Agenda

19/09/2012 Bulgaria

ALTE SIG (Special interest Group) Meeting

The Department for Language Teaching and International Students (DLTIS), Sofia University, Bulgaria will host the ALTE SIG meetings in Sofia, 19-20 September 2012. The SIGs are open to representatives of ALTE Members and Institutional Affiliates.

19/09/2012 Netherlands

DRONGO festival over meertaligheid

DRONGO is een groot festival over Nederlands in een meertalige omgeving. Voor iedereen die leeft in de moderne meertalige wereld, en daarin de weg wil vinden. Is mijn taal daarbij een probleem of juist een oplossing? Waar vind ik boekjes, deskundigheid, cursussen, tests, scholen? Bij DRONGO vind je vragen en antwoorden, een lab en een markt, sprekers en vertellers, en heel veel goede contacten. We zijn immers niet alleen - bijna de hele wereld is meertalig.

14/09/2012 Netherlands

CLEAR Child Language & Eyetracking: Analyses and Rationale

The goal of this one-day workshop is to bring together researchers who study language acquisition and language development using eyetracking. It provides the opportunity to exchange experiences and discuss practical and methodological issues of eyetracking when testing infants and young children.

14/09/2012 Italy

International conference - The languages of films: Dubbing, acquisition and methodology

By focussing on the specificities of original and dubbed film dialogue, the conference aims to offer an original contribution to research on audiovisual translation and language learning, both descriptively and methodologically. The conference represents the ideal conclusion of the two-year international project English and Italian audiovisual language: translation and language learning, funded by the Alma  Mater Ticinensis Foundation and coordinated by the University of Pavia, with the participation of the Universities of Malta and Loughborough. The conference will thus be an important occasion to present the project results and will also be an occasion to further discussions among scholars working on similar topics.

13/09/2012 Italy

International Conference: Subtitles and Language Learning

The conference’s main objective is to highlight the importance of the use of subtitled audiovisual materials in formal teaching/learning contexts (primary, secondary, tertiary education), and in informal contexts (individual language learning for adult learners). It will disseminate the results of an EU Lifelong learning programme research project on the same topic, which has been running since November 2009.

13/09/2012 Spain

8th International Conference on L3 Acquisition and Multilingualism

The 8th International Conference on Third Language Acquisition and Multilingualism will be held at the University Jaume I of Castelló, Spain, on 13-15 September 2012. Topics include multilingualism in relation to acquisition or use of three or more languages.

12/09/2012 Norway

Decennium: The First 10 Years of CASTL

CASTL, The Center for Advanced Study in Theoretical Linguistics is celebrating its tenth year, and preparing for its future as an integral part of an expanded Department of Language and Linguistics at the University of Tromsø. At this juncture, CASTL will host a major international conference highlighting its contributions at the forefront of linguistic research, to be held on September 12-14, 2012. Professor Noam Chomsky of MIT has agreed to hold a plenary lecture. In addition, there will be eight other distinguished international guests.

12/09/2012 New Zealand

The XVI FEL Conference - Language Endangerment in the 21st Century: Globalisation, Technology & New Media

Since the beginning of the millennium unprecedented substantial social changes have been taking place across the world driven by technology, new media and social media networking. The global diffusion of ideas and values linked to globalisation has become synonymous with the weakening of historical and traditional linguistic ties and their replacement by loose connections to consumerism and capitalism. Old traditions perish and new ones evolve.

In this world, everything is becoming increasingly ‘mediatised’, with the Web allowing all of us to be publishers and social media enabling everyone to be agents of public communication. Social communication is increasingly ‘mediatised’; from phone to Facebook and from SMS text to Twitter. What was once the language of private sphere is now more and more very likely to take place in a more public one e.g. the Facebook/Bebo arena, where in an exchange of written messages as we perform our relationships with each other in front of a perceived audience. The private, intimate, oral domains that have traditionally been the base of endangered languages in the face of hostility in the public sphere are being opened up to more public modes of communication with literacy as an important currency. We need to ask:

What will be the linguistic impact of this shift towards the ‘mediatisation’ of intimate conversation eventually be on endangered languages?

Will we see new patterns of ‘digital diglossia’, leading to a decline in the previously private domains where it used to be ‘safe’, ‘acceptable’, ‘not controversial’, ‘natural’ to use the minority and endangered languages?

How do technology and new media impact on endangered languages?

