Congress on Language Diversity, Sustainability and Peace

[Harold F. Schiffman]

>>From Linguist-List:

Date: 20-May-2004 - 23-May-2004
Location: Barcelona, Spain
Contact: Josep Cru
Contact Email: info at linguapax.org
Meeting URL: http://www.linguapax.org

Call Deadline: 01-Mar-2004

Meeting Description:

Congress on Language Diversity, Sustainability and Peace.

The need to preserve the languages of the world and counter the processes
of language shift that are taking place worldwide has become a major
concern shared by researchers, scholars and leaders of many language
communities.

This Dialogue wants to bring together all persons interested in the
maintenance of linguistic diversity in order to generate fruitful
discussions that may be used to hold back the current processes of
cultural homogenization of the world.

The congress will be held in Barcelona between May 20 and 23 in the
framework of the Universal Forum of Cultures - Barcelona 2004. Working
sessions will be of two types. On the one hand, the keynote
communications, that will give a general overview on the three main axes
of the congress (language diversity, sustainability and peace) and the
possible interrelations among them, taking into account the new cultural,
social, political and economic factors stemming from an increasing
globalization process. On the other hand, the five parallel workshops that
will be held in the afternoon sessions will have a more specific approach
to linguistic diversity and its relation to language policy and planning.
Working languages will be Catalan, English, French and Spanish.

CALL FOR PAPERS

Participants willing to present a communication in the framework of a
specific workshop are invited to submit an abstract of their paper before
March 1st 2004 through electronic mail at info at linguapax.org. - All papers
will be reviewed by the Dialogue's Organising Committee and by the
corresponding workshop coordinator. The results of the selection process
will be made public on March 15th. - Criteria for selection are
appropriateness to the central issue of the workshop, originality,
innovativeness and diversity in terms of cultural or linguistic origin. -
Only two communications will be selected for each worskhop. The time
allocated to each presentation is limited to 30 minutes, followed by a 15
minutes debate. - Speakers selected through the call for papers process
will have to be registered as regular participants. - Abstracts will be
saved as Word, RTF or Word Perfect documents. They shall not exceed 1000
words or 6000 characters including spaces and must be drafted in any of
the working languages of the congress (Catalan, English, French, Spanish).
The intended workshop must clearly be indicated on the top of the front
page. Authors must indicate their current position and join a short
paragraph summarizing their background.