37.52, Confs: 7th Annual Sociolinguistics Symposium (USA)

[The LINGUIST List]

LINGUIST List: Vol-37-52. Wed Jan 07 2026. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 37.52, Confs: 7th Annual Sociolinguistics Symposium (USA)

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Date: 05-Jan-2026
From: Saman Jamshidi [samanj2 at illinois.edu]
Subject: 7th Annual Sociolinguistics Symposium


7th Annual Sociolinguistics Symposium
Short Title: SOSY 7
Theme: Between Languages, Between Worlds: Language, Culture, and
Global Communication

Date: 04-Apr-2026 - 04-Apr-2026
Location: Urbana, USA
Contact: Saman Jamshidi
Contact Email: samanj2 at illinois.edu
Meeting URL: https://publish.illinois.edu/sociolinguisticssymposium/

Linguistic Field(s): Anthropological Linguistics; Computational
Linguistics; Discourse Analysis; Sociolinguistics

Submission Deadline: 30-Jan-2026

The 7th Annual Sociolinguistics Symposium (SOSY) at the University of
Illinois at Urbana Champaign is the central annual research event
organized by graduate students in Linguistics, offering a key forum
for scholarly exchange across language related fields. This year’s
theme, Between Languages, Between Worlds: Language, Culture, and
Global Communication, foregrounds the role of language in shaping
cultural connection, social positioning, and senses of belonging in an
increasingly interconnected world. The symposium invites work that
examines how individuals and communities navigate linguistic
boundaries across social, cultural, and geopolitical contexts,
highlighting language as both a resource and a site of negotiation in
global communication.
We invite abstracts that engage with this year’s theme by examining
how language operates between social worlds, cultural systems, and
global contexts. Submissions may address how linguistic practices
mediate connection, difference, and belonging across local and
transnational settings. Potential topics include, but are not limited
to:
 - Language and identity across transnational, diasporic, and migrant
contexts
 - Multilingualism, translanguaging, and everyday language practices
across communities
 - Language ideologies, power, and inequality in global and local
settings
 - Digital communication, social media, and mediated forms of global
interaction
 - Language, culture, and belonging in education, work, and public
institutions
 - Sociolinguistic perspectives on mobility, globalization, and
cultural contact
 - Narrative, stance, and positioning across languages and social
worlds
 - Language policy, language rights, and global communication ethics
Our plenary speaker:
Jamie Shinhee Lee, University of Michigan-Dearborn
World Englishes in mediated and performative spaces: Korean pop
culture as a site of linguistic innovation
Kachru emphasizes that English is a culturally plural language, shaped
by history, power dynamics, and local creativity. In the context of
Asia, he challenges the idea that “the English language is generally
discussed as a language that is in Asia, but not of Asia” (Kachru
1998: 89). He observes that English in Asia has attained a level of
functional nativeness and identifies several key roles it plays: as a
tool for communication across diverse linguistic and cultural groups;
as a nativized medium for expressing local identities; as a vehicle
for pan-Asian creativity; as a language that has developed distinct
subvarieties reflecting its deep penetration; and as a language that
evokes complex attitudes, including both admiration and resistance
(Kachru 1998: 102-103). While these observations were initially framed
in the context of countries where English was introduced through
colonization, many of these insights are also relevant to regions of
Asia with non-colonial exposure to English. In this presentation, I
will explore Kachru’s (1992:58) concept of bilingual creativity and
“the imaginative/innovative function” in relation to linguistic
creativity observed in Korean talk shows and popular music, where
English is playfully blended with Korean to produce novel expressions,
convey cultural nuances, and engage audiences in both local and global
registers.
For questions concerning SoSy, please contact: samanj2 at illinois.edu
SoSy 7 Chair:
Saman Jamshidi, samanj2 at illinois-edu



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