MIDP Symposium 'Multilingualism from below'

[Harold Schiffman]

MIDP Symposium 'Multilingualism from below'

Date: 14-Sep-2009 - 16-Sep-2009
Location: Antwerp, Belgium
Contact Person: Pol Cuvelier
Meeting Email: mfbua.ac.be
Web Site: http://www.ua.ac.be/midp

Linguistic Field(s): Pragmatics; Sociolinguistics

Call Deadline: 27-Feb-2009

Meeting Description:

2nd international MIDP symposium 'Multilingualism from below'

14-16 September 2009
University of Antwerp, Flanders, Belgium
Website: www.ua.ac.be/midp
Contact: mfbua.ac.be

2nd Call for Papers

In standard accounts of language policy and language planning, language users
are too often viewed as the 'passive receivers' of linguistic
decisions taken at
the highest levels of state organization. In defiance of this tendency, the
present and 2nd International MIDP Symposium wants to accentuate that
subalternity involves, rather than excludes, agency. Through their everyday
language practices and their discursive perceptions and interpretations of
linguistic realities, those who are supposed to 'live' the language policies
never submissively 'implement' them, but, appropriating them, steer them in
novel, unforeseen directions. It is these dialectic processes of interaction
between what is designed from above and how it is responded to from below which
give shape to societies' overall patterns of multilingualism.

The Symposium organisers invite papers which aim at shedding light on these
dialectical processes, or on component aspects of it, from a large variety of
perspectives and without restrictions as to areal scope. Some key questions
related to the theme, Multilingualism from Below, include:

- How are language policies experienced by language users?
- How are they responded and reacted to?
- How and why do certain language policies 'work' whilst others don't?
- How do top-down language policy processes measure up to changing
sociolinguistic realities?
- How 'useful' are language policies in empowering people and improving their
lives?
- How do language users' actions produce and reproduce, from the bottom up,
larger sociolinguistic structures and patterns of multilingualism, both in time
and in space?

Keynote speakers are Durk Gorter, Sinfree Makoni and Elana Shohamy.

Abstracts should arrive at mfbua.ac.be by 27 February 2009. They should be in
MS Word format (use PDF only if absolutely necessary for font
rendition) and not
exceed 250 words. The choice of language for each presentation is free.
Unfortunately, given budgetary restrictions, there will be no provision for
interpreting services.

A select number of papers are to be taken up in the conference proceedings that
will be published in the MIDP colloquia series, Studies in Language Policy in
South Africa, by Van Schaik Publishers, Pretoria (RSA).

The symposium organisers are:
Pol Cuvelier, Convenor (University of Antwerp, Belgium)
Reinhild Vandekerckhove (University of Antwerp, Belgium)
Michael Meeuwis (University of Ghent, Belgium)
Lut Teck (Institute for Higher Education in the Sciences and the Arts,
Brussels,
Belgium)
Theodorus du Plessis (University of the Free State, Republic of South Africa)
Victor Webb (University of Pretoria, Republic of South Africa)

Registration fees and accommodation: information will be provided on
the website.

-- 
**************************************
N.b.: Listing on the lgpolicy-list is merely intended as a service to
its members
and implies neither approval, confirmation nor agreement by the owner
or sponsor of
the list as to the veracity of a message's contents. Members who
disagree with a
message are encouraged to post a rebuttal. (H. Schiffman, Moderator)
*******************************************