Sociolinguistics Symposium 14

Gent, April 4-6, 2002

Discourse resources:
the sociolinguistics of access, availability and distribution.


 Allocation colloquia - SS14
THU, APRIL 4 FRI, APRIL 5 SAT, APRIL 6
Nos. 4, 5, 7, 8, 10, 14, 18 Nos. 1, 2, 3, 9, 12, 13, 15, 19 Nos. 6, 11, 16, 17, 20

List of Colloquia

  1. French in Contact
  2. Demythologising Language Alternation Studies
  3. Modalities of Access
  4. The Variable Use of Sociolinguistic and Pragmatic Rules in L2
  5. Quality and Inequality of Access in Translation and Interpreting Contexts
  6. Linguistic Rights and Wrongs
  7. Migration and Sociolinguistic Change in Contemporary Ireland
  8. Interaction in Multi-Lingual and Multi-Ethnic Classes
  9. Ethnographies of Hegemony
  10. Access to Academic Literacies
  11. Narrative in Time and Place
  12. Explaining Risk in Health and Social Care
  13. First-order and second-order politeness
  14. Loan words as sociolinguistic markers
  15. Multilingual Cities
  16. Language Across the Great Divide
  17. Making the News
  18. The Standardisation and Codification of Sign Languages
  19. The Sociology of Language and Religion
  20. The Construction of Identity through Discourse

The publication of this list is intended to promote the colloquia. The lists of individual contributions now mention all names and abstract titles which have been accepted for inclusion.

If you have a specific interest in a particular colloquium, please don't hesitate to contact the convenors or the participants beforehand. This may be useful if, for instance, preliminary drafts or extended abstracts are being exchanged before the conference.

As for timing, note that colloquia with at least 7 papers will have 4 1/2 hours (divided over four time slots: 60' + 60' + 60' +90'). Prototypically, this allows for 7 times 30' for presentations (20' speaking time + 10' discussion) and a 30-minute introduction and 30' discussion at the end. Smaller colloquia will take up 3 1/2 hours (60' + 60' + '90).

Note that the rule has been applied that participants can present only one paper at SS14. They can act as the co-author of a "second" paper (in which case the paper has to be presented by (one of) the "other" author(s)). Exceptions are "second appearances" as a discussant in one of the symposium's colloquia.

  1. TITLE
    French in Contact
    CONVENOR
    Jeanine Treffers-Daller (University of West England) and Elisabeth van der Linden (University of Amsterdam)
    ABSTRACT
    This colloquium will focus on the way French interacts with other languages around the world. The emphasis will be on how French changes under the influence of language contact in different contact situations. More precisely, we want to discuss the following:
    • Which aspects of French grammar are stable in language contact, and little inclined to change (eg basic word order) ?
    • Which aspects of French grammar are very receptive to change (eg nominal gender, A+N, N+A order, accord du participe passé, adjective-noun agreement)
    • Depth of contact: is it possible to compare the depth of contact across different language contact situations (eg with the help of Thomason and Kaufman's borrowing scale)?
    • To what extent does French borrow structural aspects of other languages (syntactic or phonological rules etc.)?
    • How can we provide evidence for internal versus external factors in language change?
    • Which social factors seem to promote intensity of language contact?
    • Which role does code-switching play in language change?
    CONTRIBUTIONS
    1. Elisabeth van der Linden, Do French-Dutch Bilingual Children Speak Frutch?
    2. Jeanine Treffers-Daller, The role of interference in situations of language contact.
    3. Robert Paper, Le français en contact avec les langues autochtones d'Amérique: Le cas du métif.
    4. Ruth de Oliveira, Sociolinguistic Approach of the indices of stability and syntactical change of French spoken by Brazilians.
    5. Tanja Kupisch, The acquisition of the DP in French as the weaker language.
    6. Hugo Ryckeboer, French of the North of France in contact with Flemish/Dutch.
    7. Natalia Dankova, Quand on voit ce qu'on voit et quand on entend ce qu'on entend, on a raison de penser ce qu'on pense.
    CONTACT
    Jeanine.Treffers-Daller@uwe.ac.uk and ELinden@hum.uva.nl
    contact all contributors
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  2. TITLE
    Demythologising Language Alternation Studies: Conversational Structure versus Social Structure in Bilingual Conversation
    CONVENORS
    Li Wei & Joseph Gafaranga (University of Newcastle upon Tyne)
    ABSTRACT
    The aim of this colloquium is to reflect on the relationship between macro-level social structures and the practical social actions of the individual through analyses of bilingual conversation. Most of the existing sociolinguistic accounts of language choice and alternation have been dominated by what might be described as the "language-reflects-society" perspective. An alternative view of the relationship between language alternation, as a conversational structure, and the wider social structures would see language itself as a social structure. Language choice and alternation would define and change social structures. Such a view would imply a shift in the analytic focus away from the identity-related motivations to the interpretive processes of the speakers in bilingual conversation. In this view, the relationship between macro-level social structures and bilingual conversational structures would be an empirical issue. Macro-level social structures would be claimed to have been used by speakers only if they are interactionally relevant. Contributions to this colloquium, drawing on conversational data from a range of sociolinguistic situations, will address that empirical issue.
    CONTRIBUTIONS
    1. Joseph Gafaranga, Demythologising Language Alternation Studies: Conversational Structure vs. Social Structure in Bilingual Conversation.
    2. Holy Cashman, Social Context and Bilingual Conversation: Towards Criteria for Determining Interactional Relevance.
    3. Normann Joergensen, Plurilingual Conversations among Bilingual Adolescents.
    4. Mark Sebba & Shirley Tate, "Global" and "Local" Identities in Discourse: the Case of British-born Caribbeans.
    5. Li Wei, "How can you tell?" Reconciling the Rational Choice model and the CA approach to code-switching.
    6. Christopher Stroud, The Gendered Use of Linguistic Boundary Phenomena on Mozambican Markets.
    7. Ashley Williams, Fighting Words: Code-Switching and Preference Marking in a Family Argument.
    8. Finn Aarsaether, Discourse-Related Code-Switching among Pakistani Children in Norway.
    9. Hayat Al-Khatib, Language Alternation among Arabic/English Youth Bilinguals: Reflecting or Constructing Social Realities?
    10. Discussants: Christina Raschka and Peter Auer
    CONTACT
    li.wei@newcastle.ac.uk and joseph.gafaranga@newcastle.ac.uk
    contact all contributors
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  3. TITLE
    Modalities of Access
    CONVENORS
    Ron Scollon & Suzanne Scollon (Georgetown University)
    ABSTRACT
    This colloquium addresses the social problem of access to social rights, goods, and identities through the presentation and discussion of several ethnographic, sociolinguistic studies conducted in eight different nations. Two main themes organize this discussion: Identities across modalities and modalities of identity.

