[lg policy] call: Language Endangerment in the 21st Century

[Harold Schiffman]

Language Endangerment in the 21st Century

Date: 12-Sep-2012 - 15-Sep-2012
Location: Auckland, New Zealand
Contact Person: Muiris O'Laoire
Meeting Email: < click here to access email >
Web Site: http://www.teipukarea.maori.nz/en/index.php/news-updates/detail/te-tuuaapapa-m-ngaa-reo-mrearea-2012/

Linguistic Field(s): Applied Linguistics; Language Acquisition;
Language Documentation

Call Deadline: 23-Apr-2012

Meeting Description:

Language Endangerment in the 21st Century: Globalisation, Technology & New Media

Since the beginning of the millennium unprecedented substantial social
changes have been taking place across the world driven by technology,
new media and social media networking. The global diffusion of ideas
and values linked to globalisation has become synonymous with the
weakening of historical and traditional linguistic ties and their
replacement by loose connections to consumerism and capitalism. Old
traditions perish and new ones evolve. In this world, everything is
becoming increasingly 'mediatised', with the Web allowing all of us to
be publishers and social media enabling everyone to be agents of
public communication; from phone to Facebook and from SMS text to
Twitter. What was once the language of private sphere is now more and
more very likely to take place in a more public one e.g. the
Facebook/Bebo arena, in an exchange of written messages as we perform
our relationships with each other in front of a perceived audience.
The private, intimate, oral domains that have traditionally been the
base of endangered languages in the face of hostility in the public
sphere are being opened up to more public modes of communication with
literacy as an important currency. We need to ask:

- What will the linguistic impact of this shift towards the
'mediatisation' of intimate conversation eventually be on endangered
languages?

- Will we see new patterns of 'digital diglossia', leading to a
decline in the previously private domains where it used to be 'safe',
'acceptable', 'not controversial', 'natural' to use the minority and
endangered languages?

- How do technology and new media impact on endangered languages?

However, globalisation can also be seen as a necessary step in the
evolution of mankind, bearing the potential for growth, preservation
of identity, fostering interdependence and forging new cultural
hybrids.

Or, to view globalisation positively, can technology and new media act
as positive and transformative catalysts in safeguarding endangered
languages?

Over the years, technology from the tape recorder to digital archiving
has become increasingly useful and has been universally deployed in
documentation of endangered languages. What are the new possibilities
in the 21st century?

- How can technology and new media be exploited in the following:

1. The teaching and learning of endangered languages?
2. Material development?
3. The creation of new opportunities for endangered languages?
4. The creation of new spaces for endangered languages?

- How have the mass media (as radio, television), and new media (as
mobile phones, the internet) affected the image of endangered
languages, or given them new voices?

- What potential do the creative industries have for endangered languages?

Call for Papers:

23 April 2012: Abstract submission deadline

Abstracts (no more than 250 words) should be sent in English as a MS
word document (.doc). Please include up to five keywords or phrases,
author names, affiliation, postal address and telephone number of
leading author.

All abstracts and papers should be emailed as attachments to both of
these addresses:

Conference Co-Chairs Professor Tania M. Ka'ai (tkaaiaut.ac.nz) and
Professor Muiris O'Laoire (molaoireaut.ac.nz)

14 May 2012: Notification of acceptance or rejection of paper
1 July 2012: Full papers due

In case of acceptance, the full paper will be due.

Note: It is a condition of speaking at the conference that authors
submit a digital copy of their paper by the deadline in MS Word.
Further details on the format of text will be specified to the
authors.


http://linguistlist.org/issues/23/23-1708.html

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