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The conference is intended to bring together academics representing a range of disciplines in humanities and social sciences, practitioners and EU/national policy makers, concerned with multilingualism and linguistic diversity in Europe. Proposals are invited for original and previously unpublished research papers that broadly fall within the following themes and topics:
A. Language, Culture and Identity: Within the context of ongoing glocalisation, the emergence of multiple identities compels to redefine the role of languages and lingua francas as identity markers, and as factors contributing to the distinctiveness of culture-specific environments. The overall objective of this thematic block is to clarify the saliency of language as an identity marker in the EU. This points to the role of language in identity formation processes, the existence of language-based multiple identities, and the significance of language as part of well-being of their speakers, and primary symbol of possible secondary cultural, economical, political and other non-linguistic motives.
B. Language Policy and Planning: This thematic bloc is addressed to researchers interested not only on the institutional, intrinsic and professional process-oriented dimension, but also to those concerned with an often unnoticed, implicit or unintended language policy and language planning processes. A consensus on the demarcation between such concepts as “language policy”, “language planning” and related concepts (“aménagement linguistique”, “language politics”) will be discussed. The issues to examine concern the adequacy of the existing language policy and language planning efforts in the EU countries, identifying possible discrepancies between theory and practice.
C. Multilingualism and Education: The main issue to be tackled concerns the challenge of becoming not only multilingual, but multicompetent in a multilingual environment and the ways of developing the capacity to behave in a flexible and adequate manner in concrete multilingual contexts. The two main fields in which these questions can be answered, are in general a) Second Language Acquisition, including all forms of language acquisition apart from first language acquisition, from contact languages present in the territory to school learning of truly foreign languages) and b) bilingual Education (including concurrent learning of several languages).
D. Language and Economy: This topic is focused on the interplay between language and economy and their impact on the building of a knowledge-based society. The focus will be on the relationship between language, geographical mobility and New Economy growth patterns. If we conceive of the economic order as a determining force in society, and if we take into account that economy cannot do without language, then it follows that economy has profound implications for language (its use and status, the emergence of lingua francas) in society. This is all the more true as economy itself has shifted from industrial age to a knowledge economy.
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