    Identities across modalities: In the first case we are concerned with the problem that social identities are produced in multiple modalities, not all of which are privileged for performance in all social situations. By 'modality' we mean a nexus of practice centering on mediational means such as bodily function and appearance, proxemic and kinetic cues as well as printed texts and signs placed in buildings. People attribute identities on the basis of arrangements of words on a computer screen, dress and skin color, gaze and eye contact as well as speech. A Chinese-American woman of professorial status is sent 'downstairs' to the public-service section of a campus hospital on the basis of evident racial identifications rather than 'upstairs' where university staff are expected to receive services. Five sociolinguistic-ethnographic studies raise the question: Is a sociolinguistic analysis able to address the full complexity of contemporary social problems? While the question implies that a fuller ethnographic accounting is required, the question then becomes: How full an accounting do we need to be able to address social problems with some degree of sufficiency? A highly independent blind woman struggles with the paradoxes of needing to practice and display social independence while at the same time manifesting certain clear self-other dependencies. Among family members who accommodate to her lack of vision she is able to assert herself and maintain her dominant role, while with strangers she needs to negotiate the function of gaze in conversation as it is not obvious that her eyes do not see (Everts). Undocumented immigrants in the US from Mexico find that in order to achieve the support of their host social group they must display and to a certain extent adopt evangelistic Christian markers of identity in their speech while also engaging in self-othering of their former Catholic-Mexican identity. These markers are learned in the context of discourse-kinesic rituals involving music and witnessing in church (Castillo-Ayometzi and Shroyer). Cultural, religious (Islamic) and social beliefs about psychotic/psychiatric illness in Oman deny certain patients access to modern treatment. Thus these multiple identities-religious identity, family identity, and sociopolitical identities produce dilemmas for the formation of patient identities (Al Zidjaly). In Taiwan the symbol systems used to characterize Japan vary across governmental, commercial, and individual discourses. Thus the meaning potential carried by a symbol differs depending upon the discourse within which the symbol is appropriated for use. Consequently, social practices and the mediated actions in relation to the appropriation of these discourses contribute to a group identity among 'harizu' (Japan crazy). In China the appropriation by men who have sex with men of mainstream discourses of Chinese culture and civilization and global discourses of gay rights creates a paradox when it comes to HIV/AIDS prevention. On the one hand, the growing strength and legitimacy of the gay community facilitates AIDS education and prevention efforts. On the other hand, the imagination of civilized status or 'quality' identity by the gay community itself produces a set of 'imaginary protections' which actually make gay men in China more vulnerable to infection.

    Modalities of identity: In the second case we are interested in the modalities themselves as semiotic systems which can be called upon to produce individual and social group identities. Here in six different ethnographic studies the problem shifts to a focus on the relationship between identities and the modalities with which they are produced. Again, for sociolinguistics, the question is: Can we address the panoply of identity problems in our contemporary society with an analytical focus upon the traditional sociolinguistic data of recorded speech? Drawing on the insights of critical discourse analysis, mediated discourse analysis, and visual semiotics, one question raised is how written discourses and visual images are used in the creation of a new sociopolitical identity in the former Soviet republic of Ukraine. How is the use of the Ukrainian, English and Russian languages as well as their positioning in visual space used in the Ukrainian cities of Kyiv and Lutsk to portray Russia as old and distant, "the Other;" while Europe is shown as new and "Us" (Yeliseyeva). A training program in Belgium forms unemployed to re-enter the marketplace as skilled manual workers. Different modalities are called upon to enhance the trainee's potential for- and access to- work and to produce new professional identities. Access to these new identities includes appropriating multimodally distributed knowledge in the trade: technical 'actional' knowledge (including knowledge about tools, their use, the expertise they index; knowledge about the materiality of the physical space and its modes of transformations), behavioral and social skills (including knowledge about pacing of work, appropriate attire, codes of conducts and personal and group relations) (de Saint-Georges). A study in Indonesia focuses on the relationship between embodied action and communicative practice through the analysis of Indonesian music. The embodied mode in this context consists of the actions that musicians must acquire within their habitus to be a musician. Implicit in this analysis is the problem of what are the embodied communicative practices related to a particular identity (musician, dayak, Indonesian)? Can an approach to discourse that utilizes behavior from different modes account for identity in a different manner from the traditional analysis of discourse in the verbal mode? (Jocuns) A crucial identity-making institutional action is the interview by which an immigration official decides whether or not to grant permanent residence in the U.S. to visa applicants. The semiotics of office layout, architectural design, and kinesics are used by the immigration officer to impute identities to applicants that-once triggered-influence interview protocol as well as the officer's choice to claim an identity of 'advocate' or 'judge' (Johnston). In contrast to these governmental/institutional scenes in which legal identities and produced or denied are the common day-to-day scenes in which two German women orchestrate a tapestry of identites-mother, professional, friend, German, or European-through a shifting performance across modes of discourse, music, the arrangement of three-dimensional spaces, and color (Norris). Finally, turning to the analysis of websites, the different use of language, images and graphics in the English version and Chinese version of Chinese websites maps out different ideological and identity positionings in Chinese website design. This analysis suggests that the demarcation of an inside and outside identity is evidenced in the differing amount and type of information provided in the Chinese version and English version, and that the choice of language itself (Chinese vs. English) presupposes an ideological positioning (Pan).

    INVITED CONTRIBUTORS
    1. Elisa Everts, Do you see what I see? How a blind woman constructs an identity of independence through the strategic exploitation of unlikely modalities.
    2. Cecilia Castillo Ayometzi & Guy Shroyer, Resources and the ongoing construction of social identity: Mexican immigrants in a Texas Baptist mission.
    3. Andrew Jocuns, Institutional discourse and access to embodied action.
    4. Ingrid de Saint-Georges, Multimodal ways to socioprofessional futures.
    5. Alexandra Johnston, Modalities of identity construction in US immigration interviews.
    6. Sigrid Norris, no title.
    7. Alla Yeliseyeva, Language and identity: emphasising differences and stressing similarities.
    8. Najma Al Zidjaly, The construction of a mentally patient identity in the prepatient phase in Oman.
    9. Rodney Jones, Negotiating practices and identities around sexuality and HIV in China.
    10. Yuling Pan, Global communications and sociolinguistic representations in Chinese websites.
    11. Shu-Ching Susan Chen, Modalities of identity: symbol systems and the construction of the "Harizu" identity in Taiwan.
    12. Bonnie Prince & Conrad Snyder, Exam fever in all Uganda: the articulation of a contemporary rite of passage through metaphor and metonymy.
    13. Svitlana Taraban, Language, identity and the discourses of globalisation.
    14. Priti Chopra, Distorted mirrors: decentring media images of the "illiterate Indian village woman" through personal narratives.
    15. Andy Cave, Nicknames among coalminers: communicative style as a marker of socio-occupational belonging.
    CONTACT
    ScollonR@georgetown.edu and SuzieScollon@earthlink.net
    contact all contributors: list 1 and list 2
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  4. TITLE
    The Variable Use of Sociolinguistic and Pragmatic Rules in L2
    CONVENORS
    Jean-Marc Dewaele (Birkbeck College) and Raymond Mougeon (York University, Ontario)
    ABSTRACT
    Recently, we have seen an upsurge of interest in the phenomenon of synchronic variation in L2 or foreign language production (Adamson & Regan, 1991; Dewaele, 1994, 1998; Lyster, 1996; Rehner & Mougeon, 1999). Researchers have focussed on the effects of social, psychological, and situational variables on oral interlanguages. Complex interactions have been discovered between a number of L2-specific factors like level of proficiency, cultural competence, type and frequency of contact with the target-language and the "classic" sources of variation in native speech (Pavlenko, 1999; Dewaele & Furnham, 2000; Mougeon and Rehner, 2001). It has been observed that compared to native speakers, non-native speakers often display very different sociolinguistic and pragmatic variation patterns which are characterised by higher levels of interindividual variation. The present panel attempts to bring together sociolinguists, applied linguists, and psycholinguists interested in variable use of sociolinguistic and pragmatic rules in second or foreign language production.

