37.1468, Confs: Swiss Association for Applied Linguistics Conference 2027: Engaging With Language – Attitudes Towards Language(s) in Society, Family and School (Switzerland)

Fri Apr 17 02:05:02 UTC 2026

LINGUIST List: Vol-37-1468. Fri Apr 17 2026. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 37.1468, Confs: Swiss Association for Applied Linguistics Conference 2027: Engaging With Language – Attitudes Towards Language(s) in Society, Family and School (Switzerland)

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Date: 15-Apr-2026
From: Alberto Giudici [alberto.giudici at phgr.ch]
Subject: Swiss Association for Applied Linguistics Conference 2027: Engaging With Language – Attitudes Towards Language(s) in Society, Family and School

Swiss Association for Applied Linguistics Conference 2027: Engaging
With Language – Attitudes Towards Language(s) in Society, Family and
School
Theme: VALS-ASLA Conference 2027 (Swiss Association for Applied
Linguistics)

Date: 28-Jan-2027 - 29-Jan-2027
Location: Chur, Switzerland
Contact: Andrin Büchler
Contact Email: VALS-ASLA2027 at phgr.ch
Meeting URL: https://www.phgr.ch/vals

Linguistic Field(s): Applied Linguistics; General Linguistics;
Language Acquisition; Linguistic Theories; Sociolinguistics

Submission Deadline: 19-Jul-2026

In an ever-changing, increasingly complex and plural world, attitudes
often play a central role in public discourse. This also holds true
for attitudes towards languages. These attitudes begin to emerge in
the family and at school and continue to develop throughout life as we
participate in society. In this way, they help to shape our
relationship to languages and our identity.
Applied linguistics has long been concerned with language attitudes.
The focus has been on social situations and contexts in which
attitudes towards languages have the potential to influence decisions,
human behaviour and/or power relations; this may be in job interviews,
in parents’ decisions regarding the language(s) spoken within the
family, or in schools, for example in cases of language
discrimination. Especially in the school context, and therefore also
in the field of teacher education, a number of questions remain open —
for instance, the extent to which attitudes towards linguistic norms
can shape teaching practices, or how teacher training can help to
promote meaningful reflection on attitudes towards multilingualism,
which are generally positive but often not reflected accordingly in
predominantly monolingual practices of teachers.
As attitudes are a concept present in many aspects of life, we
consider them to be a cross-cutting and interdisciplinary concept that
links various fields of research. Taking this into account, we invite
submissions that provide an in-depth theoretical and applied
exploration of contexts in which language attitudes manifest in
social, familial, or educational settings. Contributions may be
written from the perspective of (applied) linguistics, but may also
extend to other disciplines, with a specific focus on teacher training
from the disciplinary perspective of subject didactics. In this way,
the conference aims to open a space for discourse by bringing together
multiple perspectives on the complex topic of language attitudes.
Key Topics:
Papers may, although not exclusively, address the following topics:
 - Language attitudes in (foreign) language learning and teaching;
 - Teacher training with a focus on the tension between personal
language attitudes/perceptions and linguistic norms;
 - Speakers’ attitudes towards languages and varieties (in
multilingual societies), including approaches from perceptual
linguistics and studies in lay linguistics/folk linguistics;
 - Language attitudes from a political and institutional perspective;
 - Language attitudes relating to different family language settings
(e.g. a focus on parenting styles and their significance for the
intergenerational transmission or abandonment of heritage languages);
 - Social or geographical mobility and evaluation of languages,
varieties and speaker groups;
 - Language ideologies and their significance for language choice,
language loyalty, language shift and language loss;
 - Attitudes towards language in the fields of media, digital
communication and AI-based language technologies;
 - Methods used to study language attitudes;
 - Theoretical concepts of language attitudes and their relevance for
related constructs such as motivation
Keynote Speakers:
 - Stefan Hauser (University of Teacher Education Zug/University of
Zurich)
 - Ruth Kircher (Europa-Universität Flensburg)
 - Tillmann Pistor (University of Bern)
Format:
 - Oral presentations: Oral presentations will be 30-minutes
(20-minute presentations followed by a 10-minute discussion).
 - Posters: Posters must be formatted to DIN A0 (portrait). They will
be presented during a short talk.
Presentations and posters may be in German, French, Italian, Romansh,
or English.
Submission Guidelines:
Abstracts must not exceed 400 words (excluding the bibliography). Each
person may submit a maximum of two abstracts in total, either as a
single contribution or as a co-author. Abstracts may be submitted in
German, French, Italian, Romansh or English via ConfTool.

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