35.498, Calls: Taal & Tongval colloquium 2024: Language and Inclusion

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LINGUIST List: Vol-35-498. Tue Feb 13 2024. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 35.498, Calls: Taal & Tongval colloquium 2024: Language and Inclusion

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Date: 13-Feb-2024
From: Chloé Lybaert [chloe.lybaert at ugent.be]
Subject: Taal & Tongval colloquium 2024: Language and Inclusion


Full Title: Taal & Tongval colloquium 2024: Language and inclusion

Date: 22-Nov-2024 - 22-Nov-2024
Location: Ghent, Belgium
Contact Person: Chloé Lybaert
Meeting Email: taalentongval2024 at ugent.be
Web Site: https://www.taalentongval2024.ugent.be/

Linguistic Field(s): Sociolinguistics
Subject Language(s): English (eng)

Call Deadline: 15-Apr-2024

Meeting Description:

The 2024 edition of the annual Taal & Tongval colloquium will take
place at the Royal Academy for Dutch Language and Literature (KANTL)
in Ghent on 22 November 2024. With ‘Language and inclusion’ as its
theme, the colloquium focuses on empirical approaches to the
relationship between linguistic diversity and societal inclusion.

Call for Papers:

Sociolinguists and applied linguists have for a long time taken an
interest in the pivotal role of language in (un)equal opportunities,
access to resources, and life outcomes. The rise of activism for
social justice has in recent years reignited the interest in the
importance of language for the inclusion, emancipation and
participation of disadvantaged groups, including ethnic minorities,
LGBTQIA+ people, people with disabilities and the low literate.

Numerous studies have demonstrated that perceptions of accents or
other linguistic markers of one’s socio-economic, regional or ethnic
background can feed into discriminatory behavior or unfair judgments,
for instance in employment contexts (Spence et al. 2022). Ethnographic
and interactional-sociolinguistic research has demonstrated the
complex role of language and multilingualism in gatekeeping situations
such as job interviews (Roberts 2013; Van de Mieroop et al. 2021),
medical consultations (Cox & Maryns 2021; van Hest & De Wilde, 2021),
asylum interviews (Maryns 2006) and education (Van Avermaet et al.
2018). Experimental studies have corroborated calls for gender-fair
language (Redl 2021; Sczesny et al. 2016; Vervecken et al. 2015) and
have demonstrated the advantages of simple language (Pander Maat &
Gravekamp 2022).

However, studies on language and inclusion have also addressed
tensions, ambiguities and contradictions that may emerge.
Stereotypical perceptions of language variation may not automatically
lead to discriminatory judgments (Levon 2020; Lybaert et al. 2022). In
many institutional language policies, emancipatory principles have to
be reconciled with practical and financial constraints, which may
render full inclusion or equality difficult to achieve. The linguistic
strategies that are advocated as the inclusive ones may not be
comprehensible to everyone, may have unintended exclusionary effects
(e.g., desexed terms in communication about pregnancy and newborn
care, Gribble et al. 2022), or may not have the same inclusive
potential cross-culturally (e.g. the use of ‘person-first language’,
Buijsman et al. 2023). Given the highly politicized nature of debates
on inclusivity and language, the value of empirical work on the topic
cannot be underestimated.

We therefore welcome the submission of abstracts for 20-minute
presentations of empirical studies on language and inclusion. The
approach adopted can be quantitative as well as qualitative and the
focus can be on Dutch or other languages.

Possible topics include:
- Accent bias
- Language-based discrimination
- The role of language in (un)equal outcomes or (un)equal access for
minority groups in various settings
- The development of attitudes towards language variation and
diversity across the lifespan
- Gender-fair language and other types of inclusive language use
- Language variation and multilingualism in education
- Translation and interpreting for equal access
- Language technology as a means for inclusive communication
- Low literacy and inclusion
- Sign language and inclusion
- Decolonizing language in different types of discourse
- Methodological challenges in the study of language and inclusion
- Inclusion in linguistic research and language pedagogy (e.g.
diversifying datasets and studied languages)

Keynote speakers
We welcome Erez Levon (University of Bern, topic: accent bias), Henk
Pander Maat (Universiteit Utrecht, topic: readability and text
comprehension) and Katrijn Maryns (Universiteit Gent, topic:
multilingualism in the Belgian asylum procedure) as keynote speakers
this year.



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