    References:

    • Adamson, H. D. & Regan, V. 1991. The Acquisition of Community Speech Norms by Asian Immigrants Learning English as a Second Language. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 13, 1-22.
    • Dewaele, J.-M. (1994). Variation synchronique des taux d'exactitude. Analyse de friquence des erreurs morpholexicales dans trois styles d'interlangue frangaise. International Review of Applied Linguistics, 32, 4, 275-300.
    • Dewaele, J.-M. (1998). Lexical inventions: French L2 versus L3. Applied Linguistics, 19, 471-490.
    • Dewaele, J.-M. & Furnham, A. (2000). Personality and speech production: A pilot study of second language learners. Personality and Individual Differences, 28, 355-365.
    • Lyster, R. (1996). Question forms, conditionals, and second-person pronouns used by adolescent native speakers across two levels of formality in written and spoken French. Modern Language Journal, 80, 165-180.
    • Pavlenko, A. (1999). New approaches to concepts in bilingual memory. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 2, 209-230.
    • Mougeon, R. and Rehner, K. (2001). Variation in the spoken French of Ontario French immersion students: The case of ne..que vs seulement vs rien que vs juste. The Modern Language Journal, 85, 3.
    • Rehner, K. and Mougeon, R. (1999). Variation in the spoken French of immersion students: To ne or not to ne, that is the sociolinguistic question. The Canadian Modern Language Review / La Revue canadienne des langues vivantes, 56, 1, 124-154.
    CONTRIBUTIONS
    1. Robert Bayley, Variation in the Group and in the Individual: Evidence from SLA and Language Shift.
    2. Martin Howard, On the Interactive Effect of Linguistic Constraints on IL Variation: Evidence from the Variable Marking of Past Time by Irish Learners of French.
    3. Raymond Mougeon, Terry Nadasdi, Katherine Rehner and Dorin Uritescu, Acquisition of the Internal and External Constraints of Variable Schwa deletion by French Immersion Students.
    4. Helène Blondeau & Naomi Nagy, Gender Neutralisation in Montreal L2 French.
    5. Vera Regan, Variation in the Group and in the Individual: the Case of the L2 Learner.
    6. Lubov Tsurikova, Sociopragmatic Transfers in L2 Linguistic Behaviours: Why do Foreigners Nearly Always Get it Wrong?
    7. Jean-Marc Dewaele, Pronouns of Address in Native and Non-Native French.
    8. Alain Thomas, La prononciation du français langue seconde au niveau avancé.
    CONTACT
    J.Dewaele@bbk.ac.uk
    contact all contributors
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  5. TITLE
    Quality and Inequality of Access in Translation and Interpreting Contexts: Ethnographies of Translational Practices
    CONVENORS
    Peter Flynn (University of Gent) & Moira Inghilleri (Goldsmith College)
    ABSTRACT
    Within the field of translation studies, there is a growing recognition of translation as a situated socio-cultural practice and of the need to highlight the issue of quality and inequality of access to resources in the context of translation/interpreting. Translational behaviour is thus not viewed solely as a reflection of disembedded cognitive or linguistic processes, but as something that is accomplished in the context of a given community and governed by resources which have a specific status and distribution within that community. The process of translation may, therefore, be viewed as both a semantic exercise and a bureaucratic function with certain constraints derived both from the formal context of the translation situation and from the procedures and protocols of the social institutions within which it occurs. Translational practices may well be informed by more general socio-cultural norms operating within these institutions that underlie the translation practices evident in specific situations and which are reflective of the target language culture and/or the relationship between source and target language cultures.

    The four-five papers in the two-hour colloquium will examine the ways in which the work of translators and interpreters both impacts on and is influenced by the social/political contexts in which the translational activity occurs. Using an ethnographic approach, the papers will, in different ways, attempt to re-theorise the negotiation of semantic space in dialogic borders where language, culture and politics converge. They will examine issues such as the training and appointment of interpreters and translators; the division of status and function within the community of interpreters/translators; the range, status and quality of translation/interpretation in specialised contexts; and the relationship between translators/interpreters and the social/linguistic 'others' whom they represent. The papers will be concerned with the explicit and implicit theories about language and the nature of the role of interpreters/translators at play in a variety of institutional contexts.

