Call for papers

Almost every country in the world is multilingual. In many of them, multilingualism is a long-standing state of affairs, while for some it is a relatively recent development. Numerous speech communities in different parts of the world are currently experiencing profound transformation, and the cultural change is more intensive than ever. These changes are triggered by a fundamental restructuring of the social, economic, cultural and political environment of language, the fall of traditional language boundaries, new forms of mobility and migration.

The conference seeks to contribute to the scholarly understanding of multilingual practices and the patterns of both language change and language shift in speech communities all over the world. We encourage attention to those viewpoints, such as language contact situation, code-switching, speakers’ attitudes in different linguistic environments, that emphasise the significance of detailed qualitative linguistic analysis. We see this conference as a forum for discussion of the importance of the parallel use of two or more languages and its influence on both language structure and the renewal of functional
domains.

Possible topics for talks may, therefore, relate to (but are not restricted to) the following research areas:

– contact-induced language change
– code-switching and code-mixing
– old and new forms of multilingualism
– minority languages and language shift
– language policy and education in multilingual communities
– multilingual practices in different environments
– sociolinguistic aspects of multilingualism
– legal aspects of multilingualism
– linguistic landscapes in multilingual communities
– methodological issues in the research of multilingualism

The following plenary speakers have confirmed their participation:

– Prof. Durk Gorter (Ikerbasque, Basque Foundation for Science/University of the Basque Country, UPV/EHU in Donostia-San Sebastián)
– Dr. Eitan Grossman (Hebrew University of Jerusalem)

Anonymous abstracts of no more than 500 words, excluding data and references, should be submitted via EasyAbs (http://linguistlist.org/easyabs/multilingualism2017) in .pdf format by March 7, 2017. They will be evaluated by the organizing committee and by the members of the scientific committee. Notifications of acceptance will be announced by March 17, 2017. The talks will be 30 minutes long: 20 min for presentation and 10 min for
discussion.

The registration fee will be 35 €.

For all correspondence concerning the symposium, please contact the organizers at multilingualism-2017@helsinki.fi

The conference is organized as a part of the joint project between the University of Helsinki and ELTE University Budapest, funded by the Academy of Finland.

Organizing committee of the conference:
Riho Grünthal
Hanna-Ilona Härmävaara
Magdolna Kovács
Ulriikka Puura
Ksenia Shagal
Outi Tánczos