Submitted Abstract
Scheduled to take place at the University of Luxembourg (Walferdange Campus) on 11-12 July 2013, this exploratory workshop will bring together some 35 established scholars, mid-career scholars and early career researchers. Zoning in on the interface between multilingualism and mobility, state of the art research arising from fieldwork in multiple European countries will highlight the ways that linguistic practices and policies as well as the valorisation and stigmatisation of multilingual repertoires are bound up with social and spatial mobility. Interactions, identities and ideologies constitute the conceptual lenses through which qualitative sociolinguistic data will be analysed and related to the broader research context. Workshop participants will identify points of similarity across research sites, whilst also bearing in mind particularities of countries and regions due to their specific socio-historical contexts. Given the historical trajectories and present-day configurations of multilingualism in Europe as a whole and the ways that multilingualism currently is being managed by institutions and experienced by individuals in different European states, the European context provides a fruitful site to explore questions situated at the cutting edge of sociolinguistic inquiry and, in particular, research on language policy and multilingualism. The broad objective of this workshop is to advance knowledge and understanding of the mechanisms of language policy as well as the ways that social actors experience multilingualism in relation to the broader context of Europeanisation and globalisation. The thematic focus on multilingualism and mobility in a range of European cities and borderland zones will enhance the impact of workshop outputs: an edited volume with Peter Lang (Series on Sprache, Mehrsprachigkeit und sozialer Wandel, Series Editor: Jürgen Erfurt) and the establishment of a research network on multilingualism and mobility.The exchange of ideas and research findings by scholars at all career stages will lead to new developments in the field of sociolinguistics, first by means of insights obtained from the comparative approach across a range of European settings through the lens of a common set of research questions and secondly, by casting these research findings in relation to paradigms in different disciplines in the humanities and social sciences. Subsequent workshops – to be funded by research funding councils in their respective countries – will focus on the interface between multilingualism, mobility & education (Strasbourg 2014) and multilingualism, mobility & space (Sheffield 2015). Each of these three workshops in Luxembourg, Strasbourg and Sheffield will have websites that will serve as the central communication platform for event details, including the programme and practicalities, and workshop information will be publicised via relevant subject area lists as well as institutions and centres with a research focus on multilingualism.