36.3150, Confs: Workshop at BICLCE11: Exploring Contemporary English(es) Using the BSLVC Database (Austria)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-36-3150. Mon Oct 20 2025. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 36.3150, Confs: Workshop at BICLCE11: Exploring Contemporary English(es) Using the BSLVC Database (Austria)

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Date: 17-Oct-2025
From: Lukas Soenning [lukas.soenning at uni-bamberg.de]
Subject: Workshop at BICLCE11: Exploring Contemporary English(es) Using the BSLVC Database


Workshop at BICLCE11: Exploring Contemporary English(es) Using the
BSLVC Database

Date: 03-Jul-2026 - 05-Jul-2026
Location: Klagenfurt, Austria
Contact: Lukas Soenning
Contact Email: lukas.soenning at uni-bamberg.de

Linguistic Field(s): General Linguistics
Subject Language(s): English (eng)

Submission Deadline: 15-Jan-2026

Call for papers: Exploring contemporary English(es) using the BSLVC
database
Thematic session at BICLCE11
Manfred Krug (University of Bamberg) manfred.krug at uni-bamberg.de
Lukas Sönning (University of Bamberg) lukas.soenning at uni-bamberg.de
Fabian Vetter (University of Bamberg) fabian.vetter at uni-bamberg.de
In the past two decades, corpora have become a (if not the) primary
source of evidence for research on contemporary English(es) (see
Palacios Martínez 2020; Kortmann 2021). This is particularly true for
the World Englishes paradigm (see Lange and Leuckert 2020), which has
profited immensely from the growing family of the International Corpus
of English (Greenbaum & Nelson 1996) and the release of the Corpus of
Global Web-based English (GloWbE; Davies 2013). Apart from this, the
Electronic World Atlas of Varieties of English (eWAVE; Kortmann et al.
2020) has proved an invaluable source of information for a bird’s-eye
perspective on the regional distribution of a wide range of features.
Coming soon: The BSLVC questionnaire database
The current workshop taps into a new source of empirical evidence on
contemporary English(es): the Bamberg Survey of Language Variation and
Change (BSLVC; Krug & Sell 2013). This eWAVE-inspired, large-scale
questionnaire database documents the use of lexical and grammatical
structures in varieties of English. The thematic session at BICLCE11
focuses on the part of the database that includes usage ratings for
128 grammatical features, of which 62 are informed by eWAVE. The data
provide information about the perceived (or reported) currency of
features in two registers: an informal conversation and semi-formal
writing. The target group of participants, educated speakers in their
early to mid-20s, is consistent across varieties and (partly) aligns
with the sampling frame of the ICE family of corpora. The design of
the ordinal response scale allows for results to be expressed as a
relative frequency, denoting the estimated percentage of speakers that
use a given feature. For an illustrative study covering four
non-standard features in Scottish English, see Schützler et al. (2025)
[http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.5381956]. The thematic session at
BICLCE11 anticipates and publicizes the release of the BSLVC, which is
scheduled for mid-2027. The aim is to bring together scholars working
on a diverse set of varieties to scrutinize its potential as a
complementary line of evidence in World Englishes research. This
includes an explicit discussion of its strengths and weaknesses, as
well as an appreciation of the opportunities it creates for
methodological triangulation.
Contributing to the workshop and getting exclusive early access:
Contributors to this thematic session will be given exclusive early
access to (parts of) the BSLVC and draw on this database to present
empirical studies on different contemporary varieties of English. The
grammar part (which is the focus of this workshop) currently includes
questionnaires filled in by speakers of English in Malta (n = 265),
India (156), Puerto Rico (86), Gibraltar (81), Germany (64), Slovenia
(59), Scotland (59), England (52), Sweden (50), and the US (41). The
project homepage
[https://www.uni-bamberg.de/en/eng-ling/forschung/the-bslvc-project-dfg-funded/]
provides a link to the list of features covered
[https://www.uni-bamberg.de/fileadmin/uni/fakultaeten/split_lehrstuehle/englische_sprachwissenschaft/Feature_Overview_BSLVC_1.xlsx].
Data access: Web interface
The release of the BSLVC will be accompanied by an interactive web
interface that facilitates data access and exploratory analyses. The
pilot version, which has just been launched, will allow you to search
and examine the database; we will provide a brief hands-on tutorial on
how to use it on November 3rd (5-6 pm CET) and an identical session on
November 4th (9-10 am CET), which will also be recorded for later
(re-)consultation. A further goal of the workshop is to receive
pre-release feedback on various features of the database and platform,
to optimize the user-friendliness of the final product.
Publication of selected papers: Edited volume
We are planning to publish a selection of BSLVC-related papers in the
form of an edited volume, whose publication will be in close synchrony
with the release of the database. This volume will serve as the
standard reference for the BSLVC database, which should grant the
individual chapters a high level of visibility.
If you are interested in contributing to this workshop, we encourage
you to attend one of the BSLVC demo sessions, either on November 3rd
(5-6 pm CET) or 4th (9-10 am CET). Please contact Fabian Vetter via
email (fabian-vetter at uni-bamberg.de) so we can forward a link to the
Zoom meeting and/or the recording.
Call for Papers:
We invite proposals for individual papers (20-minute presentation + 10
minutes of discussion) or posters:
 - Abstracts should conform to the BICLCE template (300 words
excluding references)
[https://conference3.aau.at/event/156/attachments/116/305/Template_BICLCE11.docx]
 - Please submit abstracts via email directly to the workshop
organizers
 - Deadline: 15 January 2026
 - Notifications will be sent out by 15 February 2026
References:
Davies, Mark. 2013. The Corpus of Global Web-Based English.
https://www.english-corpora.org/glowbe/.
Greenbaum, Sidney & Gerald Nelson. 1996. The International Corpus of
English (ICE) Project. World Englishes 15(1). 3–15.
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-971X.1996.tb00088.x.
Kortmann, Bernd. 2021. Reflecting on the quantitative turn in
linguistics. Linguistics 59(5). 1207–1226.
https://doi.org/10.1515/ling-2019-0046.
Kortmann, Bernd, Kerstin Lunkenheimer & Katharina Ehret (eds.). 2020.
The Electronic World Atlas of Varieties of English. Zenodo.
https://zenodo.org/record/3712132.
Krug, Manfred & Katrin Sell. 2013. Designing and conducting interviews
and questionnaires. In Manfred Krug & Julia Schlüter (eds.), Research
methods in language variation and change, 69–98. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511792519.
Lange, Claudia & Sven Leuckert (eds.). 2020. Corpus linguistics for
World Englishes: A guide for research (Routledge Corpus Linguistics
Guides). New York: Taylor and Francis.
https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9780429489433.
Palacios Martínez, Ignacio M. 2020. Methods of data collection in
English empirical linguistics research: Results of a recent survey.
Language Sciences 78. 101263.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langsci.2019.101263.
Schützler, Ole, Lukas Sönning, Fabian Vetter & Manfred Krug. (in
review). The morpho-syntax of Scottish Standard English:
Questionnaire-based insights. Available at SSRN:
http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.5381956



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