012

http://www.discourse.aau.dk/Events+NEW/Event/phd-course-in-language-policy.cid54283

PhD Course in Language Policy

Tuesday 23. October 2012 at 9:00 - Thursday 25. October 2012 at 16:00

Organizers and Seminar staff

Robert Phillipson, Professor emeritus, Copenhagen Business School

Tove Skutnabb-Kangas, Åbo Akademi University Vasa, Finland, docent,
Minoritetsutbildning och språkliga mänskliga rättigheter

Venue
Aalborg University, seminar room will be announced later
Sign up for the workshop by 27 September 2012

ECTS

Active participation in the workshop will earn you 3 ECTS (corresponding to 75 hours’ work). You will receive a certificate to document your participation.

Language policy is ubiquitous in the sense that decisions on choice of language have to be made in countless contexts. As an academic concern, language policy has expanded progressively over the past 50 years from activities in language planning, sociolinguistics (at the macro and micro levels), law, economics, ecology, anthropology and education into a more coherent multidisciplinary field. This has led to many scholarly journals, books and encyclopedias dealing with language policy issues. The journal Language Policy has existed for 11 years. The publication of The Cambridge Handbook of Language Policy, edited by Bernard Spolsky (Cambridge University Press, 2012) represents a benchmark covering a range of approaches and fields of activity that are grouped under the following section headings: definition and principles, language policy at the macrolevel, non-governmental domains, globalization and modernization, regional and thematic issues. Other recent benchmarks are The Handbook of Language and Globalization, edited by Nikolas Coupland, Wiley-Blackwell 2010; The Oxford Handbook on Language and Law, edited by Larry Solan and Peter Tiersma 2012, Oxford University Press; Handbook of Language and Ethnic Identity. Disciplinary and Regional Perspectives. Volume 1. 2nd revised edition, edited by Joshua A. Fishman and Ofelia García, 2010, Oxford University Press; Language policy and political issues in education, volume 1 of Encyclopedia of Language and Education, 2nd edition, 2008, edited by Stephen May and Nancy H. Hornberger, Springer, and An introduction to language policy. Theory and method, 2006, edited by Thomas Ricento, Blackwell.

Obviously a short PhD course cannot attempt to ‘cover’ the entire field. What we can aim at is to focus on a range of representative topics, for which some essential reading will be done in advance. The course will be interactive so as to ensure that the course can be related to participants’ individual research. Lectures and seminar discussions on the PhD course will aim at establishing language policy both as a scholarly activity and as a practical ongoing concern in a variety of contexts, such as public schooling, higher education, the EU system, and the corporate world – as well as in minority-majority relations, North-South ‘aid’, and the way globalization impacts on language policy.

The main topics to be covered include
•the expansion of English worldwide: how and why, implications for other languages; the myths of ‘global’ English and English as a ‘lingua franca’; concept clarification
•linguicism, linguistic imperialism, critical applied linguistics; combining micro and macro level discourse and activities;
•multilingual education: clarification of central concepts; evidence of successful mother-tongue based multilingual education (MLE) worldwide, implications for educational language policy at school level; higher education language policy;
•assimilationist subtractive submersion education through the medium of dominant languages for Indigenous/tribal(minority/minorized (ITM) children: the most common way to educate ITM children, despite scientific evidence of the harm done;
•linguistic and cultural genocide and crimes against humanity: in what ways can submersion education be seen as genocide according to the definitions in the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, linguistically, psychologically, sociologically, educationally, economically, legally? Can it be seen as a crime against humanity?
•linguistic human rights (LHRs): what kind of LHRs exist? the significance of rights for policies to maintain linguistic diversity; the connections between linguistic, cultural and biological diversity;
•language policy as a concern of governments, exemplified by policies in the Nordic countries to ensure a the balance between national languages, international languages, and minority languages, and by the interface between EU institutions, EU policies and member states and citizens;
•the role of language policy scholars: committed scholarship, activism.

The weighting of attention to these and related topics will be adjusted in the light of the particular project concerns of participants. Participants will be expected to make short presentations of their PhD project, followed by discussion. A primary goal of the course is for PhD students to become better informed about the nature and consequences of language policy decisions that may be of direct relevance to their individual projects

Preparation

Abstracts of 200-250 words should be submitted when applying for the course to Marianne Høgsbro.
Abstracts of participants’ PhD projects will be accessible on the course website, as will obligatory reading in preparation for the course. This will be available for downloading from 20 September.

Course language policy

The language of the course itself will be English. Participants who wish to submit their abstract in a Scandinavian language or in French or German are welcome to do so, just as reference to material in these languages may be made when relevant.

Possibly relevant reading

We refer you to the benchmark volumes mentioned earlier. In addition, we list some of our own products as possible inspiration for those who wish to read widely in advance of the course. Some of the forthcoming texts are available for downloading on our websites.

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