    CONTRIBUTIONS
    1. Ester Leung, Legal Interpreting in the UK: the Chinese Experience
    2. Eliana Franco, Translation as Action.
    3. Moira Inghilleri, Uncommon Ground: Identifying Translational Norms in Intepreted Political Asylum Interviews.
    4. Peter Flynn, Metaphor as a Resource in the Construction of Translation Practice.
    5. Marieke Van Acker, From Latin to French : Vertical Communication in the Merovingian Period as a Compromise between Language Change and Language Continuity
    6. Delia Chiaro, Do Early Bilinguals Make Better Interpreters? An Empirical Study.
    7. Nigel Hall, Interpreting as action: young children's behaviour in language brokering events.
    8. Katrijn Maryns, Translational behaviour in the Belgian asylum procedure: where the quality of translation affects the quality of individual lives
    CONTACT
    Peter.Flynn@rug.ac.be and ens01mi@gold.ac.uk
    contact all contributors
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  6. TITLE
    Linguistic Rights and Wrongs: Exploring the Discourses of "Language Survival"
    CONVENORS
    Donna Patrick (Brock University, Ontario) and Jane Freeland (University of Portsmouth)
    ABSTRACT
    This colloquium aims to provide a space for the debate on language loss and language survival. It will focus particularly on the ideologies and discourses in which this debate is embedded, and consider questions such as the following:
    • What does it mean to 'save' or 'revitalize' a language? Whose language? What language forms? How defined? For what purposes?
    • Can processes of minority language legitimization exclude and 'oppress' other competing languages?
    • How is 'ethnic identity' defined in multiethnic regions?
    • What is the relation between language revitalization/survival and ethnic or linguistic nationalism?
    Three sections:
    • Ideological issues: a pair of papers to set some parameters for the discussion.
    • Case studies: we are seeking contributions based in complex multilingual / interethnic contexts, and ideally from minority/indigenous group members involved there, which make clear links between cases and the theme questions.
    • Brief critical summary of papers by a discussant, followed by contributions from the floor.
    CONTRIBUTIONS
    1. Stephen May & Jan Blommaert, Moving beyond ecology of language and linguistic human rights: developing a non-essentialist defence of minority language rights.
    2. Donna Patrick, The politics of language "survival" in the Eastern Canadian Arctic.
    3. Jane Freeland, Writing for legitimacy: Realizing linguistic rights for Nicaraguan Creoles.
    4. Lindsay Whaley, Can a language that never existed be saved? Coming to terms with Orogen language revitalization.
    5. Luisa Martín Rojo, Since they cannot be like us, let us keep them separate: multilingual language policy in Madrid schools.
    6. Jeannet Stephen and Veronica Petrus Atin, Language and Intergroup Perception in Sabah: a case study of the Rungus ethnic community.
    7. Ville Laakso & Jan Ola Östman, Balancing on the double-edged sword of hegemony and ambivalence.
    CONTACT
    D.Patrick@spartan.ac.brocku.ca and Jane.Freeland@port.ac.uk
    contact all contributors
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  7. TITLE
    Migration and Sociolinguistic Change in Contemporary Ireland
    CONVENORS
    Helen Kelly-Holmes (Aston University) and Tadhg Ó hIfearnáin (University of Limerick)
    ABSTRACT
    Since the mid-1990s, the unprecedented economic growth experienced by the Republic of Ireland has meant that from being a country of emigration, Ireland now has net immigration. Not only have people born in Ireland or people born elsewhere of Irish origin returned to the country, but the demand for labour has led to immigration of professionals, unskilled workers and refugees. Language impacts on and is necessarily affected by all of these changes. The effect of emigration, particularly in the second half of the nineteenth century and the 1950s and 1960s, on linguistic change in Ireland has been well documented. Given this historical context, the workshop seeks to address the question of how immigration is contributing to language change in Ireland today. Based on survey data gathered from primary and secondary schools in the Mid West area, four distinct but inter-related issues are covered: definitions and descriptions; linguistic competence; attitudes and identities; discourse and integration.
    • Issues of definition and description: Who is immigrating? What groups, if any, do they constitute? Do they represent significant linguistic minorities? What has their language experience been to date in terms of, for instance, bilingualism?
    • Issues of linguistic competence and access: English as a second language provision in schools; Irish language provision for those starting the language and 'catching up' with other pupils; Language provision for parents; Competence in Irish and English.
    • Issues of identity, attitudes and integration: What are attitudes among immigrants and returning 'Irish' people to learning Irish? Who opts to learn Irish and who does not? What are parental attitudes and do these differ among different groups?
    • Issues of discourse and integration: How are such groups and individuals described in public, media and personal discourse? How do they describe themselves?
    CONTRIBUTIONS
    1. Tadhg Ó hIfearnàin,  Immigrants and the Irish language: identities, attitudes and integration.
    2. Helen Kelly-Holmes, Immigration and language resources in contemporary Ireland. 
    3. Muiris Ó Laoire, Language change: the current sociolinguistic situation in Ireland.
    4. Sue Wright, The conditions of language maintenance in Ireland.
    5. Rachel Antonini, Attitudes towards the Irish language in Gaeltacht areas: a comparative analysis.
    CONTACT
    HelenKellyHolmes@eircom.net
    contact all contributors
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  8. TITLE
    Interaction in Multi-Lingual and Multi-Ethnic Classes
    CONVENORS
    Tom Koole (Utrecht University) and Marilyn Martin-Jones (University of Wales, Aberystwyth)
    ABSTRACT
    In this colloquium we focus on interaction processes in multi-lingual and multi-ethnic classes with a common focus on the ways in which linguistic and ethnic differences are constructed as resources for processes of inclusion and exclusion from classroom communication. We will look at ways in which teacher and students, or students amongst themselves deal with different linguistic competencies and with differences in life-world experience. We are interested to see how different interactional practices treat such differences as either problematic or unproblematic and how this works out for the different students involved.

    The colloquium will be organized with a focus on data. Participants will be asked to present parts of their data in such a way that we can have relatively much time for common analysis.

    CONTRIBUTIONS
    1. Elaine Vine, Constructing understanding of social studies in English: A five-year-old Samoan boy interacts with his New Zealand teacher'
    2. Alexandra Jaffe, Discourses of democracy and bilingual education in Corsica
    3. Jo van den Hauwe & Boris Mets, Coping with heterogeneity in linguistic competence.
    4. Zubeida Desai, Profiling proficiencies of primary school learners in Xhosa and English in grades 4 and 7.
    5. David Poveda and Beatriz Martin, Looking for cultural congruence in the education of gypsy children.
    6. Peter Martin, The possibility of access: inclusion and exclusion in two multi-ethnic classes in Brunei.
    7. Tom Koole & Maaike Hajer, Opportunities for learning in student-teacher dyads: doing maths and language in a multilingual class.
    8. discussant: Monica Heller
    CONTACT
    tom.koole@let.uu.nl and mqm@aber.ac.uk
    contact all contributors
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  9. TITLE
    Ethnographies of Hegemony: Rethinking Domination and Inequality in a Postmodern Era
    CONVENORS
    Jim Collins (SUNY/Albany) & Monica Heller (University of Toronto)
    ABSTRACT
    Our colloquium takes up the conference theme of "resources" by addressing the issues of inequality and domination. These are classic concerns within social thought, social movements, and sociolinguistics, but the contemporary era - often described as one of transnational economies, polyglot cultures, and hybrid identities - poses sharp challenges for received ways of thinking about the availability or distribution of discursive and other resources. Through a set of in-depth case studies, commonly oriented to the problematic of hegemony, we explore how linguistic ethnography, combining close attention to discourse properties and situational and institutional analysis, can contribute to reformulating the old questions - such as those of class, identity, and power - in order to better understand the new challenges.
    CONTRIBUTIONS
    1. Celso Alvarez-Cáccamo & Gabriela Prego-Vázquez, Political cross-discourse: Conversationalization, imaginary networks, and social fields in political rallies in Galiza
    2. Jan Blommaert, Truth and memorability: expressions of affect and the creation of a historical record in narratives from the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
    3. Jim Collins, The reading wars in situ.
    4. Patrick Devos, Discourse theory and the study of ideological (trans)formations: analysing Third Way ideology. 
    5. Monica Heller, Actors and discourses in the construction of hegemony.
    6. Stef Slembrouck, Narrations of class and parenting in the area of child protection.
    7. Jef Verschueren, A touch of class
    8. discussant: Stephen May
    CONTACT
    Collins@cnsunix.albany.edu
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  10. TITLE
    Access to Academic Literacies: Resources and Barriers across Sites, Modes and Languages
    CONVENORS
    Ermien van Pletzen and Lucia Thesen (University of Cape Town)
    ABSTRACT
    This colloquium will argue that the concept of access to higher education should be considered within a complex of cultural and communicative specifics. Working in a context of intense social transformation, contributors will discuss schooling and testing for access, the acquisition of academic literacy within disciplinary sites, as well as the role of multi-lingual and new multi-modal resources for opening up access.

