[lg policy] FEL info: Changes to dates for FEL XX Hyderabad

[Nicholas Ostler]

Please note that the dates for this conference
"FEL XX Hyderabad: Language colonization and endangerment: long-term
effects, echoes and reactions"
are being changed.

The conference will now be held one week later, on 9-12 December 2016.

It is hoped that these dates will be more convenient for most
interested participants around the world. If you are interested,
please note this change

Correspondingly, the deadline for abstracts will also be extended: we
shall continue accepting them until Friday 1 July 2016. Notification
of acceptance will be sent out by 18 July, and papers due by 30
September.

Basic theme:

European domination, all over the world, is too recent to be
forgotten. But colonial periods extended over different times in
different continents: European colonialism had its peak earlier, for
example, in the Americas than in Asia or Africa. But colonialism with
linguistic consequences occurred also in quite different eras: e.g. in
western Europe under Roman domination, North Africa under the Arabs,
South-east Asia under Indians and then the Chinese (1st millennium
AD).

In the colonial period, how was the use of local traditional
languages, and indeed other languages of wider communication,
restricted? (Complex interrelations grew up within large empires and
trade networks, especially in South-east Asia, India, east Africa and
the Americas.) Smaller language communities may have been hard pressed
to survive in larger political administrations.

The differing status of languages within a territory may also have
been a feature of colonial rule and later political dispensations,
since often post-colonial policy begins with a crisis in the choice of
which languages to support. Some languages may have had a purely oral
existence; but this may have been tacitly endorsed by institutions, or
been actively discouraged.

What means were used to channel communication and expression into
other languages? We shall consider action on place-names, as well as
the roles appointed for languages in the economy, military spheres,
public-health policy, education and government, and other features of
social life such as cultural activities.

Subsequently, how have language planning and liberation struggles made
a difference - positive or negative - to the use and prospects of
indigenous languages? Have language and/or education rights, for
example, been a useful tool of policy? Has technology - from the
introduction of literacy though to mobile phones - played a
significant role in changes? Are current norms of language
documentation all too reminiscent of colonial attitudes to smaller
communities?

Abstracts up to 500 words in English should be sent to
nicholas at ostler.net
and
panchanan_mohanty at yahoo.com

More details at http://www.ogmios.org/conferences/2016/

Yours sincerely
Nicholas Ostler
Chairman, FEL
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