But globalisation can also be seen as a necessary step in the evolution of mankind, bearing the potential for growth, preservation of identity, fostering interdependence and forging new cultural hybrids Or, to view globalisation positively can technology and new media act as positive and transformative catalysts in safeguarding endangered languages?

Over the years technology from the tape recorder to digital archiving has become increasingly useful and has been universally deployed in documentation of endangered languages. What are the new possibilities in the 21st century?

12/09/2012 Latvia

Meaning in Translation: Illusion of Precision

The themes invited for the conference include scientific and technical discourse, political discourse, theory and practice of translation, terminology, semantics and pragmatics. We invite theoretical and practical studies as well as relevant work-in-progress papers in one of the specified themes.

We welcome participation from, researchers of different cultural and language backgrounds from various scientific disciplines.

12/09/2012 Denmark

CILC 2012: 1st International Conference on Interactivity, Language & Cognition

The aim of the conference is to place the study of human interactivity, including language and cognition, within the context of human culture and the life sciences. With its trans-disciplinary agenda, CILC invites researchers from linguistics, cognitive science, psychology, anthropology, biology, etc., to address the following research questions:
1. How do the interbodily dynamics of human interactivity shape languaging and in turn how does languaging shape the dynamics of human interactivity?
2. How do linguistic, symbolic and gestural structures constrain these interbodily dynamics?
3. How are human agency, the cultural order, technology, landscapes and ecosystems influenced by the talk, texts, and material products of human languaging?

12/09/2012 United Kingdom

Conference: Regional Varieties, Language Shift and Linguistic Identities

Regional varieties have become an important contributor to identity construction processes, and an increasingly important issue for the individual and the community in late Modernity: the individual is under constant and increasing pressure to define who s/he is and has to choose from an ever growing pool of possibilities to construct social identity in an increasingly globalized world, which is perceived as incromprehensively complex. By referring to what is seen as traditional regional language, dialect and culture, localizing oneself seems to be a viable way out of this dilemma. This should have stabilizing effects on lesser used varieties, which have been facing a gradual process of language shift and divergence towards dominant contact languages over the hundred years. Unfortunately, at the same time, modern life does not so much require knowledge of regional varieties as of standard languages and a good command of English as the global lingua franca. How can an upwardly mobile individual combine the requirements of modern life with identity construction on a regional scale if they so choose? What are the linguistic consequences for lesser used varieties and their respective contact languages?

10/09/2012 United Kingdom

ALTE Course in Understanding the C-levels to Assess Language for the Professions

ALTE is running a week-long course in Understanding the C-levels to Assess Language for the Professions in Cambridge, 10-14 September 2012. The course will be taught by Dr Anthony Green, University of Bedfordshire and Dr Fiona barker, University of Cambridge ESOL Examinations.

07/09/2012 Hungary

13th Language Parade - The Language Fair

The Language Parade offers:

• language courses for children and adults
• courses abroad
• course books and resources
• language exams, exam centres, mock exams
• online language courses
• taster classes
• new methods to make your language learning effective
• presentations on language exams, etc.

06/09/2012 Canada

Multidisciplinary Approaches in Language Policy and Planning Conference 2012

The organizing committee of the Conference invites papers that approach language policy from a variety of theoretical and methodological perspectives, and in a variety of contexts, from the local/institutional to national/global. We invite abstracts for papers in any of the following areas:

- Language policy and political theory Official language policies
- Language policy and lingua franca Heritage language policies
- Language policy and globalization Ideologies and language policies
- Language policies in school settings National identities and language policies
- Language policy and the economics of the workplace Non-official languages in mainstream classrooms
- Language policies and social mobility Language attrition, language revitalization and language policies
- Language policies and transnational communities

06/09/2012 United Kingdom

12th CercleS Conference 2012 on language teaching

The LSE Language Centre will be hosting the 12th CercleS Conference. The Conference will bring together teachers and researchers from Language Centres, Departments, Institutions, Faculties and Schools in higher education whose main responsibility is the teaching of language. The general theme of the Conference is: University Language Centres: Going for Gold – Overcoming Hurdles.

This CercleS conference will be an occasion to celebrate 20 years of collaboration between its 300 member institutions that regularly meet to share experiences in language teaching and to discuss innovative ways of promoting language education throughout Europe. The conference will cover a wide range of topics of interest to anyone working in the field.