    The Language Development Group is a unit in the Academic Development Programme of the Centre for Higher Education Development at the University of Cape Town. The group's mission is to focus on the role of language to facilitate and promote access to higher education, within an ethos of social justice and national redress in South Africa. This colloquium will examine the discourses that enable or inhibit both formal and disciplinary access, always keeping to the group's central argument that the concept of access to higher education should be constructed at the multi-layered intersection of culture and communication. Drawing on the group's extensive teaching and research activities in a period of social transformation, our concern is to take the debate on access beyond the way in which it is frequently associated with uncritical socialisation of students into dominant institutional discourses. We do this by exploring new routes to academic literacies through engaging with multi-lingual and multi-modal resources for learning.

    CONTRIBUTIONS
    1. Rachelle Kapp,  ‘Thirty facts for thirty marks’: an analysis of literacy practices in ESL classes in a South African township school
    2. Nan Yeld,  The construct of placement tests in English for Educational Purposes at the University of Cape Town
    3. Moragh Paxton, The relationship between student voice and genre expectations in the discipline of economics
    4. Bongi Bangeni & Mncdesi Mashigoane, Multilingual interventions and the redistribution of cultural capital as a means to access
    5. Arlence Archer, On-line Textual Production and Access to Academic Literacies
    6. Lucia Thesen,  Picturing the university : recontextualising resources for access
    CONTACT
    Thesen@humanities.uct.ac.za and EVanplet@education.uct.ac.za
    contact all contributors
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  11. TITLE
    Narrative in Time and Place
    CONVENORS
    Michael Baynham (University of Leeds) & Alexandra Georgakopoulou (King's College, London)
    ABSTRACT
    This colloquium will examine narrative as an interactively constructed resource for meaning making with particular emphasis on the location and indeed dislocation of tellers, tellings, tales, and audiences in time and space. Standard discourse analytic models of narrative emphasize the notion of orientation in time and place as part of the generic toolkit of the narrator, with implications for the structuring as well as tellability of a story, and/or as a kind of narrative stage (this can be taken in both a temporal and spatial sense). Instead, the data we will present in the papers of this colloquium will highlight the complex diffusion and interactions of linguistic resources for indexing shifts in time and place throughout the telling of a narrative as well as their strategic deployment for creating and negotiating social meanings. As its starting point, the colloquium will draw on insights from a variety of disciplines such as cultural geography, postmodernist literary theory, etc. that have recently problematized the static conceptualization of place and time, thus opening up the possibility for more complex understandings of the dynamic role of spatial and temporal orientations in narrative and the ways that they help construct actualities, possibilities, and (dis)continuities of social relations and meanings. While the papers will primarily address issues of narrative theory and analysis, their emphasis on bringing in new perspectives on our understanding of narrative orientation in time and space is seen as having relevance in terms of sociolinguistic theory more generally, where models of sociolinguistic variation, based on largely settled speech communities (cf. the critiques of Hewitt, Rampton et al), with a relatively settled sense of place are rapidly giving way to more dynamic models that include in their theorizing the sociolinguistics of diaspora and movement, place and displacement.
    CONTRIBUTIONS
    1. Srikant Sarangi,  Modes of temporality and spatiality in genetic counselling discourse
    2. Alexandra Georgakopoulou, Shifting, contesting, and negotiating time and place in conversational narratives
    3. Mike Baynham, Some intersections of time with social space in narrative orientation
    4. Anna De Fina, Narratives of disorientation
    5. Ruth Wodak, Remembering and forgetting. Stories coping with traumatic pasts
    6. Heidemarie Armbruster, Ulrike  Meinhof and Craig Rollo, Da kammer halt nix machen: Discursive strategies of responsibility and its avoidance in contemporary Germany.
    7. Aleksandra Galasinska,  ‘Those in power have large families.’ The media and the authorities in
    8. narratives of responsibility in a Polish border town.
    9. Mary Bock, Multiple Representations of a Human Rights Violation.
    10. Discussant: Stef Slembrouck
    CONTACT
    M.Baynham@education.leeds.ac.uk and Alexandra.Georgakopoulou@kcl.ac.uk
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  12. TITLE
    Explaining Risk in Health and Social Care
    CONVENORS
    Srikant Sarangi (University of Wales, Cardiff) and Christopher Candlin (City Univeristy of Hong Kong)
    ABSTRACT
    This Colloquium addresses issues surrounding the formulation and the discursive management of the explanation of risk in a range of health and social care sites: genetics, breast cancer, HIV/AIDS, and from diverse locations, UK, Sweden, Australia and Hong Kong. Discussion of these issues is set against the background of contemporary research, especially in social theory, sociology, and cultural studies. One important aspect of the Colloquium will be the exploration of connections among these different perspectives and their relevance for a programme of research in `the sociolinguistics of risk' based on notions of uncertainty management, expert-talk, role-distancing etc. A selection of speakers (see below) will address the diversity of analytical methodologies: social theoretical analysis, interactional sociolinguistics, conversation analysis, ethnographic and content-focused accounts, cultural analysis, and systemic-functional studies of textualisation. The orientation of the Colloquium will be towards issue-raising and participative discussion rather than the serial presentation of papers with questions. We anticipate an array of issues to surface: how risk trajectories are constructed within a given interaction; what constitutes added risk, background risk and reassurance; how decision-making is tied up with the asymmetrical construction of risk etc. To that end, speakers will present short, illustrated snapshot analyses to underpin the issues of definition and practice they raise, framed by the presentation from Colloquium organisers.
    CONTRIBUTIONS
    1. Viveka Adelswärd & Lisbeth Sachs, The messenger's dilemma: giving and getting information in genealogical mapping for hereditary cancer.
    2. Srikant Sarangi, Kristina Bennert, Lucy Howell and Angus Clarke, Accounting for 'normality' in genetic risk discourse.
    3. Per Linell, Mikael Hoffmann, Karin Kjellgren et al., The framing of risk talk in different medical contexts.
    4. Lindsay Prior, Translations of 'risk': how risk language is used in a medical clinic.
    5. Rodney Jones & Christopher Candlin, The construction of risk in gay men's accounts of sexual encounters.
    6. Alison Moore and David Butt, Risk and meaning potential: why a network?
    7. Greg Myers, Comparing risks in everyday talk.
    8. Tom Horlick-Jones, Arguments as interpretive and rhetorical devices in risk accounts.
    CONTACT
    Sarangi@cardiff.ac.uk
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  13. TITLE
    First-order and second-order politeness: The dispute over 'modelling' politeness
    CONVENORS
    Gino Eelen (Antwerp), Jim O'Driscoll (Ghent) & Richard Watts (Bern)
    ABSTRACT
    During the past fifteen years or so, existing models of politeness, by far the most popular of which has been Brown & Levinson (1978,1987), have generated a huge amount of empirical research. For example, whole ranges of structures in a variety of languages have been suggested as structures of linguistic politeness (e.g. terms of address, formulaic utterances, hedges, particles of various kinds, indirect speech acts). At the same time, the B/L model, particularly its distinction between positive and negative face, has come in for a great deal of criticism.

