Duration
20 Jun 2022 - 24 Jun 2022
The Language and Society course investigates language in its social setting. This includes the following broad themes, among others: the relationship between language and culture, language variation and change, convergence and divergence of dialects, societal and individual multilingualism, language planning and policies, linguistic diversity and language endangerment, language shift and loss, computer-mediated communication, discourse analysis, pragmalinguistics, intercultural communication, lexical semantics, corpus linguistics for sociolinguists, and others.
The idea behind the course is that within these broad themes, special sessions are dedicated every year to more specialized and focused topics that are capturing scholars’ attention at the current moment.
The final aim is to discuss and improve on the possible hypotheses, models or theories related to the explanation of the interaction between language processes and social variables as well as provide a context for internationalization of existing research themes and establishing and meeting with European and overseas research networks.
The topic of the meeting in June 2022 is: Multilingual, multilectal, and multiscriptal writing.
Despite the overwhelming focus in sociolinguistics on spoken language, scholars of language in its social setting have long been interested in writing and the ways in which people express identities, stances and meanings through stylistic, code, and scriptal choices. We will explore a range of topics from an historical or contemporary perspective: the nature, politics and power dynamics of scripts and writing in multilingual, multilectal, and multiscriptal contexts, power struggles surrounding standardization and orthography, counter-hegemonic challenges to written standards, and the social meanings attached to lects, scripts and orthographic choices.
Course organizers:
Cecelia Cutler, City University of New York, Graduate Center, United States
Dunja Jutronić, University of Split, Croatia
Unn Røyneland, University of Oslo, Norway
Zvjezdana Vrzić, New York University, USA; University of Rijeka, Croatia
Click here for the information on the 2019 Language in Society meeting.