Vitality of a Minority Language

Full Title: Vitality of a Minority Language

Date: 15-Oct-2010 – 16-Oct-2010
Location: Bellinzona, Switzerland
Contact Person: Elena Maria Pandolfi Matteo Casoni
Meeting Email: decs-olsi@ti.ch
Web Site: http://www.ti.ch/olsi

Linguistic Field(s): Applied Linguistics; Sociolinguistics

Call Deadline: 31-Jan-2010

Meeting Description:

The congress aims at an in depth discussion of the parameters relevant to the evaluation of the degree of vitality of a minority language. Particular attention will be given to quantitative and qualitative indices that may be used for monitoring the ‘health condition’ of languages with a minority position in a country. The situation of the Italian language in Switzerland will be a special focus of interest.

The congress themes are:

A) Indices of a minority language vitality

(i) The concept of vitality index and its relevance for minority languages
(ii) Internal linguistic vitality
(iii) External sociolinguistic vitality
(iv) Methodology for quantitative measurements
(v) Methodology for qualitative measurements

B) Goals and aims of the researches on language vitality

(i) Sociolinguistic situation of a community and language vitality researches
(ii) Implications, effects and hints of the language vitality researches for a minority language protection and promotion

Call for Papers:

The congress program contemplates 8 invited presentations (40 minutes each) and a workshop with 8 papers selected through this Call for Papers.

Papers on general aspects concerning the Congress themes will be welcome but main attention should be devoted to the situation of Italian language in Swiss Confederation and to similar European comparable situations.

Abstracts:

Researchers working on these topics are invited to send an abstract of about 500 words of their proposed paper. The abstracts should contain the paper title, the name of the author /authors, the postal and e-mail addresses, the thematic area and have to be sent to the e-mail address decs-olsi@ti.ch. Abstracts received will be reviewed and selected by the Scientific Committee.

Deadline to submit abstracts: 31st January 2010.

Deadline of notifications of acceptance/rejection: 30th March 2010

A small contribution to the expenses may be assigned to PhD students presenting an accepted paper or at least taking part to the congress. Interested PhD students are invited to send the application within 31st January 2010, along with the title of their PhD thesis and a presentation letter by their PhD professor.

Congress Languages: Italian, German, French and English

<small>Fuente: Infoling</small>

LINEE, New Challenges for Multilingualism in Europe

Fechas: 11-Apr-2010 – 15-Apr-2010
Lugar: Dubrovnik, Croatia
Página web: http://www.amiando.com/lineeconference

The conference is intended to bring together academics representing a range of disciplines in humanities and social sciences, practitioners and EU/national policy makers, concerned with multilingualism and linguistic diversity in Europe. Proposals are invited for original and previously unpublished research papers that broadly fall within the following themes and topics:

A. Language, Culture and Identity:
Within the context of ongoing glocalisation, the emergence of multiple identities compels to redefine the role of languages and lingua francas as
identity markers, and as factors contributing to the distinctiveness of culture-specific environments. The overall objective of this thematic block is to clarify the saliency of language as an identity marker in the EU. This points to the role of language in identity formation processes, the existence of language-based multiple identities, and the significance of language as part of well-being of their speakers, and primary symbol of possible secondary cultural, economical, political and other non-linguistic motives.

B. Language Policy and Planning:
This thematic bloc is addressed to researchers interested not only on the institutional, intrinsic and professional process-oriented dimension, but also to those concerned with an often unnoticed, implicit or unintended language policy and language planning processes. A consensus on the demarcation between such concepts as «language policy», «language planning» and related concepts («aménagement linguistique», «language politics») will be discussed. The issues to examine concern the adequacy of the existing language policy and language planning efforts in the EU countries, identifying possible discrepancies between theory and practice.

C. Multilingualism and Education:
The main issue to be tackled concerns the challenge of becoming not only multilingual, but multicompetent in a multilingual environment and the ways of developing the capacity to behave in a flexible and adequate manner in concrete multilingual contexts. The two main fields in which these questions can be answered, are in general a) Second Language Acquisition, including all forms of  language acquisition apart from first language acquisition, from contact languages present in the territory to school learning of truly foreign languages) and b) bilingual Education (including concurrent learning of several  languages).

D. Language and Economy:
This topic is focused on the interplay between and economy and their impact on the building of a knowledge-based society. The focus will be on the relationship between language, geographical mobility and New Economy growth patterns. If we conceive of the economic order as a determining force in society, and if we take into account that economy cannot do without language, then it follows that economy has profound implications for language (its use and status, the emergence of lingua francas) in society. This is all the more true as economy itself has shifted from industrial age to a knowledge economy.

The abstract submission deadline for individual papers is October 1, 2009. Further details regarding abstract submission and registration are available on the conference website: http://www.amiando.com/lineeconference

(Fuente: The Linguist List)

Information Retrieval and Information Extraction for Less Resourced Languages

SEPLN 2009 pre-conference workshop
University of the Basque Country
Donostia-San Sebastián. Monday 7th September 2009
Organised by the SALTMIL Special Interest Group of ISCA

Call for Papers

SALTMIL: http://ixa2.si.ehu.es/saltmil/
SEPLN 2009: http://ixa2.si.ehu.es/sepln2009
Call for Papers:
http://ixa2.si.ehu.es/saltmil/en/activities/lrec2008/sepln-2009-workshop-cfp.html
Paper submission: http://sepln.org/myreview-saltmil2009
Deadline for submission: 8 June 2009

(Fuente: The Linguist List)