    With regard to their contribution towards an overall theory of politeness, both these strands of research appear to have severe limitations. For one thing, the idea that any (set of) linguistic form(s) is 'inherently polite' is highly dubious. More significantly, the criticism of B/L has confined itself either to attempts at modification of their model or to advocacy of a return to Goffman's notion of face. Indeed, politeness theory has in many quarters become equated with face theory. This equation is just one example of a major problem with current developments - that they disregard evaluations of (im)politeness made by lay interactants and politeness researchers alike. Another is that 'impoliteness' has very rarely surfaced as an issue (with notable exceptions, of course) despite the fact that there are frequently more numerous evaluations of impolite behaviour in everyday life than of polite behaviour. The core of the problem in the overall attempt to set up a model of linguistic politeness is the hypostasisation of the lexemes 'polite' and 'impolite' to serve as model-theoretical terms to describe what researchers take to be politeness (with the additional complication of those (English) lexemes being transposed into other cultures).

    The intention of this colloquium is to face the problem head-on by asking whether it might not be more fruitful to take first-order politeness not necessarily as the object of politeness theory but at least as the point from which new theoretical and methodological approaches to politeness should begin. The distinction between first-order (commonsense) and second-order (scientific) models of politeness was first made some ten years ago (Watts, Ide and Ehlich 1992) in order to express unease about the way in which the term was handled by scientific accounts, but did not at the time go further than this. More recently, it has been taken as a starting point to critique models of politeness (Eelen 2001). It is a distinction the epistemological and methodological significance of which has been left unexamined and thus also unaccounted for. In its light, the social-theoretical underpinning of current politeness theories appears inadequate to deal with a term which, however it occurs in other languages, is always contested, a term over which members struggle, like democracy, beauty, justice, etc. If we fail to take cognizance of this simple fact, we may not be able to approach a theory of politeness which adequately accounts for how it plays a role in ongoing verbal interaction.

    The idea of the colloquium, therefore, is to promote a discussion, which promises to be controversial, which compares the first and second-order viewpoints. Is it possible to create a model of second-order politeness which avoids the pitfalls of such an enterprise? Is it desirable? Or would it be better to create a model of politeness which takes as its starting point evaluation of it as a first-order term?

    CONTRIBUTIONS
    1. Marina Terkourafi,  The emphasis on conventionalisation: politeness as preferred interpretation.
    2. Gino Eelen, Conceptualising politeness: objectivism versus discursiveness.
    3. Mary Sifianou, "Don't do the FTA" to be extremely polite.
    4. Miriam Locher, Is a positively marked form of relational work equivalent to both first-order and second-order politeness?
    5. Jonathan Culpeper, Reflections on impoliteness. 
    6. Derek Bousfield, The dynamics of impoliteness.
    7. Saeko Fukushima, Solicitousness: Is it first-order or second-order politeness?
    8. Juliane House, Translation and politeness theory
    CONTACT
    richard.watts@ens.unibe.ch, jim.odriscoll@rug.ac.be and gino.eelen6@yucom.be
    contact all contributors
  14. TITLE
    Loan words as sociolinguistic markers
    CONVENORS
    Hans Van de Velde (Brussels) & Roeland van Hout (Nijmegen)
    ABSTRACT
    The integration of loan words shows large differences across language varieties, speech communities and language users. The key issues of the workshop are:
    • the adaptation processes of loan words
    • the interaction between social and linguistic factors
    • loan words as markers of divergence between different (standard) varieties, communities and social groups

    We prefer to have position papers on different languages / language communities where two or more (standard) varieties are developing / have developed. The organizers will present a paper on the integration of loan words in standard Dutch as spoken in the Netherlands and Flanders. Papers will be sollicited from specialists on different European and non-European languages.

    CONTRIBUTIONS
    1. Hans Van de Velde & Roeland van Hout, Loan words as sociolinguistic markers of divergence.
    2. Louis Boumans, The integration of foreign words in minority and majority speech communities.
    3. Helge Sandøy, The adaptation of loan words in spoken Norwegian.
    4. Jamilla Tarnyikova, English loan words in Czech: health to our mouths?
    5. Alla Belova, Loan words in Ukrainian.
    6. Valeri Khabirov & Marguerite Safouanova, Loan words in creolised languages in Central Africa.
    7. Discussant: Johan Taeldeman
    CONTACT
    hvdvelde@ulb.ac.be
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  15. TITLE
    Multilingual Cities: Sociolinguistic Challenges and Opportunities
    CONVENORS
    Mike Reynolds & Gibson Ferguson (Sheffield)
    ABSTRACT
    This colloquium is intended to follow up on that held on this theme at the Bristol symposium. Multilingualism and multiculturalism are defining characteristics of the contemporary city. This reality presents numerous challenges to citizens and policy-makers and creates tensions that we are all aware of. It also presents opportunities for affirmative action of various kinds, and a number of cities have risen to at least some of the challenges in various ways, particularly educational, and to various extents. This colloquium offers the opportunity to those working and researching in multilingual urban contexts to present their work, to discuss conceptual and methodological and approaches, and to define common problems. It will focus on (a) how cities are dealing with multilingualism, and multiculturalism, from trying to ignore it to embracing it in various ways, through educational and social policies, and provision or lack of provision for community languages, (b) what is happening to non-indigenous minority languages in the melting pots of contact (e.g. the development of 'mixed languages', fused lects, and crossing), and (c) the development of appropriate methods for the study of multilingual cities, the dissemination of findings and the possible contributions of sociolinguists to language policy formation and implementation.

    It is expected that most contributions will focus on European cities, but contributions from outside Europe are welcome.

    CONTRIBUTIONS
    1. Jacomine Nortier, Patterns of inclusion and exclusion in a multicultural neighbourhood in Utrecht.
    2. Willy Jongenburger, Linguistic and cultural exchange in a multi-ethnic neighbourhood in the Netherlands.
    3. Jo Arthur, Language at the margins: the case of Somali in Liverpool.
    4. Lalita Murty, From monolingualism to multilingualism: the Sheffield Multilingual City Initiative.
    5. Gabrielle Hogan-Brun & Meilute Ramoniene, Multilingualism in Vilnius.
    6. Pamela Knight, Peter Patrick & Michelle Straw, Difficult acts: aspects of linguistic identity in urban Afro-Caribbean English communities.
    7. Rudi Janssens, Language use in multilingual Brussels.
    8. Elizabeth Lanza, Oslo as a multilingual and multicultural city: a focus on Filipinos.
    9. Ute Smit, Multilingual Vienna past and present: between integration, assimilation and internationalisation.
    CONTACT
    m.j.reynolds@sheffield.ac.uk and gibson.ferguson@ed.ac.uk
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  16. TITLE
    Language across the great divide: language use across geo-political boundaries
    CONVENOR
    Goodith White (Leeds)
    ABSTRACT
    This colloquium explores the relationship between geo-political borders and language use. Papers address the differences between related varieties on both sides of a border, variation across borders, and perceptions and attitudes concerning the effect of political boundaries on language use.

