Update

This is a post advertising an academic event that took place in 2015. The content is no longer valid, and is maintained here for archival purposes only. If you landed here looking for information on language policy, the following links about language education may be of interest:

• What shapes language policy in education?
• International Mother Language Day 2014: Repressive language practices & Resistance.
• German and French as Foreign Languages in Greece
• Oppressive Language Education

The conference

The 4th conference of the Working Group on Non-Dominant Varieties of Pluricentric Languages (WGNDV) will take place in Graz, Austria on 8-11 July 2015. The aim and scope of the conference are described by the conference organisers as follows:

The conference is devoted to the description of pluricentric languages and in particular of non-dominant national varieties of plc. [pluricentric] languages. These are the varieties that are small by the number of their speakers and their symbolic power, and are not the primary norm-setting centres of the language. They may often be falsely attributed the status of a “dialect”, and have little or no codification of their norms. Typically, nd-varieties often have to legitimate their norms towards the dominant varieties etc.

Additional information, a definition and a list of non-dominant varieties can be found here.

The conference aims to describe the pluricentric languages and non-dominant varieties from around the world, including Albanian, Aramaic, Aromunian, Basque, Bengali, Chinese, Croatian, Guaraní, Hebrew, Hindi / Urdu, Hungarian, Kiswahili / Swahili, Kurdish, Mapudungun, Occitan, Pashto, Punjabi, Quechua, Tamil, Romanian, Russian and others. In addition, the scope of the conference includes non-dominant varieties of English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, German and Russian.

One aspect of the conference that will likely be of interest to readers of this blog is the strand on non-dominant varieties of English, which I understand to include research into World Englishes and English as a Lingua Franca.

The conference languages will be English and German, but sections in specific languages are also envisaged, provided enough presentations are submitted for a section to be created. It is expected that the following sections will be created: English, French, German, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, a general section and language technology section. Although the oral presentation may be held at the language of the section, the presentation should be written in English.

Call for papers

Scholars interested in presenting at the conference are are invited to submit proposals for papers and workshops. Papers (25 minutes followed by 5-minute discussion) are expected to provide information about the situation of pluricentric languages and non-dominant varieties, including ‘new’ pluricentric languages, or to contribute towards the theory and methods of description of pluricentric languages and non-dominant varieties. Abstracts for papers should not exceed 3,000 characters (1 page A4) including 4 keywords.

Workshops, which will be allocated 90 minutes, should focus on specific languages and the non-dominant varieties varieties associated with them, as well as methodological challenges in the description of non-dominant varieties. Abstracts for workshops should outline the overall structure of the workshop and provide names of the participants, and have a maximum length of 5,000 characters (1 1/2 page A4) including 4-8 keywords.

All abstracts should be written in English, and are to be submitted by 30 March 2015 using the conference registration page (update: link no longer active) or alternatively by email to ndv-conf [at] pluricentriclanguages [dot] org (as MS-Word attachments). The prorposals will be peer-reviewed, and notification of acceptance will be given on 15 April 2015. Selected papers will be published in an edited collection by Peter Lang Verlag.

Important dates