36.224, Confs: Applied Linguistics; General Linguistics; Sociolinguistics; Text/Corpus Linguistics / Spain

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LINGUIST List: Vol-36-224. Thu Jan 16 2025. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 36.224, Confs: Applied Linguistics; General Linguistics; Sociolinguistics; Text/Corpus Linguistics / Spain

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Date: 16-Jan-2025
From: Sofia Rüdiger [sofia.ruediger at fu-berlin.de]
Subject: ISLE 8 Pre-conference Workshop: Expanding Horizons – Expanding Circles – Expanding Englishes


ISLE 8 Pre-conference Workshop: Expanding Horizons – Expanding Circles
– Expanding Englishes

Date: 01-Sep-2025 - 01-Sep-2025
Location: Santiago de Compostela, Spain
Meeting URL: https://isle8conference.com/pre-conference-workshops/

Linguistic Field(s): Applied Linguistics; General Linguistics;
Sociolinguistics; Text/Corpus Linguistics
Subject Language(s): English (eng)

Of the models proposed to capture the spread of and variation in
English globally, Braj B. Kachru’s (1985) concentric circles model is
not only the foundational framework. It continues, despite recent,
more complex and perhaps appropriate proposals (cf., e.g., Schneider
2003, 2007; Mair 2013; Onysko 2016; Buschfeld & Kautzsch 2017), to
serve as a departure point in discussions of varieties of English
worldwide. While research on the Inner Circle varieties, the so-called
norm-providing Englishes, enjoys a long history, the decades since
Kachru’s model have seen extensive work done on the Outer Circle of
postcolonial varieties. Many would, in fact, consider the field of
World Englishes itself as almost entirely focused on the study of this
Outer Circle.
The third and Expanding Circle, on the other hand, has traditionally
received less attention by scholars in the field. There are several
reasons for this, among them the lack of clearly defined communities
of speakers or of a clearly identifiable colonial influence and the
presence of research traditions focusing more on language teaching and
acquisition in these locales. Research into English as a lingua franca
is also traditionally sited in the Expanding Circle.
Despite the existence of individual studies (see, e.g., Buschfeld
2013; Hadikin 2014; Edwards 2016; Rüdiger 2019; Rüdiger, Leimgruber &
Tse 2023), what remains missing from research on Expanding Circle
Englishes is the existence of a concerted and sustained corpus-based
effort to document these putative varieties, such as the one seen, for
example, in the International Corpus of English. One of the aims of
this pre-conference workshop is, therefore, to discuss the realization
of an openly accessible corpus conglomerate of Expanding Circle
Englishes, which would allow 1) comparisons between non-postcolonial
Englishes – i.e., provide researchers with a means to compare
Expanding Circle Englishes directly to each other, and 2) sharing data
from these contexts and make them usable beyond individual studies.
In this workshop, we want to investigate the reasons behind this
research gap of corpus-based research on Expanding Circle Englishes in
the field of World Englishes and the steps which can be undertaken to
address it. In this context, we are particularly interested in the
following questions:
•       What are the systematic differences in the sociolinguistic and
linguistic ecologies of speech communities in the Outer and Expanding
Circles?
•       Is variation in Expanding Circle contexts structured
differently from Outer or Inner Circle contexts?
•       What are the methodological challenges for corpus compilation
in the Expanding Circle? How can we address these challenges and how
can we create a sustainable future for corpora of Expanding Circle
Englishes?
•       How do factors like global mobilities and the ubiquity of
digital media influence our conceptualization of varieties of English,
in particular the so-called Expanding Circle? What are the
repercussions for corpus design and analysis?
•       At a more theoretical level, how useful is the category
‘Expanding Circle’, and can we find systematicity among the Englishes
spoken there, as compared to the Inner and Outer Circle?
We invite contributions that address these questions or go beyond
them. The varieties in question may be located geographically anywhere
in the Expanding Circle. Abstracts of no more than 300 words for talks
of 20 minutes + 10 minutes discussion should be sent to
sofia.ruediger at fu-berlin.de and jakob.leimgruber at ur.de by 28 February
2025.



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