37.3302, Confs: 8th Annual Sociolinguistics Symposium (USA)

[The LINGUIST List]

LINGUIST List: Vol-37-3302. Wed Oct 14 2026. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 37.3302, Confs: 8th Annual Sociolinguistics Symposium (USA)

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Date: 11-Oct-2026
From: Saman Jamshidi [samanj2 at illinois.edu]
Subject: 8th Annual Sociolinguistics Symposium


8th Annual Sociolinguistics Symposium
Short Title: SOSY 8
Theme: The Social Life of Language: Capturing Creative Chaos

Date: 25-Mar-2027 - 25-Mar-2027
Location: Urbana, USA
Contact: Saman Jamshidi
Contact Email: samanj2 at illinois.edu
Meeting URL: https://publish.illinois.edu/sociolinguisticssymposium/

Linguistic Field(s): Anthropological Linguistics; Discourse Analysis;
Sociolinguistics; Text/Corpus Linguistics

Submission Deadline: 30-Dec-2026

The 8th Annual Sociolinguistics Symposium (SoSy) at the University of
Illinois Urbana-Champaign is an annual research event organized by
graduate students in Linguistics, providing a forum for scholarly
exchange across sociolinguistics and related fields. This year’s
theme, The Social Life of Language: Capturing Creative Chaos,
highlights the creative and often unpredictable nature of language in
social life. The symposium invites research exploring how people use
language to construct identities, negotiate power, and challenge
established norms. It also encourages discussions of how linguistic
practices change as people move across communities and encounter
different social expectations. Through this theme, SoSy 8 aims to
capture the complexity of language as a social practice, recognizing
that even seemingly ordinary interactions can reveal creativity,
tension, and change.
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 speakers:
Professor Rajend Mesthrie, University of Cape Town
Professor Jennifer Cramer, University of Kentucky
For questions concerning SoSy, please contact SOSY chair:
samanj2 at illinois.edu
https://linguistics.illinois.edu/directory/profile/samanj2



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