Dates

Location




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Call for Abstracts
 Picture
Conference Booklet

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9.-10. March 2017

​University of Bern
Main Building
Room HG 331
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Conference Description:
There have been a number of research projects on Pacific languages, or on communities of the Pacific, carried out with an ethnographic and anthropological perspective. The English language, however, albeit an official language in many of these communities, has received little or no attention. In the few cases English has been or is being investigated, researchers often analyse the post-colonial English-speaking communities with a sociolinguistic approach. There is a lack of studies with transdisciplinary foci, where anthropological perspectives inform the study of Pacific languages (including English), and vice-versa, where linguistic perspectives help complete anthropological studies of Pacific communities.
This conference brings together (socio)linguists and anthropologists alike to discuss transdisciplinary stances and approaches (in the topics of language contact, language variation and change, postcolonial Englishes, mobility, power, policies and culture).
 
Keynote Speakers:
  • Prof. Carolin Biewer, University of Würzburg (Germany)
  • Prof. David Britain, University of Bern (Switzerland) and Prof. Kazuko Matsumoto, University of Tokyo (Japan)
  • Prof. Elizabeth Keating, University of Texas at Austin (USA)
 
Presenters:
Researchers of socio-cultural aspects of Pacific communities, Pacific languages, and English varieties in the Pacific are invited to submit abstracts. We aim to inform each other about linguistic and anthropological methods and findings and be able to create synergies between the two disciplines.
 
Focus Questions:
  • How can the nature of indigenous ethnicities in the Pacific and its historical transformation be explored?
  • How do socio-historical developments such as mission work, spread of formal education, political autonomy, and climate change influence an island's culture identity and their language?
  • In which way are substrate languages and colonizer languages in competition?
  • In which way do mobility, globalisation, power, and other anthropological themes shape linguistic behaviour?
  • What is the extent to which varieties of English share linguistic features? How do they predict variation patterns across different varieties?
  • Which individual linguistic constraints are universal, and which are culturally dependent?
  • Are some linguistic variation patterns more stable across speech communities than others?
  • How do we evaluate overall similarities between English varieties of the Pacific while still considering cultural differences?
  • How can cross-varietal differences in variation be best explained?
 
Format:
Authors are requested to submit an abstract of max. 500 words (excluding references) in pdf form to micronesia-project@outlook.com
 
Important Dates:
  • Submission of abstracts: EXTENDED until 31st October 2016
  • Notification of acceptance: 30th November 2016
 

Organising committee
Modern English Linguistics, University of Bern:
Dominique Bürki
Tobias Leonhardt
Sara Lynch