28.2326, Calls: Anth Ling, Applied Ling, Discourse Analysis, Lang Acquisition, Socioling/USA

Thu May 25 16:03:24 UTC 2017

LINGUIST List: Vol-28-2326. Thu May 25 2017. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 28.2326, Calls: Anth Ling, Applied Ling, Discourse Analysis, Lang Acquisition, Socioling/USA

Moderators: linguist at linguistlist.org (Damir Cavar, Malgorzata E. Cavar)
Reviews: reviews at linguistlist.org (Helen Aristar-Dry, Robert Coté,
                                   Michael Czerniakowski)
Homepage: http://linguistlist.org

Please support the LL editors and operation with a donation at:
           http://funddrive.linguistlist.org/donate/

Editor for this issue: Sarah Robinson <srobinson at linguistlist.org>
================================================================

Date: Thu, 25 May 2017 12:03:07
From: Karin Maxey [kmaxey08 at gmail.com]
Subject: Northeast Modern Language Association

Full Title: Northeast Modern Language Association 
Short Title: NeMLA 

Date: 12-Apr-2018 - 15-Apr-2018
Location: Pittsburgh, PA, USA 
Contact Person: Karin Maxey
Meeting Email: kmaxey08 at gmail.com
Web Site: http://www.buffalo.edu/nemla.html 

Linguistic Field(s): Anthropological Linguistics; Applied Linguistics; Discourse Analysis; Language Acquisition; Sociolinguistics 

Call Deadline: 30-Sep-2017 

Meeting Description:

A regional affiliate of the Modern Language Association (MLA), NeMLA provides
a forum for the dissemination of scholarship and the advancement of teaching
in modern languages and literatures. Every year, the NeMLA Convention affords
NeMLA’s principal opportunity to carry on a tradition of lively research and
pedagogical exchange. This four-day long event showcases different areas of
inquiry and includes regular panels, roundtables, seminars, interactive
workshops, special events, caucus meetings, literary readings, film
screenings, and guest speakers.

Building on a rich tradition of excellence, the University at Buffalo supports
the mission of NeMLA by serving as its institutional and administrative host.
In addition, each NeMLA Annual Convention is sponsored by a local host
institution.

Interrogating the Native Speaker Ideal in Second Language Curricula
Hosted by Amanda Ziemba Randall (St. Olaf College) and Karin Maxey (Vassar
College)

Since the 1990s, foreign language instructors and researchers have called for
the subversion of the native speaker construct. Perhaps the most well-known of
these calls comes from Claire Kramsch (1997), who suggests that the term
‘native speaker’ itself is ill-defined, and that non-native speakers have
valuable perspectives on a language and culture as non-members of a group.
Similarly, Cem Alptekin criticizes the utopian, monolithic idea of native
speakership as a linguistic myth (2002, see also Hensel 2000, Liddicoat,
2016).

Yet, despite declarations from others like Thomas Paikeday (1985) that “the
native speaker is dead,” this construct remains the hidden standard to which
language teachers and their students look as the ideal example of proper and
correct language usage. Commercial curriculum packages, for instance,
routinely follow this model: whether the discourse is didactically contrived
or extemporaneous, it is most often ethnically-marked native speakers who
demonstrates the standard language in audio and video recordings for students
to emulate. Even as regional dialect variation and the broadening cultural
diversity of the German-speaking world are gaining recognition in language
curricula and instruction--albeit often as a side-issue or separate unit, not
fully integrated as a part of mainstream culture--the regionally “unmarked”
native German speaker persists as the spoken and written linguistic and
cultural ideal.

Practically speaking, studies have shown that second language learners, even
those majoring in a language, rarely reach a state of nativeness, whether in
speaking (Glisan, et al., 2013) or reading and listening (Tschirner, 2016).
Scholars examining this issue thus continue to ask whether we are setting
impossible goals and setting ourselves and our students up for failure by
striving for a particular native speaker ideal (Cook 1999, 2007; Medgyes
1992). Recent efforts to critically revise the German curriculum to better
reflect the cultural and ethnic diversity of the German-speaking world further
ask: what are the social and ethical implications of the “native speaker”
construct, when the most prevalent model voices heard in instruction reflect
“accent free”--in the linguistic and the cultural sense--regions or cultural
backgrounds? What role should awareness-raising of language ideologies play in
the foreign language classroom?

Call for Papers: 

For the proposed session, we invite papers that consider these and other
critical questions:
How do teaching practices reinforce or challenge monolithic or exclusionary
ethnic constructs of the native speaker?
What alternatives to the construct of ‘nativeness’ are there and what do they
imply for language and cultural learning?
Where is the place in the language classroom for the intuitive linguistic and
cultural knowledge that native speakers possess?
What does it mean for language learners to occupy a linguistic and cultural
in-between space that reflects one’s own learning processes? How can
instructors help students to embrace the ambiguity that comes with developing
translingual and transcultural competence?
How can one initiate critical conversation about the native speaker construct
with students?
How do insecurities resulting from aspiring to the idealized native speaker
manifest themselves in teachers, in students, and in classroom interactions?
What are the ethical or social implications of the native speaker construct?
What are strategies used to decenter or subvert it as a means of teaching
about social justice through language education?

All abstracts are due via the NeMLA Member Portal by September 30, 2017.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

*****************    LINGUIST List Support    *****************
Please support the LL editors and operation with a donation at:
            http://funddrive.linguistlist.org/donate/

----------------------------------------------------------
LINGUIST List: Vol-28-2326	
----------------------------------------------------------