    We would suggest that the colloquium contain a number of four speakers followed by a workshop in which participants would be asked to focus on 1) the problems for research methodologies and 2) the opportunities for future research raised by the talks. We intend to make the workshop 'task-oriented' in which participants are presented with particular research findings and methodological problems which they are asked to discuss in small groups, before a plenary discussion.

    CONTRIBUTIONS
    1. Geoffrey Benjamin, Malay and its guises: a cross-national survey.
    2. Katie Wales, Linguistic Isoglosses and geopolitical boundaries.
    3. Dominic Watt, Investigating the Scottish vowel length rule in a Scottish/English "hybrid" variety.
    4. Damir Kologjera, When state borders split a communicative community.
    5. Gunther De Vogelaer, Syntactic dialect levelling on both sides of the Belgian/Dutch border.
    CONTACT
    a.g.white@education.leeds.ac.uk
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  17. TITLE
    Making the news: the negotiation of access and control in the media
    CONVENORS
    Geert Jacobs & Paul Sambre (Antwerp)
    ABSTRACT
    This colloquium explores issues of access and control in the media. In particular, on the basis of empirical data (both written and spoken) drawn from a wide range of news contexts, we propose to examine how identity and footing are variously used in constructing credibility and ratifying status in the news as well as how this impacts on the institutional balance of power underlying the interaction. Some of the questions are:
    • how do various news sources (interviewees in broadcast interviews, writers of press releases, etc.) represent themselves in an attempt to gain access to the news?
    • how do journalists (e.g. in newspaper articles, TV coverage) represent others in order to make the news accessible to their audiences? etc.
    The primary aim of the colloquium is not so much to focus on the design of discursive resources that are used to negotiate access and control in the media (this was already done in the SS12 colloquium on discourse representation in institutional discourse, for example). Instead, we wish to contribute to a better understanding of the relationship between identity and footing, on the one hand, and issues of access and control, on the other hand. Also, in attracting papers from different research paradigms and stimulating intense debate between them, we hope to address some of the controversies in the study of institutional interaction (text-context, product-process, discourse-cognition, etc.) and to work towards an integrated methodology for exploring this relationship.
    CONTRIBUTIONS
    1. Adam Jaworski, Certainty and speculation in broadcast news reporting of the future: the execution of Timothy McVeigh.
    2. Diana ben-Amon, The face of the nation: patriotism in the US news.
    3. Paul Sambre, Still voices, silent definitions. A cognitive and discursive reading of polyphony mechanisms in newspaper definitions of the Internet.
    4. Anita Fetzer, Put bluntly, you have something of a credibility problem. The interactional organisation of sincerity and credibility in political interviews.
    5. Kay Richardson, Talking about cellphones.
    6. Joanna Thornborrow, New Technology, access and the public sphere: the status of emails in phone-in discourse.
    7. Kim Sleurs, Geert Jacobs & Luk Van Waes, Writing press releases: a process view of preformulation.
    8. Discussant: Allan Bell
    CONTACT
    geert.jacobs@ufsia.ac.be and paul.sambre@ufsia.ac.be
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  18. TITLE
    The standardisation and codification of sign languages
    CONVENOR
    Myriam Vermeerbergen (Brussels)
    ABSTRACT
    This colloquium will focus on the standardisation and the accompanying codification (i.e. the making of dictionaries, grammar books, ...) of sign languages.

    Many sign languages seem to undergo at some stage a process of change from a language used (almost) exclusively within the deaf community to a language with a wider role in society. At a certain point in that evolution the teaching of the sign language in question begins -to hearing family members and friends of deaf children and adults, to future sign language interpreters, teachers and educators of deaf children,...- and the language also starts to serve as a teaching medium for deaf children (and adults). An evolution of this type often raises questions concerning the standardisation of the sign language. When a sign language starts to take on a wider role in society, it is often the case that there is not yet a standard variety of the language i.e. that different regional varieties of the sign language are still being used side by side and/or intermixedly. Within the deaf community, -but more often: amongst those responsible for the education of deaf children and/or amongst policy makers considering a possible recognition of the sign language- the question is asked whether the existence of a standard variety is not a prerequisite for using the sign language in education and for the official recognition of the language by the government,... i.e. is controlled standardisation to be the first step?

    "Opting for controlled standardisation or not?" This will be the central issue of the colloquium. Other questions that could be raised are:

    • How can we find out whether a sign language is going through a process of spontaneous standardisation?
    • Advantages and disadvantages of spontaneous standardisation versus controlled standardisation?
    • How is controlled standardisation initialised?
    • Is it possible to have a process of controlled standardisation that respects the spontaneous standardisation process?
    • Spontaneous standardisation and codification
    • Controlled standardisation and codification
    • Factors influencing the success or failure of controlled standardisation
    • Etc.

    The format of the colloquium has yet to be determined but the aim is to organise an event which is as interactive as possible.

    CONTRIBUTIONS
    1. Iris Antoons, Eline Vanhecke, Myriam Vermeerbergen, Dealing with variation (in Flemish sign language).
    2. Tommi Jantunen, A hundred years of signed language planning.
    3. Trude Schermer, Standardisation of sign language of the Netherlands: why and how?
    4. Adam Schembri, Regional lexical variation in AUSLAN and its relationship to variation in BSL.
    CONTACT
    mvermeer@vub.ac.be
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  19. TITLE
    The Sociology of Language and Religion
    CONVENOR
    'tope Omoniyi (Roehampton)
    ABSTRACT
    One of the many tasks of interdisciplinary research is how to harmoniously manage and integrate the delicate interface between two or more theoretical traditions such that a critical paradigm of analysis is established. For example, Haynes (1996) illustrates such interdisciplinary engagement between religion and politics by distinguishing between religion in the material sense which takes the form of institutions and establishments, and a spiritual sense which ‘pertains to models of social and individual behavior that help believers to organize their everyday lives.’ Issues of appropriateness that arise in the determination of communicative competence become significant in attempting to characterize the behavior of the ‘good guys’ and ‘bad guys’ in society. Ethnographers would seek to decipher between modes of subcultural socialization that violate religious norms, which frame and define ‘proper’ and ‘improper’ language behavior. Such body of data may equally be subjected to critical analysis within the framework of interactional sociolinguistics in the Gumperz and Hymes (1972) tradition, as well as the works of Sacks and Schegloff, and Ervin-Tripp among others.

