{AILA Research Network on Language Policy} LPREN launched

[Harold F. Schiffman]

From: bspolsky at gmail.com


The AILA Research Network on Language Policy was formally launched at
sessions at the Sociolinguistics Symposium at Limerick and at the ALAA
meeting in Brisbane on Thursday 6 July 2006.  In Limerick, some seventy
people heard brief presentations on the social responsibilities of
linguistics working in the area of language policy from Nancy
Hornberger, University of Pennsylvania; Alastair Pennycook, University
of Technology Sydney; Durk Gorter, University of Amsterdam; Donna
Patrick, University of Carleton; Gabrielle Hogan-Brun, University of
Bristol; and Elana Shohamy, Tel Aviv University.  All agreed that it
involved combining responsible research with commitment and even some
activism. The discussion went on to deal with the plans for the
Network.  Bernard Spolsky, who chaired the session, commented that a
network is not a spectator sport, and urged members to initiate
activities.

Richard Baldauf writes: "Just briefly, in Brisbane we had a relatively
small, but very interested group of participants and it sounds like our
'papers' were a bit less formal than perhaps yours were. Each person
(William Eggington, Brigham Young University; Koo Yew Lie, National
University of Malaysia; Kevin Lowe, Aboriginal Education, NSW Office of
the Board of Studies; Helen Moore, Independent Researcher; Donna Starks,
University of Auckland, Kerry Taylor-Leech, Griffith University) spoke for
about 10 minutes, raising issues from the variety of perspectives
represented, and then we had quite a lively and interactive discussion. I
felt the symposium went very well, and we launched the logo and the web
addresses. People went away feeling quite enthusiastic, about both the
session, and LP issues." Among the plans for LPREN, colloquia are being
organized for AILA 2008 in Essen and SS17 in Amsterdam, and an AILA book
proposal is being developed.  Information will appear on the web-site
(www.lpren.org) or through this Google group.


[message 2]:

Professor Andrew Linn         <a.R.Linn at shef.ac.uk>
to LPREN,

Dear All

It's great to see so much activity surrounding the new ReN on Language
Policy, which is a very valuable resource.  There is a lot of interest in
Language Policy internationally, as witnessed by the number of
conferences, new journals and so on, but I'd be interested to know how
many research centres or funded research projects (formally constituted
teams rather than individual scholars) there are internationally in the
area of language policy research.  If there is a full list somewhere, I'd
be delighted if someone could let me know. If not, and if you run such a
centre or manage a significant project, could you let me know, and I'd be
happy to produce an overview.

All the best

Andrew Linn