LINGUIST List 34.203
Sat Jan 21 2023
Confs: Applied Ling, Lang Acquisition, Lang Doc, Socioling/Netherlands
Editor for this issue: Everett Green <everettlinguistlist.org>
Date: 13-Jan-2023
From: Jelske Dijkstra <jdijkstra
fryske-akademy.nl>
Subject: Minority Languages in the City
E-mail this message to a friend Minority Languages in the City
Date: 16-Mar-2023 - 17-Mar-2023
Location: Leeuwarden, Netherlands
Contact: Jelske Dijkstra
Contact Email:
< click here to access email > Meeting URL:
https://www.mercator-research.eu/city/
Linguistic Field(s): Applied Linguistics; Language Acquisition; Language Documentation; Sociolinguistics
Meeting Description:
Minority Languages in the City Conference
As a result of globalisation and urbanisation, many cities are hotspots of linguistic diversity. Immigrants tend to settle in urban environments because they usually offer the best economic opportunities, and life in the city allows them to access networks that provide the support needed to adjust within a new host community. Many immigrants strive, but struggle, to maintain and transmit their heritage languages. Signing communities often emerge and flourish in large cities where deaf people are able to live together and/or gather frequently. New speakers of minority languages – that is, individuals who did not grow up with minority languages but acquire them later on in life, outside the home – are generally characterised by urban profiles.
Traditional speakers of minority languages often consider the varieties learnt by new speakers to be inauthentic, causing urban new speakers to struggle with how to become legitimate minority language users. At the same time, among traditional speakers of autochthonous languages, urbanisation frequently leads to a shift from the minority to the majority language. Many cities are thus home to a range of minority language communities with different histories, different levels of recognition and support, and very different needs.
The organisers of the international conference on Minority Languages in the City, i.e. the Mercator European Research Centre on Multilingualism and Language Learning (Fryske Akademy, Leeuwarden, NL), the Endangered Languages Archive (Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Berlin, DE), and the Interdisciplinary Centre for Social and Language Documentation (Minde, PT), are proud to announce that three particularly interesting key speakers will come to Leeuwarden on 16-17 March to deliver a lecture. These are:
* Robert Blackwood (University of Liverpool):
Minority languages in urban linguistic landscapes: Beyond documenting multilingualism in France
* Ruth Kircher (Mercator / Fryske Akademy):
Multilingual migrants in Montreal: A regional perspective on language attitudes and social identities
* Agnieszka Legutko (Columbia University):
Minority languages in the city and at university: The Mapping Yiddish New York project
Page Updated: 21-Jan-2023