    Karl Marx described religion as the ‘opium of the poor’ and thus introduced an ideological and critical dimension to its discussion both as an academic discipline and as social practice. It is in this vein that the project of establishing how language may serve as a tool in the manufacture, dissemination/distribution of this ‘drug’ and characterize religion in the process becomes legitimized scholarship. The analysis of religion within a Marxist structural-functional framework works on a similar separation of the material from the ideal as Haynes (1996) proposed. In such analyses, the subject of religion is explained using the dynamics of the economics of production and distribution, which are used for arguing the existence of classes in society. Thus, does ‘religious capital’ exist in the same sense that ‘linguistic capital does? Access and exclusion that are fueled by religious subscription as much as by language skills will suggest this. The geographical spread of the relevance of these issues can be monitored within the context of expanded notions of ‘communities of practice’ (Scollon 1998).

    From the pioneering work of Fishman, Cooper and Roxana on bilingualism in the Barrio (1968) through Samarin (1971) on glossolalia to contemporary pre-occupation with identity the Sociology of Language straddles the subject domains of Language, Religion and Sociology. Debates about language spread, maintenance and death, linguistic imperialism and linguistic human rights, multiculturalism and more recently linguistic genocide, post-imperial English, language and globalization and language policy matters in bilingual education, Ebonics and racial identity generally all underline varying aspects of the ideological dimension of the Sociology of Language. The discipline has the unique capability to sponsor social intervention schemes by proffering specialist advice and influence social theory and policy significantly (recall the Ebonics debate which culminated in Senate Bill 205 and the bilingual education debate through the storm of Proposition 227 in the US). Race, ethnicity, nationality constantly map out the framework for Sociology of Language projects anchored to the themes of individual or group identity vis-à-vis other individuals or groups, micro- or macro-level politics of control and access in formal and informal spheres.

    Within the broad field of the Sociology of Language further specializations have emerged with theories that stretch out to embrace other disciplinary interests out of necessity as in, for instance, language issues relating to refugee populations being anchored to Social, Economic, Political or Sociological theories.

    The Sociology of Religion, which is the interface between Sociology and Religion, focuses on religion’s sociological perspective and it covers various issues of interest including secularization, ideology, solidarity, identity, diversity and the impact of globalization on religious practice. Billy Graham’s television ministry in the USA has flourished via satellite television to grip other parts of the world as an extension of Bernard Shaw’s observation in 1912 when he said ‘What has been happening in my life-time is the Americanization of the world’. Today, what may be called the Dot.com Evangelization Project has added another dimension to the Sociology of Religion by setting up a whole new community of practice based on digital technology. There is an inevitable link between the spread of religion and the spread of language as the presence of Spanish and English in remote parts of Latin America, Africa and Asia demonstrate. The process has further gained momentum under the more politically correct tag of ‘globalization’. There are evidences of competition and conflict between religious interest groups in the same way that there is conflict and competition between ethnolinguistic groups. Interestingly, in sociological theory the term ‘ethnoreligious’ has been coined to accommodate multifaith identities like in Britain (see Modood 1998). The latter has ethnolinguistic identities subsumed in it.

    The Sociology of Language and Religion as a project will aim to revisit those themes that both of the disciplines have common interest in with a view to constructing new paradigms of analysis to serve the interdisciplinary purpose of the sociology of religion and the sociology of language and how their shared interests impact social practices in various communities around the world. The ultimate objectives of the Sociology of Language and Religion however will be to demonstrate the closeness of the two fields, help us understand the relationship between them better and fashion tools for creating a body of new knowledge that supports the emergence of a better society. Israeli authorities described the Israeli army attack on Palestinians in Ramala in November 2000 as ‘limited action’ in retaliation for the murder of two of their soldiers. Palestinian authorities called the same event ‘a declaration of war’ to justify their own consequent declaration of the intifadah, raising the subject of the link between language, religion, national identity, ideology and representation. Social constructionism gets a peep into the project and allows us to debate essentialism and relativism in relation to identity, language and religion in the era of globalization. The emergence of female priests in the Church of England as an element of social change creates a whole new perspective for the examination of the sociology of language and religion in the way that pronominal references, mental and visual images, Church discourse and the definition and expectations of interlocutors are caused to change. These in general terms provide an overview of the nature of the interface that is the Sociology of Language and Religion.

    CONTRIBUTIONS
    1. Muhammad Amara, The political discourse of the Islamic Fundamentalist movement in Israel.
    2. Annabelle Mooney, The sociology of religion and the language of law: paternalism and bed bugs.
    3. John Joseph, The shifting role of languages in Lebanese Christian and Moslem identities.
    4. Chao-Chih Liao, THe sociology of language in Religions in Taiwan.
    5. Rahesjwari Pandharipande, Many languages, many religions: issues in the language of religion in India.
    6. Janet Stephen and Junaidah Januin, Language use in religious diversity: use of expressions in Islam by non-Muslims in daily informal interaction.
    7. Jurgita Dzialtuvaite, The role of religion in the language choice and identity of the early Lithuanian immigrants in Scotland.
    8. Piotr Chruzsczewski, Jewish prayers as sociolinguistic factors integrating Jewish religious discourse communities.
    CONTACT
    skyman@btinternet.com
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  20. TITLE
    The construction of identity through discourse: French-Canadian minorities facing Globalization
    CONVENOR
    Norman Labrie (Toronto)
    ABSTRACT
    Globalization, migration and the New Economy are currently transforming both the demographic basis of linguistic communities, and the economic basis which allows for their social (re)production. Such social and economic transformations are at the origin of the emergence of new discourses on the significance of forming a linguistic community, on the value attributed to speaking French or English, or other international languages, and on the importance of being bi- or multilingual. Based on discourse data collected among Francophone communities in Canada from 1996 until 2001 by an international research team, this colloquium will focus on the analysis of emerging discourses and on the processes by which traditional and newly emerging discourses coexist, operate, and are disseminated and reproduced in minority settings. Such processes will be illustrated by four different case studies: how Acadian artists define the significance of cultural productions in the construction of a collective identity; how gays and lesbians of different generations explain their inclusion or exclusion in a relatively conservative linguistic minority; how national and/or international companies identify, adopt, and implement linguistic norms for internal and external communications; and finally, how individuals, NGOs, governmental institutions and employers (re)define literacy in accordance to constantly changing social and economic needs. The colloquium will focus on theoretical and methodological aspects which are at the junction between sociolinguistics and discourse analysis.
    CONTRIBUTIONS
    1. Roger Lozon, Bilingualism and the transformation of linguistic norms in the workplace.
    2. Lise Dubois & Annette Boudreau, Acadian community radio stations and new linguistic markets.
    3. Annette Boudreau & Lise Dubois, The construction of identity through cultural productions.
    4. Gabrielle Budach, Social construction through discourse in French adult literacy.
    5. Marcel Grimard & Normand Labrie, The inclusion and exclusion of Francophone gays and lesbians.
    6. Jannis Androutsopoulos, On the web: resources for website construction in the youth-cultural field.
    7. Sylvie Roy, Call centres: discourse of language as a commodity.
    CONTACT
    nlabrie@oise.utoronto.ca
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geert.jacobs@ufsia.ac.be and stef.slembrouck@rug.ac.be