ORGANISING COMMITTEE: Kinga Kozminska, Leonie Schulte, Dr Nancy Hawker, Dr Stephen Leonard

 

This 2-day conference brings together leading scholars and graduates in linguistic anthropology and related fields in order to explore the relationship between languages and senses of belonging. Focus is placed on the indexical character of language in the modern, changing world as manifest in communicative practices that are impacted by social, political and economic processes that bring different languages or forms of language into contact. Participants in four dedicated conference panels will examine how global, state, local and institutional aspects of belonging are indexed through language, how these levels can be distinguished from one another, and how linguistic anthropology and sociolinguistics can account for related linguistic transformations.

 

At the conference we would like to address such questions as:

 

• Are ideas of citizenship on the one hand and national identity on the other being conflated? What role does language play in these debates?

• How do migrants appropriate and challenge existing language ideologies and norms?

• In a globalized world, what does it mean to ‘sound’ local? What does it mean to ‘sound’ like a national? Can local communicative practices transcend local environments?

• How does the development of multiethnolects, such as those emerging in ethnically mixed and economically disadvantaged areas of some European cities, challenge or even redefine understandings of the relationship between language and social class, ethnicity, gender, but also national and local belonging?

 

We have selected 18 cutting-edge papers covering a range of topics contributing to the debate on the relationship between language and regional, national and transnational affiliations contested on social, economic and policy-based levels. Speakers will give 20-minute-long papers with an additional 10 mintues for discussion time.

 

The papers given at the conference will be published through open access platforms.

 

Registration for auditors is now open until March 31st. We only have a limited amount of space for attendees, so please make sure to register as soon as possible in order to ensure a place. 

 

Registration fees for auditors: 25 GBP 

 

For more information on the conference, programme, keynote speakers and registration, please follow the tabs on the above menu.

 

For further questions please email the LIB Conference Team at lib.conference2016@gmail.com