[lg policy] call: Eurolinguistics and the Challenge of Language Barriers in the Public Service

[Harold Schiffman]

Eurolinguistics and the Challenge of Language Barriers in the Public Service
Short Title: ELB2012

Date: 08-Nov-2012 - 09-Nov-2012
Location: Rende, Cosenza, Italy
Contact Person: Anna Franca Plastina
Meeting Email: < click here to access email >
Web Site: http://plastinaannafranca.wix.com/elb2012

Linguistic Field(s): Applied Linguistics; Discourse Analysis;
Pragmatics; Sociolinguistics; Translation

Call Deadline: 15-Oct-2012

Meeting Description:

The objective of this international symposium is to provide an arena
for researchers and scholars in the field of Eurolinguistics concerned
with issues related to language barriers which impede quality public
services in Europe. Public services tend to be those considered
essential to modern life in a wealth of contexts including
institutional public services, such as education, healthcare, justice,
social services, police services, municipality services, and also
social contexts in which the public is negotiated. It follows that
'interaction - as a communicative system - is central not only to
forms of everyday social encounters but also to professional-client
relationships in institutional settings (Sarangi, 2010: 167). The
challenge faced by Eurolinguistics is to support world citizens in
attaining levels of 'global and cross-cultural communicative
competence characterized by tolerance and empathy' (Grzega, 2008: 135)
to avoid miscommunication, intercultural conflicts and social
exclusion. This also implies a process that expands from
monolingualism to bilingualism and to plurilingual competence in which
different 'languages interrelate and interact' (Castorina, 2008).

Overcoming language barriers in these contexts means allowing people
from whatever geographical or social background to freely access
public services without privilege or prejudice. These various
communicative spaces call for a bottom-up perspective in exploring
language and its role in breaking down barriers in communication,
intercultural encounters and in social cohesion. We suggest a broad
interdisciplinary perspective to the concept of the public service,
taking on both professional and broader social issues of public
practices. This perspective opens to multiple interactive public
spaces, where language barriers may create a number of gaps in
institutional, social, educational, intercultural and global services
in daily communicative practices.

Call for Papers:

Proposals for papers and posters are welcome from, but not limited to,
any of the following thematic areas in which miscommunication,
intercultural conflicts and social exclusion may occur:

1. Language Barriers in Institutional Public Services, including
medical, legal, political and financial practices
2. Language Barriers in Daily Public Services, including bureaucratic,
commercial, and mass-media practices
3. Language Barriers in the Public Service of Education, including
interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary educational practices,
national and international educational contexts, professional
problem-based and task-based training
4. Language Barriers in Global Public Services, including developing
skills, competences and qualifications for inclusion in the current
digital and knowledge-based society, new electronic communicative
practices, accessing English as a Lingua Franca
5. Language Barriers in Social Practices, including Translation,
Interpreting, Intercultural Mediation, and Migrant/Multicultural
Literature writing
6. Language Barriers in other social and professional practices

Abstract Submission: Papers and Posters

Contributors are invited to send an abstract of their proposed paper
or poster in MS Word (12pt) of maximum 300 words (excluding
references) to the following address:

annafranca.plastinaunical.it

Contributors should specify in the abstract one of the six analytical
areas (e.g. 1, 2) into which their papers fall. Papers will be
allotted 20 minutes, plus 10 minutes each for discussion at the end of
the part-session. Posters should be 841mm x 1189mm in portrait
orientation.

Notification of acceptance: 22 October 2012

We plan for publication of selected papers and posters, details of
which will be announced in due course.

http://linguistlist.org/issues/23/23-3824.html

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