IPrA Conference - call for papers

Sun Aug 22 21:52:36 UTC 2010

I'd be very interested. I'm doing work on the legal enforcement of English-only rules by US employers, looking at how courts misunderstand the cognitive and sociolinguistic nature of bilingualism in these rulings.   Here's a brief abstract:

This paper considers the role of linguistic ideology in driving legal doctrine in American employment discrimination law by examining the rules adopted by some American employers requiring that employees speak exclusively in English on the job. Multi-lingual employees fired for violating such employment policies have attempted to argue these so-called “English only” policies violate American laws prohibiting discrimination against workers based on their national origin. They have, however, found a chilly reception in US courts for their claims. In part, this is due to the ideology of language incorporated into the fabric of law, including the belief by lawyers and judges that languages are transparent media for representing reality. Judges presume therefore that, since all languages are commensurate with one another as means of communication, it cannot be a disadvantage to a fully bi-lingual employee to be made to select one language over another while on the job.  Multi-lingual employees, by that reasoning, are not disadvantaged by being required to speak English alone. I argue that the law in this area fails to account for the linguistic research on bilingual communication. By ignoring the cognitive aspects of bi-lingual code-switching, the law falsely assumes that employees are making deliberate and unnecessary choices about their manner of expressing themselves when they code-mix and code-switch on the job. By ignoring the social and cultural context of language use by multi-lingual speakers, these courts fail to understand the degree to which code-switching by bilinguals serves as a rich resource for encoding identity and meaning. In this way, American law’s ideologically based failure to recognize the indexical aspects of language choice contributes to the continuing linguistic and legal subordination of non-native English speakers.

Let me know if you think this paper would fit your panel. I plan to be in the UK at the IAFL conference anyway and could incorporate the IPrA conference as well before returning to the US.

Janet Ainsworth
Seatle University

________________________________
From: International Gender and Language Association [GALA-L at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG] On Behalf Of Candy Goodwin [mgoodwin at ANTHRO.UCLA.EDU]
Sent: Friday, August 20, 2010 1:15 PM
To: GALA-L at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG
Subject: Re: [GALA-L] IPrA Conference - call for papers

Valentina, congratulations on your appointment! candy
On Aug 20, 2010, at 10:17 AM, Valentina wrote:

Hi everybody,

Sorry for eventual cross-postings. Sabina Perrino and I are organizing a  panel
for the IPrA conference (July 2011) and we have space for a few  additional
panelists. Work that touches on gender and sexuality as well as citizenship is
welcome.If you are interested, please let me know ASAP.

Call for Papers
Making Citizens: Discursive Practices at the Boundary of Nationhood
IPrA Conference, 3-8 July 2011, Manchester UK
Organizers: Valentina Pagliai (American University) & Sabina Perrino (University
of Michigan at Ann Arbor)
The formation of new international bodies, such as the European Union, as well
as growing transnational flows, have imposed the pressuring question on the fate
of citizenship in the age of globalization.  In particular, scholars have
pointed out that citizenship, while usually associated with rights and duties,
is very much connected to civic and social participation. However, this type of
participation is as much connected to actual citizenship (having an ID or
passport, for example, being able to demonstrate legal belonging or residency –
as in the case of immigrants) as it is to class and race. Images of who is a
citizen or not may be completely separate from the ability to produce a passport
or an ID – and participation and social inclusion similarly pass through class
and racial lines. Cultural and social capital can also influence the ability of
the person to participate to “citizenship”: – for example, in Italy US citizens
are not considered “extracomunitari” (a word that is also racialized, meaning
‘coming from outside the European Union,’ but applied only to certain categories
of immigrants). New models of citizenship are thus emerging that may reproduce
or distinguish themselves from a classic model of citizenship as simple
belonging to a nation state - either by jus solis or jus sanguinis - and as
connected to particular rights that may be additional or different from human
rights accorded to both citizens and non-citizens alike.

In this panel, we start from a consideration of everyday and institutional
discursive practices as a fundamental site for the study of citizenship. Using a
linguistic anthropological and pragmatic perspective, we argue that a careful
attention to these discursive practices can help better understand nationhood in
terms of belonging, the racialization of the Self, the gendering of citizenship,
and so forth.
We welcome contributions exploring everyday and institutional discursive
practices about citizenship produced by different social actors: ordinary
people, political representatives, immigrants, immigration officers, etc. The
papers may consider, for example:
-       How the citizen is imagined in micro-narratives, as well as in longer
narratives that may be produced in everyday encounters, in focus groups, or in
interview settings. How is citizenship talked about? How is it imagined in
everyday encounters?
-       The way citizenship is presented in everyday discursive practices
produced in educational settings, such as schools, ESL programs, citizenship
classes, and so forth. In the educational institutions ideas about citizenship
may be reflected in the creation of language curricula, for example for the
teaching of a second language.
-       The discursive practices that connect citizenship to the use of
particular languages or varieties, either produced at the everyday level or
proposed by the mass media or political parties (one only has to think of the
recent laws passed in Arizona regarding teaching with a “foreign” accent).
-       The narratives that reflect political ideologies about citizenship,
produced by mass-media or political parties, and their connection to linguistic
ideologies.
-       The macro-level discursive practices produced by institutions, including
legal views of citizenship and belonging.
-       Discursive practices that connect citizenship to identity and senses of
belonging and place.
In all these contexts, everyday discursive practices are an important site in
which citizenship is proposed in conversations and in other forms of language
use. The papers proposed can look at both spoken and written language, and
should have a focus on language use. Contributions that examine the intersection
of citizenship, race and gender, or racial, class and gender identities are
particularly welcome.
 Best,

Valentina Pagliai

Department of Anthropology
American University
Washington, DC 20016

Phone# (908) 668-4840  (h)

There Is No Place Like Everywhere

----------
Candy Goodwin
  Anthropology
  UCLA
  Los Angeles CA 90095-1553
       mgoodwin at anthro.ucla.edu<mailto:mgoodwin at anthro.ucla.edu>
http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/anthro/faculty/goodwin

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