LINEE 2012 - 2nd LINEE Conference: Multilingualism in the public sphere

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 Proposals are invited for original and previously unpublished research papers that broadly fall within the following themes and topics: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. Multilingualism practices in public spaces and linguistic landscape

The session will look at freely accessible public places (streets, parks, shops, bars, markets, clubs,
tourist resorts as well as unrooted places marked by mobility and travel) as sites of social
communicative interactions between strangers. Such public spaces with high level of heterogeneous co-presence as loci of power and politics are the most important places for studying the`right to a communicative city'. The primary interest is on place sociability, its capacity to encourage and generate spontaneous encounters and activities with the ?Other“, and all imperfect linguistic practices, and creative uses of multilingual resources (like poly-lingualism or languaging that challenge the notion of bounded, and clearly defined languages) on which people draw while striving to create meaning. Such multilingual practices are not restricted to oral communication, but can be found in different signs of linguistic landscape.

B. Multilingualism in economy

The session will explore different aspects of the relationship between language and economy in an
interdisciplinary way such as, management of human resources under conditions of linguistic diversity; knowledge transfer through multilingual practices; multilingual communication and interaction in the realization of economic production processes (e.g. marketing), and language as commodity at the linguistic market and language industries.

C. Multilingualism in institutional settings

The focus of this session is on theoretical and empirical research of institutional challenges posed by mobility and linguistic diversity. It strives to examine intercultural communication in various
functional/sectoral public arenas of differentiated service-provision (such as education, health and
social care, bureaucratic administration, law etc.) through institutional ideologies and processes of
social exclusion/inclusion as reflected in linguistic and interactional routines and practices. Empirical settings of less-studied institutional sites that challenge powerful language ideologies, control and authority that often support ?monolingual multilingalism“ through the compartmentalization of languages and the privileging of particular sets of linguistic resources over others are particularly welcome, as well as issues connected to intercultural communication and competence.

D. Historical perspectives of multilingualism

Critical, comparative transnational approach to historical multilingualism can illuminate its legacy and linguistic and social challenges stemming from the historical basis for the present linguistic and
cultural diversity in Europe and elsewhere. We can particularly benefit from historical socio-political
overviews and specific case studies of multilingual states in the past that reveal ideologies of official language policies, the interaction between national and imperial/colonial policies and their effects. Alternative perspectives that consider language use and ideologies circulating from below e.g. in popular press and literature, might reveal the social impact of such policies and different
manifestations of historical multilingualism.

E. General session

Empirical and theoretical papers on other topics related to language as social practice and intercultural communication.

The abstract submission deadline for individual papers is December 1st 2011. Abstracts should be written in English, while oral presentations can be made in any of the European languages (no translation services will be provided!).